James Grippando - Born to Run

The forensic investigators had left the place reasonably undisturbed-nothing like the way they would have dissected an actual crime scene. The rent was paid through the end of the month, and one of the tasks on Paulette’s to-do list was to sort through Chloe’s belongings and clear things out. Tonight, however, her focus was on just one of Chloe’s possessions. A prized possession. Her autographed photograph of Vice President Grayson.

The framed photograph was still hanging on the wall. Paulette crossed the room and took it down.

She hadn’t studied it closely on her last visit, the morning after Chloe’s death, when the homicide detective had brought it to her attention. Seeing it then had triggered only sadness. A seemingly unimportant detail, however, had lodged in her brain-and with all the recent talk of the vice president’s daughter, her sadness had morphed into suspicion.

Elizabeth Grayson was in the photograph.

Paulette moved closer to the lamp for a better look. The pose seemed almost candid, or perhaps it was a staged pose that had broken down into something more casual. The vice president was seated on the corner of his desk. Chloe was standing next to him. Elizabeth was right beside Chloe. Right beside her-with her arm around Chloe’s shoulder. The two women were smiling widely, heads tilted to the point where they were almost touching.

Paulette laid her hand atop the photograph and covered the vice president. With him out of the picture, the photograph told an entirely different story. There was nothing forced about the connection between the two women. Chloe and Elizabeth looked like old girlfriends, a couple of college-aged women cutting up and having a laugh in the White House.

Suddenly, the vice president’s betrayal was of a whole new magnitude.

Shit, Chloe. How could you have done that to a friend?

Paulette put the photograph back on the wall and switched off the light. One last glance through the half-opened blinds re-kindled that I’m being watched feeling, and she resolved to come back and clean out Chloe’s apartment in the daytime. She locked the door on her way out, took the rear staircase to the back entrance, and started toward her car. She hadn’t parked far away, but the night was turning colder, and the walk across the cracked concrete seemed longer than it was. Paulette didn’t frighten easily, but she was eager to get out of there. She reached into her purse as she approached, disengaged the lock with the keyless remote, and opened the driver-side door. Her hand was actually shaking as she aimed the key at the ignition-and the tip had just touched the slot when she felt the plug of cold metal behind her right ear.

She froze.

“Don’t make a sound,” the man said. He was behind her in the backseat with his gun to her head.

“What do you want?” said Paulette.

There was silence. Enduring silence. The man couldn’t or wouldn’t tell her what he wanted. Paulette did not take that as a good sign. Suddenly his left hand was at her throat. She gasped, about to scream, but he shoved a bottle in her open mouth.

“Drink,” he said.

Paulette couldn’t have swallowed if she’d wanted to. The barrel of the gun pushed more firmly against her skull.

“I said drink. ”

Paulette’s heart raced with fear, but whatever was in the bottle had to be better than a bullet in the brain. She tilted her head back, and the warm liquid poured down her throat. It was bitter and a little salty, unlike anything she had ever tasted. She coughed through the last few swallows.

“All of it,” he said.

She closed her eyes tightly and forced the rest down. When she finished, he took the bottle from her lips.

“Good girl,” he said, though his voice seemed strangely distant, as if she were hearing only the tail end of an echo. “Now we wait. We wait. We… waaaaaait. ”

The scream woke Jack at dawn, and he shot bolt upright in the bed. The window shades were drawn and the room was still dark, but Jack immediately sensed that the other side of the bed was empty.

“Andie?” he said, but he didn’t wait for a response. He heard something- muted voices? — and ran toward the kitchen.

“Whoa!” said Theo, shielding his eyes. “Forty-year-old naked man. Not pretty.” Jack quickly wrapped himself in a towel from the hallway linen closet and entered the kitchen. Andie was standing at the counter, already dressed for work and making coffee.

“What was the screaming about?” said Jack.

“Oh, you mean Andie?” said Theo. “There’s a black man in the house, there’s a black man in the house!”

Andie swatted him. “I didn’t say that. I just didn’t expect someone to be standing in the kitchen.”

Jack said, “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Time to go fishin’, dude. Dolphin are running.”

Jack had a three-year lease on the most modest waterfront property on Key Biscayne, one of the original “Mackle houses” that were built mostly for World War II veterans who were brave enough to live in what was, at the time, little more than a mosquito-infested swamp. The house originally sold for twelve thousand dollars, and the current owner was renting it out to Jack until market appreciation added three more zeros to the land value-which wasn’t far in the offing. It was basically a two-bedroom concrete shoe box, but it came with over one hundred feet of waterfront and a dock. Four years ago, Jack and Theo had gone boating, and by the end of the day, they were too tired to load the boat onto Theo’s trailer. Jack said he could dock it overnight. It was still there.

“Coffee?” said Andie.

“Sure,” said Theo.

“She was asking me ,” said Jack.

Andie poured a cup for each of them. Jack enjoyed the aroma before drinking. Theo gulped his, then said, “I hear President Keyes is a real coffee carouser.”

“ Connoisseur , Webster.”

“Sorry, I don’t speak Latin.”

“It’s French.”

“Technically, it’s English,” said Andie, reading from the web-page on her iPhone. “Derived from old French. Originally from cognoscere , which is Latin.”

“I was right!” said Theo.

“Whose side are you on?” Jack asked Andie.

Theo poured himself more coffee. The guy couldn’t get enough of anything that was free.

“So,” said Theo, “did you at least have coffee with the prez in the White House before you got canned?”

“I didn’t get canned.”

“That’s what the paper said.”

“Shit, it was in the newspaper?”

“Jack,” said Andie, “you were fired, okay?”

“I repeat: Whose side are you on?”

She didn’t answer. Her gaze was still fixed on the display screen of her iPhone, but she had turned very serious.

“Something wrong?” said Jack.

“I-” she started to say, then stopped. Jack knew she’d received one of those FBI e-mails that she couldn’t tell him about.

She looked up and said, “Turn on the television.”

Jack grabbed the remote and switched on the set. Andie took the control from him and tuned to CNN. On-screen, a reporter was standing outside a three-story apartment building. The red banner with white letters at the bottom of the screen identified her as Heather Brown, and her location was listed as the LaDroit Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

“That’s where Chloe Sparks lived,” said Jack.

Andie raised a hand, telling him to listen.

The reporter continued: “It was in an alley directly behind this apartment building, at approximately four o’clock this morning, that police found a white sedan. Police have confirmed that the vehicle belongs to CNN reporter Paulette Sparks.”