3 a.m. (Henry Bins 1) (14 page)

Meow
.

“
SVU?”

Meow
.

“
You love iced
tea?”

Meow
.

“
Oh,
Ice T
.”

Meow
.

“
Dude, I told you I’m not
gonna call her. She’s sleeping. I’ll see her tomorrow.”

I look at the clock.

It’s 3:23 a.m.

I’d spent the last seven minutes searching
the Internet for any information regarding my mother’s murder, but
there was no mention of a woman’s body pulled from the Potomac
River with a bullet hole in the back of her head. That being said,
Alexandria is only a short fifteen minutes from Washington D.C., so
if it wasn’t a politician with the hole in their head, then it
wasn’t newsworthy.

Meow
.

“
Fine.”

I pick up the phone and dial.

Ingrid picks up on the third ring.

“
Hi, honey.” The words
come out like cold molasses.

“
Sorry, to wake
you.”

“
It’s okay. How was your
morning?”

Ingrid called the first
twenty minutes of my day the
morning
, the second twenty the
afternoon
, and the third
the
night
.

“
I’ve had
better.”

I can almost feel her eyes open
slightly.

“
Did something
happen?”

I’d never mentioned my mother to her and I
spend the next four minutes bringing her up to speed: my mother
walking out, searching up Global Geologist Unlimited, paying AST to
find her, and her fingerprints matching the Jane Doe.

I can hear the sheets of Ingrid’s bed rustle
as she sits upright.

“
I’m sorry,
honey.”

“
It’s
okay, I hardly knew her.” And everything I did know about her
was
a lie.

“
Still, she’s your
mother.”

I’m not ready to be sad and ignore her. “She
was found in Alexandria. Did you hear about the case?”

“
No. With my own caseload
and Robby, I haven’t had time to talk shop with
anybody.”

Ingrid’s last partner, Cal, was the
aforementioned gentleman who had taken a bullet between the eyes,
and her new partner, Robby, was a green second-year detective.

Without my having to ask, Ingrid says, “Let
me make some calls and I’ll find out everything I can.”

“
You’re
amazing.”

“
I know.”

We hang up.

It’s 3:31 a.m.

::::

Lassie
strains the full ten feet of his leash. I yank him back from
the tree he wants to climb.

“
Dude, I don’t have time
to patch you up tonight.”

Lassie had a history of getting into fights
with other mammals — fights he rarely won — leaving me spending the
rest of my minutes cleaning his wounds from the raccoon he was
chasing, pulling out the quills from the porcupine he snuck up on,
or washing the stink off him from the skunk he was trying to
copulate.

He retreats to the sidewalk and we continue
east.

I have a windbreaker and a beanie guarding
me from the light sprinkle, but Lassie is half soaked, his tan and
black fur slick and shiny.

We cross the street, Lassie darting towards
a puddle and nearly submerging his entire body, before I’m able to
yank him back.

Meow
.

“
I’m no fun? Well, you’re
no fun when I wake up with your stinky puddle body asleep on my
chest.”

I know how much Lassie loves a good puddle
and I usually get a kick out of him slapping at the water with his
little paws, but I’m in a hurry.

We cross three more blocks in a half
run.

A minute later, we reach a small platform
with metal guardrails.

The Potomac River sweeps
past. A quarter mile south, the river runs under a long stone
bridge. Three cars zoom over the bridge in quick succession. I
wonder if the car that transported my mother’s body passed over
that bridge. Or did they park on it, pull her body from the trunk,
and toss her overboard? Or just as easily, they could have killed
her where I stood this very moment. Shot her in the back of the
head, then pushed her over the guardrail. Or was she killed miles
from here? Who knows how far the mighty Potomac carried her body.
The autopsy report said she died 24 to 48 hours before she was
found. She was found Monday morning. So that means she was
murdered,
executed
, sometime over the weekend.

Lassie and I walk north along the sidewalk.
I instinctively stop above a huge drainage pipe that flows into the
Potomac. The six-foot high pipe is only visible if you lean over
the railing and look backwards toward the shore. A stream of water,
which were millions of separate raindrops minutes earlier, flows
into the mighty river.

Six months ago, I spent twenty minutes
hiding in the pipeline while a carload of gentlemen — the sort that
would have done to me what someone did to my mother — searched for
me. I wonder if my mother was as frightened before her death as I
was then. Did she know she was being hunted? Was there a chase? I
didn’t know much about my mother — it appeared as though I knew
almost nothing — but I did remember those eyes of hers. You can’t
fake the intensity or intelligence that lived there. My mother
would not have been easy prey.

The cellphone in my pocket buzzes.

It’s Ingrid.

I put the phone to my ear and head back
towards home.

It is 3:46 a.m.

::::

“
Walker
pulled the
case.”

Charley Walker was a fat blob, who was 3rd
cousin to somebody important, or else he would still be writing
traffic tickets. At least that was according to Ingrid’s last rant.
He had an affinity for stretching the truth and was known around
the precinct as “Walker, Texas Liar.”

“
He wasn’t thrilled to
chat at three in the morning, but I reminded him he had an upcoming
IAB investigation into making illegal bets, and that he should talk
more quietly next time he put two-hundred and fifty dollars on the
Redskins to cover. That got him in the mood to talk.”

I nod along, dragging Lassie behind me as I
speed walk through the drizzle.

“
Thing is, he didn’t have
the case for long. When he showed up on the scene, he was lead for
thirty minutes before he got shoulder tapped by some
suit.”

“
The FBI?”

“
Nope, Homeland
Security.”

I stop walking, Lassie continuing until he
is yanked backwards by the leash.

“
The Department of
Homeland Security?”

“
Yep. Suit told Walker to
pack up and leave. Walker said he was back in bed thirty minutes
later.”

My brain is whirring. Lassie gazes backwards
at me. He’s sitting on his hind legs shivering.

“
Homeland Security,” I
utter again.

“
I’ve worked with DHS a
couple times and they are a tight-lipped bunch. They don’t play
well with others. Luckily, I’ve been keeping a favor in my pocket
from a guy whose son I helped wiggle out of a DUI and I called it
in.”

For a moment, I think of
the card I have in the drawer of my condo. Blank, save for the
single word,
anything,
scribbled in black ink.
And the three
initials,
CRS
. The
President of the United States gave me a Get out of Jail Free card.
One favor, for anything, redeemable at a moment’s
notice.

“
So, I woke another guy
up,” Ingrid continues. “I asked him about the woman pulled from the
Potomac on Monday morning. He said he hadn’t heard about it. I
leaned on him. Told him that his kid was still on probation and the
Dean of UVA was a close family friend.”

“
Really? The
Dean?”

“
No, but I looked it up
online. Either way, he bought it and started talking. He called me
back a couple minutes later on what I guess was an encrypted line.
Told me how on Monday morning a Red Four came in.”

“
A Red Four?”

“
An interagency alert.
Four being highest priority. Red being—”

I know the word that is coming, but it still
hurts.

“—
terrorist.”

CH:04

I hang up the phone.

Lassie yanks on the leash.

“
Dude, gimme a
second.”

Meow
.

I ignore him.

My brain has never felt so incapable. Like
trying to run a marathon having never run a day in your life.

A terrorist.

My mother was a
terrorist
?

I think back to 9/11. Waking up at 3:00
a.m., going through my routine, no clue that eighteen hours
earlier, two planes crashed into the Twin Towers. Had it been any
other week, my father would have texted me about the attacks, but
he was on vacation in the Bahamas and without cell phone service.
He would later tell me what a nightmare traveling back to the
States had been the day following the worst terrorist attack in
U.S. history. He’d camped out at the Bahamian airport for three
days, finally chartering a flight to Miami, then renting a car and
driving home to Virginia.

I found out about the attacks, not through
the news — I didn’t have time for news — but when I logged into my
E-Trade account. I’d lost nearly two hundred thousand dollars the
previous day as the stock market plummeted.

I spent the rest of my day, and the rest of
each of my next four days, watching the 9/11 saga unfold. I once
asked Ingrid how much coverage of the attacks she’d watched and she
said it was more than fifty hours that first week. Can you imagine
that? Fifty of my days watching reruns of two towers collapsing.
Now I’m not judging, it was compulsive and entertaining coverage
causing me to sleep with my laptop on my chest, but after that
fourth day, I washed my hands of it. I couldn’t give any more of my
time to sadness and anger.

But now.

My mother was a terrorist.

My mother was one of these assholes.

Meow.

Meow.

Meow.

“
Dude, what?”

Meow.

I look down at my watch.

It’s 3:57 a.m.

I look at Lassie.

“
Run!”

We take off in a sprint.

I’m a quarter mile from my condo. The
fastest mile I’ve run is right around seven minutes. I will have to
run the tail end of a six-minute mile if I don’t want to sleep in
the street.

My feet pound against the pavement.

I glance down at the phone.

3:58 a.m.

I turn onto my street, Lassie scampering
parallel with me. I don’t have to look down to know his tiny teeth
are gritted in concentration.

We pass a coffee shop and a dry cleaner.

I see my condo a block and a half away.

I ponder calling Ingrid back and alerting
her that I might not make it home. That she should drive down my
street to look for a guy on a bus bench with a cat on his chest. I
glance down at the phone.

The numbers turn from :58 to :59.

I still have time.

I can make it.

I have forty-five seconds to run a hundred
yards, go up three flights of stairs, and unlock my door.

Twenty seconds later, Lassie and I dart up
the front entrance of the condo and into the stairwell. I start
looking for places to lie down. The last thing I want is to end up
in the hospital.

Again.

When the nurses at the local ER send you
Christmas cards, you know something is wrong. Six concussions, what
seems like a zillion stitches, two broken arms, a broken
collarbone, two broken ribs, and a collapsed lung. And that was
just in the last eight years.

We hit the hallway.

We’re gonna make it.

The key is already in my hand.

I put the key in the door and turn the
handle.

::::

It
would have been better if the door hadn’t opened. If it had
stayed closed, I would have crumbled to the carpeted floor of the
hallway. But the door did open and I fell forward into the condo,
going down sideways onto the wood floor, which would account for
the dull throb in my shoulder.

At least, that’s how I recreated it in my
mind.

But I didn’t wake up on the wood. I woke up
on the carpet in the living room, a pillow tucked under my head, a
blanket pulled up to my shoulders, and a glass of water and three
Advil sitting on the coffee table next to me.

I throw back the three Advil and pick up the
yellow legal pad sitting near the water glass.

Hey Sleepyhead,

I came to drop off some leftovers and I
found you on the floor. I’m guessing after we hung up last night,
you started thinking about your mom and time got away from you.
Then you had to book it home and you didn’t make it in time. From
the position of your body, I guess you conked out right as you
pushed the door in.

Sometimes I forget she’s a detective. I keep
reading.

I gave you a thorough examination, and
everything appeared to be in working order. Your left shoulder was
starting to swell and I think it took the brunt of the fall. Get
some ice on it when you wake up. (You’re lucky you didn’t break
your nose. Well, I guess I’m lucky. I’m the one that would have to
listen to you snore. Haahahaa.) I apologize if you have any rug
burns on your back. I dragged you by your legs and your shirt kept
riding up.