The Carrier (20 page)

CHAPTER 36

Marcus drove and drove, pursued by
ghosts, but he genuinely felt like he could outrun them. He stopped
only to get gas and buy Mountain Dew and chocolate covered peanuts,
cranking back east through steady rain with more than nine hundred
thousand dollars in gold. Somewhere in Indiana an unfamiliar ring
came from Marcus’s pocket. His first thought was—Danny. Maybe he
was okay. Marcus had no idea where the sleek, new phone had come
from. He looked at it like it was an alien artifact, but he
accepted the call.

“
This is campus police at
Graham College. Who am I speaking to?”

“
What?”

“
Campus police. Give me your
name and location, and do not make this difficult.”

Marcus never figured out what Graham
College was. Ghost police? Demon avengers? He flung the phone out
the window, into the grass, and kept driving.

If he’d been stopped, the
gold would have been seized, added to the treasury of one lucky
county, and Marcus would probably have been locked up. He easily
could have crashed, hit another car, or flipped off a railing at
ninety miles an hour, driving hypnotized, chanting the names of the
towns he passed over and over in his mind—
Vickory, Vickory, Shinrock, Shinrock
.
Instead he made it back to Massachusetts in the early morning
hours. Just like he’d left it: in the cold dark before any sensible
person is out of bed. How long ago had that been? A month, a
year?

It didn’t seem possible or real, but
he was home.

CHAPTER 37

Cyril was able to pull off the road
and ease behind some brush. Cops driving past wouldn’t notice the
car unless they’d been tipped off for some reason. He carried a
shovel and a 130- pound woman for about ten minutes, then laid the
body down and started digging. The earth was cold and heavy, but
Cyril didn’t mind the hard repetitive work. He dug until he had a
giant hole, deep enough to fit this woman who’d been so full of
ideas and motion just twenty-four hours earlier. Finally he was
exhausted and heartbroken and nauseated, but the light of
self-preservation was still on. He desperately hoped he wouldn’t
return to see state police rummaging through the mess of Willow’s
car.

When he got back, he found dark empty
road and the car sitting there behind light cover, looking like
your average Toyota. He took out her driver’s license—her birthday
was next week. Her eye color was listed as hazel, but he would have
said brown. Her name was Annette. He took the money out of her
wallet, fifty-five dollars, and put the license back in. Then he
drove until he was nearly asleep. He made it all the way to Denver
this way, still smelling a dead woman. When he got to the city he
parked near the train station, with the keys still in the ignition.
He left the shovel and pick ax leaning against a building and threw
the tarp in a nearby trashcan. He carefully cleaned out the wallet
and put the ID, the other cards, and the pills deep in the bottom
of a different trashcan. Good idea, bad idea? Was he being
careless? Was there something obvious he was leaving for the police
to find? Too tired to really think about it, Cyril bought a one way
ticket to Sacramento. He hadn’t slept since—when?—not last night or
the night before. He’d never had much luck sleeping on trains, and
he felt cut up and haunted, so he doubted he’d get any rest on the
way.

The next thing he knew he felt stiff
and disoriented, slumped against a window somewhere in Nevada. If
he’d had any dreams, he couldn’t remember them now.

CHAPTER 38

Saida didn’t drink very much during
the school year, but on Tuesday night, she blew off studying and
drank a bottle of cheap white wine and watched a TV show about
millionaires who pretended to be homeless to gauge the reactions of
average people. She was pretty sure a lot of it was fake, but she
still found herself sobbing when an old woman bought the unwashed
tycoon a new blanket.

In the very small hours of Wednesday
morning, she heard a jingling in her dreams. A large animal was
dropping pennies onto a patio. It wasn’t until she heard a loud
crash of metal that she bolted awake. Someone was in the living
room.

This wasn’t the most dangerous
neighborhood she’d ever lived in, but they had their share of
troublemakers; and she knew their locks weren’t the best. She
quietly unplugged the lamp, held it above her head, and crept out
into the living room to see, in the near dark, a giant man. Was it
Marcus? The big man didn’t move like Marcus—he was shaky, not at
home—but he was the right size and shape. She was ready to scream
and attack if needed, but she wanted something better to hit him
with than this lamp.

The figure entered the bathroom. When
he turned on the light, she saw for sure: her boyfriend had
returned. He must have peed for five minutes straight. When he came
out into the living room she had all the lights on, and he caught
her staring at the bulging duffel bag that lay on the couch. Marcus
wasn’t drunk but he wasn’t walking steadily.

“
Baby?”

“
Here I am. Here I am,” he
said.

It felt like something obvious was off
about him, like he was missing an arm or leg. He opened the bag for
her.

“
Holy Jesus.”

“
Look at that.”

She knew a little about gold, and this
looked real to her.

“
I did it,” he
said.

“
What happened?”

“
I went out there and picked
up the package. I mean—that’s what happened.”

“
Where’s the—the guy, your
friend Danny?”

“
He’s—somewhere
else.”

“
Marcus, just tell me
everything.”

“
No, I can’t do
that.”

“
What did you
do?”

“
I just got all of this
gold. It’s for us.”

Marcus turned the bag upside down, and
the bars came crashing onto the couch.

“
Stop. Keep it quiet,” Saida
said, but she couldn’t help from laughing excitedly as she picked
up a brick in each hand.

“
These are
heavy.”

“
You know how much it’s
worth?” he asked.

“
This is real? This is all
real?”

“
It better be.”

Saida started to put the gold back,
stacking it carefully in the bottom of the bag. Marcus just stood
watching, standing there in his jacket, Willow’s gun poking out of
the left pocket.

“
Whose gun is that?” Saida
asked, freezing for a second.

“
I don’t know.”

Marcus could have a gun if he
wanted—he wasn’t going to hurt her.

“
We are really good,” he
said.

Twenty minutes later, Marcus was deep
asleep, out for the winter. Saida was too excited for that. The
gold was real, and life was about to get a whole lot sweeter. She
watched him for a minute, the slow rise and fall of his huge body.
Then she put together a small bag—soap and a toothbrush, underwear
and socks. She tossed it in the duffel bag on top of the gold,
hoisted it all on her back, and walked out the door. There was no
reason to leave a note.

***

Twelve hours later when he woke up
around dinnertime, Marcus assumed that Saida was at school. He was
a little disconnected and cotton-mouthed, but otherwise he felt
pretty good about himself. When he realized the duffel bag wasn’t
on the couch, he didn’t panic. It was smart of her to put it away.
But where? A closet, under the bed? Very quickly he searched the
small apartment—nothing. Still he wasn’t worried; Saida must have
gone to sell the gold. She must know how to cash it in, and she’d
be back with enough money to start a new kind of life in a few
hours. He called her twice and got no answer, but maybe she was in
class or at the jewelers or something. Midnight, one AM, two AM.
She still wasn’t back, and it started to dawn on him that she might
not love him anymore.

Still, he held out hope all night, the
next day. Maybe she’d been in an accident, or maybe she was in
lengthy discussions with one of those We-Buy-Gold guys. He went to
Saida’s college that evening. He couldn’t get into the library
without ID, and the small security guard seemed genuinely afraid
that he’d actually have to deal with this huge, half-crazed menace,
but Marcus withdrew.

“
I’m sorry for losing my
temper. I’m going home,” he said.

When he got back to the apartment that
evening, he didn’t notice anything off about his door or the lock,
and he didn’t notice that some of the pictures were crooked or that
the kitchen was messier than usual. He simply walked inside and
slumped on the couch.

CHAPTER 39

Duane felt very alone. He
lived by himself and discouraged friendship, but this feeling
rarely hit him with any force. When he saw a tableful of friends at
a restaurant or a bar laughing like animals—
look at how much fun we can have
—he
felt nothing but scorn and embarrassment. Right now, he just wanted
to be alone with enough heroin to stay relaxed for a full day—maybe
two. Because what he was going to have to do now was really tough:
track down the gold. It was probably far away, stashed somewhere
smart and safe—completely untouchable. But despair was not a useful
emotion, and Duane did have somewhere to start: Danny Chin.
Probably he was dead, but at least he was a point of entry. Somehow
this Danny Chin had figured out when Cyril was making a serious
pickup.

Duane searched for murders
in Iowa and very quickly found what he was looking for—an
unidentified Asian man shot to death on a deserted road. There were
no details released beyond one man, approximately thirty years old,
shot twice at close range. No leads, no mention of cars or
fingerprints. There was no mention of a girl or any evidence that
another body had been there. Let’s hope your luck holds up,
Cyril.
An Iowa crime blogger was already
speculating:
Chinese espionage in the
heartland.

Danny’s address was easy to find,
thanks to the sex offender registry, so Duane made his way up to
Massachusetts. Five hours later he was sitting in Danny’s
apartment. It was a part of New England that seemed to have no
history and no natural beauty. There were no minutemen or colonial
houses, just bare weedy lots set next to strip malls and cheap
housing. Someone had spray painted the letters SL on the side of
the building. Duane couldn’t tell if it was graffiti or
instructions to a contractor. Either way it looked like it had been
there a while.

Duane had no problem walking right to
Danny’s apartment and forcing open the lock. Danny wasn’t there, of
course. Once inside, Duane quickly searched the place. There was
some paperwork from the Department of Corrections and a few bills,
but other than a clarinet and a red cape there was nothing that
really indicated this was the residence of a pervert. In fact,
there was nothing interesting at all, certainly no money or
drugs.

So who was the big white
guy? Danny hadn’t lived in this place long—that was clear—and there
wasn’t much to indicate who his friends might have been. There were
no phone bills or pictures with buddies—no computer, no cell phone.
Finally Duane found a coaster with a phone number and the
name
Max
written
on it. Duane dialed, and a woman’s voice answered.

“
This is Max.”

Max was a girl?

“
Hey there. This is Danny.
You remember me?” Duane said.

“
Danny? Where do I know you
from?”

“
You’ve forgotten
already?”

“
Oh. From the supermarket?”
Max asked, her voice a little wobbly.

“
Yeah.”

This was a dead end.

“
What took you so long to
call?” she asked.

“
I don’t
know—business.”

The girl giggled.

“
So you want to get together
this weekend?” she asked.

Duane hung up. It was just a silly
female Danny had picked up in frozen foods. Poor girl would never
get her date with Danny Chin, deceased sex offender.

Finally, back in the
kitchen, Duane found an old pizza box on the counter, hard cheese
still clinging to the inside. Attached to the box was the order
slip with the name
Marcus
. Okay, that was something.
Marcus could be a big white guy. He’d come over for pizza and
they’d planned the whole thing. It was the best guess he had, so he
called the pizza place. A teenaged voice answered.

“
This is the sheriff’s
office calling. Can you put the manager on the phone?” Duane
said.

“
Uh. Sure.”

About thirty seconds later a slightly
older voice came on.

“
Hi, yeah. What can I do for
you?”

“
This is Don Olsen from the
sheriff’s office. We’re hoping you can help us out with
something.”

“
What’s—that?” the young man
was inexperienced and nervous; if they kept records, this was going
to be easy.