I stood up. I rubbed my hands together, cracked my knuckles. The house felt large around me. There was a sudden clatter from the floor above, as the fridge dropped a new load of ice into the tray.
I am not an especially imaginative man. The flashes of intuition I’ve experienced in my life usually have a basis in something obvious, even if only in retrospect. But right then I felt untethered, unguarded, as when I’d stood out on the deck a week before. It was after midnight now. I’d last spoken to my wife around eleven the previous evening. A shorthand debrief between two people who’ve loved each other for a while. Your day, my day; errand reminders; kiss kiss, goodnight. I’d idly pictured her sitting Indian-style on a turned-down bed, a pot of coffee by her side or on its way, her expensive and doubtless too-tight business shoes kicked halfway across the floor of her room, in this Hotel Malo.
Except she hadn’t been there.
I put my hand on the mouse to her computer. Hesitated, then found her personal organizer software and double-clicked it. It felt like an intrusion, but I needed to check. The diary window popped up on screen. A bar across four days said ‘Seattle’. The space in between was peppered with meetings, plus a clutch of client breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Except for this evening. Tonight had been clear from 6:30.
So why no earlier call?
There had been a couple of attempts at contact via the house phone. But she always called the cell. She knew I was supposed to be at home working but also that my desk and I acted like magnets with the same charge, and it was highly possible I would be elsewhere. And she always left a message. Amy had strong views on hotels. Maybe she got to the Malo and didn’t like it, checked herself in somewhere else. Didn’t mention it because it was trivia and didn’t affect our communication. Back-to-back meetings, then had herself booked into this week’s most fashionable Seattle eatery, table for one, briefings and demographics to read while she ate – leave calling Jack until she gets back to the room. Her phone slips out in the cab on the way there. She runs into someone from work, stays for an extra glass of wine. Would be getting back to the hotel round about now, reaching into her bag … and thinking shit, where’s the phone.
Yeah, maybe.
I looked around her desk again. Other people’s working spaces are like the ruins of lost civilizations. It’s impossible to understand why they’d have that thing there, put the other here. Even with Amy’s, which is blisteringly neat and looks like an office supplies serving suggestion. The desk looked as it always did, in I’ll-be-back-later mode. Except that her PDA was sitting in its dock. Amy was the only person I knew who actually used an organizer instead of merely owning one. She kept lists and her diary on it, maintained addresses, took notes, referred to it twenty times a day. She always toted it with her on business.
But there it was. I lifted it out, turned it on. A mirror of the diary I’d seen on the main computer. To Do lists. Slogans-in-progress. I put it back. So she elected to take one less piece of equipment on the road this time. Rock and roll. Amy had her systems. In her world there was a place for everything and everything stayed in its place, if it knew what was good for it.
And yet tonight, she was not in her allotted space.
So now what? Her phone was taken care of. I’d run down every available route for trying to talk to her, and hit dead ends. It all probably meant nothing. My rational mind was braced for an incoming phone call, a tired/apologetic Amy with a complex tale of screwed hotel bookings and phone-loss woe. I could almost hear how shrill the ring would sound, and was halfway to deciding to go have a cigarette on the deck while I waited. Either that, or just go to bed.
Instead I found myself in the living room, standing in front of the big windows, hands down by my sides. Minutes passed, and I did not move. The house was quiet around me, so silent in the continued absence of a phone call, that after a time the background rustle of moving blood in my ears began to seem very loud, appeared to swell until it sounded like the tyres of a car on a wet road, some distance away yet, but coming closer.
I could not shake off the ridiculous idea that something had happened to my wife. That she might be in danger. As I stared past my reflection in the plate glass, out towards the dark shapes against the blue-black sky, I began to feel dimly certain that this unknown car was heading inexorably toward me.
That I had always been its target, and now the time had come. That this was the night when the car hit.
Oz Turner sat in the seat he’d pre-selected, wall-side of the booth nearest the door. This position was obscured from most of Blizzard Mary’s other patrons by the coat rack. It gave him a good view onto the parking lot, cars and pickups whose sole shared characteristic was that of not looking too new. He’d been to the bar twice the day before, in preparation. Office workers at lunch, young moms sharing salads. Late at night the clientele switched to lone men interspersed with middle-aged couples drinking steadily in silences companionable or otherwise. Meanwhile their vehicles waited outside, like old dogs, pale and ghostly in the dark. Beyond the lot was the little town of Hanley. A few streets away, through the small and prettified knot of the old quarter, was a wide, flat watercourse. Either the Mississippi itself or the Black River. Oz wasn’t sure. He didn’t really care.
He was nursing a beer to earn his place. He’d ordered one of the specials too, but barely touched the gluey Buffalo wings. This was only partly due to nervousness. Over the last year his habits had changed. He’d once been something of a gourmand, in his own way: a connoisseur of quantity. He made his coffee with three big spoonfuls of Maxwell House. He took his meals super-sized. He’d enjoyed the tastes of these things, of course, but also responded to the comfort of sheer bulk. He no longer found solace there. After a time the waitress came and took his plate, and he felt no sense of loss.
He checked his watch again. Well after midnight. The bar was dim but for lamps and neon beer advertisements. The television was on low. There were only ten, fifteen people left. Oz was going to give the guy another quarter hour, then go.
As he was telling himself this, a car pulled into the lot outside.
The man who entered the bar wore old denim and a battered Raiders jacket. He had the air of a person who spent his days on the wide flat plains, near farm machinery. The Raiders didn’t hail from anywhere near here, of course, but geography has become malleable now. It could also, Oz realized, be intended as a signal. To him. He turned to the window and watched the man’s reflection in the glass.
He went up to the counter, got a beer, exchanged the pleasantries required to pass as no one in particular. Then he came straight over towards the booth. He had evidently used the mirrors behind the bar to scope the room, so he could look like he was coming to meet a friend, not searching for a stranger.
Oz turned from the window as the man slid into the opposite side of the booth. ‘Mr Jones?’
The man nodded, looking Oz over. Oz knew what he was seeing. A man who looked ten years older than he should. Grey stubble over the dry jowls of someone who used to carry an extra sixty pounds. A thick coat that looked like it doubled as the bed blanket of a large dog.
‘Glad you agreed to meet in person,’ the man said. ‘A little surprised, too.’
‘Two guys in a bar,’ Oz said, ‘they’re the only people ever have to know. Emails, anyone can find out what was said. Even after both of you are dead.’
The man nodded appreciatively. ‘They want to find you, they gonna.’
Oz knew this only too well, having been attacked by Them a year before. He still wasn’t sure who They were. He’d managed to fix the damage they’d tried to cause before it became insuperable, but still felt he had to leave town. He’d kept moving ever