Jan Burke - Nine

He smiled at the registration clerk. She was a young African-American woman. He thought she was quite attractive. He glanced at her name tag and said, “I’m embarrassed to admit this, Rashida, but I’m a little superstitious. I need to stay on the seventh floor. I need two sevens and a one in the room number. Ideally, you’ll give me room seven-seventeen, if it’s available.”

She seemed taken aback for a brief moment, then said, “Let me check.”

He worried a little at that hesitation, but he decided that it was, after all, an odd request. And she wasn’t behaving as if she felt suspicious-just dealing with a crazy white guy. That was okay. She typed something into the computer, then said, “It’s already reserved, but let me check with my supervisor. I’m sure we can get you into that room.”

He removed his sunglasses. “Thanks. It’s silly, I know.”

She smiled, and he was pleased to hear her give a shy little laugh. “It’s not a problem at all-you just wait right here, and I’ll take care of this right now.”

She went through a door behind the front counter, into an office. There was a two-way mirror on the wall between the registration desk and the office.

Reflected in the two-way mirror, he saw for the first time that he had one brown eye, one blue.

He quickly put his sunglasses back on and considered bolting away from the desk. Undoubtedly Rashida had noticed and had laughed at him. He felt a sudden surge of anger.

But-wait a minute, he thought. David Bowie’s eyes were like that, weren’t they? Maybe she liked the idea of a man with features that were a little unusual. It wasn’t as if they were strange enough to land him in a circus, for God’s sake.

Rashida returned, smiling, with an older woman in tow. The older woman was Hispanic. Her name tag identified her as Consuela Ramon. Managers, he noticed, got to have last names on their tags. She wore a walkie-talkie that crackled at her hip. She was smiling, too. “Mr. Grady?”

He nearly didn’t respond. “Oh yes,” he said, remembering which credit card he had given Rashida. “I’m Mr. Grady.”

“We’ll be happy to give you that room. We’re just waiting for housekeeping to check to make sure it’s clean and ready for you.”

“Thank you,” he said.

Rashida flirted with him while processing his registration. Consuela didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she helped the next two people in line while Rashida concentrated on him. Rashida was obviously so dazzled by him, she could hardly keep her mind on what she was doing. She nearly didn’t return his credit card. He had to ask for it. He wondered about that for a moment, but she gave it right back, apologizing.

He was putting the card back in his wallet when he heard a male voice on Consuela Ramon’s radio. “Consuela, we’ll be right there.”

And she glanced at him and smiled.

He turned and walked away.

“Mr. Grady?” Rashida called. “Mr. Grady, your room key!”

He walked faster, not looking back. Once outside the hotel doors, he ran to where the lame-ass car was parked. He hurried into it and, tires squealing all the way down the ramps of the structure, made it to the exit gate. He jammed his prepaid ticket into the slot with some anxiety. The gate seemed to take forever to lift, but at last his car could fit beneath it, and he peeled out of the structure just as a beefy security guard ran toward him, shouting. He saw the parking booth guard step out into the street and take note of the car’s license plate-reading its actual plate number, not the phony one he had written on his registration card at the front desk.

“Damn!” he shouted, as he pounded the steering wheel. “Damn, damn, damn!”

Now he’d have to ditch this car and steal another one. A big pain in the ass all the way around.

He thought of Everett learning about this misadventure, and shouted, “Fuck me!”

He saw an old man in the car next to him looking on in disapproval. He was about to flip him the bird, then started admiring the old dude’s wheels. Not bad, he decided, and discreetly followed him home.

Blue Jay, California

Monday, May 19, 6:21 P.M.

Gabriel Taggert was alone and sober when he saw the newscast.

He would have preferred to be neither.

At no time since he had first arrived at this cabin had he felt more compelled to seek the comfort that could be found in a bottle or a pill or-for him, the most sweetly beckoning of them all-a line of white powder.

Even more alluring, though, was the thought of contact with either of the only two people who had ever really given a damn about him: his sister Meghan or Kit Logan.

He fought all these temptations.

Throughout the vast majority of his twenty-three years, Gabe Taggert had been a herd animal. Never leading it, never bringing up the rear, always finding a comfortable place in the middle.

After things had gone so horribly wrong up north, his ability to blend anonymously into the middle of the herd had allowed him to hide for a time in several cities. That ability probably prevented him from being arrested on federal felony charges. Charges, he was well aware, that could lead to the death penalty.

So for several months, he stayed in cities. But this time, unlike every other time he had been in trouble, he felt vulnerable in the herd. He could not simply become an easygoing joker, a party boy looking for a little fun. The raves he went to-looking for oblivion, for instant friends-only intensified his awareness of harsh realities, his new mistrust, his sense of isolation. He could lie easily enough about who he was, and he might find a place to crash for a few nights, and he might even find someone to pretend to laugh with, but his nerves were raw, and the press of humanity in the cities had grated against the ends of those nerves.

One night last January, a pretty girl with beautiful red hair had invited him to come home with her. He could appreciate her looks, knew in some part of his mind that she was exactly the sort of woman who appealed to him. He hadn’t been able to get it up.

This had happened to him before, when he had been drunk, or loaded on downers. Nothing took the edge off a night of snorting cocaine like booze or tranquilizers, and more than once his sexual drive had been blunted in the process. But that night, he was neither drunk nor loaded. No excuses. Only a sense of separateness. Of being too contaminated by his own sins to touch her.

Later, sitting in a bar, looking down into an empty glass, he had thought of how kind she had been about it, and how that had almost made it worse. He had left her and started drinking.

He wondered about Kit-who had killed-and if that killing bothered him. But even as he thought this, he knew their cases weren’t the same. Although Gabe hadn’t done any actual killing, in many ways, he felt that his hands had more blood on them than Kit’s. Even the police knew that Kit had acted out of desperation-he had never been arrested for killing his stepfather.

Gabe wondered if he had finally put himself beyond Kit’s forgiveness. He thought he might have placed himself beyond his own.

He wasn’t sure he could withstand escape much longer-he could manage to stay free, but why should he? He thought of Meghan and wondered what it would do to her if he chose one of the two options ultimately open to him-surrender or suicide.

As he leaned against the table in the bar, he felt the press of a pair of keys against his chest, keys he wore on a chain around his neck. One fitted the door to Meghan’s guest house. The other, he had never used.

Kit had given him that one, and the chain, almost five years ago. Kit had taken him to the large, relatively isolated cabin in the forest, a place then owned by his grandmother. He had invited Gabe to come to the cabin anytime he’d like, on two conditions. The first was that he not tell anyone else of its existence.