Killer Move

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

What screwed me was trying to be clever. While I was sticking to sensible and semismart, I did okay. Clever was a step too far. I trotted down the sidewalk—and I was starting to get my shit together quickly, because though I wanted to sprint, I didn’t, as who the hell goes haring down the street at nine o’clock on a Friday morning without evident quarry, unless they’re running away from something they’ve done? So I trotted instead, as if in a vague hurry but no more—no need to stare, people, nothing of interest happening, just a guy doing something, going somewhere a little fast. Move along.

Soon as I could I ducked around a corner, however, and then I did ratchet up the pace. I’d like to say this was a conscious decision to put distance between me and the woman before she noticed that I’d gone. It wasn’t a real decision, however. It just happened. I started to run because I was scared. Really scared. Scared of what I’d seen in Cassandra’s apartment. Scared because I didn’t know what was going to happen to me, or where my wife was. And scared perhaps most of all by the fact that the woman I was running away from was frightened, too. If the person who knows more than you do looks freaked out, then you’d better be freaked out even more, on principle.

Eventually I had to stop. I staggered to a halt, gasping for air, and glanced back along the street. I’d been jacking back and forth through the blocks for ten minutes, and there was no sign of the woman on foot or in her pickup. It probably hadn’t occurred to her that I would up and run, that someone in my position would turn down assistance in a time of need. Probably it was an outlandishly dumb thing to do. I didn’t care. Getting away from her felt like the first sensible or active thing I’d done since my first beer at Krank’s the night before—and maybe for far longer than that.

I ran a quick inventory, bent over on the corner as trucks and cars belted past me. I had my phone, with nearly a full charge (courtesy of a dead girl, but let’s not think about that). I had my wallet, credit cards, and around sixty bucks in cash. That was all good news.

I was wearing a creased shirt and battered chinos, drenched with sweat. The lower sections of both pant legs sported red wine stains that dated to when the stuff had been coming back out of me rather than going in. I had a mind-fucking headache, tremors in both hands that weren’t solely due to exertion, and a whole-body nausea that was getting worse by the second. This was all less good.

Then I realized I’d left my USB drive in Cass’s apartment—a disk that had both the pictures of Karren on it (my only proof that I was being fucked with) and copies of letters and documents featuring my name and address—and so could be tied to me in half a second.

Things were actually worse than I’d realized.

I finally convinced myself I wasn’t going to throw up, and started to move again in a ragged half trot. Halfway along the next block I found a minimarket. I bought a bottle of cold water and a pack of industrial-strength painkillers. I washed a handful of the latter down with half of the former before I’d paid for either. My stomach tried to revolt, but I kept it down.

Back outside I considered my options, keeping an eye on the street and sidewalks in case “Jane Doe” had been merely biding her time. I couldn’t get my thoughts to run straight, and the thing that kept popping up with the brightest and shiniest sign was the fact it was now coming up on nine thirty. That meant Karren would be at her desk, wondering where the hell I was. I didn’t care about this from the point of view of ambition, not this morning. But still, I was supposed to be there. Insanely, I couldn’t let this fact lie.

“Karren,” I said, when she answered the phone. My head was pounding so loudly I was afraid she’d be able to hear it down the line.

“Hey, you,” she said affably. “Was wondering where you’d got to. Noticed you weren’t at your desk. Turns out here you are instead, on the phone.”

Her voice was like an audio postcard from better times, bittersweet enough to make me want to cry.

“Yeah. I’ve, uh, I’ve been held up.”

“No big deal. It’s like the grave here this morning anyhow. You sort out your problem?”

I didn’t know what on earth to say. Then I remembered that our last conversation had been about Stephanie and the mystery of her whereabouts. “It’s ongoing,” I said. “But I have hopes of progress.”

“That’s excellent. We like progress, right? So when should I expect you?”

“Little while yet,” I said, cupping the handset to mask the sound of heavy traffic. “Got a meeting in a half hour, might as well head straight there, I guess.”

“Oh yes? Anything exciting?”

“Nah. Same old same old. I’ll see you later.”

I ended the call, hearing an echo of what I’d just said. Same old same old. I realized I had two choices now, that two roads led from here.

Keep running . . . or not.

Either mark myself out as someone who’d done wrong—when, in fact, I had not done anything at all—or stick to the same old same old, in the meantime doing what I could to work out what the hell was going on—and try to stop it. Go undercover in my own life, effectively.

I was immediately sure which option made the most sense, and it had been talking to Karren that had driven it home. As far as she knew, my life was business as usual, the same old podcast: Longboat Key’s Most Promising Realtor, Bending the World to His Will. She knew nothing about the rest: she wouldn’t magically be aware of what I’d woken to that morning, just because it was smeared all over my mind.

The same applied to everyone else I knew (except for the lunatic stranger I’d just escaped from). The only modifications that had taken, so far, were the ones in my own head. To the outside world, everything about the Bill Moore Experience remained cool—as other people’s lives always are, from the outside, until some crisis blows the lid off and they’re forced to reveal that the program’s breaking down too badly to be papered over with bright smiles anymore.

My phone rang.

I didn’t recognize the number, but I hoped against hope it might be Steph calling from some unknown location, as if my reaching the act-normal realization had somehow been enough to immediately realign the spheres and kick-start normality.

“Good lord, that was dumb,” another woman’s voice said, however. “You should win an award for stupidity. Why on earth did you run?”

It didn’t surprise me that “Jane Doe” had my number. “Seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said. “Still does, as a matter of fact.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea who you are,” I said, peering up and down the street, in case this call was supposed to distract me while she crept up from some unseen angle. “Or what you’ve done, or whether you’ll tell me the truth about anything at all.”

“Why would I lie to you?”

“That’s just it,” I shouted. “I don’t even know the answer to that question. Without that, it’s hard to judge anything you might say.”

There was a pause. “That’s a reasonable observation,” she said. “But there’ll come a time when you realize you have no other option, that I am your best and only hope. When you get there, call me. No guarantee I’ll answer. But I might. You never know.”

The phone went dead. I decided to start right then and there on the second item of the short To Do list I’d developed while sitting in the Burger King.

I dialed Deputy Hallam. It went to voice mail. I cut the connection, hands shaking, realizing only then that I’d been intending to dump everything on him—to tell him about Steph, Cassandra, the whole nine yards.

Good idea? Bad idea? I didn’t know. But I couldn’t do it to a machine.

I called back and left a message saying that I’d like to talk to him as soon as possible, like right now. Then I crossed the road and trotted along the highway toward the DeSoto Square Mall.