The Stranger Beside You (18 page)

Price shook his head.  “Help me out.”

“You know, they came down here and threw a dead man under the train.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

“The dead man.”

“The one they chased down here and shot at?  That guy?”

 “No, no before that.  They brought this dead dude down in one them black bags, and they pitched him down onto the tracks and waited for the train.  They was being all
secretive
about it.  Then they saw me hiding under here and I guess they got all worried I’d tell somebody, somebody important, you know, like Katie Couric or Bill O’Reilly.  So they bought me the whiskey.  Don’t hear me complaining, do you?”

Price felt his excitement build.

“When did this happen? When did you see this?”

The old wino took a long pull on the whiskey, then he shrugged and said, “That was early yesterday morning, man.”

29

The first words out of Todd’s mouth were “Good God, you look like the Unabomber!”

“Thanks a million,” I said.

I was loitering between racks of clothing in a thrift shop.  I kept my face down, the hood up, and avoided eye contact.  Todd had sidled up next to me and touched my back.

“Let’s roll,” he said.

I nodded.

Ramón was waiting at the curb in an ancient VW van.  The sliding door was open and exhaust fumes burbled from the tailpipe.  The rear seats had been ripped out twenty years ago so there was nowhere to sit except the floor.

“Get in,” Todd said.

I went in on my knees and then swung my legs around into a sitting position.  Todd put all his weight behind shutting the sliding door then he sprang up into the passenger seat.  Ramón punched the gas and the van rocked back on its springs as it accelerated into traffic.

I glanced down at the filth of my surroundings and wrinkled my nose. 

“Nice ride,” I said.

Ramón glanced at me in the rearview mirror.  “This baby is a classic.  I’ve had it since high school.”

“You must be very proud.”

Todd turned in his seat and sat up on his knees.  He put his chin on the headrest.  “What the hell is going on? On the phone you sounded like a Haitian refugee.”

I sat cross-legged with my back to the wall.  “Somebody tried to kill me, that’s what.”

His jaw dropped.  “Oh
snap
!  Get out of here!”

“It’s true.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where did this happen?”

“At Tom’s office.”

“Tonight?”

I nodded.

 “Why were you there?” he asked.

“I got a call from his boss.  He said he needed to meet with me, so I made the drive in to see him and was attacked as I was leaving.”

“Was it random?”

“No.  It was because of Tom.”

The two of them exchanged a look, then Todd turned back to me.

“That’s freaky,” he said.

“He’s not the man we all thought we knew.  He clearly pissed someone off, and now they’ve come after me.”

“I’ve got goose bumps.”

I glanced out the grimy windows at the back of the van. 

“I’m pretty convinced they’ve been following me for weeks.”

Ramón checked his mirrors.  “They’ll never find you where we’re going.”

I rocked with the motion of the van.  I closed my eyes and saw the face of the man with the knife staring back at me.  His lips were peeled back to reveal his gnarly teeth, his breath clawing at my face and neck. 

His lips moved. 
I’m going to enjoy this
.

My eyes flew open.  I felt my stomach writhing.

We circled the park and headed south.  I kept my eyes on the floor because I had no real desire to know where we were going.  I had told them on the phone that I needed somewhere safe to sleep, someplace where no one would recognize me.  Ramón insisted he knew the perfect spot.

When we got there, I knew he was right.

Ramón stopped at a corner and Todd and I hopped out.  Ramón sped off to park the van.  We went down a flight of stairs and I could hear music thumping before we even got to the door.  The landing outside the door was crowded with men.  They ogled us as we hurried inside.  It took about ten seconds for me to realize this was a gay bar.  The hood was on my head and I kept my eyes down.  Maybe they would think I was Todd’s boyfriend.  The last thing I wanted to do was draw attention to myself.  We threaded through the crowd at the edge of a cramped dance floor.  I kept a tight grip on Todd’s hand.

 “The owner is a friend of ours,” he said over the noise.

I nodded and hurried along behind him.

We went down a short hallway, through a door, turned a sharp left and stopped at a closed door with a placard that said OFFICE.  Todd knocked.

“I called ahead,” he said.  “His name is Payton.  Ramón dated him years ago.”  Todd frowned.  “I don’t hate him too much for that.”

The door opened and a thin man in a skin-tight blue silk shirt appeared.  His beard was neatly trimmed and he wore small hoop earrings in both lobes. 

“Hey, Payton.”

“It’s been awhile, Todd.” Payton said.

“I’ve got a stowaway for you.”  Todd slapped me on the ass.

Payton looked me up and down.  “She’s cute, for a girl.  What’s her name?”

Todd shook his head.  “Sorry, no names.  Need to keep this very hush-hush.  All info is on a need-to-know basis only, and you don’t need to know.”

“Very hot,” Payton said.  “Where’s Ramón?”

“Right behind us.”

“Fabulous.  Okay, get in here.”

Payton locked the door behind us.  His office was tiny.  There was a desk on one wall and a short couch shoved against another.  The pulse of the music vibrated the walls.  Todd moved his body to the beat.

“You can have the couch,” Payton said to me.  “No one will bother you in here.  The music might keep you awake, but the price is right.”

There was a knock at the door and Payton let Ramón and gave him a peck on the cheek.

“It’s a good crowd out there tonight,” Payton said.  “You queens should join the party.”

“Maybe later,” Ramón said. 

“Drinks are on the house, for old time’s sake.”

“Give us a few minutes.”

Payton glanced at me on the way out and grinned.  “Nice to meet you, little miss mystery woman.”

“I can’t thank you enough.”

“Oh, you can try,” he said, his cackle cut short when he closed the door.

I dropped onto the couch.

“Okay, sweetie, what’s your plan?” Todd said, snuggling in beside me.

I showed them the key.

“Tom left this for me.  I’ve got to find out what it belongs to.”

Todd eyed it skeptically.  “How do you know that it even matters?  You’ve convinced yourself he cheated on you, and now he’s dead, Brynn.  How is whatever you find going to change anything?”

“Maybe it won’t, but Tom was trying to tell me something.  I want to know what it was, and I don’t care whether it changes anything or not.  Maybe I’m crazy, but someone tried to kill me tonight because of Tom.  I have to know why.”

Ramón sat cross-legged on the floor in front of us.

“How do you know where to even begin looking for answers?  That key could fit a lock anywhere on the planet.”

“It’s weird,” I said.  “But I think I have a clue.  Tom’s boss, Aaron McFadden, called me when I was with the kids late this afternoon.  I went to his office and he showed me an anonymous email he received today advising him to tell me about something that had happened on a business trip to Toronto a few weeks ago.”

“Why?”  Todd had a leg draped across my lap.

I took a deep breath and exhaled before answering.

“Because during that trip, Aaron saw Tom go into a hotel room with a strange woman.”

“Oh God.  The one he was screwing?”

“Bingo.”

“Lovely.”

“He described her.  It’s pretty obvious she was the floater the FBI pulled from the river.”

“That connects Tom to the murder.”

“Possibly.”

“Okay, so what about the anonymous email?  Who would care that you know about Tom with the woman in Toronto?”

I shrugged.  “That’s the fifty thousand dollar question.  I’m convinced that this key came from Canada.”

Todd sat up and glared at me.  “You’re going to Toronto?”

“First flight out tomorrow morning.”

“But you have no idea where you are going.”

“I’ll start at the hotel where Tom was seen with Daphne Fleming.”

“You’re losing it, girl.”

“I’m way beyond losing it.”

“Do you really believe he was screwing her?”

“The thought of it tears me up, but all the pieces are falling into place.”

“She was with the feds.  How would he have met her?”

“I’ve thought about that, and I think I finally understand.  Tom was going to steal money from the bank where he worked, but the security triggers inside the computer system had tipped off both Aaron McFadden and the FBI.  So the feds started watching him, and I figure that Daphne Fleming was probably used by them to get close to him.  The relationship eventually turned physical and they started sleeping together.  Then when Tom found out she was a federal agent he got scared and decided to put a bullet in her head.”

The two men stared at me in silence.  The discussion was over.  I could see it in their eyes.  They were convinced.

“Wow.”

“Damn.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“Do you think those goons are still out there looking for you?” Todd asked.

I nodded.  “Absolutely.”

“You’ll be safe here tonight.  Do you need a ride to the airport in the morning?”

“That’s not a bad idea.  I just hope going to Toronto leads to an explanation.” 

“We can go with you,” Ramón offered.  “You could probably use the help.”

“No.  I have to go alone.  This is between me and Tom.”

•  •  •

Rosemary Gladwell’s hands were bleeding.  She had worked herself into a state of exhaustion.  The man with the beard had bound her ankles to the bed frame using plastic zip-ties.  They were incredibly strong.  Rosemary had spent most of the day laboring to find a way to either stretch or break them.  The blood on her hands was evidence of her failure. 

She had again lost all concept of the passage of time.  Sweat ran down her face and her muscles ached.  Her back felt like it might snap in half.  She could only work for a few minutes at a time before collapsing back onto the lumpy metal grid of the bed frame, then she would struggle to rise once again and push on.  Her fingers burned.  There were blisters upon blisters and she could feel where the loose skin had peeled away.  The plastic zip-ties were slick with blood.

From time to time, Rosemary would start crying.  She was desperate to escape.  If she didn’t find a way out, there was no way of knowing how long the man with the beard would keep her alive.  A few hours ago she had started sawing one of the zip-ties against the rough inner-edge of a metal slat within the bed frame.  At last she began noticing real results.  It was dark, so she could only gauge the progress by her sense of touch.  By tracing her trembling fingers along the inside surface of the zip-tie, she could now clearly detect the gradual eroding away of the plastic a fraction of an inch at a time.  Suddenly she had hope.   She sawed and sawed.  The blisters burned.  Her fingers were on fire.  The flesh around her ankles was rubbed raw.  Hours passed, and then suddenly, like a miracle, the zip-tie snapped in half.  Rosemary gasped.  She was halfway there, only one more leg to go.  There was light at the end of the tunnel.

She would have to work fast.  The man with the beard might return at any moment, and then all the struggle and effort would have been for nothing.  She had to fight through the pain, fight through the exhaustion.  Now was the time to be strong because she might not get another chance.

30

The morgue was locked.  It took Special Agent Price twenty minutes of banging on doors to find someone with a key.  He tracked down the third-shift morgue employee returning from a smoke break.  The guy was just a kid with a ratty growth of blonde peach fuzz under his chin. 

Price cornered him.  “I need to see a body in storage.”

The kid frowned.  “Dallas will be back in the morning.  Talk to him.”

Price produced his FBI credentials and flashed them at the kids face. 

“Official FBI business.  It won’t wait.”

The kid hesitated then sighed, “Fine.”

Price was still thinking about the story the bum in the subway had told him.  Maybe it was all crap.  Price had looked into his crazy eyes.  It was a safe bet that he was nothing more than a drunk and liar, but there was something in the old man’s story Price couldn’t shake, so he had come down to the meat locker to take a closer look at Tom Nelson’s remains.  

The kid unlocked the door and hit a wall switch.  Rows of fluorescents flickered on.  The kid led him to a small office and dropped into a chair behind a computer terminal.  Price gave him the name.

“Give me a second to pull it up.”

The kid keyed Tom Nelson’s name into the database search.

Price followed him around a corner.

“Here it is.”  The kid tapped a stainless steel door with his knuckle.

“Open it.”

The kid yanked on the latch and pulled out the drawer.

“I remember Dallas mentioning this guy,” the kid said.  “Took a header under the subway.  Not much left of him.”

“Open the bag.”

The kid shrugged.  “It’s your party, dude.”  He pulled the zipper open.

Price peered down at the gore.  He had seen more than his fair share of dead bodies in his career, but really nothing to compare to this.  It was the stuff of nightmares.  The remains closer resembled a macabre jigsaw puzzle than a human being.  He studied the shredded, blood-soaked clothing.  There wasn’t nearly enough in the bag to make a positive visual ID, and that was the point.

Price turned and stared down the narrow corridor at the rows of refrigerated drawers.  There was a gap in the logic that he needed to make sense of.  The tumblers inside his brain were falling slowly into place.  Part of his training as a federal agent was to always be asking
what if?
  What if the evidence at a crime scene was designed to mislead you?  He thought about all the bodies stored inside the stainless steal drawers and the stories behind them.  Then he turned to the kid and said, “There’s another corpse I want to take a look at.”