A Devil in the Details (27 page)

“Gimme hugs, button. Daddy’s gotta go to work!” The redheaded imp came barreling down the hallway to squeeze my knees tightly, and I bit back a wince. “Be extra good for Mommy, okay?”

Anna nodded solemnly. “I will, Daddy. I promise.”

Passing through the kitchen, I gave Mira a quick kiss. “You gonna be okay today?” She nodded. “Did Viljo get the computer issue worked out?”

“He says he’s going to put green lights all over it. Why do I need green lights on it?”

I had to chuckle. “Honey, by the time he’s done, you’ll be able to pilot the Space Shuttle from it.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “We need to ship him the dead one. He’s going to see if he can recover anything off the drive.”

“Can do.” I slipped my cell phone into her hand. “Answer it, just in case it’s Ivan, okay?”

She nodded, then threw her arms around me, nearly squeezing my breath from my lungs.

“Oof!” I leaned back to look down at her. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

She bit her lip, the familiar gesture meaning she was trying to put whatever it was into words. “Something feels wrong today. Everything’s unsettled.” Her eyes were troubled, but finally, she just shook her head. “It’s probably just the storm making me all jittery. Or PMS or something.” I wasn’t about to touch that one. There’s no right answer to that.

“You sure?” She nodded after a short hesitation. I kissed her forehead. “Okay, I’m gonna head out. Call me at work if you need anything. You guys have fun at Dixie’s.”

A feeling I could only describe as lingering ickiness stayed with me as I climbed into my truck. Mira was right. Something felt off about the day. The goose bumps on my arms refused to go away, and I felt as if I had swallowed a fifty-pound lead weight. Neither of those signs ever heralded anything good.

I sat for long moments, weighing the pros and cons of taking my katana with me. The cons won out, knowing that I couldn’t afford to repair a broken window when some jerk broke into my truck to steal the sword. And really, what was I going to do with it, besides stand out in the storm and do my lightning rod impression?

As I pulled onto the highway and headed north, I kept waiting for flashing blue lights in my rearview mirror, but they never came. Twice, I saw cop cars cruising up on my tail, but while I held my breath and kept both hands at ten and two, they sped on by, intent on some other miscreant. I couldn’t believe that Verelli hadn’t gone to the police, but why weren’t they coming after me? I wasn’t exactly hard to find.

What the hell was I going to do if they arrested me? Mira was going to be so pissed, not to mention how much work I’d be missing. My income from It wasn’t much, but those paychecks made the difference between scraping by and breathing a bit easier. There were bills that still needed paying, and her car needed new tires and . . .

Worry settled between my shoulders and got quite comfortable, the muscles there knotting up painfully. I forced my hands to relax on the wheel and tried to meditate, the low hum of tires on pavement as soothing as any mantra. My thoughts refused to be soothed, and instead they took a forced march through some of the darker parts of my life.

The first line of the
Hagakure
says that the way of the samurai is found in death. It goes on to say that you should instantly choose death if it benefits your cause, because integrity is more important than life.

That was the part I had a hard time with. Sure, I was accepting of death. I mean, no one escapes it in the end, so why be afraid of it? And living honorably is very important to me. Sometimes, honor is all you have.

Bushido
says that to lay down your life for your beliefs is a noble death that few can understand. It is the way of the warrior. But when it comes down to it, if I ever truly have to make the choice between dying to achieve my goal, and living on to fight another day . . . I wonder if I could really do it. I wonder if I really believe it.

They had a lot of absolutes, those ancient samurai, and they never talked about having multiple goals. My short-term goal may be saving the next guy’s soul, but what about my long-term goals? What about growing old with Mira, or seeing my daughter graduate from college? What about being a grandpa someday? If I succeeded in one but failed in the others, did I come out on the losing end, anyway?

Sometimes—a lot of the time, really—I’m a pretty lousy samurai.

Pondering death on a day like today just had to be a bad omen. I turned up the radio to drown out the gloom and watched the sky.

The low-hanging clouds were dark with unshed rain, and the wind came in fits and gusts, threatening to goose the unwary right off the road. There was no thunder yet, but I could feel it coming, down in that deep primeval instinctive place all humans still have. You know, that place where you are secretly still afraid of the dark no matter how old you get.

Yes, we were definitely in for some bad weather.

I
wanted it to rain. Maybe if it rained the tension in the air would snap and we could all breathe again.

There were no theme songs for the day. Instead, Kristyn and I kept the radio tuned to a local station for weather updates. The store was nearly deserted. In the three hours I’d been at work, we’d seen two customers. Perhaps two dozen people had walked past the door in total. Sierra Vista looked like a ghost town. No one was willing to brave the ominous clouds, even though no actual precipitation seemed forthcoming.

My punk-haired boss grumbled. “I feel bad calling you in. If I’da known we’d be this dead . . .”

“You’re not supposed to be here alone. You know that.” We were victims of corporate policy. No one worked the store solo. I think it was supposed to cut down on employee theft or something.

“I shoulda known he was too good to be true.” All morning, she’d been beating herself up for hiring Paulo, our no-show of the day. “He was probably illegal—I never could get him to put his social on the paperwork.”

I had other reasons for cursing Paulo. If fleeing from me in the Wal-Mart hadn’t made him look guilty of
something
, refusing to show up and face me again certainly did. I had a lot of questions, and very few available answers. Therefore, it was with a heavy heart that I decided to commit that greatest of mortal sins, nosiness.

Under the pretense of reworking next week’s schedule for Kristyn, I set up camp in the small closet that served as her office. Flipping on the turquoise lava lamp for light, I began rifling through the employee files. Later, I would have to point out to her that she should really lock that cabinet, but for the moment it worked to my advantage.

My own file was in the folder marked
O
—for “old dude,” I presume. Paulo’s was under
T
for “temporary.” In our high-turnover world, no one counted as a permanent employee until they lasted through two paychecks. “Well well, Señor Riaz. Let’s see what I can find out about you.” I kept an ear out for the thud of Kristyn’s boots as I perused his paperwork.

There wasn’t much to know. The application was filled out in neat block lettering with a sketchy ballpoint pen. Paulo listed no social security number, as Kristyn said, and when I tried the phone number, it went to the car dealership across the highway. The only address was a street name, no number, and he hadn’t even bothered to write down the zip code. And she hired him with only this information? Kristyn baffled me—often.

My superior’s hiring ethics aside, there was no doubt in my mind that Paulo had been hiding something. Sure, all the omissions could have been explained as laziness or maybe even a language barrier (though I’d rate that as a stretch), but when the gut tells you it’s hinky, it usually is. Without Paulo there to interrogate, I wondered if I would ever find out the truth.

Putting the paperwork neatly back in place, I shut the cabinet up tight and scribbled down a rough draft of the schedule for Kristyn’s approval. I even remembered to pencil myself in for some time off in two weeks.

Once I returned to the front, Kristyn and I busied ourselves with putting out new stock, and when that was done, we shot paperclips at each other in a running rubber-band fight through the store. She called an end to it after the third time she scored a hit on me because I was staring out the plate glass window into the growing darkness.

“It’s no fun playing with you if you’re not paying attention.”

“Sorry.”

She came to stand next to me, tugging on a lock of violently purple hair. “It looks nasty out there.”

“Yeah. We’re gonna get nailed.” I hoped Mira and Anna had gone to Dixie’s. The lack of a basement was the one thing I hated about our house. In this area of the country, a basement is almost a necessity.

The wind whipped up a small dust devil amidst the construction debris. I watched it dance across the open grassy courtyard and bend the new saplings nearly in half. Just as abruptly, it spent itself in a fit of dusty pique and vanished.

“You can go home if you want. Go make sure Mira and Annabelle are okay.”

“Then you’d be alone. Mira’s tough. She can take care of anything. I’ll stay here with you.” In the distance to the northwest, I could see flickers of light in the towering clouds. “Lightning’s coming.”

The phone rang, a jarring sound misplaced against the low throb of the punk music currently playing. We both jumped, then exchanged sheepish chuckles.

Kristyn hung headfirst over the counter to answer it, her plaid hind end aimed skyward. I swear I didn’t look. “It is where it’s at. This is Kristyn. How can I help you?” Her business voice changed quickly to her friendly voice. “Oh, hey, Mira! We were just talking about you! Yeah, he’s right here.”

She launched the cordless phone at me, and I caught it with a minimum of fumbling, thankfully. “Hey, baby.”

“Hey. How’s work going?”

“Super slow. You guys at Dixie’s?”

“Yeah, Anna’s finger painting with banana pudding.” Now there was an image. I had to chuckle. “Um . . . your phone keeps ringing.”

“Did you answer it?”

“Yeah. It’s some guy, not Ivan. He won’t give me his name, but he insists that you know him, and that he needs to talk to you immediately. He’s called about four times now.” And she’d probably started giving him nasty answers after the first two. My wife wasn’t one to play coy with. I’d seen her reduce telemarketers to tears in a matter of moments.

It had to be Kidd. “Give me the number. I’ll call him back from here.” Grabbing an ink pen shaped like a famous wizard’s magic wand, I scrawled down the digits. Yup. That was the hotel number. “You guys had better get your heads down. It looks like this thing’s about to open up and blast us to Oz.”

“We’ll be okay. You be careful, all right? Please?” There was no hiding the worry in her voice.

“I will. Promise. I’ll call you as soon as it passes, so you know we’re not marching on the Emerald City.” After mutual I- love-yous, I hung up the phone. “I’m gonna go in the back for a minute and make a call, Kristyn.”

“Make it quick. I need help with all these customers.” She smirked, gesturing at the empty store.

Our employee break room consisted of a wall of basket lockers, a soda machine, and the hot-water heater for the three tenants around us. Yeah, someone didn’t think that design out real well. I found a free spot leaning against the bulletin board—between the year-old ROCKFEST TICKETS NOW ON SALE! sign and the reminder to clock in and out for breaks—and called Kidd’s hotel room.

He answered almost immediately. “Hello?”

“Mr. Kidd, I understand you’ve been annoying the hell out of my wife.” I wasn’t nearly as irritated as I sounded, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Oh . . . yes . . . that . . . I’m sorry. I just . . . I needed to speak to you, and that’s the only number I have for you and—” I don’t know how much longer he might have babbled on, because I interrupted him.

“What did you
want
, Mr. Kidd?”

“I—I wondered if perhaps we couldn’t speed up the process and everything. I mean, two weeks is a long time. A lot can happen in two weeks. What if something were to happen to me in the meantime? I don’t want to die, with this still hanging over me.”

“I didn’t set the time, Mr. Kidd; your ‘friend’ did.” And yeah, with my leg hurt, I wasn’t going to rush into the fray by any means. “Nothing is going to happen to you.”

“Things happen, Mr. Dawson. All the time. Car accidents, plane wrecks.” There was very real fear in his voice. He truly thought he’d never live to see his soul returned. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you, but there is such a thing as taking it too far.

“I can’t speed up the cycle of the moon. Two weeks. Less than that, even.”

“Could I come talk to you in person? Where are you?”

“No, you may not.” Never mix work with . . . other work. Just safer for everyone involved that way. “I’m at my other job, and they don’t know about things like—” Realizing at the last second that to say “things like you” would not be a good idea, I finished instead, “Like what we’re dealing with. I intend to keep it that way.”

“But I really think—”

In the background, I heard the unmistakable and imperious sound of Travis Verelli’s voice. “Is that him? You’re talking to him, aren’t you? Put down the phone, Nelson! We discussed this!”

Kidd tried to get his plea out in a rush. “Please, Mr. Dawson, I really need to . . . Ack!”

I listened in amazement as the two grown men proceeded to tussle over the phone. I couldn’t even tell who was winning, but there were many grunts and half-muffled expletives. In all honesty, I didn’t hold much hope for Verelli in a physical scuffle, especially not against a professional athlete—even an old one.

The phone crashed to the floor with a jarring clatter and I winced, holding it at arm’s length. When I finally put it back to my ear, I heard nothing but silence beyond. What the hell happened?