Rick Mofina - Six Seconds

“Maggie,” Graham said. “It was an obvious mis take.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Dixon said. “I wish we could help you. Fine-looking boy you got there, don’t you think, Wanda, honey?”

“He sure is.”

In the instant Wanda’s eyes met Maggie’s, some thing passed between the two women.

An ache. A plea. Fear.

Maggie didn’t understand and collected her file. “You folks have yourselves a nice day.” Dixon showed them his brown teeth in what he meant to be a smile.

After Graham and Maggie drove off, he turned to

Wanda.

“You disappoint me. I saw you going to the cabinet.” “Karl, she’s looking for her kid.”

“She was with a cop!”

“I didn’t know that at the time.”

Dixon grumbled something that sounded like

“dumb bitch” before extracting the keys to his Cadillac from his pants.

“I have to go to the bank, then I have to go to Frank’s.

Don’t know how long I’ll be. Think you can find your brain while I’m gone?”

The whole time Wanda watched him leave she kept turning a small card in her hand. The one Maggie

Conlin had left from her motel.

Maggie had penned her cell-phone number on it, too.

Wanda kept turning it over and over, running her finger along the edge, wishing it were a knife as Karl finally vanished.

Las Vegas, Nevada

From their booth in the family restaurant, Maggie bit back on her anger as she watched the sun set on the Las Vegas Strip traffic.

“I just know they were lying at Truck Land about

Jake.”

“Dixon’s got a lot to hide,” Graham said. “So how can you just give up?”

“Maggie, I explained all of this before we left Los

Angeles.”

“No, tell me. After coming this far, getting this close, how can you quit.”

Graham set his coffee down, glanced at their plane tickets for the morning. Hers for California. His for

Calgary.

“I am not quitting. I am out of my jurisdiction. Since we left Dixon’s place my boss has called me twice ordering me home. I’m not sure I still have a job.” “Make him understand how our cases are linked.” “It’s complicated. Listen, no one’s stepping back from your lead on Jake. I told you, I spent an hour with Casta at Las Vegas Metro, then I spoke to the FBI and I reached Vic Thompson. They can press for warrants to seize all of Dixon’s records. It’s only the beginning with him.”

“That could take weeks. It’s not a priority for them.

Besides, I bet Dixon’s good at hiding things.” Graham didn’t respond.

Frustration and fatigue had settled upon them like a losing streak. They left the restaurant and drove to their motel. Maggie watched the colossal hotels down the

Strip, gleaming in the twilight.

“Can I ask you something personal?” she said. “Sure.”

“Even if you don’t want to talk about it?” “You can ask.”

“How did your wife die?”

Graham took a few moments and he looked straight ahead.

“A car accident.”

Their rooms were separated by a few others on the motel’s upper level.

They overlooked the pool and offered a view of the Spring Mountains.

In his room, Graham had his TV turned low on CNN as he worked on his laptop. The pope’s visit to the United States dominated the news.

Graham read over his case notes. He was not ready to walk away from Tarver.

That was the truth.

But Stotter had given him an explicit order to return.

Graham checked e-mails. The autopsy on Tarver was still pending. Arnie Danton, the blood expert, had also sent an update.

Dan, given this case is supposed to be done with, I’m having a hard time getting a green light from my boss, but I’m working on it. Maybe tomorrow, or the next day.

Graham shut things down, closed his laptop, set his alarm to allow for enough time in the morning to drop off the rental and make their flights. He fell asleep as CNN featured an expert discussion on papal security against terrorist threats.

“You know, Brent, there was that chilling plot against John Paul II in Manila that narrowly…”

A few doors down, Maggie stepped into a hot bubble bath, stared at her cell phone on the tub’s lip and wept.

She was so tired, her muscles tremored in the water.

This must be what hell was like. She must have died and been damned to eternal torment by getting so close to Logan, Jake and the truth, only to find it was a lie.

All a lie.

She would never see them again.

She closed her eyes and for a moment she was with Logan and Jake on a warm beach until the cold bathwater woke her.

Maggie didn’t know how long she’d slept.

Later, her body heavy, as she got ready for bed, she decided to update her file. She’d put it in the nightstand to the right of the bed, under the Gideon’s Bible, before they went to Desert Truck Land.

But when she opened the drawer, the file wasn’t there.

Odd. She specifically remembered placing it under the Bible when she’d checked in earlier.

Maggie looked in the nightstand to the left of the bed.

Her file was there.

Strange. How did it get moved? This was not where she’d left it. Maybe housekeeping came in. Maggie picked up the phone and called down to the desk.

“No, ma’am. No one was in your room today. They’re not scheduled to clean until you check out.”

Maggie was puzzled. Weird. Maybe she’d moved it herself and didn’t remember.

She checked her door, the lock, the dead bolt, the bar and the chain, then got into bed.

As she fell asleep she tried to resurrect her beach dream.

A block away, an Impala with darkened windows was invisible among the hundreds of cars in a public lot that offered a clear line of sight on the motel through high-powered military binoculars. While one man snored in the back, the second was alert, watching the doors to Maggie’s and Graham’s rooms.

Every hour he would type an updated report on his laptop and e-mail it to his uncle in Addis Ababa.

Las Vegas, Nevada

Most Las Vegas dreams started, or ended, at McCarran International Airport.

The transit point for winners and losers.

Here, the consequences of first and last gambles played out with the perpetual chime and clack of slot action. After returning the rental car, Graham and Maggie found a soft-lit lounge where they waited under a cloud of defeat to check in for their flights. Maggie had tea and glumly poked at the bag while it steeped. Graham had orange juice and a muffin.

News clips of the pope greeting ecstatic Americans jammed into a stadium flashed on the TV monitors sus pended over the bar as Graham took a call on his phone from Casta, who had follow-up questions on Dixon. To take her mind off things, Maggie changed a dollar into four quarters and went to the slot machine in the corner. Lemons, oranges, bells and bars clattered from left to right, with the first coin she played. No win. It was the same for the second.

And the same for the third quarter.

Typical.

She played her last one and the first reel left a cherry at the payline; so did the second, and the third. Then the fourth. Lights flashed, pongs sounded during the rollup as the machine tallied Maggie’s win, releasing a torrent of coins into the tray.

At that moment Maggie’s cell phone rang. As she answered, she hurried outside the lounge to get away from the noise.

“Maggie Conlin?” the female caller said. “Yes.”

“This is Wanda.”

A tense moment passed between the two women. “I’m sorry about what happened yesterday at the office.”

“Will you help me?”

Seconds passed with Maggie pressing her phone to her ear. She looked at the happy families, the excited couples, the tour groups with snippets of German,