Already Gone (14 page)

“Get up, Jake.”

I open my eyes. The room is dark, but the light from the hallway cuts through. Gabby is standing at the foot of the bed, holding a suitcase in front of him.

“What’s that?”

“I’ve got you three sets of clothes in here. If you need more, you’re on your own.” He sets the suitcase on the ground, then reaches into his front pocket and pulls out a money clip. He holds it up and shakes it in the air before tossing it to me. “You can pay me back later.”

I pick up the clip.

It’s packed with bills.

“How much is here?”

“About a grand,” Gabby says. “It was all I had in the house, so it’ll have to do for now.”

“I don’t need it. I have money.”

“Take it anyway, just in case.”

I sit up slow, but not slow enough. The pain from my nose splits through to the back of my head, and I close my eyes tight against it.

“I’ll get you a new bandage before you go,” Gabby says. “You’re a mess.”

“I’ll do it this time.”

“Suit yourself, but do it quick. Your flight leaves in a few hours.”

He walks out, leaving me alone.

I push the covers away then slide my legs over the side until my feet touch floor. It’s ice cold, and for a second it distracts me from the pain in my head.

Then it fades.

After my shower, I stand at the sink and replace the bandage on my nose. The bruising is darker today, deeper, but the swelling is down and the rattling sound when I breathe is gone.

I hear Diane’s voice in the back of my mind telling me that with a new bandage and some clean clothes, there’s a chance that even I might look presentable.

It makes me smile, and when I close my eyes, I feel my heart break all over again.

Once I’m dressed, I close the suitcase and walk out to the living room.

Gabby is waiting for me.

He’s standing in front of the full-length windows with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Outside, the morning sky is a wall of color, orange, purple, and pink, as if the entire sky has become part of the sun.

I set the suitcase by the front door.

Gabby looks at me then takes a sip of his coffee and says, “Your ride is waiting downstairs.”

“Any news on Kevin?”

He shakes his head. “There won’t be any, either. That’s not how these things end up.”

“How about Nolan?”

“Not yet.” He sets his coffee cup on the table. “Come on, I’ll walk you out.”

I grab the suitcase, and we walk downstairs to the workshop and out through the front door. There is a black town car waiting outside the building. I look past it toward the empty parking lot across the street.

“Where’s Nolan’s car?”

“I had it taken out to the lot,” Gabby says. “One less thing to think about.”

I nod, but I’m still worried.

By now, Nolan’s cruiser has been stripped, burned, and crushed. It’s either sitting in a corner of the lot, or it’s on the back of a truck heading to some faraway disposal site. Wherever it is, I’m sure no one will ever see it again.

This should make me feel better, but it doesn’t.

Gabby puts a hand on my shoulder. He reminds me about the cell phones and tells me again to call him once a day.

“We’ll keep each other updated,” he says.

I climb in the back of the car with the suitcase. Gabby shuts the door behind me and slaps the top of the car with his palm.

We pull away.

I don’t look back.

When we get to the airport, I get out and check my bag at the curb. I notice a few people staring at my face, but I ignore them and walk through the crowded terminal toward the security gates.

I stand in line and get ready to be pulled aside and searched, but when my turn comes the woman working the gate only glances at me and says, “Looks like it hurt.”

“It wasn’t too bad.”

She smiles and waves me through.

I don’t question it.

They probably figure that if I wanted to cause trouble, I wouldn’t show up looking like trouble.

Once I’m through security, I walk down the concourse to my gate and find a seat in the corner where I can look out the window at the planes coming in from the east. I watch them land for a long time and try not to think about everything that happened the night before.

Instead, I think about Diane.

It occurs to me that once I’m gone, once I’m on the plane, there will be no reason for me to come back. When I get to Phoenix I can buy a jeep, then cross the border and head for the sea. From there, all I have to do is follow the coast until I disappear.

I let the thought take over. It warms me, and for a while I actually consider the possibility. Then it fades.

I can’t run away, not yet.

Not without answers.

I sit up and look around. There is a bar across the hall, and I walk over and buy a bottle of water. On the way back, I see a line of pay phones.

I don’t know if I’m making a mistake or not, but after everything Doug and I have been through, the least I owe him is a phone call.

He answers on the third ring.

“Hi, Doug.”

There is a long silence, then movement and the sound of a door closing.

“You there?” I ask.

“Where the hell are you, Jake?”

“The airport,” I say. “Remember that psychic I told you about? The one Diane saw in Sedona?”

“You’re going to Arizona?”

“Just for a couple days. I’m going to need some time off.” I pause. “I think I’m going to take Carlson up on her offer.”

“A leave of absence?”

“Does the offer still stand?”

Doug sighs into the phone. “Of course it does. Take as much time as you need.”

A woman’s voice comes over the loudspeaker. It gives a flight number and announces boarding.

“I’ve got to run. My flight’s boarding. I’ll call you in a couple days.”

“What if I need to get a hold of you?” Doug asks. “I don’t think there will be any problems, but you never know. Anne might have questions.”

“Can you cover me for a few days?”

“If that’s all it is, sure.” He pauses. “Is that all it is? A few days?”

I start to tell him it is, but for some reason the words won’t come. Instead, I say, “I don’t know.”

“Where are you staying?”

“I’ll find a place when I get to Sedona.”

“Is she going to talk to you?”

“I don’t know, maybe.”

“Seems like a long way to go for a maybe.”

I tell him he’s right, it does.

“I’m guessing it wouldn’t do any good to ask you to let this go, would it?”

“I can’t let it go. You know that.”

“Yeah,” Doug says. “I guess I do.”

I fall asleep on the plane and don’t open my eyes again until we touch down in Phoenix. As we taxi to the gate, I sit up and stare out the window at a row of palm trees along the rocky brown hills.

This is the first time I’ve seen palm trees up close, and they’re not what I expected. In movies, they’re always full and green, bending and brushing against the wind. These are wilted sticks, like blown dandelion stems, desperate and weary under the constant sun.

Once the plane reaches the gate, I get out and head for the baggage claim. My suitcase is one of the last to appear. I grab it and go stand in line to rent a car.

The man behind the counter gives me several forms to fill out. I sign in all the right places and hand him my credit card. He slides it through the reader and sets it on the counter along with a set of keys and a map of the city.

“Enjoy your stay,” he says.

I take the keys and the map and walk outside into the afternoon heat.

I follow the signs to I-10, then switch over to I-17 and head north. Once outside the city, the highway cuts through miles of rocky brown hills littered with saguaro cactus before flattening out into empty desert. A couple hours later, the desert turns green and rolls into hills.

When I get to the Sedona exit, I pull off the highway and drive into town.

Right away I see why Diane loved the place.

Every turn reveals something new, sharp spires and shadowed canyons, layered red rocks set against emerald-green trees, all of it framed by a warm turquoise sky.

The beauty of it makes me want to forget.

But I can’t.

I drive through town until I spot a small hotel just off the main road. I pull into the parking lot and stop just outside the office. When I walk inside, the woman behind the desk looks up from her book and studies me over her reading glasses.

“Looks like you forget to duck,” she says.

At first I don’t understand, then I remember my nose and I do my best to smile.

“Car accident. Air bag didn’t open.”

“American car?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because American cars are garbage.” She turns down the corner of her page to mark her spot, then drops the book on the counter and moves to the computer. “I owned a Ford once, years ago. Nothing worked right.” She looks at me and smiles. “Do you have a reservation, hon?”

I tell her I don’t.

She nods and starts typing.

Her fingernails are long and painted pink. They rattle against the keys like bones.

“I can give you a room with a king bed, nonsmoking, of course. Will that work?”

“Perfect.”

I watch her while she checks me in, then I look down at her book. The cover is red and glossy. There’s a man and woman on the front, both half naked and windblown.

“Good book?” I ask.

“Nope.”

I wait for her to go on. When she doesn’t, I cross the room to the window and look out.

There’s a long sloping hill behind the hotel, covered in scrub oak, and I can just see the silver blur of a fast-moving river through the branches. It’s hypnotic, and for a moment, I lose myself.

Behind me, the woman rips a page from the printer and says, “I’ll need a signature and a deposit on the room.”

I walk back to the counter and sign the pages. I take Gabby’s money clip from my pocket and peel off several bills and hand them to her.

She counts the bills then slides them into the cash drawer under the computer. “You’re in room 217, at the far end.” She hands me a plastic punch key. “If there’s anything you need, go ahead and call the front desk. Someone’s always here.”

I turn the key over in my hand.

The woman picks up her book and opens it to the marked page. When I don’t leave, she frowns. “Something else I can help you with?”

“Maybe,” I say. “Is there a place around here where I can buy a cell phone?”

She gives me directions to a convenience store in town that sells prepaid phones. It’s easy to find, and when I get back to the hotel, I drive around the side of the building and park next to the dumpster.

I walk up the stairs to the second floor and unlock the door to 217.

The room is hot.

I drop the suitcase on the bed, then switch the air conditioner to high and stand in front of the fan until the air turns cold. There’s a desk in the corner, and I lay the cell phones across it in a row.

I bought three, one for each day I plan on being in town, and each with an hour of talk time. It seems like a waste to only use them once, but this is Gabby’s plan, and I’m willing to go along for the ride, at least for a while.

I open my wallet and take out the number Gabby gave me, and then I pick up one of the cell phones and dial.

It rings three times before he answers.

I can tell right away that there’s a problem.

“What happened?”

“What happened?” Gabby laughs, but it isn’t funny. “Your face is all over the news. They found a fucking handgun in the park, registered to you.”

I think of Nolan handing me my gun right before he was shot, and I feel my chest fold in on itself.

“They’re calling you a person of interest, not a suspect, but that’s bullshit. They’re looking for you.”

“Nolan took the gun from my house. He had it and dropped it when he—”

“You think that matters?” Gabby’s voice is sharp, but I can tell he’s holding back. “We have to move fast. Did you check into a hotel?”

“Yeah, I’m there now.”

“Did you use cash?”

I tell him I did, and then I remember the rental car and close my eyes against the sudden flash of pain in my head.

I don’t want to say anything, but I have to tell him.

Somehow Gabby already knows.

“What is it?”

“I rented a car,” I say. “I had to use my credit card.”

“Fuck, Jake. Why do you think I gave you the cash?”

“How the hell am I supposed to rent a car without a credit card?”

Gabby doesn’t answer. He’s not listening.

He’s planning.

“The good thing is they don’t know which way you went, so that should buy us some time to get you out of there.” I hear him light a cigarette and inhale deep. “But don’t use that goddamn card again, got it?”

“Got it.”

“There’s a guy in Flagstaff who owes me a favor. He’s got a small plane. I’ll call him and ask him to fly you over the border to Nogales, maybe set you up with a bus ticket south. I’ll wire you some money, but that’s all I can do until things calm down.”

“I’m not going to run. I didn’t kill Nolan.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“It’s all that matters.”

Gabby is quiet for a moment, then he says, “Come on, Jake. You know better than that.”

He’s right, I do.

“If you come back, they’ll throw you in jail until they build a case. You won’t find the people who attacked you, and you’ll damn sure never know what happened to your wife.”

I start to argue, but Gabby stops me.

“Just be patient.”

“I don’t want to run.”

“And I don’t want to see you go to jail.”

His voice is loud.

Neither of us says anything else, and for a while all I hear is Gabby breathing into the phone.

“I’m trying to look out for you, Jake. If you don’t want to do what I tell you, or you think you’ll have a better chance on your own, just say the word.”

I open my mouth to tell him I’ll do it on my own, but the words won’t come. If I’m going to find out what happened to Diane, I need his help. As much as I hate it, I know it’s true.

“Okay,” I say, fighting to keep my voice calm. “Where do you want me to go?”