“That was different.”
“Why?”
“Because it was in the past!” Julian’s voice had taken on a sharp edge, one of annoyance.
“Why did things change?” Quinn persisted; but he was only noise in the background. Julian had lifted the carton’s lid, inside were large, thin books with edges of tattered paper sticking out. Angels, one bore the legend. He dug deeper for the smaller ledger half-filled with familiar, cautious writing.
Julian flipped through it, searching for the entries linked by one deciding factor.
He stopped, tracing the sentence with his finger; Quinn lingered in the background, confused, hostile but of no consequence to the revelation he’d made.
The child’s name was Daniel.
***
“Your grandmother called, she said you had your cell phone off.” Julian announced, looking up from the cardboard carton he’d been sorting through. “Also, your mother was a terrible record keeper.”
“I did,” Evelyn stated to the former part of the sentence then surprise lit her features. “I thought you were record keeper?”
“I was,” he said flatly. “Until your mother’s time. She took over the duty herself and made a complete mess of things.”
She shared a momentary look of sympathy with the older man, knowing very well how obdurate her mother could be - add disorganized. “Don’t stress about it,” she said tactlessly. “I’m going to be busy for the next hour or so, don’t bother me.”
Reno seemed to nod in acceptance, his face turned down to his work, waiting for the opportune moment when she was nearly out the opposite door. “The man you know as Daniel Hurain spent four years in and out of a psychiatric ward. His name back then was Daniel Javan.”
She didn’t want to pretend to knowledge she didn’t know and simply nodded. “I expected as much. Insanity seems to be a common thread these days.”
“Insanity plea deal.” Reno offered without the lift of a smile to soften the frost in his tone.
“It’s up to him to accept aid.” Evelyn’s tone grew a shade colder. “Where’s Quinn?”
“I sent him home early.” Reno replaced the lid on the carton, dusting his brown hands off. “Since you were gone for the afternoon, I felt there wasn’t much to have him do. The boy can only read so much in a day.”
“That was considerate of you.” She remarked caustically.
He flashed her one of his full teeth smiles.
“I try to be.”
She matched his stare for a moment, trying to pierce past the pleasant face to what he truly thought. Julian remained a blank slate to her probing. Fine, have it your way. Hostility relaxed, she continued on to her office footsore and weary.
Dinner she had sent up later, looking forward to an evening of put-off correspondence. She didn’t wait for the cell to ring, but did make sure it was close by as the long hours of the evening drew on. Reno called in by desk phone to announce he was leaving for the night. Evelyn responded the same goodbyes she always did, engrossed in writing a response to the campaign manager of a bottle recycling proposition in the greater New York area.
She wasn’t sure of the time after a while - the blinds were drawn tightly, the city seemed to slumber beyond the four walls of the office. She had laid down her pen briefly, brushing her falling hair back from her face. Her eyes closed wearily, tiredly. The day had been trying on her patience, her efforts to help had been rebuffed and a mantle of depression clouded her mind.
Sleep, she thought, sleep would help her regain her balance. Not a long rest. She’d been running on reserves the last few months going into her third year of managing the company. I deserve at least a little sleep. Evelyn rarely prayed having little faith in a higher being. She did now as a courtesy to the poorer churches the company’s charity division supported.
Please let there be peace tonight.
***
He had been thinking of that night since Diane left. Turning it over in his mind, replaying the seconds of taking one’s eyes off the road. His son had unbuckled the belt of the car seat, giggling because it was a game daddy was trying to break him of. In the passenger’s side, seven-year old Hunter played with daddy’s cell phone, too big to play any other game.
It could’ve been anybody, he realized with gut-wrenching anguish.
Anybody driving back from their mother-in-law’s, one in a million who took their eyes off the road and weren’t texting some stupid shit. They’d laid Jakey’s body to rest in a plain white coffin, not a child’s coffin because he’d been a growing boy, but an oversized adult’s, that had swallowed up the pastiche the funeral director had created.
“Don’t touch his head. That’s where the worst trauma occurred.”
At the viewing, many of Laurence’s coworkers had come by; his boss, a heavy man with a bristling white-gray beard with the latest arm candy draped over an expensive Armani suit. “My condolences, Monroe.” Henriksen had said in carefully accented English. Then, the next moment, began earnestly whispering about a new business deal that Laurence couldn’t give a damn about.
His son was dead.
- let the dead rest in peace -
Numb to everything but his own private hell, Laurence had taken the tiny hand between his own and seen the slight quiver of motion within the flesh-shell. Oh, merciful God...When the body died suddenly, the host spirit sometimes stayed behind, trapped. Unable to understand the reason why they weren’t alive and well among their loved ones.
Through the empty house, Laurence walked. Hunter and Kahina were staying with their grandmother -again. He’d fought down the threads of simmering anger when Diane had told him she was taking the kids.
She’d told him to pull himself together in that sneering way of hers. Played the same card of reminding him how lucky he was to have scored a former Miss Texas runner up. Diane’s glory had long faded, but her arrogance had only increased through the years. They hadn’t had a perfect life but then no one did, he reflected moving throughout the empty house on silent feet. The training was there, the old skill still rampant in an aged body. Laurence moved with purpose to the study he kept under lock and key.
It was in there that he kept the blue enameled trunk with its spinning jeweled dial. The same trunk his first wife, a cheap waitress from a greasy spoon, had tried to sell one day while he was out looking for work. Laurence didn’t cherish many memories from the period of his life that the trunk originated from, but he got rid of Linda soon after. The trunk stayed through five apartments and three houses, two of which were rented.
Laurence pocketed the set of heavy keys and stepped inside the room, pulling the door shut behind him. The trunk sat beneath a reproduction of Alexander Leloir’s Jacob wrestling the Angel. He had needed that kind of strength to handle five difficult years of living with an autistic child and a wife who denied the child had ever come from her womb.
He wasn’t apt to quote the bible about pride’s fall nor did he appreciate the pitying glances favored him and his son during life whenever he took Jakey with him to the store. There was a word Christians used to describe a person with disabilities and he heard it whispered often enough from healthy, whole families at the local church. Backslider. Sinner. One punished by God. They all wondered secretly what had been Jakey’s cross to bear when it had been a simple malfunction of chemicals inside the brain. Science explained away what religion taught was the fault of the soul. Laurence refused to attend with his wife, older son and the little Arabian girl they’d adopted.
Then, the neighbors began uttering prayers and watched Kahina with suspicious eyes until one day when he sat in the backyard and polished the shotgun he now took from the hooks behind his desk. They hadn’t appreciated the gleaming steel beauty of the modified Mossberg 500, but their hands had stopped itching to wring the neck of a Muslim child.
They hadn’t understood how difficult it was to tell his little girl the reasons why Tommie from the corner wouldn’t play w
ith her. No one ever understood how exclusion felt until they’d experienced it themselves. He primed the shotgun with expert hands. Nor how it felt to watch your child die on the roadside, least of all Daniel Hurain.
Filling his belt pouch with twelve extra rounds, he slid the shotgun over his shoulder and made his way out of the house. Diane had taken the Camry leaving his old BMW in the garage. The car she claimed was an eyesore, ran smoothly under his control. Soon leaving the quiet Suburbia of the New Jersey street behind, he followed the shortest route he knew through backstreets to the city.
Memories were evoked by the simple turn of the wheel, the familiar glare of streetlights playing on the hood of the battered car. The route was one he used to take to reach work. The work he thought back then, he’d dedicate his whole life to. Back, then, they’d all been so young.
The old BMW descended into lower Manhattan, his thoughts grew ever more morose. He’d always been a man of careful planning, weighting all the options before he chose his next course of action. Slow and steady. He’d never rushed in where Angels feared to tread not like - and then, he stopped thinking about it. Any farther and he’d remember them. Regret might stay his hand. Laurence parked in the shadows, on the far side of Washington Square. He walked briskly, silently, slipping through pools of shadow little more than a wavering darkness that walked with purpose to the red brick dorms given as Hurain’s address.
He had little trouble evading the security guard who was taking a break just inside the neighboring complex. Using the old set of firemen keys, he gained access to the inner stairwell and climbed upward, the shotgun cradled in his arms. Once on the right floor, he worked the lock with a crooked pick until it gave, another old trick from his first job, and entered the young man’s apartment.
The apartment was spacious in the moonlight. Hurain hadn’t bothered to close the floor to ceiling blinds behind the ivory sofas. Hardwood floors creaked little as he went through the archway into the kitchenette. A separate door in the back led to a small hallway with a bathroom and three other doors. Laurence checked the first two quickly and found them empty, most likely the rooms of the boy’s roommates.
He went to the last one and flung the door open, shouldering the shotgun. He heard a cry of surprise and saw the blur of motion. Bracing himself, he squeezed the trigger once, pumped the stock and changed aim, blasting holes in the bedding and wall, following Hurain’s escape out the window.
“Damn him...,” Laurence growled quietly, running to the sill. The young man had thrown himself out, barely catching the fire escape with an agility that he envied. Seconds passed and the boy made it down, running across the back way into plain sight through the patches of frosted moonlight. Laurence took aim with the final shell, his focus wavering with the blot of deeper darkness soaring after the boy.
Stunned, he watched the creature that he knew wasn’t of this world, darken Hurain’s shadow, and lowered his rifle. “He’s one of the damned,” Laurence whispered in horror, knowing there was nothing he nor anyone could do to alter Hurain’s fate.
***
The shrill sound awakened her.
Evelyn raised her heavy head, her eyes cross in the glare of the desk lamp. Peeks of dark grey filtered in through cracks in the blinds. She glanced at her watch while reaching for her phone. Early morning.
“Hello?”
“He’s after me!” Daniel’s voice was ragged on the edges. He sounded breathless like he had been running a great distance. Evelyn stood up quickly, injecting authority into her tone. “Where are you now?”
“I don’t...,” his breath rattled in her ear.
“Stay there,” Evelyn ordered, trying to find her keys.
He screamed so suddenly that she dropped the phone startled, her hearing ringing from the sound. “Daniel?!” she scrambled after the phone, when she snatched it up and held it to her ear, the line was dead. Her heart sank, taking up her long coat from the hooks behind the door, she ran out.
“Emergency!” she gasped to the secretary.
“Shall I call Mr. Re-”
“No! I can handle it.” She reached the elevator, stabbing the button frantically. No matter what, she promised herself. Julian wouldn’t be a part of this. He wouldn’t understand. Briefly, her thoughts turned to Quinn. He was untrained still, involving him now would be a mistake. The streamlined service car arrived on her floor. Evelyn stepped inside, donning her coat and spare holster. She had a few minutes to compose herself and contemplate her next movements.
Find him.
Secure his safety.
She caught a glimpse of her battered reflection in the shiny polish of the chrome switch plate across from her. Deep within, she glimpsed the young girl she had been. I have to find him! The sense of urgency came over her strongly. She stabbed the buttons, willing the car to descend faster. Patience had never been a virtue of hers, once the car rolled to a stop at the sub-parking level beneath the ground floor, she was out, running for the large Lincoln Town car reserved in faded letters for the senior board member.
Two years ago, a private fleet of six cars had graced the members of the board parking. Two remained in her possession, the rest wrecked, ruined or burned. How times change, she thought blithely, starting up the large cream white sedan. Throwing it into gear, she swung out wildly from the parking lot, veering across lanes to reach the light.
Time seemed crawl, trickling by like the grains of night giving way to a pale grey dawn. She passed into lower Manhattan without notice, reaching Washington Square within less than twenty minutes. Twice she had used the hands-free car device, calling back Hurain’s number. He hadn’t answered. She refused to allow the possibility of him being unable to answer. Evelyn disembarked in a flurry of brown leather.
The campus was eerily silent.
“Do you need help, ma’am?” The rich voice of an African-American man dressed in light blue with a heavy wind breaker over, approached. His nametag read Phillip.
“No, not really. I was just wondering if there were any wild parties tonight?” Anything at all?
“Hmm, well let me think. Things have been tight as a drum. Not a peep from any of the students.”
Her hand tightened around her cell. “I see...thanks.” Where was he? She walked back to the car, ignoring the guard’s curious looks. It was as she was pulling out of the parking she had haphazardly pulled into that the cell rang from its dashboard cradle.
“Private caller.” The company version of Siri answered in a voice of mechanical blips and whirs.
“Answer.” Evelyn stated, keeping her eyes on the road.
“You have to help me.”
“Where are you?”
“--got out the back way.”
“Where?” Cold emphasis dripped from her tone.
“You have to understand! He wanted to kill me!”
There was no one there.
“Never mind that now. Tell me where you are?”
A few minutes of silence filled with shuffling. “Somewhere uptown -” his voice cut out. She took her eyes off the road momentarily to glare at the mounted phone. “ - ran - it’s coming -“ then his voice cut off into a cry of surprise.
“Daniel? Daniel! Damn...,” she saw the line had disconnected. “Trace call!” She barked, manually switching modes from the steering column. From the quiet park side of Washington Square, she ascended into the glittering lights and towering buildings of upper Manhattan. The minutes stretched on, Evelyn glanced from the dampening windshield to the screen, impatient.
Someone ran out in the middle of the road.
Evelyn screamed in surprise, slamming on the brakes.
The computer drew up a schematic of the street she was on. “Target Located. Current Location specified.”
Thanks, Evelyn thought, for the warning. There wasn’t a warning of course. People were rushing from the sidewalks, into the street, surrounding the prone figure of a young Asian male lying in the road. She cursed herself, cu
rsing her stupidity and flung the seatbelt off, hurrying from the car.
For another second, her heart seemed to stop.
Daniel was clad in pajama bottoms and the same long coat over a T-shirt from the night of the other accident. He didn’t move. Didn’t seem to breathe. “Call the ambulance!” She screamed at the onlookers, slapping her pockets frantically searching for her cell phone. Behind the Lincoln Town car, traffic had slammed into a buzzing standstill, drivers were leaving their vehicles to gain a closer look.
“Goddamn - ”
Then, he awakened and got up to his feet.
Open-mouthed, Evelyn stared at his slightly swaying form and rushed toward him, throwing her arms around his shivering body. “Goddamn you! Damn you, you stupid idiot!” She hissed fiercely, aware of the stares they were receiving. Gently, she pulled away, steering him toward the car. There would be police reports, explanations to come. She’d forward them to Julian after writing down an account of her actions. For the moment, she preferred to have the young man beside her where she could watch over him.
“-somebody pushed that guy - ” she heard someone say.
Chapter 12: Ill-fated Destiny
“Get some rest,” she insisted, pulling out a spare blanket and pillow from a corner locker. Daniel perched on the edge of the lounger, nerves wound tight. She came back, depositing the designer pillow beside him.
“That man...,” he thought of something. “Monroe...he said something funny.”
She draped the blanket over his shoulders, a comforting gesture. “Go on.”
“He said I was one of the damned.” He lifted his eyes to hers, searchingly. “What do you think it means?” The word had been almost whispered, but he had heard it quite clearly.
Evelyn pursed her lips, looking away. “It could mean many things. Maybe, it was out of anger that he said it.”
Daniel sensed a lack of interest in her tone, surmising that something had happened which had caused her to question the belief she had in him. “Hey, I’m not crazy alright? These things...somehow everything just spiraled out of control.” The blanket started to slip from his shoulders. Evelyn stepped closer, drawing it upward again.
“You will help me, won’t you?”