3 a.m. (Henry Bins 1) (5 page)

My mind is racing.

“
I need to make a
call.”

“
Lawyering up already,”
snorts Cal.

“
Actually my dad probably
thinks I'm dead, so I'd like to call him.”

Ray hands me her phone. I raise my eyebrows
and both the detectives leave. My dad is frantic when he answers.
It was our card night and finding that I wasn't there, he called my
phone. When I hadn't answered, he'd started towards the
hospital.

“
Turn around and go back
to my house.”

I tell him what to do once he gets
there.

Before I hang up, I ask if he saw a cat
prowling around outside my apartment.

He hadn't.

…

The nurse – not Sara, though she'd come to
say goodbye when her shift ended – is changing the dressings on my
head when my dad shows up.

The best word to describe my father is
frumpy. He wears slacks too short and too high on his
waist. Sweaters that should have been given to the Salvation
Army decades earlier. Glasses that could fry a caterpillar in
seconds. He has a full head of curly gray hair and three days’
worth of stubble on his chin.

I introduce him to Cal and Ray, both of whom
have taken seats, waiting for what I've told them is concrete proof
of my innocence.

“
Do you have it?” I
ask.

He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls
out the pink Samsung.

I take it from him. It's dead, the battery
having run out.

“
What's that?” asks
Ray.

Holding the phone up with my right hand, I
say, “It's the phone I found under the car, the phone I can assure
you I was not lying about.”

“
But we found
Callie Freig's phone,” spits Cal.

“
Maybe she had two,” Ray
says with a shrug. 

I lower it out of his reach and say, “It's
not Callie's phone.”

“
Then whose is it?” asks
Ray.

“
It's the
President's.”

…

“
The President? As in the
President of the United States?” asks my father.

“
Yep.”

Cal is laughing. Doubled over. He composes
and says, “That's your proof.”

I hand the phone to Ray. “It's his.”

“
Is the President even
allowed to have a cell phone?” she asks, taking it.

“
Of course not,” Cal
manages.

“
Actually, he can, and he
does.”

Both Cal and Ray stare at my father. He
continues, “Obama was so adamant that he be able to keep his
Blackberry that they made a special stipulation that he could keep
it.”

“
Really?” I found myself
asking. I'd hoped this was the case, but I was still
surprised.

“
Of course they had to
make some considerations for National Security, added encryption
and disabled the GPS so no one could track him. But he was able to
keep it and Connor Sullivan was allowed to keep his.”

“
But it's pink,”
shouted Cal. “And why are we even having this conversation? This is
not the President of the United States’ cell phone.”

“
The phone is white,
the casing is pink,” I say. “And it's not just any pink
casing, look closer.”

Ray turns the phone over in her hand. “It's
got a ribbon embossed on the back. It's a Susan B. Komen
casing.”

“
The First Lady,” remarks
my dad.

The First Lady had been diagnosed with
breast cancer two years earlier. They caught it early and it'd gone
into remission.

Cal was silent.

Ray hits the button for
the nurse and when one comes a moment later, Ray asks, “Does anyone
have a Samsung charger here?”



“
Deb would,” the nurse
responds and returns a moment later with Deb's charger.

Ray plugs it in and it takes ten seconds for
the phone to come alive.

“
It's locked,” she says,
showing everyone.

“
The Washington Monument,”
remarks my father.

“
What?”
asks Cal.

“
The lock screen. The
picture in the background, it's the Washington
monument.”

The monument was only six miles from my
house and I'd assumed that Callie had loved it and taken a picture
of it. Now I was hoping that it had a special place in Connor
Sullivan's heart.

I look at my dad. He shakes his head. He
knows plenty about the President, but the monument doesn't trigger
any tidings.

“
What use is it to us if
it's locked?” says Cal. “Let's get it down to the precinct and get
one of our resident nerds to crack it open. The faster we get it
open, the faster we find out this phone isn't the fucking
President's.”

“
How many numbers?” asks
my dad.

“
Four,” responds
Ray.

My father mulls. When he mulls his lips move
back and forth. Mull. Mull. Mull.

“
Try thirteen,
forty-four.”

Ray punches them in and my dad explains,
“Thirteen was his number when he played basketball at Dayton.
Forty-four because he's the forty-fourth president.”

Ray shakes her head.

“
Switch 'em,” I
say.

“
What?”

“
Forty-four,
thirteen.”

“
Four-four-one-three,” she
says aloud. Pause. “Holy shit.”

Cal rips the phone from her hand, looks at
the screen, and then hands it back to her silently. She shows it to
both me and my father. The Washington Monument has dissolved
into the home screen. The picture is of the President spread eagle
on the eagle carpet that centers the oval office. A picture that
would have been infamous had it ever been leaked.

“
Look at this,” Ray says,
reading through his contact list. “The vice president, the
treasurer, supreme court justice Billings, the head of the CIA.”
Ray shoves the phone in Cal's face and says, “Look at this picture.
It's the President taking a selfie . . . and here's one
of his dog . . . holy shit.” She looks at me. “You were telling the
truth.”

I nod.

“
Now will you get these
cuffs off me so I can go home.”

Cal nods at Ray and she unlocks the
cuffs.

“
What time is it?” I ask.

Lassie is licking my face.

Only it isn't Lassie.

It's my dad's one-hundred and
sixty-pound English Mastiff.

Murdock.

Not only has Murdock been licking my face
for God knows how long, he'd slept on my legs, and I am paralyzed
from the waist down.

Can't I go just one night without waking up
feeling like I've been tackled by Ray Lewis. 

By the time I get Murdock off me, get my
legs to work, clean my face, change the dressing on my stitches,
and join my dad at the kitchen table, it is 3:06 a.m.

“
Why are you walking like
that?” he asks.

“
Your dumb dog slept on my
legs.”

He laughs.

Murdock comes trotting in and buries his
face in my dad's lap. “You're not dumb,” my dad tells him.

He's not dumb. To be dumb, he would have to
be much smarter.

I open the fridge and see that Isabel has
made a fresh round of sandwiches. Reubens. My favorite. I grab two
and a strawberry protein shake and set them on the table where my
dad is shuffling the cards. I grab a can of tuna, open it, and set
it outside the door.

Just in case.

I dive into the sandwiches and flip up my
laptop. 

My dad deals the cards.

“
Nothing in the news about
the President being arrested, if that's what you're wondering,” he
says.

I close the laptop and set it on the
ground.

“
How much do you
know?”

“
After you fell asleep,
the lady detective told me most everything.” He smiles. “She's not
bad looking.”

I laugh. “No, she is not.”

He's waiting for me to discard, but I also
know he wants to hear my version of the story. I oblige him with a
six of clubs and an animated narrative.

“
And you took the cat?” he
says with belly laugh. “You hate cats.”

“
I couldn't leave him
there. And he thinks he's a dog, so he's not too bad.”

I give my dad a hug at 3:58 and let Murdock
lick my face goodbye.

I have my first peaceful sleep in a
week.

…

It's 3:08 a.m. when I pick up the phone and
dial Ray.

She answers, then says, “He says
that he lost the phone two days earlier.”

“
And you believe him?” I
shout into the phone.

“
There is an official
report filed,” responds Ray. “I have a friend in the White House
who faxed it to me.”

“
Could it have been
doctored?”

“
I don't see why not. But
proving it would be hell.”

“
Well, did you at least
get the President's fingerprints off the phone?”

“
Nope, he must have wiped
it. And we didn't find his fingerprints in the house.”

I blew out a long exhale.

“
What about the car? Did
you check the stoplight cams or ATM cams for the Ford
Focus?”

“
Yep. Nothing.”

“
So where does that leave
us?”

“
Us?”

“
You? Where does that
leave you?”

“
Well, we can't do
anything without rock solid evidence and the phone isn't enough. In
fact, the Secret Service already came by and got it.”

“
Seriously?”

“
Yep.”

“
And they had a quick
conversation with my Captain, who then tore me a new asshole for
using my back channel at the White House and warned me the only way
we would ever go after the President is if there were a video of
him strangling the girl and even then we probably wouldn't do
shit.”

“
What about Cal? He didn't
back you?”

“
No.”

I wait for her to expand on this. She
doesn’t.

“
So he just gets away with
it?”

“
The only thing tying him
to the scene is you and the phone, but the phone is no longer in
our possession.”

“
There has to be a
connection somewhere. You sure Callie Freig never worked
at the White House?”

“
She graduated from Ohio
State in the winter, then moved out here four months ago. She might
have met the President in Ohio somewhere, but we'd never be able to
prove it.”

“
What about friends and
family? Ask them.”

“
No family to speak of. As
far as friends, we can't locate any.”

“
But you have her cell
phone records.”

“
Sure do. She called and
received calls from all of one number. And that number is now
disconnected.”

“
That's odd.”

“
Very. This could easily
be how she communicated with the President, but the cell company
couldn't get a report on the number. We'd need a warrant to dig any
deeper and since my ass is still stinging, I'm not doing anything
that could come back on me.”

“
So it's done. The
President gets away with murder.”

“
For now.” She pauses.
“Yes.”

I hang up.

Three minutes later, my feet are pounding
the cold Alexandria asphalt.

I dig a moat around my mind, fill it with
alligators, and place a thousand archers on the turrets of my
cerebrum, but I am unable to defend my thoughts. They are
dominated by Connor Sullivan, Callie Freig, and the white
noise of injustice.

I do not have a temper. I don't have time
for anger. But my insides are engulfed in blue flames.

The car pulls to the curb. Doors open. Men
jump out.

I cut left into an alley.

I think about what Ray said, that
the only thing tying him to the scene is you and the phone,
but the phone is no longer in our possession.

I am the only connection.

If I'm dead, no connection.

My pursuers are ten strides behind me. I run
a quarter mile, knock over two trashcans and exit the alley. 
Headlights flash at me. I cut right and sprint three blocks, then
take a left onto a side street that leads to the Potomac.  I
can feel the headlights on my back, singeing as they grow closer
and closer.  I can hear the river.  I hit the concrete
embankment and turn.  Both cars have skidded to a halt. 
The doors fly open and four men leap out.  I gaze down at the
moving water twenty feet below. 

I jump.

The water is cold, but I'm not in it. I am
in a large drainage pipe that opens into the Potomac.

Gross, I know.

The pipe is impossible to see from the high
embankment and I only know it's there because I'd jumped in the
river once on a self-dare and crawled out just below it. It is
roughly four feet high and I crouch down and wait.

I check my phone.

3:46 a.m.

Two minutes later, I hear wheels squeal on
the asphalt. 

I wait another minute, then climb out and
scale the embankment.  My pursuers are gone.

I have dual concerns as I start sprinting
back; can I make the two and a half mile trek in time?  And
are those dickheads still out there looking for me?