Page 19 of Mean Streak

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C ome October, the heating system in Jack Connell’s apartment building was cranked up to somewhere around eighty-five degrees, and it stayed at that setting until May.

After coming in from a frigid wind that whipped through the brick-and-mortar canyons of Midtown Manhattan, he exchanged his suit and overcoat for shorts and a Jets T-shirt, opened a beer, and carried it with him into his home office, a small room sparsely furnished with a desk—a door suspended between two sawhorses—and a secondhand chair on casters, one of which wobbled.

He called the number Greer had given him for the television news reporter who’d covered the protest march on the state capitol building in Olympia, Washington.

The phone rang several times, and when it was answered, the background noise was deafening. After several false starts, the young man explained that he was out, having happy hour drinks with friends. On the West Coast, happy hour apparently began at three thirty.

Jack shouted, “You talked to my colleague earlier today. Wes Greer.”

“Oh, the FBI agent?”

“Right. You told him that the group featured in your story’s video had come by bus from Seattle to participate in the demonstration. Were they isolated people with a common passion or an organized group?”

“A group. With a name. Can’t remember it now. It’s in my notes. When do you need it?”

“Yesterday.”

“Oh. Can I get back to you? I’ll have to call the newsroom and have somebody go over to my desk.”

Jack gave him his cell number. While waiting for him to call back, he went into the kitchen and made a sandwich of stale rye, hot mustard, and deli roast beef that hadn’t gone completely green, opened another beer, and was halfway through each when the reporter phoned.

“The group is Citizens Who Care. CWC.”

“Is there a contact person?”

“The guy who started it. A relative of his—I think it was his nephew—was shot and killed while buying a Slurpee at a convenience store. He got in the way of an armed robber. Anyway, this guy’s an uber-activist. He has a long name, like a Polish hockey player or something. Ready?”

The reporter spelled it out, and the letters were mostly consonants. Jack asked if he had a phone number for him.

“Figured you’d want that, too.” He read it out. “Say, why’re you trying to track him down? Is there a story here?”

The poor sap had no idea.

Jack made up some mumbo jumbo about the “Bureau’s interest” in any group or individual supporting either “stricter gun laws” or any “opposed to government’s suspension of personal liberties.”

“Oh, that’s been done to death.” The reporter sounded bored and ready to return to happy hour with his friends. “But keep my number and call me if you come across anything newsworthy. On the QT, of course. I’d never reveal you as my source.”

Jack made a promise he never intended to keep, thanked the reporter, and hung up. Switching to a burner phone, Jack called the man with the odd name, and the gentleman himself answered.

He sounded like a nice enough guy, which made Jack feel bad for lying to him. But not too bad. He used a fake name to introduce himself. “I’m not taking a survey or trying to sell you anything. I’m looking for a long-lost classmate.”

He launched into a whopper about an upcoming high school reunion. “I’m in charge of finding people the class has lost track of. You’d think it would be easy, the Internet and all. But some have slipped through the cracks.

“Last night, me and the wife were watching the news, and, swear to God, I think I spotted Becky Watson in your group that marched on the state capitol. Even in high school Becky was politically active and a crusader for causes like gun control. Which, so am I, by the way.”

“Becky, you said? We don’t have a Becky in CWC.”

“Maybe she goes by Rebecca now.”

“Nope, sorry. Nobody named either Rebecca or Watson.”

“Gosh, I was positive that was her. The white spiky hair was exactly the same.”

“That sounds like Grace.”

“The lady I’m talking about was wearing a red coat.”

“Her name’s Grace Kent.”

Jack, heart bumping, scribbled down the name.

He wanted to probe the gentleman for information about his fellow demonstrator: What does Grace do for a living?

Does she have a daughter around twelve years old?

Does she have a brother who visits her regularly?

You can’t miss him. Big, tough-looking, dark hair, light eyes.

But he resisted the temptation to ask. He didn’t want the man’s curiosity aroused. He might feel obligated to alert Grace Kent that someone had called inquiring about her.

He sighed with exaggerated disappointment. “Oh well, not our Becky then. But it was worth a shot. Sorry to have bothered you. Thank you for your time.”

“No problem. Good luck with your class reunion.”

Jack’s fingers couldn’t move fast enough on his keyboard, but for naught.

No one with the name Grace Kent was listed in the Seattle phone book.

He ran a Google search, didn’t find anything.

So he called Wes Greer and put him on it, then sat there and absently finished his sandwich, chewing mechanically, thinking.

It took him less than two minutes to make up his mind, then he was on the phone again, booking an early flight, arranging for a car service to take him to LaGuardia at six o’clock in the morning, and reserving a rental car in Seattle.

As he packed a roll-aboard suitcase, he acknowledged that the trip would probably turn out to be the last in a long line of wild-goose chases.

The last one being to Salt Lake City, preceded by Wichita Falls, Texas. Before that, Lexington, Kentucky. Seemingly random places and individuals, unrelated except for a single commonality—one man.

He was already in bed but not asleep when Greer—who, it seemed, never slept—called back. “I have an address. Grace Kent actually lives across the Sound, not in Seattle proper.”

“How do you get over there?”

“Ferry.”

Wonderful.

Jack typed her street address into his phone, gave Greer his basic itinerary, and closed by saying, “For the time being, nobody needs to know I’ve gone. In fact, I’m out sick with the flu.”

“Got it.”

As he lay staring at his bedroom ceiling, he placed odds on the likelihood of Grace Kent being Rebecca Watson.

He was going on nothing more than Rebecca’s friend, Eleanor Gaskin, who hadn’t laid eyes on her in four years, picking her out of a jostling crowd in a news video of mediocre quality.

Based on that alone, he was making the cross-country trip.

Would it be asking too much that he catch a break and the picket carrier turn out to be Rebecca?

Dare he hope that she would cooperate and tell him where her brother was?

As long as he was fantasizing, why not imagine that her brother was visiting her, and that he would answer the door when Jack rang the bell?

He could trust Greer’s discretion, so at least if this turned out to be another false lead, another dead end, no one would regard him as a complete fool.

Except himself.

And he was used to that.

***

“When will we be there?”

“When we get there.”

Emory clutched the edge of the seat as he steered the pickup around another hairpin curve. The headlights had been their only source of light since the abrupt departure from the cabin. If there was a moon, the cloud cover obscured it completely.

They hadn’t passed a dwelling or structure of any kind. Nothing. It was as remote a road as she’d ever been on, and certainly the most hazardous. As feared, there were icy patches beneath the accumulation of snow, invisible until the truck lost traction.

As they took the turns, the headlights swept over unforgiving rock formations that rose straight up out of the narrow shoulder, some encrusted with ice where waterfalls had frozen.

Where there weren’t rock formations there was forest. The massive tree trunks wouldn’t have yielded to a tank.

Or, most terrifying of all, the lights cut into black nothingness.

One skid and they could plunge over the edge into the void.

She wanted to shut her eyes so she wouldn’t see the hazards that threatened, but she didn’t dare because of the ridiculous assumption that strictly by her will to live she could help keep the truck on the road.

He’d told her that he was accustomed to these mountain roads with their curves and switchbacks, but he drove with single-mindedness, not nonchalance. His gloved hands gripped the steering wheel, his eyes never left the road.

Answers to her questions about the Floyd brothers had been brusque and monosyllabic, if he answered at all.

She had stopped asking. Whatever had happened between him and his unkempt neighbors had prompted him to take her home, or at least to drop her somewhere so she could get home. That was all she cared about.

She told herself that was all she cared about.

“What are all the guns for?”

“What are guns usually for?”

“To shoot…things.”

He shrugged as though that’s all the debate the issue warranted.

“It’s dangerous to have them around. What if I’d accidentally shot you?”

“It would have been a miracle.”

“You’re a large target. At that range I couldn’t have missed.”

“Probably not, but there wasn’t a cartridge in it.”

“It wasn’t loaded?”

He came as close to smiling as he ever did. “Doc, a word of advice. If you aim at somebody with the intention of shooting him, make sure the weapon is locked and loaded, ready to fire. If you don’t intend to shoot him, don’t point the thing at him in the first place.”

“You sound like an expert on the subject.”

He didn’t say anything in response to that, nor did he say anything as he navigated the next series of switchbacks.

Finally, she asked. “How much farther?”

“A few miles.”

“Do you mind if I turn the heater up a bit?”

“Go ahead.”