The Death Agreement (13 page)

"That doesn't give you any reason
to suspect it was me."

"It does," Rossenkants said. "The
shoe sizes did not match. That means either the man has one foot
much larger than the other."

"Or," Porter chimed in, "he has a
fake appendage, like you. The shoe size isn't right and the
spectrophotometer did not show a match, but there's something about
you that I don't like."

"This doesn't make
sense."

"No, it doesn't," Porter agreed.
"That's why it is imperative that we find Detective Yang." She
smiled thinly. "And I think we'll be confining you to your quarters
until this is straightened out."

"Do what you got to do. Can you
tell me what the other guy took?"

Porter and Rossenkants exchanged a
look.

"What did he take?" I
demanded.

Rossenkants took a deep breath and
let it out. "A rusty, old saw," he said. "Does that mean anything
to you?"

I felt the blood drain from my
face and my mouth suddenly went dry. I turned away from the agents
and started walking again. "No," I lied. "Doesn't mean a goddamn
thing."

SECTION VII - CELEBRATE
LIFE

The C.I.D. agents followed me through the winding
hallway. I turned the last corner and found the door to my room
partially open.

"Huh, that's strange." The hinge
creaked as I pushed it the rest of the way inward.

I leaned my head inside and looked
toward the empty kitchen, then toward the dark bedroom. "Mary? You
still here? Decent?" When she didn't respond, I stepped over the
threshold. "Mary? I've got company."

I turned to the agents and
shrugged. "I guess she decided to leave."

Rossenkants narrowed his eyes.
"What did you say Mary's last name is?"

I motioned for them to follow me
into the kitchen. "I'll give you her business card. Don't mind the
mess," I said, stopping to pick up a crushed beer can.

The agents stepped inside and
waited as I threw away the rest of the trash from the night
before.

Porter stared at the three empty
liquor bottles. "Would you say you're a heavy drinker?"

"I've had a rough few
weeks."

"I see," she said.

I shook my head. "Lady, you don't
have slightest idea."

Rossenkants took a step forward
and held out his hand. "Business card?"

I removed Mary's card from under a
magnet on the fridge and handed it to him. "That's her office. Her
cell is written on the back."

Rossenkants looked at it and
nodded. "Thank you."

"Give me a second, I'll get the
rest." I tried to walk past the agents, but Porter grabbed my
arm.

"Lieutenant," she said, "why don't
you stay here with me while my partner has a quick look
around."

I shrugged off her hand and made a
waving gesture. "By all means, knock yourself out."

Rossenkants smiled and left the
kitchen.

Porter looked me over. "What is it
you're not telling us?"

"You probably won't believe this,
Agent Porter, but from the moment I heard that Jesse had died, all
I've tried to do is keep from losing it."

"What do you mean by
that?"

"I hadn't even recovered from the
news that he was gone before I learned about what else he had done.
Not to mention everyone thinking I had any part in this. I'm not a
murderer. I'm not an accomplice. I'm not anything."

She frowned. "All of this is
happening around you, yet you can stand here and tell me that
you're not involved."

I stared at her for a moment
before responding. Finally, I said, "Because it's true. I didn't
ask for any of this, and all I want is for it to end."

"You're very convincing, but where
there's smoke there's fire."

From the living room, Rossenkants
called out, "All clear."

Porter smiled and left the
kitchen. "Now, about that evidence…."

The jeans I'd worn the night
before were piled at the base of the couch. I picked them up and
rummaged through the pockets looking for Taylor's
letter.

"Damn," I said.

"What is it?" Rossenkants
asked.

"It's gone. The drawing…the
confession…both copies of The Death Agreement."

In a mocking tone, Rossenkants
asked, "Is it possible you put them somewhere else? Maybe in your
bedroom?"

"No. I had everything in my
pocket." I threw the jeans across the room and nearly fell
backward. "That bitch stole it for her goddamn story!"

Porter and Rossenkants watched me
pace back and forth. I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed
her number. The call went to voicemail, of course.

"Why, Mary? You didn't need to
steal from me. I would have given you copies."

Ending the call, I sat on the
couch, and lowered my head.

"She's got what you want," I said
to the agents. "So leave me alone and go bother her."

I felt their untrusting eyes stare
through me for what seemed like an eternity before Rossenkants
finally walked back into the hallway. Porter followed him. From the
hall, Porter said, "You'll be seeing us again soon,
Lieutenant."

I listened to their heavy
footsteps fade away.

For months, I had constantly been
in the dark, and when I finally felt like I had gotten ahead of the
game, the game thrust me to the back of the line. I knew right then
that I was done with The Death Agreement, done with Jesse Taylor,
done with the military, done with everything. As for Yang and Mary,
they could go to hell. I didn't care why he had helped some
psychopath take that saw, and I couldn't give less of a damn why
she had thrown away my trust for a story.

It dawned on me how long I had
allowed all the hurt, anger, and sadness to flow into each other,
strengthening over time until the meld became a perfect storm of
pain.

I crawled into bed and screamed
and thrashed and cried and cursed and kicked. At some point I
forgot about the troubles of the world. At some point I forgot
about Jon Randon.

***

The blades of a helicopter sliced
through the air somewhere in the darkness above.

"Jon?" Taylor whispered. "Come and
play with us."

I opened my eyes and sat up on a
blood-covered cot. Taylor's shadow danced away, and I stood, amazed
both of my legs were made of flesh. Looking around the empty
medical tent, I felt a sense of disorientation, as if the world had
began spinning in the wrong direction.

"Jesse, I don't know what to
do."

The steady cadence of a helicopter
engine distorted into a sickly whine that grew louder and
louder.

"Come," Taylor said.

I followed the shadow to the front
of the tent and looked up at millions of maple tree helicopters
slowly falling to the ground.

"Beautiful," I said.

When the first pod landed softly
onto the sand, a terrible crash of twisting metal and shattering
glass filled the air, and a sudden blast of heat blew back the tent
flap, burning my face.

I marveled at the red fireball
roiling high into the pitch-black sky.

The shadow circled around me like
a vortex, then slid from the tent into the hot desert air. "Come
play with us," Taylor said again.

Several other shadows, silhouetted
by the blaze behind the dunes, slid across the black sands. They
were laughing and kicking a ball. I knew them all. Mr. Hunter, Mrs.
Christina, Kyle, Tiffany, Lorie….

Mary Stallings said, "Kick it to
me, kick it to me!"

"No," Yang replied. "It's Jon's
turn."

"Hello, everyone." I waved, and
they all waved back.

Taylor pointed in my
direction.

Yang kicked.

I ran forward and stopped the ball
with my right foot, feeling the soft texture give slightly under my
weight.

"It's mine," Taylor said. "Kick it
over to me."

"Okay." I readied myself, drawing
back my right leg, then stopped. "Wait. Something is
wrong."

I rolled the roundish object under
my foot, twisting and turning it. "The ball has hair on
it."

After giving it another roll, the
face Taylor's infant son, Jon, came into view. His milky, dead eyes
stared up into his head, and when I screamed, the baby looked at me
and blinked.

***

Each time I woke from a nightmare,
I noted the color of the sky seeping through the window shade
before forcing myself back into oblivion. The ambient light had
changed from blue, to orange, to red, then finally to the dull
eggshell color of the street lamps.

Eventually my mind refused to shut
back off, and instead of restless sleep, I listened to the sound of
a clock ticking the hours away.

My stomach growled. The pangs of
hunger had caught up to me, and I couldn't recall when I had last
eaten.

I knew it was past midnight by the
sound of the generators. They only kicked on after the solar power
batteries fully depleted, which usually happened around two in the
morning.

I fumbled to get myself out of
bed, making sure to securely attach my leg before attempting to
stand.

In the kitchen, I found the
refrigerator nearly empty. What little was inside didn't appeal to
me in the least, but my stomach rumbled again, telling me to eat
something anyway.

I inspected the quarter loaf of
bread, looking for signs of mold. Then I opened the container of
lunch meat and sniffed. "Borderline." I shrugged and dropped shiny
turkey slices on what had been left of the rye, then devoured the
sandwich. After, I drank a glass of tap water and wiped my lips on
the sleeve of my wrinkled dress uniform.

Appetite pacified, I opened my
door to see if the newspaper had been delivered. Sure enough, the
St. Patty's Day edition of the Baltimore Sun had been propped up
against the door frame, rolled up in a transparent yellow
sleeve.

Kneeling, I noticed specks of
blood that led down the hallway, and wondered which patient's
leaking bandage had messed up the carpet.

I sat down at the kitchen table
and flipped the paper open to the obituaries. Mary had kept her
word, at least in terms of Taylor's death notice. The tidy history
of Major Jesse Taylor lay before me in black ink on the dull grey
pulp.

'Sterile', she had called
it.

Yeah, well maybe it had lacked
soul. I didn't care. The message was honest, and that was enough
for the general public. The firestorm would come, no doubt, but I
didn't want to be the one to throw the match.

While I read over the good parts
of Taylor's life, a transformer exploded somewhere far off, and the
lights in my room dimmed until they finally
extinguished.

Sitting in the dark, I considered
trying to go back to sleep, but then I heard the unmistakable loud
pop of a second transformer failing.