Dying for Her: A Companion Novel (Dying for a Living Book 3) (21 page)

Sunday, May 4th, 2003

I
was sitting in Charlie’s office when he played the tape for me. It was like a badly choreographed play. It has been confiscated during the raid on Chaplain’s house. In the film, we appeared to be trying to kill ourselves more than Chaplain.

Charlie looked up from his computer screen. “What the fuck is this?”

It was my first day back at work. After a brief stint in the hospital, I was still suspended until they’d allowed me to come back. Since I didn’t have the heart to go by Peaches’ place, I’d almost quit drinking.

“What the fuck is this?” He rewound the tape so I could see the last part again, the part where Chaplain and Sullivan appear to ignite in flames spontaneously.

“Accelerant?” I asked. I tried to explain in a way my friend would understand. Charlie didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t see, smell, or touch, which probably explained why he believed so much in women and booze. To tell him that Chaplain was good at hypnosis and the old house had simply been too damn flammable to handle all the gunfire—all these nonsensical excuses were more convincing than saying he was some kind of freak with telepathic powers.

“And there’s this,” he said and threw the paper on top of the desk for me to see. I’d already read it several times. The reporter had been kind enough to send me a copy when the story broke and every story thereafter. I humored Charlie anyway by opening the paper and pretending to read:
Torture Camps Revealed.

Beneath that were the pictures, one of the prison and another of men and women marching out of it. Their possessions were slung over their shoulders. Some of them even waved amicably at the crowds of supporters lined along the fences, holding signs to celebrate their release.

I read the article aloud to Charlie: “Last month The President ordered the suspension of such detainment camps as the one pictured above at Fort Diq. Thousands of detainees were released yesterday morning, greeted by the cheers of supporters and their families. Twenty-two individuals were still held under the Congressional compromise, awaiting a trial for their alleged crimes.”

“I’ve read it,” he said. “I loved your interview. Very moving. But that part where you discovered the camps while investigating a missing person, total bullshit. I like how they paint you as a hero though.”

I just smiled. “Someone will probably put a bullet in my head any day now.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Maybe not. I haven’t gotten any shit for this.” He shook the paper at me. “Which is pretty surprising.”

I considered that. Why hadn’t anyone paid me a visit for speaking up about the camps? Were they afraid of making a martyr of me? I doubted it. There were always freak accidents after all.

“I just wonder if you’ve put two and two together,” Charlie said, pulling me back from my thoughts.

“Hmm?” I asked and lowered the paper.

“Our missing person cases have plummeted. A drastic restructuring of the departments have been ordered and they are pushing the death replacement project to the forefront. You’ve been reassigned.”

“Come again?” I asked.

“How are you getting along with the Wright girl?”

I was surprised by his question. “Good.”

It was the truth. I’d seen Rachel every other day since her release. She was bouncing back quickly now that the drugs were out of her system. It turned out that Chaplain couldn’t control people with NRD as well as he could everyone else. Jackson believed the magnetite in her brain protected her, and she was probably right. Chaplain had relied on drugs to keep the girls complacent. Without the drugs, Rachel was proving to be a spunky, sweet kid. She was a chatterbox, but charismatic. I liked her.

“I’m glad to hear it. You’ve been reassigned as her handler.”

“Excuse me?” I said and sat forward in my seat. I tossed the paper onto the desk.

“Finding missing people is no longer the FBRD’s primary mode of operation. The death replacement industry has moved from beta into full blown functionality. I either fire you, or I give you a job. I thought you’d prefer to keep working. Was I wrong?”

“No, but—”

“Good,” Charlie said. “I’m sending you to Atlanta to get some training. You’ll do fine. It’s just more bureaucratic bullshit that you’ll have to memorize. But I think you’ll make an excellent handler.”

“Why me?” I asked him. “What makes you think I’m qualified for this?”

Charlie grinned at me then, but it was a little sad.

“You’ll do what’s in their best interest and keep them safe,” he said, clamping a large hand on my shoulder. “And you’ll be good at the politics. You’re charming. Your liaisons will love you.”

I stood and accepted the new badge Charlie offered me. Mostly, I was just happy to have my Beretta back. It wasn’t until he’d put it in my hand and I felt my fingers squeeze around it affectionately that I realized how much I’d missed her.

I must’ve looked doubtful, because Charlie slapped my shoulder again. “I believe in you, Jim. I always have.”

Thursday, May 15, 2003

W
hen I came back from Atlanta with folders full of shit to memorize, federal regulations, protocols, forms, papers and procedures, I really wanted a beer. But the first thing I’d done was check on Rachel. I helped her get a cute apartment downtown. It was one of those artsy places with exposed beams overhead and a brick accent wall to compliment the painted ones.

She’d filled it with bright furniture. A lime green chair that looked like a bubble. A hot pink couch with fluffy blue throw pillows. A white rug with thick purple swirls and abstract whirls that could’ve been a toddler’s handiwork.

I’d slipped into her apartment with a box of donuts I’d promised to bring back from a café in Atlanta. Part of me scoffed at the idea of Federal Agent turned delivery boy, but another part secretly loved it. The way she would smile when I would fulfill her requests, mostly small trivial things, it made me feel like less of a bastard.

I closed the front door behind me and was unnerved by the quietness of her apartment.

“Rachel?” I called out.

No answer. I drew my gun, as my heart hammered.

I felt like a fool when I found her in her bed sleeping. She was lying there, pink cheeked and dreaming with two huge headphones over her ears. She’d cut her hair into a bob and it suited her. She was wearing magenta pajamas, and her bed sheets were black satin with red pillows. I had no doubt that the bright colors were a way of putting that white cotton gown behind her.

Bold, outrageous and in charge. That was Rachel. She was sweet too, especially that afternoon when I tucked her in, pulling the covers up over her sleeping body. Moving the couture magazines and basket of nail polish to the bedside table, I watched her sleep with a small smile on her face and felt at peace for the first time in a long time.

Wednesday, June 25, 2003

A
fter a couple of replacements, Rachel and I had settled into a nice rhythm. And after I would get her out of the hospital and put her to bed, I’d walk down to the riverfront. I’d sit on a bench not a quarter mile from where they’d pulled Fizz out of the water. It was a morbid habit I’d taken up in the wake of the shitstorm that was this past spring.

It wasn’t just how weird it had all been—the teleporting, the mindfucking—after all, I’d become handler to a young woman who died so others didn’t have to. I’d been the partner of a woman who could see the future and draw it.

I’d left normal town a long fucking time ago.

I was on the bench when I saw Sullivan.

He just appeared, his back to me as he watched the water. The wind was rippling the surface and the high noon sun made everything shine, even the dingy iron of the bridge.

“I was wondering if I’d ever see you again,” I said. I set my back against the bench and felt the heat from the wooden planks through my leather jacket.

“I wanted to say thank you,” he said, turning around. He faced me and I got a good look at him. He squinted against the sun in his eyes, his freckles scrunching up. I knew immediately that he’d changed. Somehow. “The camps are actually closed and that’s thanks to you.”

“I should thank
you
,” I said. “Jackson still has her brains in her head.”

He came and sat beside me on the bench. “How’ve you been? Do you like your new job?”

Yes
, I thought and he nodded as if I answered. That should’ve been my first clue. But already my mind was turning away from the chitchat, from the small talk to the important matters. Sullivan and I had unfinished business.

“I know,” he said aloud. “You have questions about Maisie. She’s safe. Happy.”

“You’re her father,” I said. I sat forward and rested my elbows on my knees. “Her biological dad.”

“I wasn’t lying when I said I met her mother in the camp,” he began. “It’s amazing how much a man’s feelings can intensify in a place like that. We avoided sex for months. We were scared of exactly that kind of thing happening. Georgia—Maisie’s mother— knew having something happen to her baby would kill her. And it almost did. I didn’t take Maisie for me. I took her hoping it would heal some broken part of her mother.”

Yes, because if you were a man who needed his children, you would’ve taken Jesse, right?

“Did it?” I asked.

Sullivan nodded. “It’s helping. Georgia is a little more herself every day.”

I laughed. “What are the chances that I’d get Maisie’s and your case on my desk at the same time?”

Sullivan gave me a lopsided grin. “I asked someone I trusted—”

“Memphis,” I interjected. “No need to be shy with the details now.”

“If you had the file, then it wouldn’t be in the hands of another detective. I didn’t want anyone else looking for her. I knew they would send someone after me when they realized I wouldn’t come back this time. Worse, they might’ve sent someone after Maisie, looking for another way to control me.”

“They know what you can do?” I asked.

“They know and they’ve used it to their advantage. They trained me to do things I’d never believe I’d do in a million years.”

I thought of the boy I killed in the desert. Definitely something I never thought I’d do.

“I tried to refuse them once, and they hurt Georgia. They—” He stopped speaking.

“You are the one that took Maisie out of the camp.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “She was so small. It never worked with Georgia, but you don’t know how many times I wrapped my arms around her wishing we’d disappear, only to find that I couldn’t take us both. When I found out where Maisie was placed, I visited her all the time. I would go and check on her and then come and tell Georgia how she was. I think it was the only thing that sustained her in those years. It was better for Maisie to be with the Michaelsons than in that place. I don’t regret giving her to the placement agency, but now, she belongs with us. We’re together again, and that’s what matters. Georgia needs her.”

I looked out over the water. “There’s only one problem.”

“I know,” he said.

“A couple lost their only kid and then their lives,” I said.
Did you make them suffer?
I thought of the charred, decapitated bodies in the burning house. I didn’t need to ask how he’d gotten Maisie’s teeth.

“No,” he said and looked honestly offended. “They didn’t suffer. I snapped their necks. I was as gentle as I could be.”

It was a clean shot
, they had said.
The boy didn’t even know what hit him.

“I know it doesn’t make it better and I don’t expect you to let me go for that. I’m a monster, and I always will be,” he said. He stood up and moved away from me. “I just wanted to thank you for all that you’ve done and to give you a gift. You can call it a token of gratitude.”

“What gift?”

“Go to the bar,” he said. “You’ll know it when you see it.”

I couldn’t bring him in if he didn’t want to be captured. No cuffs would hold him. I could try to put a bullet in his head, but he wasn’t going to stick around long enough for me to do that.

“You won’t see me again,” Sullivan said with a small little smile. “Or maybe you will.”

Then he was gone, leaving only the wide open river coursing before me.

Sunday, June 29, 2003

I
t took me a few days to get up the nerve to see just what Sullivan’s “gift” was. But when Sunday rolled around and Rachel told me to quit hovering long enough for her to have a date with some boy from a band, I went down there. I walked the cobblestone street leading me to Blackberry Hill with slow steps. When I looked up, I saw the sign had been redone. The wooden board no longer showed black smears left from the firebombing. Instead, a neon square stood in its place with a swirly
Blackberry Hill
sparkling in the late afternoon light. Two mugs clinked together and spread apart as the fluorescent tubes flicked on and off in time.

“B?” a voice called.

I looked down from the sign and saw Peaches. He stood on the sidewalk with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth. His shirt and pants were covered in paint, a light industrial gray. It splattered across his clothes and his forearms, matting the grey-white fur there. I couldn’t tell with that damn cigarette hanging out of his mouth whether or not he was scared to see me. The last time he thought he saw me, I’d firebombed the place he loved most in the world.

I didn’t take a step closer. I stood where I was with my hands in the pockets of my leather jacket, unsure of what to do with myself. Peaches also stood and stared. He took a long drag on the cigarette and exhale the smoke into the warm air around us. Then he smiled.

“Where the hell you been, brother?”

My heart broke. I hadn’t realized until that moment I’d been afraid of what he might say.

I came up to the curb and offered him my hand. He laughed at me and pulled me into a hug. “How’s your new job?”

How do you know about my transfer?
I thought.

“It better be the best thing since sliced Wonderbread if it’s keeping you away from me.”

Sullivan was right. I did know my gift when I saw it. Nothing in Peaches betrayed confusion, anger, or regret.

“How’ve you been?” I asked. “I’m sorry I haven’t come by to check on you sooner.”

“That’s life, man,” he said. “We come. We go. But I’m good. Get in here and see what I’ve done with the place.”

I held open the heavy wooden door while Peaches smashed out his butt on the sidewalk before putting it into the ashtray out front. With the smell of cigarette smoke clinging to his hair, I followed him in.

Plastic had been brought in and laid over the floors.

“We had to gut the whole place,” Peaches said. “And let me tell you, insurance companies take their sweet fucking time giving you your money. But it’s fine. The furniture is going to be delivered Friday, and I hope to have us stocked by then.”

“4th of July?” I asked.

“That’s right.” He grinned. “4th of July Bonanza and grand reopening. There’s even a dart tourney if you’re interested.”

A warm feeling spread over my chest. I didn’t have the heart to tell Peaches I’d quit drinking. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

His grin widened and he bent to pick up the paint roller that sat waiting in the drip pan. He rolled it a few times through the industrial grey pool before pressing the sponge to the wall for the second coat. The place would look real nice when he was done. I had no doubt.

“I’m sorry,” I told him. My chest grew heavy as I watched him roll the thick goop onto the wall.

“For what?”

“If it wasn’t for me, your place would’ve never been firebombed.”

His mouth came open and he paused, holding the roller against the wall. “That’s not your fault. He was a maniac. Maniacs do whatever the hell they want.”

So he did know something of Chaplain and of what really happened.

“I’m just glad you were here,” he said. “No one got hurt and that was thanks to you.”

He knows something, yes
, I thought.
But not everything.

The jukebox sprang alive then of its own accord and began to play
I Want It That Way
.

“Besides,” he added, grinning at me as he lifted the brush again. “The jukebox didn’t get hurt and that is all that matters.”

I looked over his shoulder at the beast against the far wall. It was as large and cumbersome as always, with one long black char mark along its side. It was plugged in too, with its face lit up expectantly.

“Thank God,” I said sarcastically. “That’d be a real tragedy.”