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ESCAPE VELOCITY
Bonus content. Read for free below... She helped Jackson Flint when he needed it in FAIR GAME. Now the homeless young woman from the restaurant in the sky is back. This time she needs Jackson’s help. Kristine is one step away from her quest to leave the streets for a better life. There is no way she’s going to give up now. |
Escape Velocity
A Jackson Flint short mystery story
Scott Geisel
A Jackson Flint short mystery story
Scott Geisel
Chapter 1
“JACKSON?”
“Yes.”
“Jackson Flint?”
The call had come from a number I didn’t recognize, but it was my work number so that wasn’t unusual. It was a female voice. I pushed aside the cup of coffee on my desk and reached for a pad of paper. “Yes.”
“It’s… I—do you remember me? We had lunch at the restaurant? It’s Kristine.”
“Kristine with a K.”
“Um.”
“Because spelling it right is important. We went to the restaurant in the sky.”
“You remember.”
She wasn’t easy to forget. I’d met Kristine in an abandoned warehouse where she’d been sleeping with some other squatters. That was a couple of months before when I was working a missing person case that got complicated. Kristine was homeless, surviving as she could on the streets of Dayton, Ohio. She’d helped me out by pointing me in the right direction for my missing person.
“Of course I remember.” It was August now and I had a feeling why Kristine had gone to the trouble to find me again. But I didn’t suspect the unfortunate twist that was coming.
“I’m supposed to leave tomorrow.”
“Congratulations.”
“No.” The strain in her voice came through the connection. “You don’t understand. My things… they’re—gone.”
“Your things?”
“My ID. I can’t fly.”
Oh. When I last saw Kristine I’d tried to help her out, but she wouldn’t accept much. She was making her own way, already enlisted to go into the Air Force when she turned eighteen. She’d taken the ASVAB, the armed services entry exam, and done ridiculously well, proving once again that intelligence and ability aren’t tied to circumstance so much as they can be hindered by it.
I spun in my chair and looked out the little window of my office above Yellow Springs. It was nice here—small town, funky vibe, a place everyone seemed to want to be. It was a million miles from Kristine and the spaces she lived in.
I turned back to my desk. “For basic training?”
“Yes. They bought me a ticket. It’s an e-ticket. I just have to show up. I’ve got everything ready but I can’t…” Kristine’s voice choked out.
“You can’t get on the plane without your ID.”
“It’s in Texas. I can’t—there’s no other way to get there in time.”
That was bad. “And you lost your ID?”
“Of course not. Somebody stole it.” Her voice had returned to clear and steady. Indignation will do that for you.
I considered my day. It was still early and I didn’t have a real case keeping me busy with my detective agency. I’d lined up some work serving papers to a few people who were hard to get to, but nothing pressing. I’d found that people who ran from trouble generally didn’t go far, and when they found whatever refuge they could land in they tended to stay there.
None of that mattered. I would have dropped the Patty Hearst case for Kristine.
I shifted my phone to the other ear. “Let me come to you.”
“When can you do that?”
“Tell me where you are. I’ll come now.”
Chapter 2
THE DRIVE FROM YELLOW SPRINGS TO DAYTON was back roads most of the way. Corn and soy fields that were high now and in full summer green, then a jag around the Air Force base and over the big dam, a straight shot down Route 4 past the old rock quarries, and that eases you into downtown Dayton.
Kristine wanted to meet at the levee. I knew the spot. It was where we’d first met, and I had a feeling why we were going back there again.
I cranked my old Silverado pickup into fifth gear and leaned back into the seat. I was in a Chevy, and I was driving to the levee. Not surprisingly, a Don McLean song came into my head. It didn’t suit the day. Too dark and complex. I switched the radio on and found Yellow Submarine playing on an oldies station. It was mindless and perfect because it took my mind off of not knowing what I could do to help Kristine. And I desperately wanted to help her.
I left the truck parked in a lot near an industrial building and found Kristine on the grass near the top of the levee. It was part of a large and impressive system of checks that rescued Dayton from the Great Miami River when it had a mind to rise. Kristine was sitting in the sun looking out over the water. She didn’t move when I slid down beside her, but she knew I was there.
We sat for a minute without speaking and then Kristine flicked a blade of grass. “Thanks for coming.”
“Of course.”
“I’m sorry about crying on the phone.”
I looked over. Her blonde hair was still short, cut straight across just below her brow. The jeans and oversized shirt I remembered her in from before had been replaced with loose-fitting pants, a snug t-shirt, and a worn but decent pair of running shoes. She still had the black backpack that bulged in every direction. “You weren’t crying.”
Her head moved slowly back and forth.
“How bad is it?”
Kristine turned enough that I saw the full extent of the look on her face. There had been tears. She put her hands to her face. “I have to get on that plane.”
I gave her a moment to let the emotions settle. “Tell me what happened.”
Her head moved back and forth again.
“You were still sleeping in the warehouse?”
She let out a lot of air. “And other places.”
We’d covered this. The last time I saw her I encouraged Kristine to find a shelter. Some place to stay where there was structure and more security. She told me she didn’t need my help.
Kristine lifted her face from her hands. “I know what you’re going to say.”
“I’m not going to say anything.”
“It was just a couple more nights. I knew somebody was taking things, but I always keep my stuff close to me.”
I gave it a moment. “What kinds of things were disappearing?”
“Little things mostly. Food and candy. A backpack. Some books got stolen.”
“But never anything from you?”
“No.”
“Until last night.”
Her face twitched but she held whatever feeling was causing it back.
“What did they get?”
“My wallet.”
“Just your wallet?”
“And everything in it.”
I put a hand on the ground beside Kristine. Not touching, just next to her. “Tell me what was in the wallet.”
“My state ID. The new one that lets you get on a plane. And my social security card.”
“Money?”
Her eyes came up to mine. “Nobody in there keeps money in their wallet.”
She meant nobody sleeping in the warehouse. Or on the streets. Nobody like her. I felt stupid for asking the question, but you don’t know until you know.
“I need those. To get on the plane. And the social security card. That was so much trouble to get.” She patted her backpack. “I have everything else. My brother has been helping me. You remember I said he got into the Air Force and now he’s OK? He got there and he got through basic training and now he has a regular life. He got away.”
I waited. Kristine had brought me here to tell her story, and I was going to give her time to figure out how the narrative went.
“I have everything else. My documents. My flight information. The recruiter arranged everything. My brother even sent me a cell phone.”
I took my own phone from my pocket. “That’s what you called me from?”
“Uh-huh.”
I entered her name for the contact. “Where was your wallet? When it disappeared.”
“It was in my backpack. And that was under my leg all night.”
“So it disappeared at night?”
She nodded. “It wasn’t there in the morning.”
“And you never got up during the night or left it?”
Kristine blinked. “I got up to pee.”
“You took the backpack with you?”
“No. Everyone was asleep. You can’t pee wearing a backpack.” Her eyes danced toward me and back away. “Well I can’t.”
“So maybe that’s when it happened.”
Her face tightened. “So stupid.”
“How long were you away from your backpack?”
“Like a couple of minutes. I just went out back behind the building.”
Now I took out my little notebook and started writing. “So it was probably someone who was awake and alert during the night, at least enough to hear you get up. And probably someone who’d been around. Had seen that you had a wallet and where you kept it.”
Kristine shuddered. “It’s so creepy.”
I tapped my pen on my notebook and thought a little.
Kristine turned and looked down over the river again. “I had it all figured out. I was even working out, you know? Running and doing sit-ups and things. To get ready.” She looked at me.
“For basic training.”
She nodded.
I closed the notebook. “You could call the police.”
“Homeless people don’t call the police.”
I expected that. “Your recruiter then. Have your entry delayed. Until you get things straightened out.”
“No.”
“There’s got to be somebody…”
Kristine squared herself to me. “You don’t understand. I have to get on that plane.”
Lots of things flashed through my head. I didn’t say any of them.
Kristine’s eyes gathered water. “I’ve reached escape velocity. I’m ready. I have to go. If I don’t get out now I think I’ll crash. I’ll burn up.”
It was a great metaphor. And a scary one.
Then Kristine wiped moisture from one eye. “I don’t have anyone else. And I don’t have any right to ask you for help. I can’t pay you.”
“I don’t want you to pay me.”
A minute passed. Then another. Then I said, “I wonder if he’s likely to do it again tonight.”
“What?”
“Do you think the thief might try to steal something again tonight?”
“I don’t know.”
Another minute passed.
Kristine said, “What are you thinking?”
“The odds that we can find the guy, assuming it’s a guy, and catch him and get your ID back by tomorrow are a long shot.”
She rubbed a circle in the grass with the palm of her hand. “I have to try.”
“And if we can’t get them back by tomorrow?”
She shook her head.
I saw the desperation in her look. “There’s got to be another way. If you miss the plane. Your recruiter…”
Her shoulders jerked up and down.
I waited for Kristine’s breathing to settle.
She hiccupped and said, “I’ll need help. If I’m going to try.”
I knew it pained her to say that. She wanted to make her own way.
“Maybe I won’t burn up if I’ve tried.”
I stood and held a hand out. “OK. I have an idea.”
She took my hand. Hers felt sure and firm. It belied the haggard look on her face, but I knew that what was underneath was what she was really made of.
“You remember what I gave you when we had lunch? When you left?”
“You snuck money into my backpack. Forty dollars.”
I wasn’t surprised that she remembered the exact amount. “What else?”
She shrugged.
“You wanted my cigarettes.”
Her eyes crinkled. “You weren’t going to smoke them.”
“No.”
“You don’t smoke.”
I pointed to Kristine. “And neither do you. But they were worth something.”
Chapter 3
THE DRIVE BACK TO YELLOW SPRINGS was less than thirty minutes and another crossing of the universe that separated Kristine’s life and my own.
My daughter Cali wasn’t home when I got there. That wasn’t unusual. It was summer and she was busy inhaling the last weeks of her break before high school started again.
I texted her. Late night tonight. Maybe all night. Will you be OK?
It was a silly question, but one I had to ask. The real question was whether I was OK with it. Since we’d lost Cali’s mother and my wife nearly two years before, Cali had done a lot of raising herself. And this wouldn’t be the first time I’d worked all night and left her home sleeping alone.
I texted an addendum. I’ll miss dinner. I can make something to leave for you before I go.
It took a few minutes for Cali’s reply to come. Can I have some friends over?
I stared at the message. It would be the first time since her mother had died that Cali invited any of her friends to the house. She’d spent a lot of that time with her friends, but always away from the house, as if she’d been searching for that surrogate home where life was still fully intact.
The girls want to cook. I promise we’ll clean up.
Something inside of me softened, in a good way.
I know you will. Do you need anything? What are you going to make?
I don’t know. We can go to Tom’s.
Tom’s was the local market, a small store tucked into the heart of the village. In the age of superstores that sold lawn mowers and clothing with their groceries, Tom’s was an anomaly. It was where you saw your friends, met strangers, and planned your meals.
I’ll leave some money for you on the counter.
So yes?
Yes. Of course yes.
I dug into my wallet for some bills to set out. My phone bleeped again. Dad, be careful.
I always am.
On that note I went to the bedroom, to the safe in the back of my closet, and took out my Smith & Wesson M&P40. Mrs. Jenkins, the fluffy calico cat that had walked onto our porch and decided she wanted to live with us, padded up softly behind me and propped herself on her haunches. It was a ritual for us. She seemed to know when I was going for the gun, watching me like a sentinel with an unspoken message that I’d never quite deciphered.
I held my hand out for Mrs. Jenkins’ ear, and she leaned in for the scratch. Maybe that was the message. Scratch my ear. I could have been trying to read too much into it.
Then I plugged my phone in to charge and gathered some other things I’d need. Change of clothes, ball cap, flashlight. Snacks. Lots of snacks. Thermos of coffee.
I texted Marzi, who had over the past month or so become more than a date and something of a regular overnight guest. Late night. Maybe I can see you tomorrow?
Her reply came quickly. K.
That meant things were busy for her at work, and it was OK. Much easier to decipher than the cat’s cryptology.
I drove out of town for an item I needed, to a gas station outside the village where no one would know me by name. I didn’t want to be seen buying a carton of cigarettes, even if I wasn’t going to smoke them. In a small town, even a little story is worth repeating, and this wasn’t one I wanted coming back to me.
I was loading things into the truck when my phone interrupted me.
Feeling manly?
When Brick asked that, I always wanted my answer to be yes. It meant he wanted a workout, either lifting heavy objects or running up crazy hill climbs or through the Glen Helen nature preserve. But the timing wasn’t good.
My day is crowded.
Uh-huh.
I checked the time. Brick and I had known each other in school, but we didn’t really connect until much later, after he’d gone into the military for a stretch of special ops and come back with some manageable but lingering PTSD. Since then we’d become like brothers.
Time with Brick often hammered out the rough edges in my mind and added a glimpse of clarity. I tapped on my phone. Could maybe squeeze in a run.
Now?
Have to be now.
Fire road. 10 minutes.
The fire road was an old path through Glen Helen that stretched from one end of the preserve nearly to the other. The trail was wide and flat and relatively smooth. We could run it fast.
I laced on my running shoes and got going.
We met in the gravel parking lot. Brick and I went down the hundred stone steps into the preserve and he turned left for a loop around the spring before we hit the fire road. His chocolate-raspberry skin glistened under the shade of the trees. My complexion flashed pearly white stripes in the dappled light. Stevie and Paul’s vision of ebony and ivory gliding through the woods.
When we made the turn to a straight stretch of path, Brick took off. I kicked up beside him and we were both already working hard. First one to break stride would get left behind. But neither of us would do that.
When we reached the end of the trail, Brick crossed the road into John Bryan State Park and we looped through the campground and out onto the main road. The pace slowed to something reasonable and Brick took us to the first parking area and doubled back. We hadn’t had any conversation yet. That was unusual.
On the run back down the fire road, Brick glanced over and said, “So what’s happening?”
I told him about Kristine. He’d helped me on the case that had led me to her.
After I’d given him the brief version of what I was planning, he looked over. “Long shot.”
“I know.”
“But you’re going to go through the motions.”
I evened my breath with my steps, lengthened my stride. Kept beside him. “It’s not that. It means something to her.”
We were coming to the home stretch. We both knew it would be a race. It never was, but it always was.
Brick turned his head again. “Do it. If you don’t find her wallet but it gets her to the next thing…”
I finished the sentence for him. “It’ll be worth it.”
A few steps later, Brick said, “I have one suggestion for you. Have you got Christmas ornaments at the house?”
“Do I have what?”
“I’ll tell you what for if you can catch me.”
I grinned. “You’ll have to catch me.”
Then we ran.
Chapter 4
THE CIGARETTES HAD BEEN A RUSE, something to make me look like I fit in a little better where I didn’t really fit in at all. I’d used them when I’d staked out the warehouse earlier in the summer to get some of the others to talk to me, or at least give a stranger a pass. That’s how I’d met Kristine.
I put up the same front again. I wore the same pair of pants that were too big, bunched at the waist and rolled up at the cuffs. A stretched-out t-shirt under a long-sleeve shirt that was too warm for the weather but would come in handy if you were sleeping rough and the night took on a chill.
Ball cap tucked over my eyes, work boots. Cigarette behind one ear, and the pack bulging noticeably in the front pocket of the outer shirt. An old backpack stuffed with clothes to make it full.
Then I tried to assume the look. Like a turtle, carrying everything in case you had to relocate without warning, and ready to hide at the first sign of trouble.
I met Kristine at the top of the levee. We watched the sun go down over the river, little sparkles of light dancing on the surface as if the water were made of glitter.
We’d already gone over the plan, and I had already reminded her of the slim chances of success. “But I’ll be there for you tomorrow, for whatever comes next. However this thing gets straightened out.”
A moment passed. Then she said, “Did you ever find Willow?”
The girl I’d been looking for when Kristine and I met. I nodded. “We did.”
“I never saw her or heard from her again.”
I squinted at the water. “I hope you don’t take this wrong, but that may not be such a bad thing. Willow is with her mother now, and her grandmother.”
“So Willow got out.”
“So to speak.”
The sunlight danced some more. We watched some more. Then Kristine said, “I’m sorry I didn’t ask about that sooner.”
If it wouldn’t have seemed weird, I would have given her shoulders a squeeze. Instead I said, “You’ve had other things on your mind.”
A few minutes later we got up, separated, and walked to the warehouse one at a time.
I entered from the back, at the old loading docks where a bay door was open as I remembered. It looked much the same inside, a smattering of people sitting or laying quietly on blankets or old mattresses. Some cloth bags stuffed with belongings and a couple of shopping carts with aluminum cans and bric-a-brac.
I didn’t like the way cigarettes here felt like currency, as if we were in the penal system, and I cared even less to smoke them. But I pulled a stick from my pocket and held it between my lips as if I was anticipating a light.
An old man with bad teeth immediately came over and lingered.
“Feller,” he said.
I looked over with my eyes down and the ball cap low on my head. The last time I’d been here a similar-looking man had threatened me, and a young wiry guy with bright red hair came at me with a two-by-four. I wasn’t hoping for a repeat performance.
“Feller, you got an extra?” His eyes went to the lump in my shirt pocket. “Or two?”
I tipped my head down as if I was thinking, then gave him two. He accepted them greedily and slid one into his mouth and one into his pocket and walked away.
I made a show of taking my backpack from my shoulders, setting it on floor, and unzipping it loudly. I reached in and extracted the carton of cigarettes, zipped the backpack, and walked slowly once through the array of people and belongings, holding the cardboard carton.
I examined an empty spot on the floor away from the scattered belongings, then made a show of pretending I didn’t like the location. I walked the fringe and gave everyone who wanted it another look at me carrying the carton of cigarettes. Then I settled in against a set of metal stairs that disappeared up into a darkened catwalk. I replaced the partial pack of cigarettes in my shirt pocket with a full one from the carton, then set the box on the floor beside me and stretched my legs out.
I pretended not to notice, but I’d had a few eyes on me. It was encouraging, but this still felt like a long shot.
Then I sat quietly as the cavernous space darkened. It was a surprise, and not a surprise, how much most of the dozen or so people squatting there kept to themselves.
Moonlight came through the open bay door and through high dirty windows, and my eyes adjusted to the dimness. I had a paperback book in my pocket and desperately wanted to pass the time reading, but instead I lit and pretended to smoke three cigarettes in the space of about an hour.
Then I rolled over like I was sleepy and took from my pocket a simple device that Brick had suggested. Little bells on ribbons that Cali liked to hang from our Christmas tree every year. I’d tied them to fishing line, and now I clenched the bells tightly so they wouldn’t sound and taped the fishing line to the back of the cigarette carton.
I had urged Kristine to find somewhere else to sleep, and had tried to coerce her with offers of a room, and when she refused that, sleeping in the cab of my truck. But she was going to be here, and I wasn’t going to change that.
I had gotten her to agree that we would keep separated and not interact, and she proved to be good at doing that. Her curled-up form lay on the floor across the loosely scattered ring of people, and I hadn’t seen her move for some time. I stopped watching.
Then I pretended to sleep, which wasn’t easy to do. It was late, dark, and quiet, and I was tired. I was laying in a sleeping position and trying not to move. Nature was trying to take over. My eyes were getting droopy.
I wanted the coffee. But now that I was here, pulling a thermos of fresh, hot coffee from my backpack seemed like it would be a giveaway that I didn’t belong. It was another thing to add to the growing list of reasons why I didn’t like stakeouts.
Eventually I found it easier to stay awake if I sat up with my back propped against the stairs. I did that in the still of the band of homeless and waited. For a long time.
Chapter 5
I DIDN’T KNOW THE TIME. I didn’t know if I’d been asleep. I knew I heard the bells.
I wasn’t the only one. Sounds of rustling or movement drifted through the dim light, people noticing, turning over, sitting up.
The bells had jangled only once. I picked out the shape of a person standing very still a few steps away. Then the bells jangled hard and long against the sound of heavy footsteps as the snatcher fled.
The runner had opened a good lead by the time I was up and moving, but the lumbering shape and the crashing bells made an easy beacon to follow. I closed some distance between us as we crossed the expanse of the warehouse.
Then the bells choked a strangled chime and crunched to the floor, and the figure ahead of me dropped out of sight through a small side door.
I knew the way. A narrow sidewalk crowded between two long, high exterior walls. To the left were the abandoned loading docks and an inner courtyard between the buildings. To the right was a tall chain fence and then more narrow sidewalk until the buildings opened to the river.
The fence rattled. I went right.
When I came out into the open, I saw the runner skimming the top of the high berm of the levee, fleeing under the moon and city lights.
It didn’t take long. Even in my work boots, catching him wasn’t a challenge. I could thank Brick for that later.
The guy was panicked. I tackled him and he rolled over and curled up with his hands over his head. “Don’t hurt me.”
I stepped back.
“You don’t have to hurt me.”
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
He extracted the carton of cigarettes from beneath his shirt and tossed it away. “You can have the cigarettes. Don’t hurt me.”
“Listen, man. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Just take the cigarettes.”
“I don’t want the cigarettes.”
One hand came away from his face and he peeked out at me. The man looked somewhere between forty and a lot older than forty, with a thin face and a thin frame and hair that ringed his face and was in need of washing.
I heard footsteps and the man looked behind me. Kristine ran up. Her steps were fast and sure and showed the work she’d done to get ready for her journey.
The man rolled up to a crouch.
Kristine looked down at him. “Where is it?”
The man shook his head.
I said to Kristine, “Do you recognize him?”
“I’ve seen him. But we don’t talk.”
The man was shaking his head harder now. “Just take them and go away.”
I stepped closer to the man. “You took her wallet.”
He looked confused.
“Last night. From her backpack. In the middle of the night.”
His head wagged. “I never did that.”
Kristine put one knee to the ground and leaned her face close to the man’s. His eyes owled back at her. Then Kristine raised back up and crossed her arms. “He did.”
We all stared at each other in the dark and I quickly grew tired of that. I faced the man. “I’ll tell you what. She wants the ID that was in that wallet. It doesn’t matter how it got wherever it is now. Someone else took it and you saw something. It got left out and you found it. Whatever. If you know something, we won’t have to…” I let the rest hang. Not a threat, but it should sound like one.
“ID?”
“State ID card. Some other items.”
He frowned like those were alien items.
“She needs those to get to basic training. Now.”
The man scratched a spot on his head. “Basic training?”
Kristine’s face was tight. Very tight.
The man looked hard at her. “You’re going to serve?”
“I was. I have to get on a plane.”
The man placed his hands on the ground at his hips and pushed up. I stepped toward him, but he raised himself and held a hand up to me. “No. Wait. I served.”
Under the streetlights I could faintly see the shadow of that former serviceman he once was. Tall, shoulders back, square and jutted jaw. You never knew about a person by just looking from the outside.
The man turned away from me to face Kristine. “What branch?”
“Air Force.”
He nodded, then rattled off flight or squadron or some sort of names and numbers that indicated what he’d done in the service. It meant something to him, even if I didn’t understand the code.
Then he said, “I might’a found the wallet. Someone else done something with it, and I just found it. I didn’t know who to give it back to.”
Kristine nodded, accepting the fiction.
“There wasn’t no money in it when I found it.”
A beat passed. Kristine said, “Whoever found it can keep the eight dollars.”
I felt exposed standing in the open, and I wanted to close the deal. I stepped forward. “She just needs the ID.”
The man rubbed his hands on the front of his pants. “It’ ain’t going to be easy. If it’s still there…”
“You don’t have the wallet with you?”
“No.”
“But you know where it is.”
“I know where I left it.”
“Then let’s try to find it.”
His eyes went to the carton on the ground. “What about the cigarettes?”
“You can have the cigarettes.”
His looked from me to Kristine to the cigarettes and back. “We could trade. The cigarettes for the wallet.”
I’d heard there was no honor among thieves, but this looked like an attempt at honor or redemption. Kristine accepted it. “Deal,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 6
HE TOOK US TO A TRASH CAN near McDonald’s, the one bit of suburban surrealism planted in that stretch of the downtown district. The man pointed to the metal receptacle. “I put it in there.”
Kristine looked at me. I looked at the man, then reached for the top of the trash can and pulled it off. “Start digging.”
He didn’t need to. A crumpled brown paper McDonald’s bag was visible in the debris. The man stuck his hand in and pulled the bag out.
He gave the bag to me, and I turned it over to Kristine. Her fingers worked the top open.
Then her eyes lit with a cautious hope. Kristine pulled a wallet from the bag.
She looked at me and I looked at the wallet. Kristine looked inside and stood very still while I watched a look emerge on her face that told me she’d seen her life come flooding back to her.
When her moment was complete, Kristine closed the wallet and pushed it deep into her front pocket.
“You good?” I said.
She nodded once very quickly.
“What about him?”
Her eyes moved over the man. “Homeless people don’t call the police on other homeless people. And I have to go.”
The man reached a hand out like he would touch Kristine, but then he let his palm drop to his side and he said, “I’m sorry.”
Kristine looked him in the eye. “I know.”
It was a good thing. The Smith & Wesson was still secured in its holster under my left arm where it would do no harm. My phone stayed in my pocket, and the local folks in blue cruised the streets without mind of us.
I picked up the paper bag and stuffed it back into the trash can and put the lid on top.
Then Kristine and I left the man standing there on the street.
Chapter 7
KRISTINE OBJECTED, but I wasn’t going to let her spend the rest of the night, however little remained, anywhere on the street.
It was very late and she had everything with her that she would ever want from her old life. We climbed into the truck. Kristine twisted in the passenger seat and locked her door, and I took us out of the city.
When we skirted the Air Force base in the darkness, Kristine perked up and looked hard through the perimeter fence at the lights and structures of the base. Like a magnet for her.
We got to the house and there was little to talk about. Kristine laid on the couch in the living room and did what might have passed for trying to sleep.
I went to the kitchen. It was so clean I thought Cali must not have had her friends over. But in the fridge was a half-empty iron pan with a note stuck on top that read Vegetarian moussaka. Try some!
I hadn’t even known that was a thing. I forked out a bite. Eggplant, vegetables, sauce, cheese. Spicy. I vowed to eat more later when I would warm it up and enjoy it.
Then I made sandwiches that I knew Kristine would try to refuse, but she would take them for her trip.
I thought about sleep but it was already more morning than night and the sun would be up soon. I made coffee and sat in the kitchen and read.
Kristine had a very early flight. She’d arranged a cab but had called that off. I was going to take her to the airport.
I heard her stirring in the other room when the sunlight starting canting through the windows. I waited and read and drank more coffee. I heard the bathroom door and the toilet and then water running. A few minutes later, Kristine came into the kitchen and said she was ready.
My daughter Cali had slept through the entirety of Kristine’s brief visit with us. She never woke to see a young woman not too much older than her spend a few hours very close to us but always still a million miles away.
At the airport I pulled to the curb and Kristine opened her door. Then she turned back. “I’m sorry I can’t pay you.”
“I know.” I didn’t say it, but she already had paid me. I would remember the joy of seeing her get on that plane longer than I would any invoice or paycheck.
I wanted to know how things would turn out for Kristine. How she would do in basic training, where her new life would take her. What stories she would have to tell years from now.
But I knew that if I never heard from her again that would probably be a good thing. It would mean she’d truly reached her escape velocity.
- - -
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Scott Geisel.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this book or its cover may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent of the author.
“JACKSON?”
“Yes.”
“Jackson Flint?”
The call had come from a number I didn’t recognize, but it was my work number so that wasn’t unusual. It was a female voice. I pushed aside the cup of coffee on my desk and reached for a pad of paper. “Yes.”
“It’s… I—do you remember me? We had lunch at the restaurant? It’s Kristine.”
“Kristine with a K.”
“Um.”
“Because spelling it right is important. We went to the restaurant in the sky.”
“You remember.”
She wasn’t easy to forget. I’d met Kristine in an abandoned warehouse where she’d been sleeping with some other squatters. That was a couple of months before when I was working a missing person case that got complicated. Kristine was homeless, surviving as she could on the streets of Dayton, Ohio. She’d helped me out by pointing me in the right direction for my missing person.
“Of course I remember.” It was August now and I had a feeling why Kristine had gone to the trouble to find me again. But I didn’t suspect the unfortunate twist that was coming.
“I’m supposed to leave tomorrow.”
“Congratulations.”
“No.” The strain in her voice came through the connection. “You don’t understand. My things… they’re—gone.”
“Your things?”
“My ID. I can’t fly.”
Oh. When I last saw Kristine I’d tried to help her out, but she wouldn’t accept much. She was making her own way, already enlisted to go into the Air Force when she turned eighteen. She’d taken the ASVAB, the armed services entry exam, and done ridiculously well, proving once again that intelligence and ability aren’t tied to circumstance so much as they can be hindered by it.
I spun in my chair and looked out the little window of my office above Yellow Springs. It was nice here—small town, funky vibe, a place everyone seemed to want to be. It was a million miles from Kristine and the spaces she lived in.
I turned back to my desk. “For basic training?”
“Yes. They bought me a ticket. It’s an e-ticket. I just have to show up. I’ve got everything ready but I can’t…” Kristine’s voice choked out.
“You can’t get on the plane without your ID.”
“It’s in Texas. I can’t—there’s no other way to get there in time.”
That was bad. “And you lost your ID?”
“Of course not. Somebody stole it.” Her voice had returned to clear and steady. Indignation will do that for you.
I considered my day. It was still early and I didn’t have a real case keeping me busy with my detective agency. I’d lined up some work serving papers to a few people who were hard to get to, but nothing pressing. I’d found that people who ran from trouble generally didn’t go far, and when they found whatever refuge they could land in they tended to stay there.
None of that mattered. I would have dropped the Patty Hearst case for Kristine.
I shifted my phone to the other ear. “Let me come to you.”
“When can you do that?”
“Tell me where you are. I’ll come now.”
Chapter 2
THE DRIVE FROM YELLOW SPRINGS TO DAYTON was back roads most of the way. Corn and soy fields that were high now and in full summer green, then a jag around the Air Force base and over the big dam, a straight shot down Route 4 past the old rock quarries, and that eases you into downtown Dayton.
Kristine wanted to meet at the levee. I knew the spot. It was where we’d first met, and I had a feeling why we were going back there again.
I cranked my old Silverado pickup into fifth gear and leaned back into the seat. I was in a Chevy, and I was driving to the levee. Not surprisingly, a Don McLean song came into my head. It didn’t suit the day. Too dark and complex. I switched the radio on and found Yellow Submarine playing on an oldies station. It was mindless and perfect because it took my mind off of not knowing what I could do to help Kristine. And I desperately wanted to help her.
I left the truck parked in a lot near an industrial building and found Kristine on the grass near the top of the levee. It was part of a large and impressive system of checks that rescued Dayton from the Great Miami River when it had a mind to rise. Kristine was sitting in the sun looking out over the water. She didn’t move when I slid down beside her, but she knew I was there.
We sat for a minute without speaking and then Kristine flicked a blade of grass. “Thanks for coming.”
“Of course.”
“I’m sorry about crying on the phone.”
I looked over. Her blonde hair was still short, cut straight across just below her brow. The jeans and oversized shirt I remembered her in from before had been replaced with loose-fitting pants, a snug t-shirt, and a worn but decent pair of running shoes. She still had the black backpack that bulged in every direction. “You weren’t crying.”
Her head moved slowly back and forth.
“How bad is it?”
Kristine turned enough that I saw the full extent of the look on her face. There had been tears. She put her hands to her face. “I have to get on that plane.”
I gave her a moment to let the emotions settle. “Tell me what happened.”
Her head moved back and forth again.
“You were still sleeping in the warehouse?”
She let out a lot of air. “And other places.”
We’d covered this. The last time I saw her I encouraged Kristine to find a shelter. Some place to stay where there was structure and more security. She told me she didn’t need my help.
Kristine lifted her face from her hands. “I know what you’re going to say.”
“I’m not going to say anything.”
“It was just a couple more nights. I knew somebody was taking things, but I always keep my stuff close to me.”
I gave it a moment. “What kinds of things were disappearing?”
“Little things mostly. Food and candy. A backpack. Some books got stolen.”
“But never anything from you?”
“No.”
“Until last night.”
Her face twitched but she held whatever feeling was causing it back.
“What did they get?”
“My wallet.”
“Just your wallet?”
“And everything in it.”
I put a hand on the ground beside Kristine. Not touching, just next to her. “Tell me what was in the wallet.”
“My state ID. The new one that lets you get on a plane. And my social security card.”
“Money?”
Her eyes came up to mine. “Nobody in there keeps money in their wallet.”
She meant nobody sleeping in the warehouse. Or on the streets. Nobody like her. I felt stupid for asking the question, but you don’t know until you know.
“I need those. To get on the plane. And the social security card. That was so much trouble to get.” She patted her backpack. “I have everything else. My brother has been helping me. You remember I said he got into the Air Force and now he’s OK? He got there and he got through basic training and now he has a regular life. He got away.”
I waited. Kristine had brought me here to tell her story, and I was going to give her time to figure out how the narrative went.
“I have everything else. My documents. My flight information. The recruiter arranged everything. My brother even sent me a cell phone.”
I took my own phone from my pocket. “That’s what you called me from?”
“Uh-huh.”
I entered her name for the contact. “Where was your wallet? When it disappeared.”
“It was in my backpack. And that was under my leg all night.”
“So it disappeared at night?”
She nodded. “It wasn’t there in the morning.”
“And you never got up during the night or left it?”
Kristine blinked. “I got up to pee.”
“You took the backpack with you?”
“No. Everyone was asleep. You can’t pee wearing a backpack.” Her eyes danced toward me and back away. “Well I can’t.”
“So maybe that’s when it happened.”
Her face tightened. “So stupid.”
“How long were you away from your backpack?”
“Like a couple of minutes. I just went out back behind the building.”
Now I took out my little notebook and started writing. “So it was probably someone who was awake and alert during the night, at least enough to hear you get up. And probably someone who’d been around. Had seen that you had a wallet and where you kept it.”
Kristine shuddered. “It’s so creepy.”
I tapped my pen on my notebook and thought a little.
Kristine turned and looked down over the river again. “I had it all figured out. I was even working out, you know? Running and doing sit-ups and things. To get ready.” She looked at me.
“For basic training.”
She nodded.
I closed the notebook. “You could call the police.”
“Homeless people don’t call the police.”
I expected that. “Your recruiter then. Have your entry delayed. Until you get things straightened out.”
“No.”
“There’s got to be somebody…”
Kristine squared herself to me. “You don’t understand. I have to get on that plane.”
Lots of things flashed through my head. I didn’t say any of them.
Kristine’s eyes gathered water. “I’ve reached escape velocity. I’m ready. I have to go. If I don’t get out now I think I’ll crash. I’ll burn up.”
It was a great metaphor. And a scary one.
Then Kristine wiped moisture from one eye. “I don’t have anyone else. And I don’t have any right to ask you for help. I can’t pay you.”
“I don’t want you to pay me.”
A minute passed. Then another. Then I said, “I wonder if he’s likely to do it again tonight.”
“What?”
“Do you think the thief might try to steal something again tonight?”
“I don’t know.”
Another minute passed.
Kristine said, “What are you thinking?”
“The odds that we can find the guy, assuming it’s a guy, and catch him and get your ID back by tomorrow are a long shot.”
She rubbed a circle in the grass with the palm of her hand. “I have to try.”
“And if we can’t get them back by tomorrow?”
She shook her head.
I saw the desperation in her look. “There’s got to be another way. If you miss the plane. Your recruiter…”
Her shoulders jerked up and down.
I waited for Kristine’s breathing to settle.
She hiccupped and said, “I’ll need help. If I’m going to try.”
I knew it pained her to say that. She wanted to make her own way.
“Maybe I won’t burn up if I’ve tried.”
I stood and held a hand out. “OK. I have an idea.”
She took my hand. Hers felt sure and firm. It belied the haggard look on her face, but I knew that what was underneath was what she was really made of.
“You remember what I gave you when we had lunch? When you left?”
“You snuck money into my backpack. Forty dollars.”
I wasn’t surprised that she remembered the exact amount. “What else?”
She shrugged.
“You wanted my cigarettes.”
Her eyes crinkled. “You weren’t going to smoke them.”
“No.”
“You don’t smoke.”
I pointed to Kristine. “And neither do you. But they were worth something.”
Chapter 3
THE DRIVE BACK TO YELLOW SPRINGS was less than thirty minutes and another crossing of the universe that separated Kristine’s life and my own.
My daughter Cali wasn’t home when I got there. That wasn’t unusual. It was summer and she was busy inhaling the last weeks of her break before high school started again.
I texted her. Late night tonight. Maybe all night. Will you be OK?
It was a silly question, but one I had to ask. The real question was whether I was OK with it. Since we’d lost Cali’s mother and my wife nearly two years before, Cali had done a lot of raising herself. And this wouldn’t be the first time I’d worked all night and left her home sleeping alone.
I texted an addendum. I’ll miss dinner. I can make something to leave for you before I go.
It took a few minutes for Cali’s reply to come. Can I have some friends over?
I stared at the message. It would be the first time since her mother had died that Cali invited any of her friends to the house. She’d spent a lot of that time with her friends, but always away from the house, as if she’d been searching for that surrogate home where life was still fully intact.
The girls want to cook. I promise we’ll clean up.
Something inside of me softened, in a good way.
I know you will. Do you need anything? What are you going to make?
I don’t know. We can go to Tom’s.
Tom’s was the local market, a small store tucked into the heart of the village. In the age of superstores that sold lawn mowers and clothing with their groceries, Tom’s was an anomaly. It was where you saw your friends, met strangers, and planned your meals.
I’ll leave some money for you on the counter.
So yes?
Yes. Of course yes.
I dug into my wallet for some bills to set out. My phone bleeped again. Dad, be careful.
I always am.
On that note I went to the bedroom, to the safe in the back of my closet, and took out my Smith & Wesson M&P40. Mrs. Jenkins, the fluffy calico cat that had walked onto our porch and decided she wanted to live with us, padded up softly behind me and propped herself on her haunches. It was a ritual for us. She seemed to know when I was going for the gun, watching me like a sentinel with an unspoken message that I’d never quite deciphered.
I held my hand out for Mrs. Jenkins’ ear, and she leaned in for the scratch. Maybe that was the message. Scratch my ear. I could have been trying to read too much into it.
Then I plugged my phone in to charge and gathered some other things I’d need. Change of clothes, ball cap, flashlight. Snacks. Lots of snacks. Thermos of coffee.
I texted Marzi, who had over the past month or so become more than a date and something of a regular overnight guest. Late night. Maybe I can see you tomorrow?
Her reply came quickly. K.
That meant things were busy for her at work, and it was OK. Much easier to decipher than the cat’s cryptology.
I drove out of town for an item I needed, to a gas station outside the village where no one would know me by name. I didn’t want to be seen buying a carton of cigarettes, even if I wasn’t going to smoke them. In a small town, even a little story is worth repeating, and this wasn’t one I wanted coming back to me.
I was loading things into the truck when my phone interrupted me.
Feeling manly?
When Brick asked that, I always wanted my answer to be yes. It meant he wanted a workout, either lifting heavy objects or running up crazy hill climbs or through the Glen Helen nature preserve. But the timing wasn’t good.
My day is crowded.
Uh-huh.
I checked the time. Brick and I had known each other in school, but we didn’t really connect until much later, after he’d gone into the military for a stretch of special ops and come back with some manageable but lingering PTSD. Since then we’d become like brothers.
Time with Brick often hammered out the rough edges in my mind and added a glimpse of clarity. I tapped on my phone. Could maybe squeeze in a run.
Now?
Have to be now.
Fire road. 10 minutes.
The fire road was an old path through Glen Helen that stretched from one end of the preserve nearly to the other. The trail was wide and flat and relatively smooth. We could run it fast.
I laced on my running shoes and got going.
We met in the gravel parking lot. Brick and I went down the hundred stone steps into the preserve and he turned left for a loop around the spring before we hit the fire road. His chocolate-raspberry skin glistened under the shade of the trees. My complexion flashed pearly white stripes in the dappled light. Stevie and Paul’s vision of ebony and ivory gliding through the woods.
When we made the turn to a straight stretch of path, Brick took off. I kicked up beside him and we were both already working hard. First one to break stride would get left behind. But neither of us would do that.
When we reached the end of the trail, Brick crossed the road into John Bryan State Park and we looped through the campground and out onto the main road. The pace slowed to something reasonable and Brick took us to the first parking area and doubled back. We hadn’t had any conversation yet. That was unusual.
On the run back down the fire road, Brick glanced over and said, “So what’s happening?”
I told him about Kristine. He’d helped me on the case that had led me to her.
After I’d given him the brief version of what I was planning, he looked over. “Long shot.”
“I know.”
“But you’re going to go through the motions.”
I evened my breath with my steps, lengthened my stride. Kept beside him. “It’s not that. It means something to her.”
We were coming to the home stretch. We both knew it would be a race. It never was, but it always was.
Brick turned his head again. “Do it. If you don’t find her wallet but it gets her to the next thing…”
I finished the sentence for him. “It’ll be worth it.”
A few steps later, Brick said, “I have one suggestion for you. Have you got Christmas ornaments at the house?”
“Do I have what?”
“I’ll tell you what for if you can catch me.”
I grinned. “You’ll have to catch me.”
Then we ran.
Chapter 4
THE CIGARETTES HAD BEEN A RUSE, something to make me look like I fit in a little better where I didn’t really fit in at all. I’d used them when I’d staked out the warehouse earlier in the summer to get some of the others to talk to me, or at least give a stranger a pass. That’s how I’d met Kristine.
I put up the same front again. I wore the same pair of pants that were too big, bunched at the waist and rolled up at the cuffs. A stretched-out t-shirt under a long-sleeve shirt that was too warm for the weather but would come in handy if you were sleeping rough and the night took on a chill.
Ball cap tucked over my eyes, work boots. Cigarette behind one ear, and the pack bulging noticeably in the front pocket of the outer shirt. An old backpack stuffed with clothes to make it full.
Then I tried to assume the look. Like a turtle, carrying everything in case you had to relocate without warning, and ready to hide at the first sign of trouble.
I met Kristine at the top of the levee. We watched the sun go down over the river, little sparkles of light dancing on the surface as if the water were made of glitter.
We’d already gone over the plan, and I had already reminded her of the slim chances of success. “But I’ll be there for you tomorrow, for whatever comes next. However this thing gets straightened out.”
A moment passed. Then she said, “Did you ever find Willow?”
The girl I’d been looking for when Kristine and I met. I nodded. “We did.”
“I never saw her or heard from her again.”
I squinted at the water. “I hope you don’t take this wrong, but that may not be such a bad thing. Willow is with her mother now, and her grandmother.”
“So Willow got out.”
“So to speak.”
The sunlight danced some more. We watched some more. Then Kristine said, “I’m sorry I didn’t ask about that sooner.”
If it wouldn’t have seemed weird, I would have given her shoulders a squeeze. Instead I said, “You’ve had other things on your mind.”
A few minutes later we got up, separated, and walked to the warehouse one at a time.
I entered from the back, at the old loading docks where a bay door was open as I remembered. It looked much the same inside, a smattering of people sitting or laying quietly on blankets or old mattresses. Some cloth bags stuffed with belongings and a couple of shopping carts with aluminum cans and bric-a-brac.
I didn’t like the way cigarettes here felt like currency, as if we were in the penal system, and I cared even less to smoke them. But I pulled a stick from my pocket and held it between my lips as if I was anticipating a light.
An old man with bad teeth immediately came over and lingered.
“Feller,” he said.
I looked over with my eyes down and the ball cap low on my head. The last time I’d been here a similar-looking man had threatened me, and a young wiry guy with bright red hair came at me with a two-by-four. I wasn’t hoping for a repeat performance.
“Feller, you got an extra?” His eyes went to the lump in my shirt pocket. “Or two?”
I tipped my head down as if I was thinking, then gave him two. He accepted them greedily and slid one into his mouth and one into his pocket and walked away.
I made a show of taking my backpack from my shoulders, setting it on floor, and unzipping it loudly. I reached in and extracted the carton of cigarettes, zipped the backpack, and walked slowly once through the array of people and belongings, holding the cardboard carton.
I examined an empty spot on the floor away from the scattered belongings, then made a show of pretending I didn’t like the location. I walked the fringe and gave everyone who wanted it another look at me carrying the carton of cigarettes. Then I settled in against a set of metal stairs that disappeared up into a darkened catwalk. I replaced the partial pack of cigarettes in my shirt pocket with a full one from the carton, then set the box on the floor beside me and stretched my legs out.
I pretended not to notice, but I’d had a few eyes on me. It was encouraging, but this still felt like a long shot.
Then I sat quietly as the cavernous space darkened. It was a surprise, and not a surprise, how much most of the dozen or so people squatting there kept to themselves.
Moonlight came through the open bay door and through high dirty windows, and my eyes adjusted to the dimness. I had a paperback book in my pocket and desperately wanted to pass the time reading, but instead I lit and pretended to smoke three cigarettes in the space of about an hour.
Then I rolled over like I was sleepy and took from my pocket a simple device that Brick had suggested. Little bells on ribbons that Cali liked to hang from our Christmas tree every year. I’d tied them to fishing line, and now I clenched the bells tightly so they wouldn’t sound and taped the fishing line to the back of the cigarette carton.
I had urged Kristine to find somewhere else to sleep, and had tried to coerce her with offers of a room, and when she refused that, sleeping in the cab of my truck. But she was going to be here, and I wasn’t going to change that.
I had gotten her to agree that we would keep separated and not interact, and she proved to be good at doing that. Her curled-up form lay on the floor across the loosely scattered ring of people, and I hadn’t seen her move for some time. I stopped watching.
Then I pretended to sleep, which wasn’t easy to do. It was late, dark, and quiet, and I was tired. I was laying in a sleeping position and trying not to move. Nature was trying to take over. My eyes were getting droopy.
I wanted the coffee. But now that I was here, pulling a thermos of fresh, hot coffee from my backpack seemed like it would be a giveaway that I didn’t belong. It was another thing to add to the growing list of reasons why I didn’t like stakeouts.
Eventually I found it easier to stay awake if I sat up with my back propped against the stairs. I did that in the still of the band of homeless and waited. For a long time.
Chapter 5
I DIDN’T KNOW THE TIME. I didn’t know if I’d been asleep. I knew I heard the bells.
I wasn’t the only one. Sounds of rustling or movement drifted through the dim light, people noticing, turning over, sitting up.
The bells had jangled only once. I picked out the shape of a person standing very still a few steps away. Then the bells jangled hard and long against the sound of heavy footsteps as the snatcher fled.
The runner had opened a good lead by the time I was up and moving, but the lumbering shape and the crashing bells made an easy beacon to follow. I closed some distance between us as we crossed the expanse of the warehouse.
Then the bells choked a strangled chime and crunched to the floor, and the figure ahead of me dropped out of sight through a small side door.
I knew the way. A narrow sidewalk crowded between two long, high exterior walls. To the left were the abandoned loading docks and an inner courtyard between the buildings. To the right was a tall chain fence and then more narrow sidewalk until the buildings opened to the river.
The fence rattled. I went right.
When I came out into the open, I saw the runner skimming the top of the high berm of the levee, fleeing under the moon and city lights.
It didn’t take long. Even in my work boots, catching him wasn’t a challenge. I could thank Brick for that later.
The guy was panicked. I tackled him and he rolled over and curled up with his hands over his head. “Don’t hurt me.”
I stepped back.
“You don’t have to hurt me.”
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
He extracted the carton of cigarettes from beneath his shirt and tossed it away. “You can have the cigarettes. Don’t hurt me.”
“Listen, man. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Just take the cigarettes.”
“I don’t want the cigarettes.”
One hand came away from his face and he peeked out at me. The man looked somewhere between forty and a lot older than forty, with a thin face and a thin frame and hair that ringed his face and was in need of washing.
I heard footsteps and the man looked behind me. Kristine ran up. Her steps were fast and sure and showed the work she’d done to get ready for her journey.
The man rolled up to a crouch.
Kristine looked down at him. “Where is it?”
The man shook his head.
I said to Kristine, “Do you recognize him?”
“I’ve seen him. But we don’t talk.”
The man was shaking his head harder now. “Just take them and go away.”
I stepped closer to the man. “You took her wallet.”
He looked confused.
“Last night. From her backpack. In the middle of the night.”
His head wagged. “I never did that.”
Kristine put one knee to the ground and leaned her face close to the man’s. His eyes owled back at her. Then Kristine raised back up and crossed her arms. “He did.”
We all stared at each other in the dark and I quickly grew tired of that. I faced the man. “I’ll tell you what. She wants the ID that was in that wallet. It doesn’t matter how it got wherever it is now. Someone else took it and you saw something. It got left out and you found it. Whatever. If you know something, we won’t have to…” I let the rest hang. Not a threat, but it should sound like one.
“ID?”
“State ID card. Some other items.”
He frowned like those were alien items.
“She needs those to get to basic training. Now.”
The man scratched a spot on his head. “Basic training?”
Kristine’s face was tight. Very tight.
The man looked hard at her. “You’re going to serve?”
“I was. I have to get on a plane.”
The man placed his hands on the ground at his hips and pushed up. I stepped toward him, but he raised himself and held a hand up to me. “No. Wait. I served.”
Under the streetlights I could faintly see the shadow of that former serviceman he once was. Tall, shoulders back, square and jutted jaw. You never knew about a person by just looking from the outside.
The man turned away from me to face Kristine. “What branch?”
“Air Force.”
He nodded, then rattled off flight or squadron or some sort of names and numbers that indicated what he’d done in the service. It meant something to him, even if I didn’t understand the code.
Then he said, “I might’a found the wallet. Someone else done something with it, and I just found it. I didn’t know who to give it back to.”
Kristine nodded, accepting the fiction.
“There wasn’t no money in it when I found it.”
A beat passed. Kristine said, “Whoever found it can keep the eight dollars.”
I felt exposed standing in the open, and I wanted to close the deal. I stepped forward. “She just needs the ID.”
The man rubbed his hands on the front of his pants. “It’ ain’t going to be easy. If it’s still there…”
“You don’t have the wallet with you?”
“No.”
“But you know where it is.”
“I know where I left it.”
“Then let’s try to find it.”
His eyes went to the carton on the ground. “What about the cigarettes?”
“You can have the cigarettes.”
His looked from me to Kristine to the cigarettes and back. “We could trade. The cigarettes for the wallet.”
I’d heard there was no honor among thieves, but this looked like an attempt at honor or redemption. Kristine accepted it. “Deal,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 6
HE TOOK US TO A TRASH CAN near McDonald’s, the one bit of suburban surrealism planted in that stretch of the downtown district. The man pointed to the metal receptacle. “I put it in there.”
Kristine looked at me. I looked at the man, then reached for the top of the trash can and pulled it off. “Start digging.”
He didn’t need to. A crumpled brown paper McDonald’s bag was visible in the debris. The man stuck his hand in and pulled the bag out.
He gave the bag to me, and I turned it over to Kristine. Her fingers worked the top open.
Then her eyes lit with a cautious hope. Kristine pulled a wallet from the bag.
She looked at me and I looked at the wallet. Kristine looked inside and stood very still while I watched a look emerge on her face that told me she’d seen her life come flooding back to her.
When her moment was complete, Kristine closed the wallet and pushed it deep into her front pocket.
“You good?” I said.
She nodded once very quickly.
“What about him?”
Her eyes moved over the man. “Homeless people don’t call the police on other homeless people. And I have to go.”
The man reached a hand out like he would touch Kristine, but then he let his palm drop to his side and he said, “I’m sorry.”
Kristine looked him in the eye. “I know.”
It was a good thing. The Smith & Wesson was still secured in its holster under my left arm where it would do no harm. My phone stayed in my pocket, and the local folks in blue cruised the streets without mind of us.
I picked up the paper bag and stuffed it back into the trash can and put the lid on top.
Then Kristine and I left the man standing there on the street.
Chapter 7
KRISTINE OBJECTED, but I wasn’t going to let her spend the rest of the night, however little remained, anywhere on the street.
It was very late and she had everything with her that she would ever want from her old life. We climbed into the truck. Kristine twisted in the passenger seat and locked her door, and I took us out of the city.
When we skirted the Air Force base in the darkness, Kristine perked up and looked hard through the perimeter fence at the lights and structures of the base. Like a magnet for her.
We got to the house and there was little to talk about. Kristine laid on the couch in the living room and did what might have passed for trying to sleep.
I went to the kitchen. It was so clean I thought Cali must not have had her friends over. But in the fridge was a half-empty iron pan with a note stuck on top that read Vegetarian moussaka. Try some!
I hadn’t even known that was a thing. I forked out a bite. Eggplant, vegetables, sauce, cheese. Spicy. I vowed to eat more later when I would warm it up and enjoy it.
Then I made sandwiches that I knew Kristine would try to refuse, but she would take them for her trip.
I thought about sleep but it was already more morning than night and the sun would be up soon. I made coffee and sat in the kitchen and read.
Kristine had a very early flight. She’d arranged a cab but had called that off. I was going to take her to the airport.
I heard her stirring in the other room when the sunlight starting canting through the windows. I waited and read and drank more coffee. I heard the bathroom door and the toilet and then water running. A few minutes later, Kristine came into the kitchen and said she was ready.
My daughter Cali had slept through the entirety of Kristine’s brief visit with us. She never woke to see a young woman not too much older than her spend a few hours very close to us but always still a million miles away.
At the airport I pulled to the curb and Kristine opened her door. Then she turned back. “I’m sorry I can’t pay you.”
“I know.” I didn’t say it, but she already had paid me. I would remember the joy of seeing her get on that plane longer than I would any invoice or paycheck.
I wanted to know how things would turn out for Kristine. How she would do in basic training, where her new life would take her. What stories she would have to tell years from now.
But I knew that if I never heard from her again that would probably be a good thing. It would mean she’d truly reached her escape velocity.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Scott Geisel.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this book or its cover may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent of the author.
