Both Ends Burning (Whistleblower Trilogy Book 3) (11 page)

“Thanks for stopping by,” I said, pointing at the door.

She started to walk toward it, then something else occurred to me. “Wait. There is one thing you can possibly answer for me.”

She hitched her purse over her shoulder. “Go ahead.”

“Why haven’t they killed me? With everything I know, everything I’ve done… they’ve had several chances to put a bullet in me, but they haven’t done it yet. Why not?”

She shrugged. “I have no idea. Who knows why they do anything they do?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I needed a gun, but I didn’t know where to get one quickly and easily. The cops had taken the one I’d used to shoot Wyatt, so I had to acquire a new one. I contemplated going to a gun shop to buy something, but didn’t know if I could walk out with one right away. Didn’t they have waiting periods with background checks and all that?

Also, I couldn’t go the traditional legal route because I had a feeling I was going to have to use it in some non-legal ways.

My phone rang and I fumbled it out of my pocket. “Hello?”

“Hey, buddy, it’s me,” Rodrick said. “Just wanted to check in and see how things were going.”

Rodrick’s perfect timing gave me an idea. The gangster with the cornrows.

“I’d say it’s bad, but that doesn’t cover it. I do have one avenue I haven’t pursued yet. Is Noah around?”

“I’m afraid not. He’s staying with his grandmother up in Buena Vista for the next couple days. What do you want with him?”

My heart sank. “I was hoping he could take me to the place we went the other day, but don’t worry about it. I’ll find another way.”

“Oh. Okay, then. Um, maybe now’s not a good time.”

“A good time for what, Rod?”

“I wanted to talk to you about what I mentioned the other day, but we can discuss it later.”

Twice now, he’d had this weird aborted conversation with me. “Sure, that’s fine.”

“Okay, buddy. You let me know if you need anything.”

I got off the phone with him and considered my options. Walking into that gangster apartment alone was not a good idea. But even without Noah as a bridge, I had to risk it. I didn’t have any other plans.

I hopped in the rental car and drove to Colfax. Sat outside the bar with the tiny door leading up to the apartment and tried to settle my nerves.

“Okay, Candle,” I said to the dashboard. “If you project confidence, you will be confident. If you crap your pants, act like you meant for it to happen. Be a confident pants-crapper.”

I crossed the street and banged on the screen door. About a minute later, the same guy in the same wifebeater trundled down the stairs, with the same suspicious look on his face.

He leered at me. “What do you want?”

“Do you remember me, from the other day?”

He made a clicking sound with his tongue as he looked me up and down. “Nope,” he said as he turned to walk away.

“Wait,” I said, and held up all the cash I had left with me. Just a few hundred dollars, but I’d rolled it to seem bigger. Like a mobster would, I guess, if they actually do that the way it happens in movies.

The money caught his attention and he came back to the door. “Alright, follow me. He ain’t gonna like you coming by without an appointment, though. So, don’t act like I didn’t warn you.”

He creaked open the screen door and I followed him up the stairs. Just like the other day, a collection of people all hanging out, smoking weed, playing video games. Many of them were drinking, too, and it wasn’t even noon. Booming music thumped through the floor. Bass so forceful I felt my stomach churn.

The man with the cornrows sat in his same spot on the couch, head tilted back, a bulbous joint hanging from his lips, dribbling wisps of smoke into the air. Same gun on the coffee table.

He snapped his head forward and opened his eyes, then glared at me. “What the fuck?” He glared at the man in the wifebeater. “You let him in here?”

“Man’s got green,” Wifebeater said. “Looking to do some business.”

Cornrows shot up off the couch, snatched the gun, and got in my face. His breath stank of eggs. He raised the pistol to the side of my head, his finger hovering a half-inch above the trigger. “Who the fuck are you? Tell me why I shouldn’t dead you right now.”

I held up my hands in surrender, tried not to whimper. Not the first time I’d had a gun pointed at me recently, but the first time today, at least. Plus, he had his finger on the trigger, and could easily shoot me, if even by accident.

“I came here the other day. Two days ago, I think. I was with a younger guy.”

“That doesn’t tell me shit.”

“You made me a fake ID.”

He didn’t step back, but at least he took his finger away from the trigger. He stared at me for a few seconds, pushing breath in and out of his nostrils, then lowered the gun. “Water cooler.”

“Right, that’s me. I asked you about water cooling.”

“You looking to buy some computer parts or what?”

I shook my head. “I need a gun.”

Cornrows stepped back, then looked around at the people near him. When they saw he was trying to get their attention, a few of them laughed, and he laughed with them. Like a king holding court, demanding his subjects guffaw at the jester.

“What you think this is,” he said, “Wal-Mart? You think I’m running some kind of sporting goods store here where you can just place your order?”

“There are some people after me. I need protection.”

“No,” he said, and walked back around the coffee table to sit. “Your bullshit is not my problem. I give a fool like you a gun, that’s gonna come back on me.”

I could have pointed out that selling drugs was also likely to come back on him, but all I said was, “please.”

He leaped off the couch again, over the coffee table, and swung the pistol at the side of my head. I saw it coming, and I could have easily dodged it, but I let him hit me. What was I going to do, brawl with every one of the thugs in this room?

The nose of the gun connected with my temple, which exploded in pain. Throbbing, pulsing, explosive pain. At least, it was not the same side of my head where Glenning had kicked me.

I took a step back. A few of Cornrow’s cronies stood and surrounded me. “Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. I’ll go now and leave you to your business.”

He raised the pistol to his shoulder. “You got five seconds. Five…”

I spun and raced toward the door as the whole room erupted with laughter. Didn’t look back as I bounced down the stairs, slamming against the screen door. What an idiotic, half-baked, ill-conceived plan, and I’d been lucky to get out of there alive.

I needed to stop letting desperation drive my actions. Next time, I wouldn’t be so lucky. I resolved to put more careful thought into whatever came next.

Outside, I looked up and down Colfax at the cars rolling along the wet streets, the homeless people at the intersections with their ratty jackets and cardboard signs. What the hell was I supposed to do now?

After a check in with Grace, who had been spending her time mostly watching TV and taking Dog for walks around the base of the ski resort, I drove home. Heavy head. Bleary eyes. I had no idea what the next step was.

I parked the car and walked across the driveway, shoulders slumped and head low.

Then when I stuck my key in the front door, I found it unlocked again.

I threw it open, and saw the body of my neighbor Alan, hanging from a noose anchored to the banister at the top of the stairs.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Alan’s body swayed a few inches back and forth on the noose, which was connected to the upper banister of my living room stairs. His head had lolled forward, his cheeks blue and puffy. He was wearing only boxer shorts, and I could see a collection of bruises up and down his chest and legs.

I was meant to see the bruises, obviously. To know that he had suffered before they killed him. They wanted to remind me that they could get to anyone, at any time. As if I’d forgotten how they’d already demonstrated that by killing my trainees and making sure I saw their dead bodies.

I rushed to him and almost put my hands on his body, then stepped back. Of course, they wanted me to touch it. To get my DNA on his corpse so they could hide me away in a jail cell somewhere.

A funny thought struck me: a month ago, when IntelliCraft had inserted MBA grad Paul’s corpse in our upstairs bathroom, I’d gone into shock. Been dazed, hyperventilating, had passed out because I couldn’t comprehend the brutality of discovering the body of someone who’d been murdered. Of coming in direct contact with evil. Since then, I’d seen so many bodies that it hardly even fazed me anymore.

But Alan wasn’t an acquaintance like those others. He had been a friend. Maybe this man had kidnapped my wife, but seeing his dead body in my living room stung me more so than Paul, Keisha, and Martin. More than the other dead bodies IntelliCraft had created in my life. More than Omar and Kareem.

And as shocking as it was to find him, it seemed perfectly logical for Alan to end up dead. He knew things about IntelliCraft. He could have talked, and would have talked. Also, he was another pawn they could use against me.

The company’s timing was so incredibly impeccable. I’d gone out for only a couple hours, and they’d raced in here with this body and staged all of this.

But what if IntelliCraft hadn’t done this? What if it was Susan and my dad? Would they do something this horrible to scare me away from my goal of exposing the company? Susan had said they’d do nothing, but how could I believe her?

No, this was IntelliCraft. It was exactly their M.O., but they couldn’t have gotten in and out so easily without help. One of my neighbors had to be spying on me for them.

At that moment, I hit a boiling point. No more death. No more casualties of war. No more deception.

I decided I’d go confront the neighbors, knock on doors and look them all in the eyes until I found the one with the guilty face. Then I’d drag him back to my house and make him look at Alan’s brutalized body, to see what had become of this dopey stoner who’d lived next door.

I stormed outside and walked two doors down, to the house next to Alan’s. Banged on the front door. No response. I waited a few seconds, my blood rumbling, and my pulse rattling like a machine gun. I peeked in his windows, saw a couple lights on, but no motion inside.

I walked to the next house. Slammed my fist against the front door. Didn’t know the name of the guy who lived here, but he almost never shoveled his driveway after it snowed. He always let it devolve into a crunchy, icy mess for days. I’d meant to confront him about that, but couldn’t ever find a time when we were both at home.

“Open up!”

I saw the curtains flicker. “I see you,” I shouted at the windows. “You’re the one who thinks you’re above shoveling. Open up this goddamn door right now!”

“Go away,” said a muffled voice from the other side. “You’re scaring my wife. Please, just go away and leave us alone. We don’t want anything to do with you.”

I jumped from his porch into the front yard, kicking a pile of crusty snow along the way. On to the next house. Banged on the door.

“Somebody is going to fucking answer for this bullshit! Do you understand the lives you’ve wrecked?”

I spun around, and across the street, a little girl was standing in front of a green house with solar panels on the roof. She was holding a ball of snow, one as big as her own head. The basis for a snowman, probably.

The little girl cocked her head and stared at me, this crazy man shouting and kicking snow piles. Later, she’d tell her parents about this, and maybe even have nightmares about the angry man. I’d be the reason her parents would remind her not to talk to strangers.

What the hell was I doing? Before I had a chance to flesh out the thought process any further, a car pulled into the cul de sac.

Detective Cross and his mirrored sunglasses stared back at me.

“Shit,” I said with an incredulous laugh. “This is perfect. Just perfect. Why would he show up at any other time than right now?”

He opened the car door and nodded at me.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

“Dispatch relayed your message about meeting you here,” he said. “The note said it was urgent. Can we go inside your house and chat about it?”

Again, not a surprise. “Okay, but first: you have to listen to me. You’re going to find something in my house, but I can explain. It looks bad, but I had nothing to do with it, understand? It was this company, they’re trying to get me out of the way. They want to make it seem like I’m capable of doing terrible things, to destroy my credibility.”

Cross threw back one side of his jacket, unclipped a button on his holster, and drew his pistol.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I sat in a little room with a metal table and two plain office chairs. A mirror made up one wall, behind which I assumed Cross was standing, watching me, letting me stew. A six inch welded metal arch marked the middle of the table. Probably, that’s where they would have attached handcuffs, but they’d taken mine off already.

Thank God I’d left my fake ID back at the house earlier. Didn’t know how I’d explain that one.

Five minutes, maybe ten elapsed. I wasn’t sure because I don’t carry a watch and they’d taken my cell phone. I could have sworn I heard a clock ticking somewhere, but I didn’t see one hanging on the walls.

I wiped some remnants of fingerprinting ink on the leg of my jeans. I hadn’t been through this arrest procedure since one stupid incident in college. It’s not like it is in the movies; it’s mostly sitting around, waiting for this person to take you over here, sign this, then that person takes you over there to wait some more.

My stomach yawned since I hadn’t eaten all day. But if I let on about my discomfort, they’d use it as a tool to manipulate me. I told my stomach to shut up and kept my eyes on that welded metal arch, thinking of all the murderers and drug dealers who’d been attached to it before me. All the people who were truly bad.