In Death's Shadow Page 9

  They had decided on the trip to Jamaica as a way to celebrate his last run from Colombia. He’d taken a big chance picking up that unauthorized packet from the bandit character. Joey didn’t like taking chances. He’d made the run once a month for a year before his first actual pickup. He’d known every customs agent by name, and he had a good cover. He was a construction engineer. He went down and surveyed and studied plans. Even better, it would take a battery of lawyers to figure out the company he worked for was owned by the Colombians. The extra he picked up this time worked out to great cash.

  Enough for a needed vacation. Georgia was the pits in February—one long, cold, gray rain cloud. Still, he wouldn’t do it again.

  “Come here, baby,” he said, and his wife sauntered over to the bed. He caressed one buttock, squeezed, and then let his hand slip lower to the place between her legs.

  “Mmm, you must be feeling better.” Her hand pressed into his, holding it against her.

  “Yeah, I do.” Ironically, so far the vacation had been a real pain—a bad time to have the flu. They’d been in Jamaica only a day when he’d suddenly come down with it. Fever, chest aches, even hard to breathe—the whole works. He’d decided to just stick to bed—no use fighting it and less use trying to find a doctor. If it stuck, he’d go to the clinic when he got back to Savannah. Now, five days later, he finally felt better. He’d survived whatever it was. He let his hand drop to the bed.

  “Sure you’re better?” she asked. “I don’t want you missing the rest of the week by acting like you’re well too soon and then coming down with it again.” She reached forward to press her palm against his forehead. “You don’t feel hot.” She took his hand and kissed it.

  “But I am.” He wrapped his arms around the small of her back and pulled her closer. She pressed to him. He kissed her stomach and then let his caress gradually go lower. Denise moaned with pleasure. Outside the ocean lapped against the white sand of the beach.

  Joey felt good. In another year, he planned to drop out of the courier business. He almost had his student loans paid off.

  Harry decided not to take any more of the threes. They kept his mind in a constant fog. He couldn’t think, and he needed to. They couldn’t stay in Jesup forever. Somewhere, two thugs were probably still searching Atlanta for them.

  Had his apartment been searched? He wondered when they would start looking outside of Atlanta and remembered the pickup truck that had almost killed them.

  He cursed. Obviously, the search had left Atlanta. How long would it take for them to start looking off the interstate—like on the main two-lane road to the coast, the road this motel sat on? His eyes widened. The car! It was parked right out front. How stupid could he be? All they had to do was drive down the road and keep their eyes open.

  He decided he’d move the car, but later, after Ree had returned. He didn’t want her to come back and see it gone. Who knew what she’d do? No more threes. By four in the afternoon, the last dose had worn off, and he hurt. At five, Ree arrived with a bag of fast food. Harry groaned as his stomach churned at the heavy smell of grease. He ate anyway. The cheeseburger tasted flat and had too many fake onions; the french fries hung limp.

  After stuffing the empty food bags in the small plastic trashcan, Ree turned on the television, and for the next two hours, Harry watched her watching a series of programs on the newest developments in gene therapy. She leaned toward the television, apparently fascinated.

  Finally, he broke down and listened to the sound. Cystic fibrosis would soon be a disease of the past. Gene substitution was here. Sounded like science fiction.

  Squirming with impatience, he waited for a break in the programming, so he could start asking questions. Every time he straightened up with the intent of beginning a conversation, Ree made some little move toward the television. At nine, the program ended.

  “Ree?”

  She looked at him and smiled. He wanted to drag answers out of her, yet he didn’t want to lose that smile. There’d been few of them. He felt he was making progress with her. Gaining her trust. He took a deep breath and went for it.

  “Look, you’ve got to start telling me what’s going on. Why don’t you just start at the beginning.”

  “No.”

  Startled, Harry sat up against the headboard, groaned at the sudden pain, and took a moment to gather his thoughts again. “If I don’t know everything, I don’t see how I can help.”

  “You don’t need to know everything,” she said.

  She did turn off the television. He decided that was progress. “How do I know what I need to know until you tell me?”

  “’Cause I’m telling you now.” She stuck her jaw out in what looked to be anger.

  Harry cupped his hands and rested his chin on them. He didn’t want to threaten her, but he needed answers. Perhaps he was going after it too directly. “Where do your parents live?” he asked.

  She spun around and stared at him. He shook his head in bewilderment. He had tried to ask an innocuous question. Her eyebrows drew down into a scowl, and she started twisting at the hair above her ear. She glanced at him and then looked away.

  “My father is dead. My mother is in a hospital,” she said, still not looking at him.

  “I’m sorry. What happened?”

  “Fuck off.”

  “I’m just asking a simple question, Ree. If we’re going to work together to get out of this, you’ve got to trust me. There are people after us who obviously wouldn’t mind us both dead. Now would be a good time to start working together.”

  She glared at him, but the flare died in her eyes. The wait seemed forever before she continued. She slumped over, looking defeated. He sat patiently.

  “I grew up in embassies,” she finally said, her voice a flat monotone. “When I was twelve, terrorists broke into our apartment. They shot my father, and then while he was bleeding to death, they made him watch my mother being raped.”

  It was only years of being a reporter that kept Harry’s jaw from dropping and kept him from staring at her in stunned silence. Her gaze darted around the room, but if he had expected tears, instead he saw anger.

  “Why?” he found himself saying.

  “I don’t know. Don’t know if anybody did. Getting back, I guess. We’d done something to them. Who the hell knows? What can ever cause anyone to do that? It’s sick.” She spit out the last words.

  “Did they catch them?”

  “No.”

  “Did they…do anything to you?”

  “N-no.”

  Her voice had changed. “What did they do to you, Ree?” he said and then regretted saying it.

  Her eyes seemed to lose focus, yet they remained fixed on him. Her jaw clenched tighter, and then suddenly the words streamed out of her mouth. “First there was a face, a man, not Arab. Then a gunshot, a scream. Another man came into my room—dark complexion—a boy really. He came in and shut the door behind him. He tied my hands. I fought but couldn’t stop him. He slapped me, ripped my nightgown pulling me up to hit me again. I quit fighting. After he had my legs tied, he sat on the bed and stared at me. I couldn’t move. The other man came in and said something. The two left. The radio in my parents’ room came on loud…”

  Her expression went blank, and then suddenly her face tensed up into a mask of rage. “Goddamn you,” she yelled and burst across the space in between the beds screaming. Her fingers arched into claws as she attacked him.

  Harry fell back under her assault. Pain lanced his ribs, took the breath from him. He grabbed her hands and rolled, trying to pin her. He felt her body go rigid, and in a second of insight, he loosened his grip. The terrorists had bound her tight. He held her as loosely as he could without being damaged by her frenzied struggle. She kicked, tried to bite, scratched and hit him as hard as she could. He let her, but softened each blow, holding her away from him.

>   She fought until her breath came in gasps. Then, the struggle lessened. Her eyes had focused again. She was on top, her elbows locked straight, his hands wrapped around her forearms. Her pupils had widened to dark holes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, not quite knowing what to say. His stomach felt hollow. Was being a reporter, having a knee-jerk desire to ask questions, a disease?

  The tears became continuous lines of pain down her face. Her body convulsed, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “I’d never—I was just a kid. The white man looked in later I think. I never saw him again, just his face. I freaked. First, I fought against the ropes, but I couldn’t…I was tied too tight. It lasted a long time, the music.” She stopped, gasping for breath. “Sometimes, I heard my mother screaming, a muffled scream. I knew what was happening, but I couldn’t…The doctor treated me and promised he wouldn’t tell that I knew, that I’d heard. They all thought I didn’t know what happened. My uncle never knew. But I dream about it, and sometimes it comes back to me…the ropes, the man, the screams. I can’t stand it.”

  She collapsed onto his chest and buried her head against him. Holding her gently, Harry levered his way up onto a pillow. She let him position her.

  “Uncle Will took me back to the States.” She mumbled the words into his chest. “He put me in schools over here. I kept getting thrown out. I didn’t want to go to school. I hated everybody, felt like I was owed.”

  “You were owed,” Harry said quietly.

  She shook her head against him. “No, not like that…But Will worked for the agency. He kept getting me out of trouble. He’d find a new school. Finally, one of them graduated me. I guess they just didn’t want me around anymore.”

  The room fell to silence broken only by the rumble of an occasional truck, the sudden blaze of light from the hotel sign.

  “I didn’t mean to…” He stopped, unable to complete his sentence. He had meant to find out about her, but—God’s alive-not this.

  She wiped at the tears with her arm. “My father died. They took my mother. She was gone. Uncle Will took me to see her when I graduated from high school. She didn’t even recognize me. She sat in a rocking chair with a stuffed bear in her arms. She had on a soiled nightgown and a diaper. She just stared.” Ree’s body shook, and he tightened his grip around her.

  “You never told anybody you knew what was happening?”

  “No. I was too…ashamed.”

  “Ashamed, but you did—” He stopped again. He could understand. No, she hadn’t done anything, but it had happened to her. “I guess you hate men. I could understand why.”

  “Hate?” she repeated.

  He held her. The light blinked. A car screeched to a halt in front of the motel. Harry opened his eyes wide and stared between the slit created where the curtains did not meet. The car drove off, its sound receding into the background.

  “Not you,” she said.

  He started slowly rubbing her back.

  “Hold me.”

  He did. The light beside the bed stayed on; he cradled her in his arms. For a while, he lay awake and enjoyed the feel of her warmth on top of him. She was small. Her body was mostly hard, here and there soft. And, he felt guilty. It had been men who’d done this. He couldn’t imagine a woman perpetrating such horror. Why would a man do such violence?

  She slid to his side. A few more cars passed. The number decreased, more time in between each one. The night grew silent. The wall opposite the window blinked as the sign lit and died. Why would anyone have done that? They lay there for a long time before he finally fell asleep.

  When he awoke, the sun had risen, and she was gone—again. He took a shower and then thought about turning on the news and decided against it. What could he learn? He sat in the bed and looked through the crack in the curtains. A thick-set Hispanic woman rolled a cart past. She didn’t stop. Harry closed his eyes.

  The door opened. Harry woke with a start and stared at Ree, her face taut with emotion. Fear? She signaled for him to come outside. She held a finger to her mouth, indicating silence. He obeyed, carefully pulling on the T-shirt with the combine on the front of it.

  She looked panicked, like she had when the truck had almost killed them. His breathing started to race.

  It was early in the morning. Rendon had been up until two the night before working on the protocol. Now he sat in front of a computer in a small Fulton County Health Department office. It felt cold even with his sport coat and wool pants. People were starting to trickle into the building. He could smell coffee starting to percolate.

  He felt like he was waiting for Godot. When would the virus strike? Who would fall?

  Back to the protocol. He listed all the information they had, all the descriptors that might pertain to a case. It sounded like everybody who walked into a general practitioner’s office. The medical community would rebel. He went over the list again: young, healthy, moneyed, cold symptoms, shortness of breath…He scowled. There would be rank noncompliance. He’d been a general practitioner. He knew the life. The doctors were already overworked. They were asking them to order and read an EKG and X-ray on each case—that would add ten minutes to each case and one hundred fifty more dollars in fees. The doctors would simply not do it, let alone the patients (whose checkbooks would be hit). And if they really convinced them, there might be panic. Damn.

  He stopped working on the protocol, pulled out his notebook, and opened it to the last page of his notes. They needed to make the description a little more specific. Maybe if he talked to one of the strippers again? The one who died had been the only case not to fit as far as socioeconomic status. That, at least, was something, and all the more experienced EIS officers were always saying if you were stuck, you looked for the unusual cases. Sometimes the cause was more apparent there. He was stuck. He wrote a note to call the club and arrange to meet with one of the dancers. Not at the club, though. The place was too distracting. It was hard to keep his eyes off the dancers. He went back to working on the protocol.

  An hour later, he finished. He delivered it to Cougher, who was in the meeting room with the rest of the team. That room was warm.

  Cougher nodded, taking the paper. “I’ll look it over and get back to you,” he said and went back to discussing the case with the rest of the group.

  Rendon paced back to the borrowed office, feeling irritated. Cougher hadn’t even given him the time of day. Scowling, Rendon stopped on the way and picked up some coffee. As he sat down, he remembered that one of the girls had given him a phone number. He thumbed back through his notebook until he found it. The phone rang on the other end.

  The voice that answered sounded sleepy. “Yes?”

  “This is Dr. Rendon from the CDC. I was over at the club earlier this week and talked to you about Susie. Do you remember? Just a couple of days ago. You gave me your phone number, if I had any other questions.”

  “Yeah, you’re the one thinks she had some disease or something.”

  “Right, well, I was wondering if I could sit down and talk to you over at the restaurant across the street from the club.”

  “Sure, baby. Anything you want.”

  “Are you going in to work today?”

  “Yeah. The lunch crowd pays good.”

  “Well then, how about this morning?”

  “OK, I’d need to meet you about nine thirty, so I’d have time to get back over and change. That OK?”

  “Sure. I’ll sit up in the front.”

  “See you.”

  At 9:30 precisely, he reached the restaurant and chose a booth near the front in the smoking section, though he didn’t smoke. He ordered coffee, the drug of choice at the CDC. Ten minutes later, he went ahead and ordered a breakfast. The restaurant was quiet. The few people there were dressed in suits and looked like they’d strolled over from the office buildings next door. None of them looked like they were danc
ers, and that disappointed him. He might not have seen all of them at the club.

  The food came quickly. By ten, he was finished. No dancer. He asked the waitress where the phones were and then, finding them, called her number. No answer. The restaurant was not full, so at least there was no pressure to leave. He ordered another cup of coffee and went back to his notes. Nothing.

  At eleven he called the club. A man answered.

  “This is Dr. Rendon from the CDC. I was over their investigating the death of Susie, one of your dancers.”

  “Yes?”

  Rendon wiped the hair back from his eyes. “Well, I need to ask a few more questions, and Goldie had given me her number. So I called her, and she was supposed to meet me.”

  “Right.” The voice sounded sarcastic.

  “No,” said Rendon, “I needed to get some more information. We think that Susie may have died of something contagious. Goldie said she’d meet me at nine thirty, and she still isn’t here.”

  “So?”

  Rendon took a deep breath. “Is she there?”

  “Nope. She hasn’t come in today.”

  “Could something have happened to her?”

  “I guess,” said the man. “More likely she just decided not to come or forgot.”

  “I just asked her this morning.”

  “Doctor, you got to understand. These girls here—they just barely remember to get to work. A lot of the time, they don’t get here, and we have to go calling just to get enough to work the stages. We’ve got more turnover than an egg on a griddle. They come in, work awhile, and then they’re gone. I don’t know what you thought, but if she ain’t there, she ain’t coming. If you want to talk to one of them, find her, sit her down, and talk. Don’t expect them to be able to remember you the minute you’re gone. They won’t. Once you’re out of their eyesight, you are gone.”

  “Oh, well, uh, thanks. Guess I’ll come over there. Maybe she’ll come in later. What time do you open?”