The Hunger of Crows, page 27
“You just saved our lives.” He hugs Carla, holds her tight, cupping the back of her head with one big palm, pressing her face to his chest.
She looks down at the stun pen in her hand. For a second she doesn’t know what it’s doing there. “I think this thing ran out or something.”
“It’s a good thing, or you would’ve killed him.”
“I think I wanted to. I’m so sick of these guys coming after me.”
He nods. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
Carla pulls back from Scott and holds one hand out level in front of her. It’s steady. “I’m not even shaking. I don’t know why. I think I’m just too tired to be scared anymore.”
“You looked scared when you reached for that stun pen.”
“That was more like temporary insanity.”
She’s suddenly chilled. The valley is in shadow as the sun sets to the northwest, the night air off the river damp and cold. She puts the stun pen in the hoodie pocket and hugs herself. “Who is this one?”
“The bald guy’s father.”
“The guy you shot?”
“This is who he texted. He must have been almost to my house when he saw us pulling out onto the road, saw my name on the truck. When his son didn’t answer his calls, he decided to follow us. He waited until we stopped where he could grab us.”
“How long before he regains consciousness?” Carla asks. “And then what happens?”
Scott shrugs. “We can tie him up and leave him somewhere long enough to get you on a plane and the photo to the FBI. But he knows my name. My address. And I don’t have a new identity to run to.”
“What are we going to do with him?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You don’t have a plan?”
“How the hell could I plan for this? All I know is we gotta get you to the airport.”
The man starts gurgling and coughing. Scott and Carla turn to look.
Scott kneels over the man. His face has gone blue, eyelids twitching madly, arms and legs thrashing. Foam bubbles at the corners of his mouth. “He’s having a seizure or something.”
“Scott, he’s choking!” Carla crouches beside Scott. “We have to call an ambulance.”
“Roll him over so he can breathe!”
It’s too late. With one massive shudder, the man goes still.
Scott holds two fingers against the big artery on his neck. “He’s dead. Heart attack or something.”
“I really did kill him!” Carla says.
“He must’ve had a bad heart.”
“Great. Just fucking great. Now what?”
Overhead, they hear strange laughter. They look up to see a raven flapping toward its roost in the rocky cliffs. It makes that ha-ha-ha! sound once more and disappears into the shadows. Headlights move along the road to the highway, tires whoosh on the pavement. Then the night goes quiet again.
Scott stands. “We have to keep moving. We can’t leave his body here. Your DNA is all over him. His is all over my truck.” He crouches and grabs the man’s body under the arms and drags him toward the water.
“Wait,” Carla says. “His gun.” She picks up the pistol. “And I want to see his phone.” She pulls the man’s phone out of a pocket in his coat, muttering, “Jesus, I sound like D’Angelo.”
Luckily, the old guy is bone-skinny. Scott drags his light body to the river and lays it on the bank. The heavily silted water is the color of wet concrete and looks almost as thick.
Carla has a thought. “What if he floats down to the highway?”
“I’ll sink him. The water is so silty, he may never be found.” He bends and picks up a rock the size of a football.
Carla stands over him with her arms crossed over her chest, cell phone in one hand, like an ordinary woman watching her husband perform any mundane yard work task: planting a shrub, pulling weeds. Except that in her other hand she’s holding a huge pistol.
She watches Scott put three heavy rocks on the man’s chest. He buttons the coat over them, grabs the body under the arms again, and wades into the river.
Jesus. They’ve killed another man and they’re throwing him in a river like so much trash. She used to be a social worker. This is never going to end if she antagonizes McKint any further. She needs to give him that photo.
Scott is knee-deep in the current now.
“Be careful,” she says. She’d like to have him helping her a little longer, but she needs to tell him what she’s decided to do. It’s either that or blatantly deceive him when they get to the airport.
Scott shoves the body away, and the river carries it off. It floats downstream for a moment, arms outstretched. Then it rolls, and one hand comes up out of the silty river like a wave good-bye. It sinks and is gone. Scott wades to shore.
“Give me his gun,” he says. He takes it from Carla and hurls it as far as he can into the river. “The stun gun and the phone too.”
She hands him the stun pen but hangs on to the phone. “Wait a second.”
Remembering D’Angelo’s actions, she tries to check on recent calls, but the phone is locked. “Damn. I can’t tell if he called anybody and told them we’re on our way to Anchorage.” She throws the phone into the river. “These guys are going to keep showing up!”
“Maybe not. There’s probably a bounty on this,” Scott says. He picks the envelope up off the ground and waves it at her. “Maybe on you too.”
“Is that supposed to be reassuring?”
“No, I just mean I’ll bet these two were planning on keeping the money in the family and didn’t share our info with anyone else.”
“Listen, Scott.” She hesitates. She needs to at least give him a hint about what she’s thinking of doing. “What if I just give the photo back to McKint and go and live wherever Cosmo’s guy sends me with a new ID? Sidewinder won’t bother to look for me then. Not if they have the photo.”
Scott’s disappointment shows. “Carla, I thought you wanted to do the right thing and crush McKint. He’s getting more powerful every day. You want to give the picture to him now? After all this? Two guys dead today? D’Angelo in the hospital?”
“I want to stay alive. That’s what I want to do,” she says flatly. “I’m just trying to think it through.” But she’s already done that.
He’s going to be decent. Of course. “Okay,” he says. “It’s your decision. But either way, you’re going to need that new ID. I’m going to get you to the airport so you can find a pay phone. Let’s go.”
She’s moved by his loyalty and devotion. But she has to think of herself too.
He hustles her back into the truck, returns the envelope to the glove compartment, and turns around on the riverbank. They head back up the gravel track toward the road to the highway and Anchorage.
“Maybe a half hour,” he says.
Carla barely hears him. Thinking. If she’s going to keep up the nerve to do what she wants to do with the photo, she’s going to have to make a clean, unsentimental break with Scott. That’s going to be hard.
CHAPTER
52
IT’S ELEVEN THIRTY when Scott pulls into the Ted Stevens International Airport. D’Angelo said Carla must go into the terminal alone or his guy won’t show himself. Still, Scott doesn’t want to just let her out at the curb like some departing visiting relative he’s getting rid of. He pulls into the short-term lot and parks. They’ve barely spoken since dumping the dead man in the river. She’s been calm all the way into town. He’s not sure if that’s genuine or if she’s just numb. “How are you doing?” he says. “You know, with what happened back there.”
Carla turns toward him, face unreadable. “I’ve seen people die before. At the hospital in Phoenix. Lots of them.” She’s gone cold to him since the river.
“Yeah, but …”
“But I killed that one. Is that what you were going to say?”
Scott looks away, out the windshield at the airport. Says nothing. What can he say?
“Do you want me to cry? Would that help?” she says, a knot of anger or hostility in her he hasn’t seen before.
Why’s she being this hard?
“I’ll walk you to the door,” he says. “I won’t go inside. You can make the call and meet this guy on your own.” He pauses. There is still one thing that needs to be said. “Back at the river, you were talking about not giving the photo to the FBI. Giving it to McKint instead.”
She just looks at him, not as coldly now. Just distant. “Yeah?”
“You okay now?” he asks.
Carla nods, her mind obviously elsewhere. “I’m fine. I was just upset. Tired.”
Her face is taut, brow stitched. He hopes she’s trying to think of some possible way to stay in Alaska a little longer. He hopes she hates the idea that they’ll never see each other again as much as he does. He knows it’s ridiculous to feel this attached after such a short time. But, after what they’ve been through, it seems like years.
“We just met, Scott,” she says, as if reading his mind. She’s pushing him away. She gets out of the truck and doesn’t say anything more as they start toward the terminal. She stops abruptly. “I left the sunglasses.” She turns back to the truck. “Can you unlock it?”
Scott points the key ring, pushes the button. The door locks click open. She opens the passenger door, leans in. She apparently drops the sunglasses and seems to be fumbling for them on the floor of the truck. It takes her a few seconds. Finally she closes the truck door. Although it’s nearly dark with the late hour and a heavy mass of new clouds building over the mountains, she puts the sunglasses on. She looks suitably unrecognizable. She’s already disappearing.
When she’s at his side again, he presumes to put one arm around her shoulders. She doesn’t resist. They walk to the terminal that way. But something has changed between them, and he can’t read it.
On the sidewalk, in front of the Departures doors, she turns and looks at him, and he pulls her closer before she can step back. She smells of soap and shampoo from the shower they shared. It sends a pang of longing through his chest, but it’s way too late for that now. “It’ll be okay,” he says. “You’re safe now. Those two guys were the end of it. I’m sure.”
“I hope you’re right.” She looks away from him. She’s still not all there. Her mind is spinning. There’s something she’s not telling him.
“Again, I’m so sorry I put you through all this.” She seems to be trying to put some warmth into that. He guesses that’s as much as he can hope for now. Twenty-four hours ago he was sitting in his boat alone in the dark, Carla just one of the numerous women of Homer fueling his overheated fantasies. Now she’s about to become a memory he’s never going to forget. “Really, I’m sorry things got so screwed up, but thanks for pulling me out of the ocean. You are the Great Rescuer of Wayward Waitresses, Scott Crockett.”
That has a note of finality in it that panics him. When she shifts her weight to step away, he reaches for her arm. “I’m thinking when I get home, I’ll go anchor up over there behind the island again and wait for the next tide to bring me a new woman.”
Her face relaxes a bit, and she cups his cheek with one hand. “I hope you do, Scott. I really do.”
He bends and kisses her then. She may be too tough to cry, but he needs to get out of there before he’s bawling on a public sidewalk. She returns the kiss and steps back.
He can see she’s really going to go now. He pulls a Crockett Construction business card out of his jacket pocket. “In case you need me. For anything. Call it a memento. You forgot to steal anything from my bedroom.”
“A memento,” she says, and rolls her eyes. “That’s a habit I think I’ve kicked for good.”
“Go,” he says. “You have to make that call in the next couple minutes.”
She takes the card, gives him one last look, and bolts across the concrete. The automatic doors of the terminal open to swallow her and close again. She’s gone.
She’s going to be all right.
And what about him? When he gets home, the first thing he’s going to do is bulldoze another six feet of gravel over the top of that body, grade the driveway to be sure there’s no trace left there either. Will that be the end of it? He can hope. Still, there are some things no amount of gravel will bury.
He turns away from the terminal and heads for the parking lot. His feet are still wet from wading into the silty river, his pant legs soaked. The air is cool and pregnant with moisture. Ominous black clouds build over the Chugach Mountains to the east, no doubt bringing precipitation from Prince William Sound. It will be raining again by the time he gets out of the airport. Exhaustion crashing through him, he stands and looks at the grim sky and thinks about the long drive home, the empty house waiting for him at Anchor Point. He thinks about the days ahead, alone again.
Well, there’s really no reason to drive all night in the rain. Maybe he’ll pull into a Walmart lot and sleep in the truck among all the RVs. In the morning when the stores open, he’ll go to Costco, stock up on bourbon and beer, steaks, a big chunk of the cheap Jarlsberg they sell. Maybe look for one of those specialty food delis and buy that Italian anchovy sauce D’Angelo mentioned. He might even drive downtown to that fancy Nordstrom store with the great-smelling saleswomen. Take a look around. Check out the menswear department.
Right now, he needs to get that photo to Agent Mel Ritchie at the FBI.
CHAPTER
53
INSIDE THE TERMINAL, Carla finds a pay phone and dials the number D’Angelo gave her. She looks at the clock on the wall. It’s a few minutes before midnight. The number rings three times. Four times. She looks at the clock again. The minute and hour hands are almost vertical now. “Fuck!”
Someone picks up on the other end. “Go to the Cinnabon shop,” the voice says. Carla’s heart is pounding so hard she can barely hear the person. It sounds like a woman’s voice. “The table nearest the window.”
The phone goes dead.
She walks to the Cinnabon place, fingering the photo stashed in her hoodie pocket, still turning questions over in her mind. Will McKint stop looking for her if he gets it back? Will D’Angelo—assuming he survives the gunshot—still get protection from the FBI if there is no photo for evidence, no trial of McKint? She wishes she had more time.
The Cinnabon shop is empty except for the table nearest the window. A woman sits alone facing the terminal, a newspaper and a coffee cup on the table before her. She is insistently plain looking, middle-aged, wearing medium-quality clothes—an acrylic cardigan that is strictly from Target or Kohl’s—her dull-brown hair in an out-of-date perm. She looks like somebody’s aunt from Ohio. Carla feels a jolt of anxiety. Did she get the instructions wrong?
Then the woman smiles and waves to her as if they’re friends.
Carla takes a chair facing the woman with her back to the entrance of the shop. There’s a black travel bag under the table. The woman slides it over with her foot. “Look inside.”
Carla pulls the bag up onto her lap. It contains a neck pillow, an iPad tablet, an Atlantic Monthly magazine. There’s a travel kit with a toothbrush and deodorant and such, and an orange prescription pill bottle of zolpidem. There’s a small red handbag. Inside that, she finds an iPhone, a wallet, and a passport with the photo of her that D’Angelo snapped on Scott’s porch; it’s been transferred onto a blank background. She studies her face, the badly cut short hair sticking out around her head like some punk rocker’s. The passport says her name is Anna Katherine Martin. Carla glances at the date of birth and can’t help smiling. She’s thirty-three again. Well, if they kill her now, she’s going to die young.
She opens the wallet and finds an Oregon driver’s license with the same name and age. There’s an address in Bend. There’s a Social Security card, a Visa card, J.Crew and Nordstrom cards, a handful of twenties. At the bottom of the purse, there’s an Oregon State Credit Union checkbook, a house key, what looks like a safe-deposit box key, and a set of car keys.
She feels a cloud of depression drift over her. This one small bag holds her whole new life. Or, should she say, Anna Martin’s life? Which is the same thing now.
“You’re Mr. Plan B?” Carla asks. This isn’t what she expected at all.
“Plan B?” The woman smiles at the name. “I work with the person you refer to. Open the phone and go to the Alaska Airlines app.”
A boarding pass appears for Alaska Airlines flight 91 to Portland. Boarding soon. First class. She’s never flown first class. There’s a connecting flight to Bend.
“Now, you head to security and find out how good Anna Martin’s ID is.”
Carla just looks at her. “You can make somebody into another person with another life? Just like that? In the few hours since he called this afternoon?”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly ‘just like that.’ Anna Martin was constructed over a period of time. The bank accounts, the passport, driver’s license. There are records going all the way back to Anna’s high school transcripts. In case you want to go back to college or something. All we did today was fill in the physical details to match you. And then I got on a plane to meet you here.”
“I see.” She hesitates. “You must do other things too. I mean, not just new identities.”
The woman leans back in her chair, smiles crookedly, quizzically. “You have something else in mind that needs to be taken care of?”
Gut twisting, Carla debates whether to go ahead with what she’s about to say. Right now, she’s probably safe enough. She can still call Scott and tell him she stole the photo from the glove box, give it back to him to deliver to the FBI. She can still follow the original plan, go to Bend, get another job in another bar, dye her hair black. And then what? Wait tables for the rest of her life? Or just until she meets some man who’ll take care of her? Take a few classes at the community college? Join a softball league? Is that all there is? And exactly how vengeful is McKint going to be when that photo ruins him? How far will she have to go to elude him? Bend doesn’t sound nearly far enough. Even Cosmo D’Angelo wants to be what he called “twice removed.”
