The Travelling Man (15 page)

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Bobby Cohen sat nervously, fidgeting at the table in The Oasis Bar. The place was crawling with reporters and the town manager should have been in his element, but it was his wife Cora who seemed to be enjoying the attention far more than he did. The nation’s spotlight was shining brightly on Granton and he was hating every second. It seemed like every time he walked around a corner there was a camera or a microphone shoved in his face, firing questions at a supersonic rate of knots and demanding answers that he didn’t have.

He knew that many of the store owners in town were buzzing with the attention and their bulging cash registers but he was quietly hoping that the whole tornado would soon blow over.

He was a small man with small appetites and ambitions. He had only ever wanted to hold down a steady job and raise a family. His mistake had been to marry Cora when she had come a wooing. Looking back, he should have realised that nothing about his life from that point on had ever been his decision. It was Cora’s choice that he went to work for her ailing father, as she’d realised that the old man was never going to leave his construction company to her. Paulie Cohen had always bemoaned the fact that he’d never produced a male heir which, in his eyes, meant he’d never produced an heir period. Cora had designs on running her father’s company but she was just lacking a penis to do so. Bobby had come to learn that a necessary appendage was all he’d ever been to Cora.

Their marriage had been one at her convenience and she had soon started organizing his push for Town Manager. It wasn’t a position that he had ever coveted, but he’d soon found himself sitting on the outside and watching Cora’s campaign from afar. He had known that he was going to win the small town election as soon as Cora had told him that he was running; she was a woman who simply didn’t entertain the prospect of failure.

He took a long swig from his glass, finishing off the hard liquor in a throat-burning swallow that instantly started to warm his insides. He knew that his drinking was starting to get a little out of control. Hell, a lot out of control. When you started to open a bottle over breakfast, it was time to take stock. Unfortunately, soon after he had taken a pledge of sobriety, albeit a moderate pledge, he had discovered the joys of prescription drugs.

He had taken a tumble when Cora had dragged him off skiing. His sense of balance and co-ordination was never the best and he was far from a natural athlete, but Cora had told him that it was all the vogue. He had fallen on the slopes, much to his wife’s embarrassment, and broken his leg in three places. The recovery had gone to plan and he had been prescribed a painkiller called Co-Codomol. The little round white tablets had opened his eyes to a whole new world of small anonymous highs that were undetectable to those around him. Cora was happy that he was no longer drinking heavily; not for his health, of course, but more for his public appearance. On the whole she left him alone unless she had some duties for him to perform. He found that life was always so much easier with a little buzz to take the edge off. The only problem was that Dr Stewart had soon stopped his refills and he had been forced to seek out an alternative source. It wasn’t until about a week after he had used up the remainder of his final prescription that he realised just how much he had come to rely on those small, snowy-white pills.

It had been Harlan Harris who had approached him after a Town Council meeting, offering him a refill. At first, he had been shocked at the offer. Harlan ran a small business in town and sat on most of Granton’s committees and had never struck Bobby as a man who might know how to get things out of the ordinary. He had agreed and all that Harlan had asked in return was to be kept in the loop with anything that his name became associated with. Bobby had no idea what the hardware store owner was mixed up with, but Harlan had given him regular packages of painkillers and he had kept an ear out for any mention of Harlan’s name. But now Harlan was gone and Bobby’s reserve stock was running dangerously low.

He raised the glass to his lips again, forgetting that it was empty. The booze helped, but it was too much of an obvious crutch that Cora would surely notice. He didn’t have the courage to face her drunk; hell, he didn’t have the courage to face her full stop.

He slipped out of the booth and headed out through the rear door and into the alley beyond.

“Mind if I join you, Mr Cohen?”

Bobby looked up as a smartly dressed man emerged from behind the dumpsters and stood beside him, not waiting for a reply. The man wore a perfectly tailored three piece suit and he doffed a dark grey Homburg hat.

“Can I help you?” Bobby asked morosely.

“Why don’t you have another drink, Mr Cohen?”

Bobby opened his mouth to tell the obviously blind man that he was dry, when he noticed that his hand was holding a glass which was filled to the brim with dark liquid. His mind buzzed a little but he didn’t care. Instead, he raised the glass to his lips and downed the contents quickly.

“You know, you remind me of someone,” the man said in a quirky accent.

Bobby raised his eyebrows in question.

“You’re like the lion,” the man replied.

“I’m like a lion?” Bobby asked quizzically.

“Not
a
lion,
the
lion,” the man said smiling. “You are on a journey, my friend, walking a long road, a yellow road if you will and what is it that you seek?”

“I don’t know,” Bobby shrugged helplessly.

“Oh, but you do, you surely do, Mr Cohen. What does the lion seek?”

“Courage,” Bobby whispered.

“Excuse me?”

“Courage,” Bobby said louder. “I’m a coward and I seek courage.”

The man smiled broadly as though the very words were music to his ears. “My name is Gilbert Grange, Mr Cohen, and I do believe that we can do business.”

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Cassie took the drive home to process and sort through the tidbits of information that she’d gathered from the bar. To be fair, there wasn’t much and she had been a little disappointed with the harvest. Normally, the townsfolk of Granton would be overflowing with juicy gossip, but tonight a lot of her regular sources had been strangely quiet.

She had seen the Kravis guy and was angry with herself for letting him slip to the back of her mind. Seeing him also reminded her of the old British guy that she’d met on the town square a few days before. In the whirlwind that had engulfed her office she had let the two strangers, who had arrived in town prior to all hell breaking loose, to go unchecked. But now that Harper had pushed her aside, she was determined to get back on track.

The strange thing was that only a day or so before, she had been unable to remember the British guy’s name or even picture his face. She had added his details to her internal filing system when she’d first met him on the town square, but when she had gone to recall them, the pages had been empty. It was the first time that she could ever remember losing any information on any subject, but thankfully it had only been a brief blip as earlier, when she’d rechecked the file, she could make out faint writing in her mind’s eye. The faded information had only grown in strength until it was fully visible again as though whatever force that was keeping it at bay had waned considerably. 

She stopped back at the station before heading home and put in several calls for background information on both Matt Kravis and Gilbert Grange. She left Tom to run the names and wait for results with strict instructions to call her if anything important pinged back. She personally called Sheriffs from surrounding counties, leaving messages for any similar cases like the bizarre ones that Granton had seen. The law enforcement community relied heavily on cooperation and, despite what TV would have you believe, she had found that most cops were far more interested in catching bad guys and solving cases than jurisdictional squabbles. She was confident that if her questions raised any red flags, she’d hear back in double quick time.

She reached home later than she’d intended and was already planning the morning’s excursion out to check on Harlan Harris’ plot of land. Her head was full of questions and no answers.

Her mom was waiting for her on the porch when she pulled up and Cassie’s heart skipped a couple of beats as the sight could only mean bad news.

“What is it?” Cassie asked as she walked briskly up the pathway.

“We heard back from the insurance company today. They’re still refusing our claim and they say that this was our last appeal,” her mom replied sadly.

Cassie felt the rage build in her gut and she wanted something to smash. At the same time, there was a small amount of comfort in her mom’s use of “we” and “our”; it felt like she wasn’t fighting alone. “Bastards,” she hissed through clenched teeth.

“Can we sue them?”

Cassie looked down at her mother. The woman had aged through the stress of Ellie’s condition and the financial strain that was weighing them all down. Cassie knew that most people would associate her strength with her father due to their matching imposing size, but she knew that her inner steel came from her mother. “I’ll make some time tomorrow to look into it. Jimmy Galloon is a lawyer in town. He owes me a couple of favors; maybe I can pick his brains for advice,” Cassie shrugged, trying to think clearly through the red mist that was threatening to descend.

“What’s his number?” her mother said, feeling no need to produce a pen to write it down with.

Cassie gave her mom the number and hugged her gently, painfully aware of her mother’s increasing fragile frame and of the extra burden that she was placing upon her shoulders. Life wasn’t fair sometimes and there was never enough time.

She moved gracefully through the house and crept upstairs to Ellie’s room. Even though Cassie was of a linebacker’s height and power (if not weight), she could be deftly silent when she needed to be.

She eased open her daughter’s bedroom door and peeked inside. Ellie had less than a week to go before she had her next round of tests to see how her chemotherapy had fared against her disease. Cassie knew that worrying her days away about future results would accomplish nothing and she tried to keep the paralyzing fear away. Fortunately, she had more than enough on her plate to keep her mind occupied, at least until she put her head on the pillow at night.

“Mom?” a small voice whispered out of the darkness.

“Hey, Ellie-Belly,” Cassie whispered back, tiptoeing into the room and closing the door softly behind her. She walked to the bed and eased herself gently down onto the soft mattress.

The room was flooded in darkness, with only a thin trail of moonlight shining through the window offering any kind of dim lighting. Ellie’s bed was of a simple and sturdy build, devoid of any of the pink frivolities that a young girl should have. Cassie often wondered if her daughter’s serious nature would exist without her illness or if it only existed because of it. She felt another stab of bitterness at everything that was being stolen from them all because of some random disease. Cassie worked hard and considered herself a good mother and a good person. She had returned to Granton after her father had died to take his place in serving her home town. She wore a badge and a gun and kept her people safe. Surely she had enough good karma stored up by now to not deserve such a harsh fate?

“Can I ask you something?” Ellie said quietly.

“Sure,” Cassie replied, recognising the serious tone in her daughter’s voice. Ellie rarely asked her about anything frivolous, even though Cassie often thought that she’d be relieved if Ellie did.

“My…, my illness, it couldn’t affect my…, mind could it?” Ellie asked nervously.

Cassie stroked her daughter’s brow, which seemed cool and not fevered. “No, I don’t think so sweetie, why?”

“It’s just that there seems to be a lot happening in town that everyone is talking about and I don’t remember any of it.”

“Like what?”

“That whole thing with the Herod; I don’t recall any mention of it on the news before. Then there was Becky James.”

“The actress, what about her?”

“Well, that’s just the thing. I remember her working in the diner only a few days ago, but now everyone is saying that she left town years ago and became some big time actress. I feel like either the whole world’s gone crazy or it’s just me,” Ellie managed before she started to cry.

Cassie took her daughter in her arms and held her closely, feeling her tiny heart beat frantically against her chest. Ellie buried her face in Cassie’s shoulder and once she started crying she couldn’t stop for several minutes. Eventually, the raging torrent receded to a steady trickle before tailing off completely.

“Sorry,” Ellie mumbled.

Cassie lifted her daughter’s head and stared her straight in the eyes. “Don’t apologies sweetie, never to me.”

“I wanted to be strong like you and Grandpa.”

“You are,” Cassie said, kissing Ellie lightly on the forehead. “I think that you’re stronger than any of us and I don’t want you to have to worry about anything other than getting better, which is something that I promise you are going to do.”

Cassie held her daughter until she fell back asleep. In the darkness she tried to plot and plan for a way to save her, a way to make the insurance company pay what they owed and she knew that she would give anything for Ellie’s safety, anything at all.