Jeff Abbott: Fear

‘I just want it to sell. Emilia needs a good home.’ A tinge of desperation edged his voice.

‘We won’t let her be orphaned.’

‘Good. I have to go to Marfa today.’ Marfa was a town in the West Texas desert, reborn from its background as the shooting site for the film classic Giant and emerging as a junior Santa Fe, a thriving arts colony with lower living costs. ‘I might move there, a friend’s driving me there to check it out for a couple of days. I just wanted to be sure Emilia didn’t get stuck in the back. Would you call me if she sells?’ He scribbled a number on a note and handed it to Miles.

‘Yes, sir.’

Blaine the Pain left. Miles closed the office door and dialed DeShawn Pitts’s pager number. He entered his identification code and hung up. Less than a minute later the phone rang.

‘Joy Garrison Gallery,’ Miles said. ‘Michael Raymond speaking.’

‘It’s Pitts. What’s up?’ The voice sounded young but deep, slightly distracted, and Miles could hear the rustle of paper shuffling on a desk.

‘Not on the phone. Lunch. Can you drive up here?’ DeShawn lived in Albuquerque; he was the WITSEC inspector for federally protected witnesses hidden in northern New Mexico. He was responsible for helping Miles protect his new identity, finding him work and settling him into his new life, keeping him safe.

‘Give me a hint, man.’

‘My shrink wants to bring in another doctor to work with me, and I’m concerned about him.’

‘I’m sure Doctor Vance wouldn’t recommend a quack. What’s his name?’

‘James Sorenson.’

‘Why do you need another doctor?’

‘He’s running a project for PTSD patients.’

‘Did you ever tell Doctor Vance you’re a witness?’

WITSEC had told him he was permitted to tell his psychiatrist of his status as a protected witness – it was considered crucial for successful therapy, given the enormous mental ordeal relocation was for witnesses. But he’d never told Allison he was in witness protection. She knew only that he’d been involved in a shooting and exonerated by the authorities. WITSEC requested he specifically not tell Allison his real name or where he’d originally come from, unless it was critical to his therapy. All those details were in the confession he’d been too afraid to give her today.

‘No. I never told her I’m a witness.’

‘Group therapy’s not a good idea for you, man, since you got to be circumspect. But we can talk about it at lunch. Meet me at Luisa’s. Twelve-thirty.’ And DeShawn hung up.

Joy hurried back in, grabbed a file off Cinco’s desk, a rich smell of espresso rising from her coffee cup. She hurried back onto the sales floor, calling out to her visitors, and the aroma of the coffee made the world swim before his eyes. Cuban coffee. Rich and heady. A screech of laughter from one of Joy’s friends. The smell and the scream cut straight through to his brain. The gallery transformed into an empty warehouse, shafts of light cutting through the gloom, and he stood in the warehouse and the four men drank the heavy coffee. Miles tried to hide his trembling hands. The two undercover FBI agents, Miles, and Andy talking at the table, Andy about to get the best news of his life, and then Miles spoke, just a few words, and then tried to laugh.

The words he spoke? He couldn’t remember the words.

Andy stared at him, standing behind the two undercover agents, who sat at the table pouring themselves refills of coffee. And then it all went wrong as Andy reached for his gun, Miles grabbing for his own gun in reaction, horrified, saying, ‘Andy, don’t.’

He heard the shots, the triple echo. Opened his eyes. Back in the gallery, the bloodied floor of the warehouse gone. He sank to the floor, next to the copier. He leaned against the equipment and his finger twitched, jerked once against a ghost trigger.

Awful silence, darkness, as if the world had swallowed him whole.

‘It’s pointless.’ Andy knelt next to him. ‘This is your life now. Me. You. Never parted. Give up trying to change.’

Miles shook his head.

‘You’ll die trying,’ Andy whispered.

Then he heard laughter. Joy’s warm, honeyed laughter. The gallery, its wonderful quiet, surrounded him. Miles forced himself back into the chair at his desk. He took deep breaths, trying to ward off the pain and the fear.

He couldn’t live this way.

‘So don’t. End it. I’ll help you,’ Andy said.

Miles groped at the weight of the pill bottle in his pocket. Allison’s pills. A very mild sedative to help you if you have a flashback, she’d said.

He fished the vial of pills out of his pocket. Plain plastic bottle, no label. He twisted it open. The pills were white capsules.

Folded among the pills lay a note.

He pulled out the piece of paper. He spread the note flat on the desk with his fingers. Dear Michael: I need your help. I need your services as a private investigator. I’m in real trouble. Come to my office tonight at 7 and I’ll explain. Don’t tell anyone. I’m depending on you, see you at 7 P. M. Allison.

Miles stood in line at Luisa’s Drive-Thru, a Mercedes in front of him, a homeless man who smelled of dollar wine next to him, and a pickup truck loaded with truant high-school kids behind him, gunning the motor.

When he’d first arrived in Santa Fe, Miles had crafted a careful series of policies and camouflages to keep people from realizing he was Dealing With Issues. Don’t answer Andy in public, resist jumping at sudden noises, close his eyes and stand still when a flashback invaded his mind. He didn’t want to stick out, be noticed, devolve into the street-corner crazy raving at ghosts. Because if you acted crazy, you landed in the asylum.

Today his fit-in-with-the-normals policy was in the toilet.

Luisa’s Drive-Thru was an entirely accurate name for the tin-roofed, simple establishment on a curve of the busy Paseo de Peralta. It offered no counter service; customers used the drive-up window or nothing. So a man who walked everywhere stuck out, standing in line between the cars. On the stroll over he had spotted a gaunt street person he knew named Joe, a man in his late fifties, laid waste by alcohol. He figured Joe received few invitations to dine, so he’d said as he walked past, ‘I’ll buy you lunch at Luisa’s if you want.’ And Joe, without a word, had followed him.

The federal witness and the homeless drunk stood between the two cars, having spoken their orders into the microphone, and now were waiting patiently in line to reach the order window.

Behind him, the pickup’s engine revved in motorized machismo. Miles heard the laughter, hollow and cruel, of stupid children.

‘Hey, losers!’ a girl called. Miles glanced over his shoulder. The girl sat close to the driver, a thick-necked kid with a shaved-close head. Miles saw the girl was the brain, the boy the brawn. She was beauty-queen pretty but an ugly, taunting sneer slashed her face. Three other kids crowded the cab.

‘Hey, losers!’ Beauty Queen yelled again. She wore a cocky confidence born of her loveliness and her knowledge of how to use it. ‘Get a car, why don’t you?’

The pickup jolted an inch closer to his leg. He ignored it.

‘They’d leave you alone if I wasn’t here,’ Joe said in his low, beaten whisper.

‘No, she wouldn’t,’ Miles said. ‘An ass is an ass.’

The girl, secure in the presence of her personal grizzly bear, laughed. Loud enough to be sure that Miles heard. ‘It’s a drive-through. Not a walk-through. What’s the matter with you?’

Miles thought he looked normal. Not mental. But he wondered, in the sidelong glances he often earned, if there was a mark on him, a shock in his eyes, that announced damaged goods to anyone seeking a victim or a mark. Joe walked in slow retreat to the other end of the lot, eyes riveted to the pavement. The pickup jerked closer, barely nudging the back of his knee. Miles stood his ground.