From a Dead Sleep (47 page)

“Bullshit,” he answered at a volume that compelled a mother waiting for a departing flight to cup her young son’s ears with her hands and reprimand Sean with a disapproving scowl. He didn’t notice it.

Diana chuckled and insisted that she was telling the truth. A half-grin developed across his coarse lips.

“I’ve got someone here who wants to talk to you,” she said. “Hold on.”

From a small Lakeland hospital room decorated with vases of flowers and a couple of gift baskets, Diana kept a hand firmly wrapped around her husband’s while she held the corded phone receiver to his ear. Gary sat up in a reclined position as best he could with an arrangement of shoulder cast, thick bandages, and IV tubes constraining him.

“Hello, Sean,” he said with some dryness in his voice. “Welcome back.”

“Hollywood!” Sean shouted over the phone in near jubilation.

Diana watched a lighthearted sneer form across her husband’s face.

“How are the nurses treating you? I bet they love having a real-life celebrity under their care!”

Diana could hear her brother’s remark through the phone. She grinned at her husband as she watched him shake his head.

Gary said, “Yeah. Diana told me it’s been all over the news.”

“
National
news, Hollywood,” Sean interjected. “Your ugly mug was on CNN this morning. I saw it at the airport in Michigan.”

“It looks like you weren’t kidding about Vincenzo Moretti being a big shot,” said Gary. “Not just in the casino world, but also in drug trafficking. I guess the DEA’s been onto him for some time, building a case. With Tony Fabrizio singing like a bird, they’re getting more than they ever could have hoped for.”

“Yeah, Fabrizio’s soft. I’ve never seen a grown man cry like that. Have they found Moretti?”

“No. Not yet. A guy from the bureau thinks he may be on his way to Mexico. Maybe Canada.”

“Why do they think that?”

“They found his passport in Alvar Montoya’s car. They think he might have had someone FedEx it to them from Vegas,” Gary said. “Whatever’s in that ledger had him scared enough to want to leave the country. Without his passport, only the landlocked ones are going to let him in. Speaking of Alvar Montoya, it turns out that he’s got a rap sheet four pages long.”

“Big surprise,” Sean grumbled.

Gary let his wife hold a large cup of water with a straw in front of him. He took a sip before continuing. “Most notably, he was wanted in connection with the murder of two US border agents down in Texas. Seems he’d been under the radar for the past couple of years, going by the name of Alvar Sanchez. The Feds didn’t know he was the same guy. He dyed his hair silver, wore glasses he probably didn’t need, and carried a plethora of phony identification.”

“Well, he won’t hurt anybody else from the grave,” asserted Sean. “And
you
finally got to fire your gun.”

Gary’s tongue formed a ball and pressed it against the inside of his cheek. “In the line of duty, Sean,” he said with some annoyance. “I’ve fired all kinds of guns.”

He knew Sean would feel compelled to get in at least one dig.

Diana squeezed her husband’s hand while he spoke, grateful to God that he was alive and that surgeons told him he’d recover from his injuries over time with the right rehabilitation. Maybe never one hundred percent, but enough to return to work as Winston’s police chief. The irony of it all, though, was tough to digest. They had left Chicago, in part, because she worried for her husband’s safety there. She would have never thought in a hundred years that Winston would prove to be more dangerous. Still, the look in her face admitted she enjoyed watching the pride in his eyes when he spoke of his involvement in his first serious case since leaving the big city. She also saw some rare vulnerability from him since she arrived in the hospital. A sincere appreciation for her companionship and love. She was looking forward to having him home for a few months to rest and heal, and had already tossed every pack of chewing gum in the house into the trash. She mused at the comical image of him sharing the television with her mother.

At that airport, Lisa had seen Sean’s grimace of pain when he leaned his knife shoulder to the post beside him while on the phone with his brother-in-law. She was at his side in seconds.

“Ask him if the FBI has the ledger,” she whispered to him.

He almost grinned at the hint of perfume that met his nostrils as she leaned in to him. “Do the Feds have the ledger?” he asked into the phone.

“They do,” Lumbergh said. “It turned up in a mail room at the Las Vegas branch. Unopened until we let them know they should have it. They haven’t told me what’s in it. I doubt they will.”

“They were probably just happy to have someone do their jobs for them,” said Sean.

No one spoke for a few seconds as each waited for the other to say something.

“I should have believed you, Sean,” Lumbergh eventually said.

Sean could imagine Diana’s surprise in reaction to her husband’s words.

Lumbergh added, “You were right.”

There was only silence on Sean’s end until he finally responded with, “I bet that hurt to say.”

“Yes,” Lumbergh replied. “But you did good detective work. You didn’t give up. That’s commendable.”

Sean grinned. “You know, I think I was right about Tariq being a terrorist too.”

“No, you weren’t.”

Both men could hear each other smile through the phone. It was the first time the two of them had held a civil conversation. Respect had been earned.

“How long are you going to be out of commission?” Sean asked.

Lumbergh sighed. “Oh, I’ll be back before anyone misses me.”

“Who’s in charge until then?” Sean asked eagerly.

“Of the office? Jefferson, of course.”

“Jesus,” Sean bemoaned. “You’d be better off just handing your badge over to Toby.”

Lumbergh belched out an abrupt laugh that Sean figured had awakened his injuries because Diana took over the conversation.

“Joan says that Toby put together a really nice photo collage for Uncle Zed’s funeral service, Sean,” came her voice.

Sean’s shoulders lowered, and Lisa noticed his smile deflate a little.

“He’s really looking forward to seeing you back,” she continued. “He feels terrible about Rocco though. He feels like he let you down, because you put him in charge and all.”

Sean sighed and said, “He didn’t let me down. I owe him.”

He wished his sister well with the promise that he would be back home to Winston in a few hours. He then handed Lisa her phone back. She ended the call, snapped it shut, and dropped it into her purse.

The two strolled down the wide airport terminal as others walked faster around them, reflecting back on some of the conversations they’d had on the plane and over the past forty-eight hours. Sean was cognizant to the looks he received, having such an attractive woman by his side. Lisa needed to catch a connecting flight back to Nevada where her late husband’s body was to be shipped, so the two stopped when they reached the center of the terminal.

“Have you figured out when you’re going to make it back to Michigan to get your car?” she asked him with a grin.

“I’m not sure. Once the funeral’s over, I’ll figure it out. I’m not planning on leaving it behind. We’ve been through too much together.”

She nodded and reached into her purse. She pulled out a small white, rectangular box with a shiny red ribbon wrapped tightly around it. She held it up to him in the palm of her delicate hand.

“What’s this?” he asked, suspicion lacing his voice.

She smiled brightly. “A gift.”

Some reluctance to accept it was apparent in his gaze, but she insisted, watching his large fingers toy with the ribbon.

“You just have to slide it off,” she said.

He smirked and tugged off the ribbon before peeling up the lid. His lips pursed at the sight of a black, sleek-looking cellphone that was nestled inside in red tissue paper, matching the color of the ribbon. His eyes lifted to meet hers. She grinned again. The radiance of her face produced a fluttering sensation deep in his gut.

“It’s time to embrace the twenty-first century, Mr. Coleman. You should never leave home without one. It will save you a heck of a lot of trouble in the future.”

The small phone resembled a child’s toy at the center of his excessive hand. He studied the gadget so intently that he looked like an archeologist trying to determine what kind of fossil he’d just discovered.

“The buttons are so tiny,” he muttered. “I’ll be lucky if I can punch in a number.”

“You’ll get used to it. I promise,” she said with a giggle. “I made my phone number easy for you. I added myself as your number one contact.”

She pointed to a larger button in the upper left portion of the phone’s keypad and added, “Just push this one and then the number one.”

“Sounds easy enough,” he conveyed with a touch of uncertainty.

The two gazed at each other for a strained moment before Lisa let her eyes flow to the row of large television monitors that hovered at an angle above the wide and busy hallway they stood in.

“Well, I’d better be moving onto the next concourse,” she said. “My flight should start boarding in about fifteen minutes.”

He nodded as large herds of people shuffled their way around them in both directions. Only bits and pieces of other conversations lingered in the air while he struggled to come up with the words to offer as a parting farewell.

“I hope you have a good flight,” he eventually blurted out, instantly regretting his choice.

He took a breath and extended his hand to her. She ignored the hand and swept her body in close, delivering a tight embrace around his large frame. The side of her face pressed against his chest and he wondered if she could hear his elevated heart rate as he breathed in her fresh scent. He hadn’t expected such a sign of affection, but he timidly returned the hug.

“Thank you,” she whispered before her arms slipped from his back.

He noticed her eyes shift and narrow before she craned her neck over his shoulder. “What?”

“That sore, or whatever it is on your head,” she noted. “It’s healing.”

Only then did Sean Coleman realize that the itch at the back of his skull that had persistently nagged him for longer than he could remember had escaped his notice for two straight days. His hand went to the back of his head where a solid scab marked its mending.

“I’ll be damned,” he muttered under his breath.

She wiped a misty eye with the side of her soft hand and then latched onto the elevated handle of the leather carry-on suitcase that stood behind her. Its wheels strolled on thin, gray carpet and then linoleum as she made her way toward the escalator that would take her down one floor to the tram. She only turned back once, waving goodbye to the man from Colorado who hadn’t yet moved.

He waved back, a hint of sadness in his face.

She held a finger and thumb to the side of her face in the shape of a phone and mouthed the words, “I’ll call you.”

He nodded and took a breath, watching her body and then the top of her head float down below the floor until she had disappeared from sight.

She leaped off the last step of the escalator before it disappeared into the floor at the bottom of its metal track. It was a habit that had formed from her childhood when she used to travel with her parents—one that she’d never given up for whatever reason.

While waiting for the interterminal train to arrive, she watched in amusement as a handsome man, probably in his later thirties and wearing khakis and a polo shirt, dragged his young daughter across the pale, linoleum floor. The little girl was probably only three years old with long and curly blonde hair. She had wrapped her arms and legs tightly around her father’s larger leg, and he made funny faces, much to her delight, as he walked around in circles to tote her along. Her sister, who looked a couple of years older, joined in her laughter, and their pretty mother watched on, displaying a pleasant smile.

It occurred to Lisa at that very moment that she was no longer shackled by disappointment and false hope. There was a new life out there for her somewhere—a fresh start toward the things she wanted and often dreamed of. Once her old life was sorted out in Las Vegas, a new chapter would begin and maybe her story would unfold somewhere other than Nevada.

When she reached her concourse and made her way down to her departing terminal, she learned that her flight had been delayed by twenty minutes. To kill time, she meandered her way over to the terminal’s small food court where she purchased a poppy seed bagel and glass of orange juice. She sat with her legs crossed in a seat along an empty row that faced the walkway and enjoyed her snack. A couple of pilots, clad in short-sleeved, white uniform shirts with dark ties, took notice of her as they walked briskly by, pulling their luggage behind them. She offered a polite smile before glancing down at her watch.

The news that her flight’s delay had been increased to thirty minutes was delivered by a woman’s voice over a loudspeaker. The news didn’t faze her.
What’s an extra ten minutes?
she thought to herself. Moments later, another announcement was broadcast through the intercom. This time, it was a man’s voice, requesting that a passenger return to Gate 27. Had it not been for the name of the passenger, the page would have completely escaped her notice. Its familiarity however, triggered her attention.