Nothing Left (Jack Widow Book 16), page 2
The cruiser was unmarked, but I knew it was a police car because there was an array of antennas sticking up along the trunk lid. The kind police needed to stay in contact with dispatch, especially when driving out in the middle of nowhere.
Both dead bodies had that cop look about them. They wore street clothes, but were definitely off-duty cops, or federal agents in plain clothes. They could’ve been on a stakeout, or having a clandestine meeting with an informant, or doing any of those things that cops do.
I’ve spent the last several years hitchhiking from one state to the next, never stopping for long, and never getting too used to staying in one place. I started drifting after I left my undercover job in the NCIS. And I’m addicted. Not unlike a drug or alcohol addict, but my addiction isn’t going kill me—probably.
I’m addicted to two things: coffee and nomading. My addictions have no cure. Not that I’d want to cure them. I love them both. Why live paycheck to paycheck? Why stay in one place your whole life? Why work for someone else, paying taxes, paying rent, paying bills? Why settle for any of that? Why settle at all? I didn’t get it.
I love not knowing what’s around the corner. You never know what the tide will bring. Sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes it’s a bad thing. On the road ahead of me, there could be anything. I could meet a beautiful woman. I could meet a stranger with a gun. I could run into danger. I could run into adventure. That’s the magic. The spontaneity. The improvisation of life. The unknown. That’s what I love.
But, right then, all of those things happened to me all at once, like some kind of twisted ambush.
Right then, a pair of headlights appeared in the darkness. A car approached from down the two-lane highway. I froze where I was and watched it. It grew larger in a long moment as it headed in my direction. Was it the killer? Was he returning to the scene of the crime?
At first it passed by, but then the brake lights came on. And the driver slammed to a stop. The tires skidded, and the brakes howled. Dust rose behind the tires.
Once the headlights had passed, I got a better look at the vehicle. And it was bad news for me.
Shit, I thought.
The oncoming car was another police cruiser, but a regular one, not an unmarked one. I could tell because the light bar on top lit up and blue lights washed through the darkness, over the terrain. The blue light bounced off the nearest wind turbine’s white base, illuminating a wide stretch of ground beneath it.
The driver left the siren off. The car reversed, and the engine whined until the cruiser made it back to the track I stood on. The car stopped, and the engine whine died away as the driver switched the car into drive and turned onto the dirt track. The new police cruiser sped up as fast as it was safe to. The headlights bounced up over dips in the track.
The cop must’ve seen the brake lights from the dead cops’ car. Not knowing what to do, I froze. Technically, I didn’t kill them. There was nothing for me to fear. But in my experience, I had been arrested more often than your average drifter for crimes I didn’t commit. It was mostly because of how I looked and partially out of convenience.
I was six foot four, two hundred and twenty pounds of concrete muscle mass. And I stood over two dead cops in the middle of nowhere. What would this new cop think when he saw me? He’d arrest me. No doubt about it. I’d do the same thing if I were in his shoes.
I could run. So far, he hadn’t seen me. Not from the highway. But where would I go? There was nothingness in every direction. Plus, running would get me more than arrested. It’d probably get me beaten with nightsticks in a room with no cameras and no witnesses. It’d get me charged and probably stuffed into a jail cell. In some rural areas, in some states, it’d get me killed. Cops don’t like cop killers. Even though I had killed nobody. At least not in New Mexico. Not yet.
I stayed where I was.
The newly-arrived police cruiser continued up the track. As it got closer, I got a better look at it. The cruiser was old, but had once been a state-of-the-art machine. The driver must’ve spotted me, and spotted the bullet holes in the police car in front of me. Maybe he saw the two dead bodies inside because he buzzed the siren, not turned it on, just blipped it, like a warning to me to stay put.
The cruiser swayed and bounced as it sped toward me from out of the darkness. A coyote howled somewhere behind me. The giant wind turbine whooshed overhead. The police cruiser slammed to a stop again. The tires screeched, and the brakes squealed as the thing came skidding to a stop ten feet from where I stood. The rear of the car skidded clear across the dirt. Dust sprayed up into the air behind it. The wind gusted a huge dust cloud out past the cruiser. It engulfed both of us for a moment, before dissipating into the gloom.
The siren blipped again, and the blue lights lit up the low, hilly grassland around me, like little blue lighthouses on the sea. The night sky brightened and the beams from the light faded into hazy clouds. More dust rose up from the tire skid, but this time slow and somber.
The headlamps washed over me, and stayed there. But the light stopped at my neck, just below my chin. My head and face remained in darkness above the beams.
I stayed where I was.
The cop inside threw the car’s transmission into park. The police cruiser’s driver’s door burst open, and the cop jumped out and pulled a department-issued Glock on me. The cop had excellent moves. It all went down as I had predicted. Except I was wrong about one important detail. The cop wasn’t a he. He was a she.
She steadied her arms over the top of her car door, the Glock held out and pointed directly at me. She locked her arms straight out and stood strong—textbook stance. She aimed her weapon at the dead center of my chest. There was no laser sight, but I felt it. This cop was well-trained.
I didn’t know if it was bad luck on my part that she appeared out of nowhere or if she’d pulled up to answer a distress call from the two dead cops. I hadn't thought to check the police radio, or look to see if their hands were empty. The latter was plausible. Maybe one of them stayed alive long enough to radio for help. Maybe the radio was still in the palm of his hand.
What I knew for sure was, to this cop, I was a total stranger. She was a cop staring at a police cruiser with two dead cops in it, and me, a stranger, standing over them. Not a dream scenario. To her, I was just a giant hitchhiker with black, gas-station-bought clothes on.
Factor in the black clothes, my large stature, and the middle-of-nowhere scene, and she probably looked at me and saw the thing from outer space from many eighties alien invasion/horror movies. One of those movies where a giant alien, who never dies, hunts man for sport. The kind of alien giant who keeps returning from the dead after being shot with shotgun rounds, nine-millimeter parabellums, or whatever else the local cops could throw at it.
The policewoman aimed down the barrel of her Glock at me, and shouted, “Hands up!”
Without objection, I raised my hands high above my head and kept my fingers limp and still. As my arms went up, she followed them with her eyes slowly. Like uniformed sailors watching a flag rising up a flagpole in front of them. It was a long route. Her eyes flicked back down to my face. I doubted she could see much detail because of the darkness.
She shouted, “Keep them up!”
Her voice was calm, yet firm. It was a seasoned cop-voice. She had used it hundreds of times, maybe thousands.
She shouted, “Turn around! Face the other direction! Do it slow!”
I turned around, slow and calm. My head pivoted back to look over my shoulder as I turned so I could maintain eye contact with her. Not that she could tell.
She shouted, “Face forward!”
I turned my head back toward the front and faced the direction of the silent cop car with the two dead cops inside. My eyes washed over their bodies again, closely. I got a better view of the damage. There were bullet holes all over the place—the front hood, the backseat, the rear windshield, and even through the headrests.
The policewoman walked up behind me, slow and steady, with her boots scuffling in the dirt. She stopped directly behind me, but outside of my reach, which was a smart move on her part. She had sized me up like a veteran law enforcement officer would. She determined it best to stay clear of my long reach in case I spun around and snatched the Glock from her hands, which I could’ve done.
She said, “Place your hands behind your back! Do it slow!”
I did as she asked. Knowing what she was going to do, I jetted my thumbs out. A half-second later, she grabbed my wrist and locked it in a handcuff. She followed with the other wrist and cuff. I heard the clicks from the handcuffs. The cold metal chilled my skin as it coiled over my wrists. I glanced back at her from over my shoulder. Not fast and not slow, just a steady glance. I kept my expression friendly. I had been arrested many times before, and by female officers before. I knew the drill.
In my experience, officers in arresting situations are hopped up on adrenaline and training, which told them to be aggressive, to make their voices sound full of authority and strength. They were trained to sound like they meant business. When an officer tells you to freeze, what they are really saying is freeze or I’ll shoot you. And ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, they will shoot you.
I didn’t know this woman from Eve. So far, she seemed professional, level-headed, and competent, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure she wasn’t a bad apple. Lots of police departments have them. Bad apples would be just as quick to shoot you and sort it out later, instead of following procedure. Especially out in the middle of nowhere. No witnesses. And two dead cops as probable cause. So I gave her no provocation to shoot me.
I kept my voice friendly, but more toward the side of neutrality than familiarity. I said, “You’re making a mistake. I didn’t do this. I just found them.”
She said, “Right. Now, turn around. Slow. Let me see your face.”
I turned around, dawdling, and gazed down at her. She squinted her eyes, but not in the way that said she couldn’t see me. It was more like she couldn’t believe her eyes, like something amazed her, like she recognized me. She took one hand off the Glock and covered her mouth with it. She stayed like that for a long second and held the gun one-handed, pointing at my center mass. Then, she reached down and grabbed a small flashlight from her police belt, quickly, like she had rehearsed it many, many times.
She lifted it up and clicked the light on in one fluid motion. The beam was bright, white like a surgeon’s light. The beam spotlighted straight at my chest and then moved up to my face. She stopped it, held it on my face. The flashlight beamed a powerful light on me. It blinded me.
I couldn’t make out her features behind the beam.
The police officer suddenly broke protocol and stepped forward, closer to me than she should have. She stared at me for another long second. Suddenly, she did something completely unexpected. She lowered the Glock, a fraction of the way down. But she kept it pointed at me and kept her finger inside the trigger guard, in case she had to draw it up fast and put a bullet in me.
I could make out her face, but not enough to pick her out of a lineup. I saw just enough to know she was probably about forty, not much older than I was.
She looked at me strangely—strange for this situation. Strange for any situation where a stranger is pointing a Glock at you one second, and the next, she’s greeting you with the eyes of someone from the past.
The officer lowered the flashlight enough for me to see better. I saw her face. She had pale blue eyes and fair skin. I believe the tone was called porcelain. I imagined it wasn’t a natural look in New Mexico, where there is plenty of sunlight. Maybe she only worked the night shift. And she had been doing so for a long time, judging by how pale her skin was.
She was about five-four, not short for an average woman, but an entire foot shorter than I was. She wore a bulletproof vest over her uniform. It looked bulky around her chest, like her breasts stretched the vest more than the design was meant for. Bulletproof vests are traditionally designed with men in mind. Men make up most of the vocational forces that utilize bulletproof vests. There are some companies out there with more female form-fitting designs in their catalogue. Apparently, whatever department she belonged to in New Mexico didn’t offer those.
Her uniform shirt had long sleeves. I could see a hint of a tattoo cropping out of her sleeve, over her wrist. It rode up the back of her gun hand. There was another tail of it poking out of the collar of her shirt. It came up her neck about a third of the way. I imagined it was all one enormous piece. I had a lot of tattoos myself. So I knew two things about it. First, the procedure was long and painful, which told me she had patience, and probably a high threshold for pain. And two, it was expensive. Big tattoos like that could cost thousands of dollars and take weeks or months to complete.
All of this told me she was tough and patient. She probably had thick skin, with a radar for bullshit. Most female cops like her do. There’s an extra layer of bullshit for women to go through in male-dominated industries. Law enforcement was no different. It’s far from a perfect world.
I glanced at her name patch. It was just a flick of the eyes. Her name patch was sewn above her right breast on the bulletproof vest. It read: Voss.
I took a second glance, with another flick of the eyes to see her badge. It glimmered faintly from the moonlight. It was a small, gold star-shaped badge, engraved with symbols, representing New Mexico Law Enforcement. And there was a badge number. The symbol was probably the crest for the local city she worked out of, and not the county, because the side of her car read: Angel Rock: Police and not Angel Rock: Sheriff. She was a part of a police force and not a sheriff’s office, which meant that she was on the force for a township or city, and not for a county, because sheriffs policed the counties of America, and police worked the municipalities.
Her flashlight flicked back up to my face. The light was bright in my eyes. I recoiled from looking at her badge. She lowered the beam, so it was no longer blinding me.
I returned my eyes up to her face. Her expression had completely changed from one of strangeness, to one of perplexity. But, why?
She looked at me like she had seen a ghost, someone from years ago that she had thought was dead by now. And then, I knew why, because she spoke.
She said, “Widow? Jack Widow?”
2
The cop named Voss stared at me like she’d seen a ghost, a reincarnation of a memory she wanted to forget. I saw it in her eyes. There was something there—a recognition, more than a hint, but less than familiarity. She knew me. Obviously. She had said my name. The Glock trembled in her hand. It was subtle, but it was there. An untrained person wouldn’t notice it, but I did. She became distant for a moment. Her mind had gone somewhere else, to a far-off past. Her eyes glassed over like condensation on a mirror.
There was pain there. It was in her eyes, like she knew me from an unwanted memory. It was something she ran from, something she fought hard to block out of her mind. I had no idea what it was. Whatever it was, it distracted her, only for a moment, but it had been there, and I had seen it.
If I had been the killer, it would’ve been bad for her. Her life would’ve ended right there. Because I could’ve swiped the Glock right out of her hands, but I didn’t. She didn’t strike me as a cop who’d make such a stupid mistake. I doubted she’d ever let a suspect overpower her, or give them the chance. Not even a slight one. But she had given me that one moment of opportunity.
She recognized me from somewhere and from the look in her eyes, it wasn’t a fond memory, which was unlucky for me because she had me at gunpoint. And I couldn’t remember her, which was unusual for me because I had a pretty good memory. But right then, I was drawing a blank.
I said, “That’s my name. Do I know you?”
She looked confused, a bit disappointed, and then, visibly angry, like I should remember her. It was like she wanted to say: You don’t remember me? How dare you forget?
I saw it in her eyes. But the anger quickly subsided. And she came back to reality. A glimmer of mistrust appeared back in her eyes, like she realized she made a mistake and let her guard down in front of a murder suspect, and a cop killer, at that. The Glock went back up all the way and she stepped back enough to keep out of my reach.
My opportunity to swipe the gun out of her hand and turn it against her was gone. I repeated, “Do I know you?”
She didn’t answer, just repeated my name, like now she was unsure it was me. Like her eyes deceived her. Like her brain was playing tricks on her. She repeated my name. “Widow?”
Voss let the flashlight beam wash over my features, up and down like a prison-yard spotlight. She broke the same protocol once again, gave me a second chance to overpower her. She stepped closer again, closer than before, keeping the gun tight in her hand and her arm loose, so she could quickly flick the Glock upward, and shoot me. If she needed to. Voss said, “You look the same. Only more scruffy, older, like you’re a man now.”
I’ve always been a man, I thought.
Voss paused a beat, and said, “Lieutenant Widow.”
I stared back at her, trying to find her face in my memory. It was strange, because she was unforgettable as she was now, but I couldn’t find her. Not anywhere in my memory. I said, “I used to be a Lieutenant. That was a long, long time ago.”
Voss said nothing.
Somewhat cretinous, I asked, “Do I know you?”
She didn’t answer that. She just nodded in complete recognition like she had known me my whole life, like I was someone she’d never forget. She said, “Amazing. You look just as I remember you. Like out of a dream.”
Silence.
Voss asked, “You don’t remember me?”
“Sorry. I don’t. But I can’t hardly see you. Can you lower the flashlight?”
She paused a beat and breathed in heavily, like it was an act that was a complete betrayal of years of cop training. She said, “Sorry.” And she lowered her hand. The flashlight beam fell off my face, but she held it so that it stayed on my torso.
