A few minutes and a thousand feet of elevation later, the tram slowed and bumped to a stop at the top of Ranger Peak. A park attendant opened the tram door, and I stepped out into the sunshine. I made my way out onto the viewing platform where there were several yellow metal benches and a coin-operated telescope. It was a sunny, clear, cool afternoon. Fifty degrees and almost no wind at all. Picnic weather. It was the kind of day that makes you glad you’re alive.
I pulled out my burner phone for the final time and dialed Marco’s number.
“Hello?”
“I contacted the FBI, Marco. I told them everything. About the drugs, the tunnel, the killers you use to intimidate and murder witnesses. They’re coming after you.”
“We had a deal,” Marco said. “You broke it when your friend shot up the warehouse. Now you’re dead.”
“Lavar tried to kill Bonnie and me,” I said. “Was that part of the deal?”
“It wasn’t supposed to go that far. Lavar was supposed to let you both leave after he knocked you around enough to even the score.”
“Well, Marco, whatever plans you had before; I’d make a new one. The FBI is getting search warrants for your properties, and they’re going to kick down your front door as soon as they have ‘em. Been nice knowing you.”
I tossed the phone into a nearby trash can.
I had some time to kill, so I walked out onto the Thousand Steps trail and found a rock to lean against. I tipped my head back and closed my eyes, letting the sunlight flood through my eyelids. It was too late to turn back now.
I don’t usually smoke, but I’d brought a pack of Marlboros with me and lit one. I took two or three long pulls on the cigarette, feeling the nicotine flood my system. An old Rolling Stones song, “Sympathy for the Devil” started running through my head. I reached into my backpack and brought out the small bottle of W. L. Weller Kentucky Bourbon. The liquor glowed in the sunshine like an amber Christmas tree light. I lifted the bottle in a salute to the sun before taking a long draw off the bottle. The pleasant burn of the alcohol returned like an old friend.
I could have sat there and finished the bottle, but I had work to do.
I reached into the backpack for the Celestron binoculars that Sandy had left in my car, then pulled my knees in close to my chest and rested the binoculars across my knee caps. It took a minute to get the binoculars focused and oriented on the hangar where Marco kept his new airplane, but I managed it okay. Marco’s gold Ferrari was already parked off to the side of the hangar, and the plane was taxiing towards the runway. Marco had taken the bait and was trying to escape in his new toy.
The airplane held position at the end of the taxiway briefly, then launched forward with tremendous acceleration. Halfway down the runway, it lifted from the pavement in one beautiful, miraculous moment before the nose of the plane tipped skyward, the wheels retracted into the underside of the wings, and the plane began its ascent. As it climbed, the plane began a slow, lazy arc towards the south, towards the Mexican border. As the aircraft neared Franklin Mountain, the roar of the airplane’s twin engines overwhelmed the humming of the tramway motor and the sounds of El Paso below. Then the roar of the airplane’s twin engines was silenced.
Suddenly, Marco’s airplane began a sharp U-turn back towards the airport. With just a few hundred feet separating the plane and the mountainside, the shiny black torpedo went into a stall without enough altitude to use to recover from the stall. I watched as the airplane descended and slammed into the side of Franklin Mountain not far from where I’d boarded the tramway. A giant fireball blossomed from the wreckage, followed by a concussive thud that might have knocked me off my feet if I’d been standing.
It became very quiet on Ranger Peak again. My world collapsed down to the sand, the rocks, the sun, and the breeze blowing across the Thousand Steps trail. I took a final pull of Weller’s from the bottle and screwed the top on tightly before putting the bottle back in the backpack with the binoculars. Waste not, want not.
It was a long walk down, but the view made it all worthwhile. Ambulances and fire trucks raced towards Franklin Mountain with sirens wailing and rooftop strobe lights flashing. A plume of grey smoke drifted skyward from the flames engulfing the wreckage of Marco’s airplane.
Chapter 47
The hospital bed creaked, and then Bonnie’s head turned on the pillow to look in my direction. She looked at me like I was a piece of furniture at first, then her focus seemed to change and I knew that she’d recognized me.
“You came for me,” she said quietly as a whisper. A tear welled in the corner of her eye.
“You knew that I would.”
I got up from the chair and went to the side of her bed. I put my cheek against hers.
“I was so scared,” she said.
“Me too.”
“They told me if I didn’t do what they said; they’d kill me and kill you, too.”
“It’s okay.”
“They made me take that powder. I don’t remember much after that. It was like a nightmare where you’re trapped in your body but can’t move on your own. I know that I did things, terrible things. I wanted to die.”
She cried for a while after that and became still again. I went back to the bedside chair, thinking that she’d fallen asleep. Then she shifted her position in the bed and forced her body into an upright position.
“Are you sure you can sit up?” I asked.
“Pretty sure,” she said. She slid her feet out from under the sheet. She was wearing a paper-thin hospital gown with small sunflowers printed on it. I stood and rested a hand on her shoulder to try to keep her from getting out of bed.
“Seriously,” I said. “You should lie back down.”
“Let me do this,” she said. “Please. I need to.”
“All right.”
She put her feet on the floor and leaned her backside against the frame of the hospital bed.
“This gown is horrible, isn’t it?” she said.
I nodded again. “You take sunflowers to a new level of style, though.”
She gave me the faintest hint of the crooked smile.
“As fetching as that hospital gown is,” I said, “I thought you might want to change into something else. I brought your suitcase with me. You left it at the house on the beach.”
Her lower lip trembled and she began to cry again.
I popped open the suitcase at the foot of the mattress where the blankets and sheets had bunched together.
Bonnie was looking at the floor. “Do you love me?” she asked.
“Of course I love you.”
“Even now?”
“Always.”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
I took her hand and held it. I kissed the silk-smooth skin on the back of her hand.
“You and me, kid,” I said. “We’re going to see the world.”
She gave me the crooked smile again, a little bigger this time.
She had an ugly bruise on her forearm where Lavar had grabbed her and swung her across the room. I took her arm gently in my hands, covering the bruise with my palm.
“Many bruises can be life-threatening if not treated promptly,” I said.
“Then I think you’d better get started,” she said. “Don’t you?” The crooked smile again, this time more like the way it used to be.
I slid my hand through her glossy back hair and cupped her neck with my palm, feeling the heat of her skin. I looked into her jade green eyes before taking her in my arms. I felt a sense of weightlessness and then falling as I offered a trade to the universe: everything that I had or would ever have in exchange for keeping Bonnie safe.
It was a sensation not unlike stepping into a pool and wading towards the deep end: as the water rises to your knees, your hips, your throat, and finally your eyes, you know that you’re at the edge of a different world you couldn’t see before. Then you submerge and realize that
there is a better world, really, where all that matters is that moment of perfect clarity and sensation and letting go of everything that came before. In that instant all the needs and cares and pain fall away, completely forgotten.
I took a deep breath. And went all the way under.
###
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Dave Kearns
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All The Way Down
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All The Way Back
Present Day
Oceanside, Oregon
Eric Fullmeyer and I were on the deck of the small house I rented in Oceanside, Oregon. The wood was a funky blue color and needed re-painting, but the Rhododendrons encircling the porch were in full bloom, with purple and pink star-shaped flowers visible in the fading evening light. I had Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue” on the turntable in the living room, and strains of jazz carried through the sliding screen door onto the porch.
“Check it out,” I said. “The sun’s about to set.” The house was two hundred feet up the side of the hill that fronted onto the Oceanside beach, and even if the house was small, old, and run-down, the views from the living room and deck were glorious. There was a ribbon of white sand at the bottom of the hill, and the Pacific Ocean stretched to the horizon beneath a sparse collection of clouds the color of molten glass. The sun glowed blood red as touched the horizon before swelling in the curved lens of the earth’s atmosphere.
“Nice,” Eric said. “I can see why you like it here.”
“It’s unspoiled, isn’t it?”
Eric had on a thin black leather coat, a grey button down shirt, blue jeans, and black dress shoes. He was a grey haired man with a short beard, a thin waist, and shoulders a yard wide. He looked like someone who could change a car tire without using a jack. The knuckles on his hands were huge, and the muscles in his neck stood out against the skin like a diagram in an anatomy textbook. I’m not sure why he carried a gun. I think he could probably tear someone’s arms off if he needed to.
It was very quiet on the deck. The air was so still that it felt as if the world was holding its breath.
“Have you heard anything from Bonnie?” I asked. Eric was my connection with the Federal Marshal’s service and the witness protection program. I’m not in the program, but I know people who are. Bonnie is now one of them.
Eric looked away. He shifted his position as if he were uncomfortable, and then fidgeted with the zipper on his coat. “You know I can’t talk about that,” he said.
“I just need to know that she’s okay.”
“She’s fine, Delorean. She’s adjusted to her new circumstances as well as can be expected.”
“Any more problems with the cartel?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not so far.”
“I guess going into the program was worth it, then,” I said. “If that’s what it took to keep her safe.”
“Have you had any issues?” he asked.
“Not since the bombing, but I wouldn’t tell you if I did, Eric.”
“Why the hell not?” Eric asked. He furrowed his eyebrows and I felt the weight of his irritation with me.
“If I thought that you, Bonnie, or Sandy were in danger, I’d tell you. Otherwise, I’m not involving you in my problems any more. People who come into my orbit wind up hunted, fired, or dead.”
“The world doesn’t work that way, Delorean. None of what’s happened is your fault.”
“Really?” I said. “I don’t think that’s true. I’ve made choices I didn’t have to make. I’ve done things that brought pain to people I care about. And worse.”
“I’m still your friend,” Eric said. “If you need help, you gotta tell me.”
“I appreciate you saying that,” I said.
Eric looked a little sad. It was late spring, and in the waning evening light a cold breeze passed over the deck. He popped the collar on his leather coat and zipped it up.
“I’m getting another beer,” I said. “You want one?”
“No. I’m fine, thanks.”
I went inside, flipped the vinyl record on the turntable, and got another Laurelwood IPA from the refrigerator. The worn oak flooring gave off a mellow glow from the low-wattage bulbs in the faux hurricane lamps. The royal blue wall paint left behind by a previous tenant looked almost passable against the beige Formica countertop. The threadbare sofa looked welcoming in the dim light instead of beaten-down as it did during daylight hours. I looked out through the picture window that formed the south wall of the living room and saw the running lights on a shrimp boat in the distance. I had the feeling that the world had been put right again, just for a moment. Good things could still happen.
I flipped the light switch by the screen door, illuminating the Christmas lights I’d strung above the deck on small wires stretched between the roof and decking posts. It made the deck look almost festive. Eric was sliding his phone into his coat pocket when I stepped outside. He waited until I was back at the picnic table before he started talking.
“I need you to do something for me,” he said.
“Anything.”
“There’s someone I want your help keeping an eye on.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
Eric let out a long sigh. “I’ve got someone in WITSEC who thinks they’re being watched. My team looked into it more than once and didn’t find anything, but this lady is convinced that something’s not right, and that we’re not taking her seriously. I’ve offered to move her to a new location, but at this point she’s put down roots and refuses to move.”
“Okay. I think I understand your problem, but I don’t know how I could help.”
Eric rubbed at his beard, deep in thought. “I think she’s not that far from becoming unstable, Delorean. She’s threatening to exit WITSEC and go it on her own. If she does that and something happens to her I’d never forgive myself.”
“Understood, but you can’t force her to stay in the program. If she leaves and something happens to her, isn’t that on her?”
Eric pulled his eyebrows together and frowned. “Delorean, sometimes things are bad for everybody involved. This isn’t about trying to assign responsibility. I’m trying to keep this lady safe. Whether she’s actually in danger I don’t know. She certainly thinks she is. This week she adopted a Doberman from the animal shelter, and I just found out that she’s applied for a firearms carry permit.”
I laughed. “Let me just recap. She thinks she’s in danger but WITSEC thinks she isn’t. You offer to move her anyway. She’s mad that you’re not taking her seriously, she refuses to relocate, and now she has a guard dog, a gun, and an attitude. So far I like her style. Maybe we’re soul mates.”
Eric’s frown turned into a scowl. If we were in a cartoon, I think smoke would have been coming out of his ears.
“It’s a little different for you, Delorean. You have a track record of being able to deal with threats.”
“My track record wasn’t so good with Bonnie, was it?”
Eric didn’t say anything.
“If she hadn’t used the remote start on the car, she’d have been in it when it went up,” I said.
“You had no way of knowing that they were still looking for you,” Eric said.
“And still are, I hope.”
“Is that the plan? Wait for them to come after you again? Go out in a blaze of glory?”
“I’m not suicidal, Eric. I’m just tired of looking over my shoulder. It’s inevitable that they’ll try again. I plan to settle the score with them when they do.”
“All by yourself, huh? I hope it plays out that way.”
“Me, too, Eric. What do you want me to do about your lady with the stalkers?”
“This lady only lives ten miles from here, in Tillamook. I told her that I
would hire an independent contractor to watch her for a while. I want you to form your own opinion about whether something isn’t right. If you see something that my team didn’t, which is extremely unlikely, tell me and I’ll do something about it. If you don’t find anything, tell me that, too.”
“Just to clarify - did you tell her I was going to check on her?”
“I told her. She’ll be expecting you.”
“And what will she be expecting?”
“I told her that you’re smart, tough, observant, fearless, and apparently un-killable.”
“All of that and more,” I said.
“She needed to be sold on you,” Eric said. “Do you think I laid it on too thick?”
“I take a licking and keep on ticking,” I said.
“Like a Timex watch,” Eric said.
“Tough as a nails,” I said.
“Battle tested,” Eric said. “To be sure.”
“A man without equals,” I said.