Gray Night (8 page)

Chapter Seven

 Brandon is fast. I know because I’m fast and I hadn’t caught him. He knew these streets. I didn’t. If I didn’t catch him soon I’d lose him. I considered my options. He was racing south. Fifty-fifty chance picking one direction to cut him off. I could outlast him maybe. Exhaust him and wait it out. I sure as hell wasn’t going to run him down like this.

 Sometimes it’s a blessing having choices taken away. Another block or two and I’d have lost him, but Brandon turned a corner and ran into a salvage yard. I was in time to see him slip inside an old building near the back of the lot I followed him into. I had him. But why would he let himself be cornered after a few blocks?

 No, that wasn’t right. Not a few blocks. Two. South. Like the garage he worked at.

 “Ah, hell,” I whispered. I have a tendency to wax eloquent during times of distress. And distress was on my mind when the garage doors opened and three guys stepped out with Brandon. On second thought not such a blessing. I’ll keep my choices thank you very much.

 Two of the three guys jogged wide around the heaps of scrap metal. By the time Brandon and the third guy were close, two other sets of shoes crunched on the gravel behind me.

 Brandon, who looked tougher now, pointed at me. “This is him. This is the guy. Came after me with a gun and everything asking about Ruby. Well, now I got questions for you!”

 “Brandon, I’ll answer all your questions—” I started.

 “Damn right you’ll answer my questions!” he said.

 “Brandon! Listen to me! Thomas said—”

 “Thomas! Man, how do you know Thomas? Where is he? What have you done?”

 There is a split second when you know what’s about to happen but you can’t do anything to avoid it. Well, I could. Saved my life half a hundred times. It was like my own personal Spidey sense. I knew what he would do. How he would move. What I didn’t count on was one of the guys behind me leaping forward in silence and hooking my arms back.

 I made eye contact with each and every one of them in front of me and gave a polite nod. “Gentlemen.”

* * * *

 “
Oww!
” I jerked my hand back. Stupid paper cut adding injury to insult. No clues, no new direction, no nothing, and all I had to show for it was a bloody thumb. One of many reasons I preferred fieldwork. I grabbed a napkin left over from the sandwich Abner brought me for lunch and wrapped it tight.

 I’d made my calls. No one had seen or heard anything. Not the contacts I’d made through the museum, or in college, or my travels, or the local fences. Even from my own team I was only able to get ahold of Sam. He would ask around and meet me tomorrow in his office at New York University, but in the meantime...

 With nothing to do but wait, images from this morning filled my mind and my eyes glistened. I stood and paced around the room to get a hold of myself, which made it worse because when I passed the trashcan I thought I smelled blood. I made it to the bathroom just in time. I thought I would vomit again, but the trash needed taken out right then. I went to do it and took the lid off prepared to run back to the sink. But, there was no smell. I took a closer look and there were no clothes, no blood, no anything. In fact, it was a clean new liner. Scented with lemon no less.

 I stood there a full minute breathing deep before going back to the sink and cleaning up while making a mental note to thank Adrian. I hadn’t realized he’d taken it out. That was… thoughtful. He’d still ran off leaving me alone to do all the work and I was pissed about that, but he made sure I wasn’t left alone three feet from…that. I was thankful. And a million times more comfortable in these sweat clothes. And the coffee with purified water was good. I was better off in every way right then than at any point all morning. What I needed now was another distraction, something to focus on, to stay busy.

 I played with my phone for a minute, investigated Roarke’s weird black candle, and then spun a loose knob on one of the desk drawers. Two seconds later I had the top drawer open.

 There was the .38 where Adrian had left it on top of a blank notepad with some scattered pens and pencils. I shut it and opened the larger bottom drawer. It was full of loose papers, newspaper clippings, photographs, and a large album with loose pictures stacked beside it. The top photo looked like Adrian. A young Adrian. Interesting.

 I admit I was curious to do some research on Knight. I was convinced he didn’t have anything to do with this morning. But, research is what I do and I wanted to shed some light on the mystery that is Adrian Knight. So I lifted the heavy album onto the desk along with the loose stack of photos.

 The top one was of Knight and the rest of the stack was him and two other young men all smiling and wrestling and making ridiculous poses. I flipped open the album and browsed over the first page of photos to see if I could identify the two guys. Only a handful of pictures had labels. Nick Roarke’s name was on the back of one or two of them, but the third man only appeared every couple of pages. Between each photo it was obvious months had gone by, years perhaps, and only one of his pictures were labeled. It was the three of them again. One of the earlier ones. What looked like dirt, or soot, covered them. Made their shining dog tags stand out even more. On the back, it read
Premier jour de printemps‘99
. First day of spring 1999. In French. Fascinating.

* * * *

 The garage was quiet and still except for the ice machine I was using and distant grunts and groans coming from the boys who sat in the dirt against one of the outside walls.

 I filled five quart-sized Ziploc bags with ice and walked back into the salvage area in front of the garage, tossing one to each boy as I passed.

 “What’s the last one for?” Brandon asked as I sat down in front of them with the last bag of ice.

 I sat and looked at him.

 “For me,” I said, resting the ice over my wrists. They had torn raw again during the fight and bled along with my knuckles.

 Brandon gave a half-hearted snort and straightened his back careful to keep the ice over the corner of his eye. Looked like it would bruise nicely come morning.

 “Winning is not all it’s cracked up to be,” I said to no one in particular.

 “Losing’s not so hot either,” the guy on Brandon’s right said.

 “Well, there’s that,” I said.

 I took another look at them to see if I’d missed anything more serious. A black eye, two busted lips, a bloody nose and sore ribs, but it looked like their pride had taken the brunt of it.

 “All right guys, let’s try this again,” I said.

 Brandon looked like he would get angry again, but the others were happy to stay sitting right where they were. I focused on Brandon.

 “I mean let’s start over. I’m something of an investigator. Name’s Adrian Knight,” I said.

 “That supposed to mean something?” Brandon said.

 “Nick Roarke, you ever heard of him? Helped a friend of Ruby’s a while back. Jessica Hayes,” I said.

 All three of the other guys nodded. Brandon sighed.

 “Yeah, him we heard of. Ran off some dude harassing Jess. None of that explains what the hell you’re doing out here looking for me or why you’re walking around carrying. You work for him or something?” Brandon asked.

 “We work together. Sometimes. I owe him a favor and said I’d keep an eye on things while he’s away. Thomas came around this morning looking for Nick to help find his sister. So here I am,” I said. “And I carry the gun because you never know when four guys are going to jump you in a salvage yard.”

 The kid on the far left laughed then hugged himself, holding his ribs as he slid down the wall to lie in the dirt.

 “Stop.
Owwhwwh
. Don’t make me laugh,” he said.

 “Yeah, sorry about that. Ruby was missing and we been looking everywhere and somebody shows up asking questions looking for me—” Brandon started.

 “Hey, what are you apologizing to him for. He broke my nose, Brandon!” interrupted the other kid next to him.

 “Yeah and he could of shot ya. All of us. And he didn’t, stupid,” Brandon replied.

 “I’m stupid? You’re the one who ran in yelling about some dude out to get you and crying for help,” the kid said back.

 Brandon hesitated. “I know,” he said. The other kid started in again but Brandon held his free hand up cutting him off. “I know, all right! It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

 The other kid seemed mollified and didn’t reply.

 “So what is it you want me for?” Brandon asked, looking back at me.

 “Had some questions is all. You’re her boyfriend right?” I asked.

 Brandon nodded.

 “I hear there was an argument and she ran off yesterday evening. Tell me about it.”

 “We were supposed to meet for dinner. I come outta the diner early and she’s across the street all dolled up and paying M&M this huge wad of cash. I exploded. I mean I lost it, man. The thought of her working again, I lost my temper and ran over hollering and screaming at her. I mean I never even gave her a chance and she ran off upset.”

 “What time was that? Did you go after her? What happened next?”

 “Right before sundown maybe. I don’t know for sure. But, no I… I didn’t.” Brandon’s eyes watered and turned red. I thought he was going to break down and then
Baaooom!

 His hammerfist caved in the sheet metal siding behind him as deep as his fist. “I should have gone after her!”

 Thank God fear had the better of Brandon when he’d turned to fight me. I might have had to get rough with him. There was no longer any doubt in my mind as to whether he had something to do with Ruby’s disappearance. If he had struck her in anger, she wouldn’t have lived. The look in his eyes wasn’t guilt. I’ve seen guilt. I knew it well. This wasn’t it. This was rage.

 “Hey Brandon?” said the guy at the end, standing and holding his ribs.

 “Yeah?” Brandon replied, looking over.

 “Think I’m going to lock up for the afternoon and head home.”

 Brandon nodded.

 The other two guys stood.

 “Hey man, I think we’re gonna head out too. Take some aspirin and lay down or something,” said one of them.

 “Yeah. All right,” said Brandon.

 “Give us all a call after sundown and we’ll be ready to head back out,” the other said.

 I waited until they were gone. “What happens after sundown?”

 “We’re planning a walk. You know, seeing what all there is to see,” he said.

 “Looking out for something suspicious? Hope to catch a lead on Ruby? Or maybe someone who saw her last night?”

 “You got a better idea?”

 “No, actually I approve. More eyes and ears out the better. I’d be doing the same if I were you. You keep cool and don’t harass anyone who doesn’t deserve it. Don’t lose your temper and make a bad situation worse, you hear?”

 “Yes sir,” he said, pausing for a moment. “What is it you hope to do out here, Mr. Knight?”

 “Find Ruby. You feel like a walk right now?” I asked.

 “Yeah,” he said standing. “Where we going?”

* * * *

 The rest of the album fascinated me. Most were of Adrian and Nick taken in various towns and villages. Several had a young woman in them. She looked about their age. You would have thought maybe they were all in the Peace Corps, or student volunteers, or on holiday, the way they smiled and laughed and took crazy pictures around the city or hiking in the countryside. And one photo of all three of them trying to ride an elephant and failing. I laughed out loud at that one. It felt good to laugh.

 It was difficult picturing Adrian as innocent. Both boys had the same devilish grin, usually while doing something mean to the girl in the photos. When I flipped past the first couple of pages that all changed.

 No more smiles, no more laughing, no more picturesque landscapes with the pretty girl. In their place was carnage. Villages burnt to the ground, mass graves, buildings on fire, old women screaming and crying. I only saw the girl in one other picture. It looked like she was working as a nurse in a makeshift refugee camp during a thunderstorm. Adrian and Nick were loading supplies onto a truck along with several armed men in fatigues and the girl was screaming at them.

 There was more. Black and white aerial recon, roads with convoys marked, pictures of compounds, jungle forts, and mines. The photos gave way to newspaper clippings. The oldest going back to May 1997.

 It was a church. Or what I assume was a church. The building had been blasted from the inside out and people were carrying burned and broken bodies outside where they waited in rows for burial. An excerpt in English stated the Gray family, who had built it several years before, were the intended targets and were found among the deceased.

Another, from years later, had a black and white photo on the cover of bodies littering the ground on the banks of a stream flowing through a village.

 Most of the articles were in a language I didn’t know. Especially the older ones that appeared to cover events of the Second Congo War until around 2003. From then on more and more were articles from international papers and magazines. Most were in English and covered subjects from weapons trafficking to black market antiquities to international criminal court hearings over events the world over. Dozens of unrelated stories in an order I could not figure out. Like an article on hundreds of millions of dollars missing in the financial records of over half a dozen central African governments after the war ended was right beneath a short story on one of the last battles before the ceasefire. Something about a mining compound ravaged by fire but no one had taken credit for the attack.

 On and on the articles went. Theft, trafficking, battles, assassinations, serial killers, manhunts, Interpol statistics and briefings, warlords brought to trial, it was a mess all the way to the end.

 I slid the album over and picked up the small pile of papers lying beneath it in the drawer.

 More recent photos and articles. One in color of a woman getting a certificate or degree of some kind. Looked like the young girl in the other photos, but older. Several of the newspaper articles were local stories on missing children found or neighborhoods reclaiming their street. It never mentioned him by name, but given the focus on local crime, and the handful of wanted posters crossed out, I knew those were about Nick Roarke. An interesting fellow this Roarke. Savior of children and neighborhoods and keeper of a disturbing album from the past.