CHAPTER 6
Walt caught a cab to the airport and boarded the first plane he could on his way to Dallas. He arrived in the early hours of the morning and called the phone number of the security service. One of their patrol cars picked him up outside the terminal and drove him to the office. There he spoke with the men who had chased Deakin and Eden. He also interrogated the “father” who’d lived with Deakin for years. By the middle of the morning, he’d wrung them dry so he borrowed a car and drove to Jeannette Murphy’s house. He arranged for an artist to work with her on a picture of the girl and a current picture of the boy. At least she’d noticed enough about the two to come up with fairly good pictures. Walt took her through her story time after time until she was exhausted and in tears. Then he walked away without another word. Jeannette locked her front door and leaned against it for a long time. Then, with a huge gulping sob, she crawled into her bed and fell into an uneasy sleep. She woke up many times during the night, each time expecting to see Walt pointing a gun at her head. When she woke the next morning and realized she was still alive, she sent a quick prayer to God for letting her live a little longer. Then she showered, dressed, and drove to work because she had nothing better to do.
Walt had left a man watching Jeannette’s house. The next morning, after Jeannette had driven to work, he called the man off and sent him out to check motels. No credit card records in either Eden’s or Deakin’s names had surfaced so they must be paying cash. Walt had the security patrol cars flashing the pictures of the two teenagers at every motel clerk possible and looking for Eden’s car in the parking lots. So far they’d come up with nothing.
Late the next afternoon a security guard entered the office of a small motel. He waited his turn and then spread out the pictures of Eden and Deakin on the counter. The desk clerk glanced at the pictures and turned away to answer a ringing phone. When he turned back again,
he narrowed his eyes and picked up the picture of the girl. The guard held up the picture of Deakin but the clerk waved it away.
“I never saw him but I think I talked to her. She came to the desk the other day and wanted to rent a printer. She wound up renting our computer back there. It’s $12 an hour. She walked out a few minutes later with several printed pages and thanked me. I didn’t see her again. Let me see if she’s still here.”
The clerk scrolled down the screen of his computer and then said, “She’s not still listed. I’m not sure about her name but all these other people just checked in this afternoon. She was here for a couple of days. She must have left this morning before I came on duty.”
The guard thanked the man and called in when he returned to his car. Then he drove around the parking lot but Eden’s car was no longer there. He waited near the front entrance until Walt showed up and followed Walt into the motel office. Before long, Walt stood in the doorway of the room Eden and Deakin had stayed in. The maid had already paid her daily visit but Walt was sure she hadn’t cleaned off all their fingerprints. He pulled his cell phone out and called Tom Adams. He left the security guard standing in front of the door with instructions to wait for the fingerprint and lab technicians to show up.
Walt sent his agents to the airport to flash the pictures around. They came up with nothing. He also sent cars out the major highways out of Dallas, specifically along the interstate highways. Cars radiated out of the Dallas/Fort Worth area on I35 North and South, on I45 South, and on I20 East and West. Walt waited in Dallas until the techs had gone through the motel room and come up with two sets of probable fingerprints. One set matched the prints on file for Deakin and he assumed the other set would match the dainty fingertips of Deakin’s girlfriend. They’d bagged up everything they’d found and taken it away for examination in the lab. Walt sat in his car and flipped through the information Clark had given him. On the last page, he read the list of the scientists who’d worked with the Kimbroughs. Several of them still lived and worked in California so Walt made a leap of faith and decided to fly to Los Angeles to pay a visit to Dr. Evan Phillips. Maybe Deakin would try to contact him.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Chapter 5 - Continued
She tucked her long brown hair under the cap and pulled the brim down over her eyes. Deakin ruffled up his shoulder-length hair and opened the window to let it blow in the breeze. Then he looked behind him, trying to figure out which cars were following them. Eden turned onto the access road and followed a long line of cars onto the huge concrete road with five lanes of cars all trying to get somewhere as fast as possible.
“Quick, tell me the highway number I need.”
“The one that says ‘Denton.’ 35N, that’s the one we want.”
Eden concentrated on driving with the flow of traffic. She changed lanes a few times just to make it harder to follow her. Then she slid her little convertible in between two large delivery trucks and climbed the large swooping curve that connected one highway to another. She changed to the middle lane of the new highway and drifted in and out of it as she passed a few cars or let some pass her. Deakin stayed quiet and watched the traffic behind them. Eden exited at the next large intersection and pulled into a large gas station. She drove to the pumps on the far side of the small shop in the center. Deakin jumped out of the car to fill the tank. One yellowish-tan four-door Chevy pulled in after them and stopped out of sight behind the building. No one got out of the car and it didn’t drive away. Deakin stopped pumping and climbed back into the car. Eden drove to the front of the building and let Deakin run in to pay for the gas. Then she turned right onto a large street bordered by strip shopping centers, fast food restaurants, and every other kind of commercial establishment imaginable. For block after block, Eden moved from lane to lane and finally ended in the left turn lane. She whisked through on a yellow light, leaving the tan Chevy fuming behind a long delivery truck and a longer red light. She drove through a large parking lot and returned the way they’d come. They were back on the highway before the other car got a chance to turn left and follow. Deakin relaxed but Eden kept her eye on her mirror and hid her car behind large SUV’s and delivery trucks.
“Keep looking, Deakin. That guy must have had a radio or a cell phone in his car so there could be someone else behind us right now.”
Deakin jerked around in his seat and stared out the back window but he didn’t spot any other trackers. Eden pulled off the highway again and drove into the parking lot of a large auto supply store.
“Stay in the car and I’ll be right back.”
She dropped a heavy bag into Deakin’s lap when she returned and drove to a large restaurant with a full parking lot. She drove slowly through the cars and finally found the right car parked between two large vans. She held out her hand for the bag and rummaged inside it until she found a couple of screwdrivers. Then she slid out of the car and walked to the back of the car. Deakin watched her kneel down on the pavement and take the license plate from the back of the car. She handed it to him and motioned to the back of her car. He switched the plates while she played license plate tag with two other cars in the parking lot. Deakin had changed the front plates while she worked on the other cars.
As they drove away, Deakin looked his question at her. “They surely have the plate number from this car so they’ll probably check motels for the car. Instead of California plates, my car now has Minnesota plates. If we ever get stopped, we don’t know how it happened. Someone must have changed them while we were stopped at a motel or at a restaurant. Total innocence on our part. Toss that bag in the back seat. It stays in the car.”
Deakin looked through the bag and pulled out a can of flat tire fixer, a plastic bottle of motor oil, two flashlights, and an empty water bottle.
“Leave that water bottle out so we’ll remember to fill it up. Now look up the best way to get back to our motel. I want to get out of sight as soon as possible.”
Almost an hour later she pulled into the parking lot of the motel and drove around the entire motel without seeing a tan security car watching from the shadows. She slipped her car between two others and hurried into the building. Eden slowly opened the door to their room and peered inside. No one had been inside the room since the housekeeper had cleaned it. Their bags were still on the closet shelf and the bedspread was smooth and wrinkle-free. Deakin stood at the open door until Eden had looked under the bed and in the small bathroom. Then he entered the room and set the computer on the desk next to the television. Eden fell on her back onto the bed and groaned out loud. She looked up to see Deakin fiddling with his new toy. He dropped down next to her and shoved the door alarm into her face. She pushed his arm away and covered her eyes with her arm.
“Stop that, Eden. You have to know how to turn this thing on and off. What if I’m not here? Now, look, you just have to push these two buttons to set it. To turn it off when you wake up, you push the same two buttons two times. It even has a timer on it but we don’t need that. We’ll just stick it on the door as soon as we get here and turn it off when we want to leave. Remember, push them once to set it and twice to turn it off.”
Eden nodded her head and groaned again. Then she turned over and hid her face in the bedspread. Deakin jumped up and broke out the laptop. He needed his Internet fix and this was his chance. Eden listened to the tiny clicking sounds of his fingers on the keyboard and drifted into a dream-filled sleep. She was lying on a sandy beach all by herself. Clouds scudded across the sky, hiding the sun and the sky. Clicking sounds had awakened her and she turned her head away from the ocean. She scanned the bushes and trees that lined the beach but saw nothing. Then she looked at the waves rolling across the sand closer and closer to her body. As she stared at the waves, she saw hundreds of crabs crawling along the sand under the safety of the waves. The whole mob moved closer and closer to her just as the waves reached for her hand. As she lay there mesmerized by the steady progress of the crabs, she slowly understood the clicking sound came from their claws. They clicked and clacked their way closer to her outthrust hand until the leader grabbed her finger and clamped down hard. Then more and more crabs clamped onto her hand and her arm and then her feet and legs. She was powerless to move in the face of their onslaught and stared at them with horrified eyes. Just as a scream worked its way up her throat and into her mouth, she found herself rudely shaken.
Deakin stood over her with his hands on her shoulders. “Wake up, Eden. You’re dreaming.”
She opened her eyes and stared into Deakin’s calm eyes. “It’ll go away as soon as you wake up. I know. I have dreams all the time and they go away until the next time.”
Eden sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Crabs were biting me and I just let them do it. I didn’t try to get away and push them off me or anything. God, that was awful. I never want to have that dream again. What do you usually dream about?”
She shook like a dog and looked at Deakin as he stared out the window at the parking lot below. “Lots of different dreams. I try not to remember them. There sure are a lot of cars driving around down there.”
Eden glanced at the door, noticed the blinking light of the door alarm, and stepped next to Deakin at the window. As a large tan car pulled into a parking place, she shoved Deakin away from the window and pulled the curtains together. Then she peered out the edge of the curtains and noticed an older man and woman slowly getting out of the car.
“Sorry, Deakin, false alarm. Too bad we can’t see our car from here. I should have parked it farther away from the building so we could keep an eye on it. All I can see are people who look like they’re staying here. Are you having any luck with the computer?”
Deakin looked back at the small screen and said, “I’m waiting and waiting and waiting. This connection is so slow it’s about to drive me nuts. We need to find a better connection. I’ll think of something. Can I have something to eat? I’m starving.”
Eden laughed at the look on his face and said, “Sure, have whatever you want. I have to figure some things out too. Did you bring the map up here? Thanks.”
Eden spread the map out on the bed and traced roads back and forth across it. Finally, she looked up from her scrutiny of the map, and watched Deakin dither around the room.
“What happens if we can’t talk to your ex-father? What happens if we don’t get any good info from your sources on the Internet? Do we have a time frame here? Because I’m going to have to do something about the finances pretty soon.”
Deakin shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe we should have brought my ex-mother with us. Then she couldn’t have called for help after we left.”
Eden shook her head. “I thought of that but decided against it. That’s kidnapping and we’d end up in prison if we were caught. Let’s keep this as legal as we can.”
“Yeah, like what they did to me was legal. Let’s keep that in mind too. That was so illegal they never called the police when I ran away. I could have been kidnapped by some pervert and they wouldn’t have done anything about it. That’s how legal they’re playing.”
“Okay, okay, calm down. Tell me what we’re waiting for from your friends out there in cyberspace somewhere.”
Deakin punched some buttons on the keyboard and stared at the screen. Then, he abruptly turned to face Eden. “Actually, I have some friends who can get into Federal databases. They’re searching for whatever they can find about my real parents. They promised to get me something by today. The last I heard they were digging really deep into some files that were so hot their keyboards were turning red. My parents must have been really important or really terrible to have been buried so deeply.”
“Which are you hoping for?”
“Huh? Oh, really important, of course. Then they might still be alive. I don’t guess I’ve ever given up hope I’ll find them. It certainly got me through the last couple of years.”
He dropped into the chair in front of the laptop and read the words scrolling down the screen. “Eden, come here. Damn, go downstairs and see if they have a printer we can hook up to. I’ll at least save this to disk.”
Eden clicked off the alarm and scooted out the door with the disk in her hand. She returned fifteen minutes later, shaking her head. “No printer to borrow. However, they did have rental computers. Here’s your printout. What does it mean? I read it as it printed out.”
“It means that my friend found out what my father was doing when he disappeared. Evidently he was some big computer programmer for the government. He was listed in the payroll records but there is no mention of which department he worked for.”
“Your mother’s name is on one of those other pages. Did she work for the government too? Maybe on the same job as your father? That could be how they met each other. Has your friend checked immigration files? I mean, your mother’s name is certainly ethnic, for want of a better word.”
“I’ll ask him.”
Eden glanced back at the map and asked, “What small town does your father’s family live in? Should we go there next?”
“I was hoping to have more information before we tried to find them. It would be better to do something rather than just sitting around this room. Rockwall is the name of the town. I have the name and address written down.”
“Pack up the computer and let’s head out of here. I’d rather be moving than sitting still too.”
“Quick, tell me the highway number I need.”
“The one that says ‘Denton.’ 35N, that’s the one we want.”
Eden concentrated on driving with the flow of traffic. She changed lanes a few times just to make it harder to follow her. Then she slid her little convertible in between two large delivery trucks and climbed the large swooping curve that connected one highway to another. She changed to the middle lane of the new highway and drifted in and out of it as she passed a few cars or let some pass her. Deakin stayed quiet and watched the traffic behind them. Eden exited at the next large intersection and pulled into a large gas station. She drove to the pumps on the far side of the small shop in the center. Deakin jumped out of the car to fill the tank. One yellowish-tan four-door Chevy pulled in after them and stopped out of sight behind the building. No one got out of the car and it didn’t drive away. Deakin stopped pumping and climbed back into the car. Eden drove to the front of the building and let Deakin run in to pay for the gas. Then she turned right onto a large street bordered by strip shopping centers, fast food restaurants, and every other kind of commercial establishment imaginable. For block after block, Eden moved from lane to lane and finally ended in the left turn lane. She whisked through on a yellow light, leaving the tan Chevy fuming behind a long delivery truck and a longer red light. She drove through a large parking lot and returned the way they’d come. They were back on the highway before the other car got a chance to turn left and follow. Deakin relaxed but Eden kept her eye on her mirror and hid her car behind large SUV’s and delivery trucks.
“Keep looking, Deakin. That guy must have had a radio or a cell phone in his car so there could be someone else behind us right now.”
Deakin jerked around in his seat and stared out the back window but he didn’t spot any other trackers. Eden pulled off the highway again and drove into the parking lot of a large auto supply store.
“Stay in the car and I’ll be right back.”
She dropped a heavy bag into Deakin’s lap when she returned and drove to a large restaurant with a full parking lot. She drove slowly through the cars and finally found the right car parked between two large vans. She held out her hand for the bag and rummaged inside it until she found a couple of screwdrivers. Then she slid out of the car and walked to the back of the car. Deakin watched her kneel down on the pavement and take the license plate from the back of the car. She handed it to him and motioned to the back of her car. He switched the plates while she played license plate tag with two other cars in the parking lot. Deakin had changed the front plates while she worked on the other cars.
As they drove away, Deakin looked his question at her. “They surely have the plate number from this car so they’ll probably check motels for the car. Instead of California plates, my car now has Minnesota plates. If we ever get stopped, we don’t know how it happened. Someone must have changed them while we were stopped at a motel or at a restaurant. Total innocence on our part. Toss that bag in the back seat. It stays in the car.”
Deakin looked through the bag and pulled out a can of flat tire fixer, a plastic bottle of motor oil, two flashlights, and an empty water bottle.
“Leave that water bottle out so we’ll remember to fill it up. Now look up the best way to get back to our motel. I want to get out of sight as soon as possible.”
Almost an hour later she pulled into the parking lot of the motel and drove around the entire motel without seeing a tan security car watching from the shadows. She slipped her car between two others and hurried into the building. Eden slowly opened the door to their room and peered inside. No one had been inside the room since the housekeeper had cleaned it. Their bags were still on the closet shelf and the bedspread was smooth and wrinkle-free. Deakin stood at the open door until Eden had looked under the bed and in the small bathroom. Then he entered the room and set the computer on the desk next to the television. Eden fell on her back onto the bed and groaned out loud. She looked up to see Deakin fiddling with his new toy. He dropped down next to her and shoved the door alarm into her face. She pushed his arm away and covered her eyes with her arm.
“Stop that, Eden. You have to know how to turn this thing on and off. What if I’m not here? Now, look, you just have to push these two buttons to set it. To turn it off when you wake up, you push the same two buttons two times. It even has a timer on it but we don’t need that. We’ll just stick it on the door as soon as we get here and turn it off when we want to leave. Remember, push them once to set it and twice to turn it off.”
Eden nodded her head and groaned again. Then she turned over and hid her face in the bedspread. Deakin jumped up and broke out the laptop. He needed his Internet fix and this was his chance. Eden listened to the tiny clicking sounds of his fingers on the keyboard and drifted into a dream-filled sleep. She was lying on a sandy beach all by herself. Clouds scudded across the sky, hiding the sun and the sky. Clicking sounds had awakened her and she turned her head away from the ocean. She scanned the bushes and trees that lined the beach but saw nothing. Then she looked at the waves rolling across the sand closer and closer to her body. As she stared at the waves, she saw hundreds of crabs crawling along the sand under the safety of the waves. The whole mob moved closer and closer to her just as the waves reached for her hand. As she lay there mesmerized by the steady progress of the crabs, she slowly understood the clicking sound came from their claws. They clicked and clacked their way closer to her outthrust hand until the leader grabbed her finger and clamped down hard. Then more and more crabs clamped onto her hand and her arm and then her feet and legs. She was powerless to move in the face of their onslaught and stared at them with horrified eyes. Just as a scream worked its way up her throat and into her mouth, she found herself rudely shaken.
Deakin stood over her with his hands on her shoulders. “Wake up, Eden. You’re dreaming.”
She opened her eyes and stared into Deakin’s calm eyes. “It’ll go away as soon as you wake up. I know. I have dreams all the time and they go away until the next time.”
Eden sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Crabs were biting me and I just let them do it. I didn’t try to get away and push them off me or anything. God, that was awful. I never want to have that dream again. What do you usually dream about?”
She shook like a dog and looked at Deakin as he stared out the window at the parking lot below. “Lots of different dreams. I try not to remember them. There sure are a lot of cars driving around down there.”
Eden glanced at the door, noticed the blinking light of the door alarm, and stepped next to Deakin at the window. As a large tan car pulled into a parking place, she shoved Deakin away from the window and pulled the curtains together. Then she peered out the edge of the curtains and noticed an older man and woman slowly getting out of the car.
“Sorry, Deakin, false alarm. Too bad we can’t see our car from here. I should have parked it farther away from the building so we could keep an eye on it. All I can see are people who look like they’re staying here. Are you having any luck with the computer?”
Deakin looked back at the small screen and said, “I’m waiting and waiting and waiting. This connection is so slow it’s about to drive me nuts. We need to find a better connection. I’ll think of something. Can I have something to eat? I’m starving.”
Eden laughed at the look on his face and said, “Sure, have whatever you want. I have to figure some things out too. Did you bring the map up here? Thanks.”
Eden spread the map out on the bed and traced roads back and forth across it. Finally, she looked up from her scrutiny of the map, and watched Deakin dither around the room.
“What happens if we can’t talk to your ex-father? What happens if we don’t get any good info from your sources on the Internet? Do we have a time frame here? Because I’m going to have to do something about the finances pretty soon.”
Deakin shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe we should have brought my ex-mother with us. Then she couldn’t have called for help after we left.”
Eden shook her head. “I thought of that but decided against it. That’s kidnapping and we’d end up in prison if we were caught. Let’s keep this as legal as we can.”
“Yeah, like what they did to me was legal. Let’s keep that in mind too. That was so illegal they never called the police when I ran away. I could have been kidnapped by some pervert and they wouldn’t have done anything about it. That’s how legal they’re playing.”
“Okay, okay, calm down. Tell me what we’re waiting for from your friends out there in cyberspace somewhere.”
Deakin punched some buttons on the keyboard and stared at the screen. Then, he abruptly turned to face Eden. “Actually, I have some friends who can get into Federal databases. They’re searching for whatever they can find about my real parents. They promised to get me something by today. The last I heard they were digging really deep into some files that were so hot their keyboards were turning red. My parents must have been really important or really terrible to have been buried so deeply.”
“Which are you hoping for?”
“Huh? Oh, really important, of course. Then they might still be alive. I don’t guess I’ve ever given up hope I’ll find them. It certainly got me through the last couple of years.”
He dropped into the chair in front of the laptop and read the words scrolling down the screen. “Eden, come here. Damn, go downstairs and see if they have a printer we can hook up to. I’ll at least save this to disk.”
Eden clicked off the alarm and scooted out the door with the disk in her hand. She returned fifteen minutes later, shaking her head. “No printer to borrow. However, they did have rental computers. Here’s your printout. What does it mean? I read it as it printed out.”
“It means that my friend found out what my father was doing when he disappeared. Evidently he was some big computer programmer for the government. He was listed in the payroll records but there is no mention of which department he worked for.”
“Your mother’s name is on one of those other pages. Did she work for the government too? Maybe on the same job as your father? That could be how they met each other. Has your friend checked immigration files? I mean, your mother’s name is certainly ethnic, for want of a better word.”
“I’ll ask him.”
Eden glanced back at the map and asked, “What small town does your father’s family live in? Should we go there next?”
“I was hoping to have more information before we tried to find them. It would be better to do something rather than just sitting around this room. Rockwall is the name of the town. I have the name and address written down.”
“Pack up the computer and let’s head out of here. I’d rather be moving than sitting still too.”
Sunday, November 23, 2008
THE BANDIT QUEEN - Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
Deakin and Eden drove back to the security service and parked in the dark shadows along the street. There was only one small light inside the building and a few cars in the parking lot. All the cars bearing the company name must already be out on the street, guarding the homes and businesses of the fair city of Dallas. Deakin scrunched down in the passenger seat and rested his head against the door. He stared off into the distance and ignored Eden’s presence. She left him to his own thoughts and pulled out the binoculars to study the small building in front of them. No shadows moved across the lighted window but Eden assumed there must be someone inside, answering the radio calls and making sure the alarms were monitored. None of the cars in the parking lot had been there earlier in the day and no one drove in or out of the fenced lot.
Deakin pulled himself up in the seat and Eden asked him the first question that came to her mind. “Do you have a driver’s license?”
Deakin jerked his shoulder in her direction and said, with a hurt voice, “No, but I can drive. I’ve driven lots of times.”
Eden leveled a look in his direction and he said, with a shrug, “Well, a friend of mine let me drive his car once and I didn’t get stopped by a cop or wreck the car or anything like that. Why?”
“Well, we might need to leave quickly and I might not be able to drive so you’d have to. Do you think you could do it in this car? It has an automatic transmission so you wouldn’t have to shift gears. We’ll find a big parking lot tomorrow and let you practice. I’ll get some more keys made and you can carry a set in your pocket.”
Deakin brightened up a little and Eden found him watching her closely as she drove away from their stakeout and returned to the motel.
“I just can’t sit in the car anymore tonight. I don’t care what we miss. I need to sleep on a bed, not in a car.”
The next morning she found Deakin curled in a ball next to her on the bed. She quietly slid off the bed and shut herself in the shower. When she came out, dressed for the day, she found Deakin sitting on the bed with his head hanging down. From the look of his eyes, he’d spent most of the night on the Internet, following clues from one site to another. He stumbled into the bathroom and stayed there until Eden returned with breakfast. He looked much better after a shower and some food. Eden still hadn’t asked him how he felt about seeing his “mother” again and knew she wouldn’t for some time yet. Certain emotional experiences needed to age a little before they could be brought out into the light of day. The two young people talked about cars and errands and other unimportant things while they ate breakfast. As Eden packed up their stuff, Deakin stared out the window.
“Are we leaving this place? Does it cost too much? Can we stay here at least one more day? I really need to connect with some people again tonight. I’ve thrown out a lot of baited hooks and I should be getting some answers by tonight.”
Eden nodded, but she said, “Pack up your stuff anyway and slide it on the luggage shelf in the closet. Grab the computer and let’s get moving. Here are the keys. Get yourself loaded and I’ll stop by the desk to tell them we’re staying another day.”
They drove carefully away from the motel and headed for a large shopping mall a few miles down the road. Eden drove to the far corner of the parking lot and stopped her car. For the next hour, she let Deakin drive the car around the edges of the parking lot. When she felt he’d become at ease behind the wheel of the car, she pointed him toward the road that ran next to the mall building. Deakin threw her a scared glance before a look of determination settled on his young face. He slid into the long line of slowly moving cars and drove a complete circle around the mall. The tenseness of his face and the death grip his fingers had on the steering wheel were the only signs of his lack of expertise. He drove away from the mall and turned left onto the street. Eden waited until he stopped at a traffic light before she broke her silence.
“Lean back a little and relax. Tense people draw police attention. Don’t speed and always use your turn signal. That’s all I’m going to say right now.”
Deakin drove through the streets of Dallas for the next hour, getting more and more comfortable behind the wheel of the small car. He finally turned into the parking lot of a small key shop and disappeared inside. He returned a short time later with a small sack. Eden moved into the driver’s seat and waited to be shown the contents of the bag. Deakin pulled out a high-tech looking padlock with a keypad on the front of it.
He smiled at Eden’s baffled expression. “It’s an alarm for motel doors. Before long, some people are going to be looking for us, so we’d better start paying attention to our own safety. Should we get some weapons of some kind?”
“No guns. I don’t know anything about them. We could get some hunting knives at any Wal-Mart or sporting goods store. Let’s start with those, okay?”
Deakin nodded happily and led Eden straight to the sporting goods section in a large discount store. They looked at all the hunting knives and pocket knives before picking out two knives with sheaths to slide on their belts. Eden smiled at the middle-aged clerk and said, “Our cousins will really like those for Christmas, won’t they?”
The man nodded without paying any attention to their story and wrapped up the two knives. Deakin wandered away to look at guns. He pointed eagerly at a pellet gun on the wall above the clerk’s head. Eden shook her head at the gun but added a couple of cans of pepper spray to their purchase. Deakin returned from his foray with a couple of thermal ponchos. Eden grudgingly put more money out on the counter and grabbed the sack to leave.
Deakin ran behind her like a puppy dog and caught up with her in the food section. Eden bought energy bars, cans of fruit juice, trail mix, bananas, apples, and oranges. Deakin carried the sack containing the knives to the car and fell into the front seat. He opened the sack and pulled out the knife he’d chosen. Then he carefully threaded the sheath onto his belt and practiced reaching for the knife like a gunfighter in the western movies. Eden grabbed the can of pepper spray out of his hand before he sprayed it inside the car.
“This stuff is terrible, Deakin. We’d probably have to go to the hospital if you sprayed it right now. Have you ever rubbed your eyes after touching a jalapeno pepper? Multiply that by a few hundred or a few thousand and that’s how much this stuff hurts. I am glad you found these ponchos though. We can really use them in the car or sitting outside at night. Now, let’s get back to our stakeout.”
Deakin fiddled a while with his knife and finally asked, “Do you think my “mother” told someone we came to her house?”
“Yes, I do. I’ll bet she called as soon as we left. Your ‘father’ has probably been warned and may not show up at work at all. We’ll have to be really careful from now on. They’ll be looking for us at the same time we’re looking for your ‘father.’ Keep looking around as I drive.”
Deakin immediately looked at all the cars around them and, with his head turned away from her, asked, “How did you know how to hit her? How did you know that you could? I mean, have you ever hit anyone like that before?”
“Well, I’ve never hit anyone like that before but I knew I’d have to do something to make her talk quickly. I learned where to hit people in martial arts class when I was a kid. I wore a white suit with a colored belt and punched and yelled and kicked for months. The only thing I ever hit was a board. I’ve never hurt anyone in my life until now but I know I can do it. All it really takes, Deakin, is the willingness to punch clear to the other side of the person. You don’t think about your fist or foot hitting their stomach. You think about your foot pushing into their stomach clear to their backbone.”
“How do you know all this stuff? You’re only a few years older than me but you know how to take care of yourself so much better. I’m the one who’s been on his own for almost two years but you’re better at this.”
Eden smiled easily at Deakin and said, “You spent your time on the two biggies: food and shelter. I’ve read and thought about a lot of stuff and I’ve watched people a lot. Most of them are so wrapped up in their own worlds they don’t pay any attention to anyone else. That’s why three different people will give three different descriptions of the car that ran over the kid on the bicycle. They weren’t watching at all until the crash happened. I learned a long time ago that it was better to be the watcher than to be the watched. I have six brothers and sisters and they all are louder and larger than I am. I was the quiet one who was no trouble so nobody paid any attention to what I did. Actually I did more unacceptable things than any of the others did but I never got caught. You can get away with most things if it looks like you know what you’re doing. Remember that, Deakin. Never look guilty and never confess to anything and we’ll get through this.”
Eden pulled into a parking place about a block from the security service. Deakin focused the binoculars on the office door. “There’s a man standing at the gate to check every car in and out. It looks like there are more cars in the parking lot than before and there are lots more people standing around on the street.”
“Duck, Deakin. We’re getting out of here.”
Eden pulled the car quickly out onto the street and drove easily and slowly through the traffic to the next corner. She turned right and headed away from the area. She checked her rearview mirror just before she turned right again and noticed several tan cars screeching around the corner in her direction.
“Instead of looking at the floor, look at the map and tell me how to get out of here. Corner of Gillespie and Duval heading west. Now, I’m on Duval and Real, heading sort of north.”
Paper rustled from Deakin’s direction and then he said, “Stay on Real. It goes clear to downtown. Then we can catch a highway in any direction. I’d say we should go west and then north. It will be hard for someone to follow us through all the highway changes.”
“How far on Real?”
“Two miles, tops. You already should be getting close to all those huge buildings.”
“Sit up now and help me watch for cars. They haven’t seen you so maybe they’ll think this is the wrong car since there are two people in it. Give me your baseball cap and I’ll cover up my hair.”
Deakin and Eden drove back to the security service and parked in the dark shadows along the street. There was only one small light inside the building and a few cars in the parking lot. All the cars bearing the company name must already be out on the street, guarding the homes and businesses of the fair city of Dallas. Deakin scrunched down in the passenger seat and rested his head against the door. He stared off into the distance and ignored Eden’s presence. She left him to his own thoughts and pulled out the binoculars to study the small building in front of them. No shadows moved across the lighted window but Eden assumed there must be someone inside, answering the radio calls and making sure the alarms were monitored. None of the cars in the parking lot had been there earlier in the day and no one drove in or out of the fenced lot.
Deakin pulled himself up in the seat and Eden asked him the first question that came to her mind. “Do you have a driver’s license?”
Deakin jerked his shoulder in her direction and said, with a hurt voice, “No, but I can drive. I’ve driven lots of times.”
Eden leveled a look in his direction and he said, with a shrug, “Well, a friend of mine let me drive his car once and I didn’t get stopped by a cop or wreck the car or anything like that. Why?”
“Well, we might need to leave quickly and I might not be able to drive so you’d have to. Do you think you could do it in this car? It has an automatic transmission so you wouldn’t have to shift gears. We’ll find a big parking lot tomorrow and let you practice. I’ll get some more keys made and you can carry a set in your pocket.”
Deakin brightened up a little and Eden found him watching her closely as she drove away from their stakeout and returned to the motel.
“I just can’t sit in the car anymore tonight. I don’t care what we miss. I need to sleep on a bed, not in a car.”
The next morning she found Deakin curled in a ball next to her on the bed. She quietly slid off the bed and shut herself in the shower. When she came out, dressed for the day, she found Deakin sitting on the bed with his head hanging down. From the look of his eyes, he’d spent most of the night on the Internet, following clues from one site to another. He stumbled into the bathroom and stayed there until Eden returned with breakfast. He looked much better after a shower and some food. Eden still hadn’t asked him how he felt about seeing his “mother” again and knew she wouldn’t for some time yet. Certain emotional experiences needed to age a little before they could be brought out into the light of day. The two young people talked about cars and errands and other unimportant things while they ate breakfast. As Eden packed up their stuff, Deakin stared out the window.
“Are we leaving this place? Does it cost too much? Can we stay here at least one more day? I really need to connect with some people again tonight. I’ve thrown out a lot of baited hooks and I should be getting some answers by tonight.”
Eden nodded, but she said, “Pack up your stuff anyway and slide it on the luggage shelf in the closet. Grab the computer and let’s get moving. Here are the keys. Get yourself loaded and I’ll stop by the desk to tell them we’re staying another day.”
They drove carefully away from the motel and headed for a large shopping mall a few miles down the road. Eden drove to the far corner of the parking lot and stopped her car. For the next hour, she let Deakin drive the car around the edges of the parking lot. When she felt he’d become at ease behind the wheel of the car, she pointed him toward the road that ran next to the mall building. Deakin threw her a scared glance before a look of determination settled on his young face. He slid into the long line of slowly moving cars and drove a complete circle around the mall. The tenseness of his face and the death grip his fingers had on the steering wheel were the only signs of his lack of expertise. He drove away from the mall and turned left onto the street. Eden waited until he stopped at a traffic light before she broke her silence.
“Lean back a little and relax. Tense people draw police attention. Don’t speed and always use your turn signal. That’s all I’m going to say right now.”
Deakin drove through the streets of Dallas for the next hour, getting more and more comfortable behind the wheel of the small car. He finally turned into the parking lot of a small key shop and disappeared inside. He returned a short time later with a small sack. Eden moved into the driver’s seat and waited to be shown the contents of the bag. Deakin pulled out a high-tech looking padlock with a keypad on the front of it.
He smiled at Eden’s baffled expression. “It’s an alarm for motel doors. Before long, some people are going to be looking for us, so we’d better start paying attention to our own safety. Should we get some weapons of some kind?”
“No guns. I don’t know anything about them. We could get some hunting knives at any Wal-Mart or sporting goods store. Let’s start with those, okay?”
Deakin nodded happily and led Eden straight to the sporting goods section in a large discount store. They looked at all the hunting knives and pocket knives before picking out two knives with sheaths to slide on their belts. Eden smiled at the middle-aged clerk and said, “Our cousins will really like those for Christmas, won’t they?”
The man nodded without paying any attention to their story and wrapped up the two knives. Deakin wandered away to look at guns. He pointed eagerly at a pellet gun on the wall above the clerk’s head. Eden shook her head at the gun but added a couple of cans of pepper spray to their purchase. Deakin returned from his foray with a couple of thermal ponchos. Eden grudgingly put more money out on the counter and grabbed the sack to leave.
Deakin ran behind her like a puppy dog and caught up with her in the food section. Eden bought energy bars, cans of fruit juice, trail mix, bananas, apples, and oranges. Deakin carried the sack containing the knives to the car and fell into the front seat. He opened the sack and pulled out the knife he’d chosen. Then he carefully threaded the sheath onto his belt and practiced reaching for the knife like a gunfighter in the western movies. Eden grabbed the can of pepper spray out of his hand before he sprayed it inside the car.
“This stuff is terrible, Deakin. We’d probably have to go to the hospital if you sprayed it right now. Have you ever rubbed your eyes after touching a jalapeno pepper? Multiply that by a few hundred or a few thousand and that’s how much this stuff hurts. I am glad you found these ponchos though. We can really use them in the car or sitting outside at night. Now, let’s get back to our stakeout.”
Deakin fiddled a while with his knife and finally asked, “Do you think my “mother” told someone we came to her house?”
“Yes, I do. I’ll bet she called as soon as we left. Your ‘father’ has probably been warned and may not show up at work at all. We’ll have to be really careful from now on. They’ll be looking for us at the same time we’re looking for your ‘father.’ Keep looking around as I drive.”
Deakin immediately looked at all the cars around them and, with his head turned away from her, asked, “How did you know how to hit her? How did you know that you could? I mean, have you ever hit anyone like that before?”
“Well, I’ve never hit anyone like that before but I knew I’d have to do something to make her talk quickly. I learned where to hit people in martial arts class when I was a kid. I wore a white suit with a colored belt and punched and yelled and kicked for months. The only thing I ever hit was a board. I’ve never hurt anyone in my life until now but I know I can do it. All it really takes, Deakin, is the willingness to punch clear to the other side of the person. You don’t think about your fist or foot hitting their stomach. You think about your foot pushing into their stomach clear to their backbone.”
“How do you know all this stuff? You’re only a few years older than me but you know how to take care of yourself so much better. I’m the one who’s been on his own for almost two years but you’re better at this.”
Eden smiled easily at Deakin and said, “You spent your time on the two biggies: food and shelter. I’ve read and thought about a lot of stuff and I’ve watched people a lot. Most of them are so wrapped up in their own worlds they don’t pay any attention to anyone else. That’s why three different people will give three different descriptions of the car that ran over the kid on the bicycle. They weren’t watching at all until the crash happened. I learned a long time ago that it was better to be the watcher than to be the watched. I have six brothers and sisters and they all are louder and larger than I am. I was the quiet one who was no trouble so nobody paid any attention to what I did. Actually I did more unacceptable things than any of the others did but I never got caught. You can get away with most things if it looks like you know what you’re doing. Remember that, Deakin. Never look guilty and never confess to anything and we’ll get through this.”
Eden pulled into a parking place about a block from the security service. Deakin focused the binoculars on the office door. “There’s a man standing at the gate to check every car in and out. It looks like there are more cars in the parking lot than before and there are lots more people standing around on the street.”
“Duck, Deakin. We’re getting out of here.”
Eden pulled the car quickly out onto the street and drove easily and slowly through the traffic to the next corner. She turned right and headed away from the area. She checked her rearview mirror just before she turned right again and noticed several tan cars screeching around the corner in her direction.
“Instead of looking at the floor, look at the map and tell me how to get out of here. Corner of Gillespie and Duval heading west. Now, I’m on Duval and Real, heading sort of north.”
Paper rustled from Deakin’s direction and then he said, “Stay on Real. It goes clear to downtown. Then we can catch a highway in any direction. I’d say we should go west and then north. It will be hard for someone to follow us through all the highway changes.”
“How far on Real?”
“Two miles, tops. You already should be getting close to all those huge buildings.”
“Sit up now and help me watch for cars. They haven’t seen you so maybe they’ll think this is the wrong car since there are two people in it. Give me your baseball cap and I’ll cover up my hair.”
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Chapter 4
CHAPTER 4
A well-brushed man in a quiet office located in a quiet building set his phone carefully back in place. By this point in his official life, all of Clark Duncan’s distinguishing characteristics had been airbrushed into anonymity. He resembled thousands of other men all across the country who wore expensive suits to the office every day. He drove an expensive car but it was painted gray and the interior was also gray. The owner of an expensive salon trimmed his hair but it always looked just the same. He was neat, clean, calm, and unremarkable. He leaned back in his chair and contemplated the opposite wall. His mouth pursed slightly in distaste as his right hand reached for the phone. His hand stopped in midair as Clark rethought his impulse. He stood up, adjusted his suit jacket, shot his cuffs, and strolled out of his office. His secretary raised her eyes and watched him walk down the hallway without a word or a glance in her direction. She smiled grimly and wondered what the latest crisis could be. She’d find out sometime, she always did.
Clark walked smoothly through the building and out the back door. Large boulders dotted the landscape along with bushes and wooden benches. He chose a bench out of sight of the windows along the back of the office building and pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. He flipped it open and quickly punched in a long series of numbers. When a voice answered the call, Clark spoke slowly and clearly.
“#633. 9:30 at 24th and Park Street.”
Then he flipped the phone closed and pulled a cigar out of another pocket. He cut off the end with his knife and lit it. After three or four puffs, he relaxed a bit and scrutinized the white ash on the end of the cigar. The phone call had brought back memories Clark had not thought of in a very long time. Years back, when he was a younger man, he’d spirited a small boy away from his aunt and questioned him about his parents without success. His superior, John Edward Quincy, had set up and funded the boy’s life in Dallas. Clark had vehemently disagreed with Quincy’s plan and had even gone over his boss’s head with his opinions, but without any success. When the boy had run away two years ago, Clark had let him go without a second thought and ordered the project closed down. Since that time, he’d forgotten all about the boy. Now that the boy had resurfaced, he would have to decide what to do about him. He remembered the project vividly. It was his first undercover operation for John Edward Quincy and it hadn’t gone well from the first day.
Clark Duncan shook his head as he remembered the briefing in Quincy’s office. John Edward Quincy had been a pompous, self-important son of a bitch in Clark’s opinion. The first time Clark had called him by his first name, Quincy had pointedly told him that his name was “John Edward” and he expected Clark to remember it. Clark had remembered it but had referred to him as “Mr. Quincy” or just “Quincy” for the rest of their association.
Quincy had sent Clark to California to clean up the mess caused by the first man sent to deal with the Kimbroughs. The week after Alex and Helena Kimbrough had disappeared from work, Quincy had sent an agent to find them. When Steve Olsen had arrived in Los Angeles, he found a cesspool of a mess. Not only had the Kimbroughs disappeared but so had all the research Dr. Phillips’ group had done for the last five years. The files had been emptied and the computers had been sabotaged to destroy all information about the project. Small pockets of research had been saved by other members of the group but not enough to rebuild the entire project. Dr. Phillips had completely broken down and refused to start over. He and other key members of the research group felt the project could not be done without Helena Kimbrough. Alex had been a major member of the group but Helena’s knowledge of laser design and capabilities could not be duplicated.
Steve Olsen had run through the remaining researchers like a bulldozer and left broken bodies by the wayside. When Clark entered the picture, Olsen had found the Kimbroughs and questioned them mercilessly. Helena had died early in the interrogation but Alex had hung on. Clark threw Olsen out of the operation and tried to keep Alex alive long enough to get any information. He was somewhat successful because Alex didn’t die right away. He just wouldn’t say anything about the laser research project. He spoke his son’s name over and over. Clark stashed Alex in a restricted hospital and cleaned up after Olsen.
Helena and another researcher who’d tried to run away from Olsen were sent over the edge of the expressway and burned beyond recognition. Clark tracked down Helena’s sister and took the small boy away from her. He’d questioned the boy and then called in a hypnotist to pry out any information the boy might have. He got nothing from the boy and he never found any of the research files or data. He suggested the boy be returned to his aunt and forgotten but Quincy had the idea to set up the family in Dallas and monitor him constantly. That didn’t work either. The boy knew nothing and Clark closed down the project when the boy ran away from home. Now the boy had reappeared and had even found his “mother.” He’d been seen in the vicinity of his “father” also. Operatives had been sent to pick the boy up but he’d evaded them. Clark blanketed the area with more men but they hadn’t come up with the boy yet.
Clark looked up into the bright blue sky and took a deep breath. He stood up and tossed his cigar into the dirt. He straightened his jacket and walked sedately into the office building. Tonight he would meet with a man who could handle the situation and Clark could go on with his own work.
Clark drove his gray car to the corner of 24th and Park Streets and parked next to a newsstand located there. A few minutes later a square-shouldered man in a long overcoat approached the car and opened the passenger door. Clark drove smoothly away and joined the traffic that filled the streets of large cities at any time of the day or night. His companion settled in without a word and waited for Clark to bring up the reason for the meeting. Clark drove smoothly to a large parking lot outside a group of movie theaters and parked in between two large pickups. He then took a few minutes to collect his thoughts and greeted his passenger.
“Good to see you again, Walt. I’ve missed working with you lately.”
A small throaty chuckle escaped from the man and he said, “Sure, Clark. You don’t miss the street work at all and you know it. You were born to run things from behind a desk. What’s the problem this time? It must be a big one if you’re talking to me in person.”
Clark contemplated the face of the man seated next to him. Walt Rogers had not aged gracefully. The rigors of his profession were written on his face. Deep lines crossed his
forehead and creases fanned out from the sides of his eyes. Frown lines bracketed his mouth and his nose had been broken and set crookedly. Walt had obviously been a very busy man in the last ten years. Clark suffered one small twinge of remorse but quickly buried it with his other regrets. Walt was the man who could solve his problem and make it all disappear.
Clark quickly outlined the situation and passed on all the information he had on Deakin’s whereabouts. Walt had listened intently and then asked a few questions of his own.
“Does the boy have any help and is he still in the Dallas area?”
“The woman who called in said there was a girl with him. A girl with long brown hair and a real mean streak. She never heard her name.” Clark passed over some papers. “The woman’s name is on that list. She played the part of the boy’s mother. You can talk to her when you get to Dallas. I don’t know where the kids are now. They visited the woman night before last. We alerted the man who had posed as the boy’s father and staked him out. Today two kids were spotted outside the office of a security service where the boy’s ‘father’ works. They were followed for miles by one of our teams but they got away. Their car is listed on that page. We have a name for the girl too. Eden Boatman from California. Her apartment has been searched but there’s no tie to the boy Deakin. She’s a student at UCLA so maybe they met there. We’re still looking into her background. What else do you need?”
“Who do I call for backup or am I just flapping in the breeze?”
“Call Tom Adams. He’ll set up anything you need. Just find those kids. The file is closed and I want it to stay that way. It’s your job to clear away these loose ends.”
Clark started the car and drove away in the stream of cars leaving the parking lot. He dropped Walt at a subway stop a mile away and drove sedately home. He consigned Deakin’s fate to Walt and forgot about him.
A well-brushed man in a quiet office located in a quiet building set his phone carefully back in place. By this point in his official life, all of Clark Duncan’s distinguishing characteristics had been airbrushed into anonymity. He resembled thousands of other men all across the country who wore expensive suits to the office every day. He drove an expensive car but it was painted gray and the interior was also gray. The owner of an expensive salon trimmed his hair but it always looked just the same. He was neat, clean, calm, and unremarkable. He leaned back in his chair and contemplated the opposite wall. His mouth pursed slightly in distaste as his right hand reached for the phone. His hand stopped in midair as Clark rethought his impulse. He stood up, adjusted his suit jacket, shot his cuffs, and strolled out of his office. His secretary raised her eyes and watched him walk down the hallway without a word or a glance in her direction. She smiled grimly and wondered what the latest crisis could be. She’d find out sometime, she always did.
Clark walked smoothly through the building and out the back door. Large boulders dotted the landscape along with bushes and wooden benches. He chose a bench out of sight of the windows along the back of the office building and pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. He flipped it open and quickly punched in a long series of numbers. When a voice answered the call, Clark spoke slowly and clearly.
“#633. 9:30 at 24th and Park Street.”
Then he flipped the phone closed and pulled a cigar out of another pocket. He cut off the end with his knife and lit it. After three or four puffs, he relaxed a bit and scrutinized the white ash on the end of the cigar. The phone call had brought back memories Clark had not thought of in a very long time. Years back, when he was a younger man, he’d spirited a small boy away from his aunt and questioned him about his parents without success. His superior, John Edward Quincy, had set up and funded the boy’s life in Dallas. Clark had vehemently disagreed with Quincy’s plan and had even gone over his boss’s head with his opinions, but without any success. When the boy had run away two years ago, Clark had let him go without a second thought and ordered the project closed down. Since that time, he’d forgotten all about the boy. Now that the boy had resurfaced, he would have to decide what to do about him. He remembered the project vividly. It was his first undercover operation for John Edward Quincy and it hadn’t gone well from the first day.
Clark Duncan shook his head as he remembered the briefing in Quincy’s office. John Edward Quincy had been a pompous, self-important son of a bitch in Clark’s opinion. The first time Clark had called him by his first name, Quincy had pointedly told him that his name was “John Edward” and he expected Clark to remember it. Clark had remembered it but had referred to him as “Mr. Quincy” or just “Quincy” for the rest of their association.
Quincy had sent Clark to California to clean up the mess caused by the first man sent to deal with the Kimbroughs. The week after Alex and Helena Kimbrough had disappeared from work, Quincy had sent an agent to find them. When Steve Olsen had arrived in Los Angeles, he found a cesspool of a mess. Not only had the Kimbroughs disappeared but so had all the research Dr. Phillips’ group had done for the last five years. The files had been emptied and the computers had been sabotaged to destroy all information about the project. Small pockets of research had been saved by other members of the group but not enough to rebuild the entire project. Dr. Phillips had completely broken down and refused to start over. He and other key members of the research group felt the project could not be done without Helena Kimbrough. Alex had been a major member of the group but Helena’s knowledge of laser design and capabilities could not be duplicated.
Steve Olsen had run through the remaining researchers like a bulldozer and left broken bodies by the wayside. When Clark entered the picture, Olsen had found the Kimbroughs and questioned them mercilessly. Helena had died early in the interrogation but Alex had hung on. Clark threw Olsen out of the operation and tried to keep Alex alive long enough to get any information. He was somewhat successful because Alex didn’t die right away. He just wouldn’t say anything about the laser research project. He spoke his son’s name over and over. Clark stashed Alex in a restricted hospital and cleaned up after Olsen.
Helena and another researcher who’d tried to run away from Olsen were sent over the edge of the expressway and burned beyond recognition. Clark tracked down Helena’s sister and took the small boy away from her. He’d questioned the boy and then called in a hypnotist to pry out any information the boy might have. He got nothing from the boy and he never found any of the research files or data. He suggested the boy be returned to his aunt and forgotten but Quincy had the idea to set up the family in Dallas and monitor him constantly. That didn’t work either. The boy knew nothing and Clark closed down the project when the boy ran away from home. Now the boy had reappeared and had even found his “mother.” He’d been seen in the vicinity of his “father” also. Operatives had been sent to pick the boy up but he’d evaded them. Clark blanketed the area with more men but they hadn’t come up with the boy yet.
Clark looked up into the bright blue sky and took a deep breath. He stood up and tossed his cigar into the dirt. He straightened his jacket and walked sedately into the office building. Tonight he would meet with a man who could handle the situation and Clark could go on with his own work.
Clark drove his gray car to the corner of 24th and Park Streets and parked next to a newsstand located there. A few minutes later a square-shouldered man in a long overcoat approached the car and opened the passenger door. Clark drove smoothly away and joined the traffic that filled the streets of large cities at any time of the day or night. His companion settled in without a word and waited for Clark to bring up the reason for the meeting. Clark drove smoothly to a large parking lot outside a group of movie theaters and parked in between two large pickups. He then took a few minutes to collect his thoughts and greeted his passenger.
“Good to see you again, Walt. I’ve missed working with you lately.”
A small throaty chuckle escaped from the man and he said, “Sure, Clark. You don’t miss the street work at all and you know it. You were born to run things from behind a desk. What’s the problem this time? It must be a big one if you’re talking to me in person.”
Clark contemplated the face of the man seated next to him. Walt Rogers had not aged gracefully. The rigors of his profession were written on his face. Deep lines crossed his
forehead and creases fanned out from the sides of his eyes. Frown lines bracketed his mouth and his nose had been broken and set crookedly. Walt had obviously been a very busy man in the last ten years. Clark suffered one small twinge of remorse but quickly buried it with his other regrets. Walt was the man who could solve his problem and make it all disappear.
Clark quickly outlined the situation and passed on all the information he had on Deakin’s whereabouts. Walt had listened intently and then asked a few questions of his own.
“Does the boy have any help and is he still in the Dallas area?”
“The woman who called in said there was a girl with him. A girl with long brown hair and a real mean streak. She never heard her name.” Clark passed over some papers. “The woman’s name is on that list. She played the part of the boy’s mother. You can talk to her when you get to Dallas. I don’t know where the kids are now. They visited the woman night before last. We alerted the man who had posed as the boy’s father and staked him out. Today two kids were spotted outside the office of a security service where the boy’s ‘father’ works. They were followed for miles by one of our teams but they got away. Their car is listed on that page. We have a name for the girl too. Eden Boatman from California. Her apartment has been searched but there’s no tie to the boy Deakin. She’s a student at UCLA so maybe they met there. We’re still looking into her background. What else do you need?”
“Who do I call for backup or am I just flapping in the breeze?”
“Call Tom Adams. He’ll set up anything you need. Just find those kids. The file is closed and I want it to stay that way. It’s your job to clear away these loose ends.”
Clark started the car and drove away in the stream of cars leaving the parking lot. He dropped Walt at a subway stop a mile away and drove sedately home. He consigned Deakin’s fate to Walt and forgot about him.
Monday, November 17, 2008
THE BANDIT QUEEN - Chapter 3 continued
Deakin compressed his lips together and pulled out the owner’s manual for Eden’s car. Then he climbed out of the car, pasted a smile on his face and waited patiently for Eden to join him on the sidewalk. The two young people walked calmly up the walk and rang the doorbell. After a minute or so, Eden rang the bell again and Deakin beat on the door with his fist.
A tired, middle-aged woman opened the front door a few inches and spoke through the screen door. “If you’re selling something, you might as well leave right now. I don’t have any money. If you’re from some church, I’m not interested in that either. So, just go away.”
She backed her face out of the crack. Eden whipped open the screen door and stuck her foot between the door and the frame. Deakin moved out of the shadow and leaned his shoulder against the door. The woman frantically tried to shut the door but Deakin shoved it open. They stepped inside the little house and Eden shut the door behind them. The woman ran toward the back of the house but Deakin grabbed her arm and swung her onto the sagging couch against the wall of the living room.
“What do you want? I already told you I didn’t have any money. Please, don’t hurt me.”
Eden jerked her head toward the rest of the house and Deakin obediently searched the other rooms. Eden stared down at the scared woman and waited for Deakin to return. She didn’t know what to do next. Deakin stepped into the room and joined Eden in her scrutiny of the pathetic figure lying on the couch. He reached out and pulled the woman into a sitting position. Then he knelt in front of her and asked,
“Is Jeannette Murphy your real name or is Barbara Williams your real name?”
The woman stopped crying immediately and said in a flat, toneless voice, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My name is Jeannette Murphy. I’ve never heard of that other name.”
She stared defiantly at Eden and dropped her eyes to the ground. She didn’t look at Deakin at all. He angrily shook her arms and then grabbed her hair to make her look at his face. Her eyes widened in recognition and then dropped to her lap.
Deakin tried to peer up into her face from his position on the carpet but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Please, please, you have to tell me why. I have to know. What happened to my parents? Why did you pretend to be my mother? What was so important about me? You have to tell me. YOU HAVE TO TELL ME!”
Deakin grabbed her arms again and shook her as he yelled into her face. She didn’t even try to resist. She only mumbled over and over, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
Deakin pulled his hand back and swung at her face but Eden pulled him away from the woman. She crouched down next to him and held him while he cried out years of frustration and uncertainty. Then she leaned him against a chair and stepped directly in front of the woman. Her hair had fallen into her face and she continued mumbling but Eden could see that she was faking her collapse. Eden stomped down on the woman’s foot as hard as she could and was rewarded with a truly venomous glance through the hanks of hair. The woman tried to cry in pain but she’d waited too long for believability.
“Now, listen to me, you bitch. Deakin is still too nice a person to hurt you, even after what’s been done to him, but I’m not. You’re part of some scheme to screw up this boy’s life and I want to know what you know. I want names and reasons. Do you understand what I’m saying? I am prepared to hurt you to find out what I want to know.”
She lifted up the woman’s hair to get a glance at her face but the woman leapt off the couch and reached out with both hands to shove Eden out of her way. Eden dropped under the woman’s arms and leaned in toward her. The woman tripped over Eden’s right knee and Eden slammed her elbow into the woman’s back, connecting with her kidney. The woman screamed and fell back on the couch, writhing in pain. Deakin leaned forward with interest and then, following the Eden’s pointing finger, he turned on the television set and cranked up the volume.
Eden grabbed the front of the woman’s shirt and pulled her face up to her own. “Now, do you understand what I mean? I can hurt you a lot worse than that so you’d better start talking right now.”
The woman’s eyes glanced furtively around the room and then flitted across Eden’s face. What she saw in the girl’s face did not comfort her in any way. To stave off the inevitable, she began to cry. Eden pushed her back on the couch and held her with a hand on her chest.
“When I swing my fist, turn the television up louder.”
Deakin nodded even though Eden couldn’t see him but the woman saw him and words poured out of her mouth. “Why are you letting her hurt me? I was nice to you when you lived with us. I was nicer to you than I was to the other boys. I talked them into letting us all live together like a family. I thought it was the best to find out what they wanted to know but you didn’t know anything. They wouldn’t believe me and that’s why we lived together for so long. They kept hoping you’d remember but you never did. You never did. I even made them give you the computer. I thought that might jog your memory but it didn’t because there was nothing for you to remember. You were just too little to remember anything. They even hypnotized you but that didn’t work either. That was before I came into the picture so I wasn’t there but I heard all you remembered were a few little kid rhymes, like the spider one. I’m sorry I wasn’t your real mother but I tried. I tried to be good to you but I just really didn’t know how. Please don’t let her hit me.”
“Who hypnotized Deakin? Was it someone here in Dallas or was it back in California? Exactly what rhymes did he remember?”
“All I know is that it was before me. I don’t think it was here in Dallas. We were already moved into the house and I got the feeling they brought the boy directly to us as soon as they hit town. He was a crying little mess but he got over it real quick. That part about the rhymes was just something I heard but I didn’t pay much attention to it. I know for sure about the spider one ‘cos he would say it to his stuffed animals. I just thought he’d heard two others before because he learned them right off when I read them to him. The one about birds in a pie and the counting one, you know, buckle my shoe and the rest of them. That’s all I know.”
Eden stared in disgust at the writhing woman and spoke over her shoulder to Deakin. “Does any of this make sense to you? What else can we ask her?”
Deakin appeared soundlessly at her shoulder and spoke in her ear. “Ask her who ‘they’ are and what they were hoping to find out.”
“Tell us about the person in charge. Everything you can remember, okay?” Eden knelt in front of the couch and leaned her elbow in the woman’s stomach. “Now, Jeannette, it’s time to answer our questions. Who paid you to be Deakin’s mother? Who paid for the whole fake life? Tell us now and we’ll go away and never come back.”
Jeannette Murphy glared at Eden and said through clenched teeth. “Sure, sure. I tell you all my secrets and you’ll go away. Then, what happens to me later? I’ll lose my job, I’ll lose my house, and I’ll probably lose my life. Go ahead, hurt me. I’ll still be alive when you’re through. That’s a lot better than telling you everything and then getting killed. Why don’t you just go away and leave me alone? I know very little about this boy. Someone, somewhere, thought he might remember something from his life with his real parents but he didn’t. We tried everything we could but there was nothing there. That’s why we never called the police when he disappeared. We all just moved away and nobody cared. Go away. I can’t help you.”
She turned her head away from the two people in her living room and hid her face in a pillow. Eden backed away from the couch and joined Deakin at the front window. They peered out at the traffic on the small street and saw nothing to scare them. Without a word they grabbed their props and left the house. Jeannette Murphy stayed on the couch for twenty or thirty minutes before she dragged herself to the bathroom to clean up. Then she approached the phone with trepidation. She stood with her hand on the phone for several minutes until she quickly made her decision. She dialed a long distance number from memory and waited impatiently for it to be answered.
“Jeannette Murphy, here in Dallas, Texas. I’ve just had a visit from the boy Deakin and a friend of his. I don’t know how he tracked me down but they asked a lot of questions. I didn’t tell them anything.”
Then she carefully put the phone down on the table and wandered around her small house. She touched the furniture in the living room as she passed by it. She picked up each small china figurine on the mantel and then set it carefully back into place. She opened her closet door and ran her hands along the clothes hanging from the rod. She slowly opened each cabinet door in the kitchen and looked at all the dishes stored inside. As she returned to the living room from her circuit of the house, she realized she’d just said goodbye to everything she owned. Tears poured down her cheeks but she did nothing to stop them. They dripped onto her clothes and spotted the carpet as she walked. She leaned in the doorway as her body shook with sobs. After a time, she pushed herself to move and walked in the bathroom to wash her face. She knew someone would come to see her soon and they also wouldn’t believe she didn’t know anything about Deakin and his friend. Best case scenario – they would let her pack up her stuff and move to some other town. Worst case scenario – they would kill her and bury her body somewhere it would never be found. She hoped for the best, but her experience with life had led her to expect the worst.
A tired, middle-aged woman opened the front door a few inches and spoke through the screen door. “If you’re selling something, you might as well leave right now. I don’t have any money. If you’re from some church, I’m not interested in that either. So, just go away.”
She backed her face out of the crack. Eden whipped open the screen door and stuck her foot between the door and the frame. Deakin moved out of the shadow and leaned his shoulder against the door. The woman frantically tried to shut the door but Deakin shoved it open. They stepped inside the little house and Eden shut the door behind them. The woman ran toward the back of the house but Deakin grabbed her arm and swung her onto the sagging couch against the wall of the living room.
“What do you want? I already told you I didn’t have any money. Please, don’t hurt me.”
Eden jerked her head toward the rest of the house and Deakin obediently searched the other rooms. Eden stared down at the scared woman and waited for Deakin to return. She didn’t know what to do next. Deakin stepped into the room and joined Eden in her scrutiny of the pathetic figure lying on the couch. He reached out and pulled the woman into a sitting position. Then he knelt in front of her and asked,
“Is Jeannette Murphy your real name or is Barbara Williams your real name?”
The woman stopped crying immediately and said in a flat, toneless voice, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My name is Jeannette Murphy. I’ve never heard of that other name.”
She stared defiantly at Eden and dropped her eyes to the ground. She didn’t look at Deakin at all. He angrily shook her arms and then grabbed her hair to make her look at his face. Her eyes widened in recognition and then dropped to her lap.
Deakin tried to peer up into her face from his position on the carpet but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Please, please, you have to tell me why. I have to know. What happened to my parents? Why did you pretend to be my mother? What was so important about me? You have to tell me. YOU HAVE TO TELL ME!”
Deakin grabbed her arms again and shook her as he yelled into her face. She didn’t even try to resist. She only mumbled over and over, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
Deakin pulled his hand back and swung at her face but Eden pulled him away from the woman. She crouched down next to him and held him while he cried out years of frustration and uncertainty. Then she leaned him against a chair and stepped directly in front of the woman. Her hair had fallen into her face and she continued mumbling but Eden could see that she was faking her collapse. Eden stomped down on the woman’s foot as hard as she could and was rewarded with a truly venomous glance through the hanks of hair. The woman tried to cry in pain but she’d waited too long for believability.
“Now, listen to me, you bitch. Deakin is still too nice a person to hurt you, even after what’s been done to him, but I’m not. You’re part of some scheme to screw up this boy’s life and I want to know what you know. I want names and reasons. Do you understand what I’m saying? I am prepared to hurt you to find out what I want to know.”
She lifted up the woman’s hair to get a glance at her face but the woman leapt off the couch and reached out with both hands to shove Eden out of her way. Eden dropped under the woman’s arms and leaned in toward her. The woman tripped over Eden’s right knee and Eden slammed her elbow into the woman’s back, connecting with her kidney. The woman screamed and fell back on the couch, writhing in pain. Deakin leaned forward with interest and then, following the Eden’s pointing finger, he turned on the television set and cranked up the volume.
Eden grabbed the front of the woman’s shirt and pulled her face up to her own. “Now, do you understand what I mean? I can hurt you a lot worse than that so you’d better start talking right now.”
The woman’s eyes glanced furtively around the room and then flitted across Eden’s face. What she saw in the girl’s face did not comfort her in any way. To stave off the inevitable, she began to cry. Eden pushed her back on the couch and held her with a hand on her chest.
“When I swing my fist, turn the television up louder.”
Deakin nodded even though Eden couldn’t see him but the woman saw him and words poured out of her mouth. “Why are you letting her hurt me? I was nice to you when you lived with us. I was nicer to you than I was to the other boys. I talked them into letting us all live together like a family. I thought it was the best to find out what they wanted to know but you didn’t know anything. They wouldn’t believe me and that’s why we lived together for so long. They kept hoping you’d remember but you never did. You never did. I even made them give you the computer. I thought that might jog your memory but it didn’t because there was nothing for you to remember. You were just too little to remember anything. They even hypnotized you but that didn’t work either. That was before I came into the picture so I wasn’t there but I heard all you remembered were a few little kid rhymes, like the spider one. I’m sorry I wasn’t your real mother but I tried. I tried to be good to you but I just really didn’t know how. Please don’t let her hit me.”
“Who hypnotized Deakin? Was it someone here in Dallas or was it back in California? Exactly what rhymes did he remember?”
“All I know is that it was before me. I don’t think it was here in Dallas. We were already moved into the house and I got the feeling they brought the boy directly to us as soon as they hit town. He was a crying little mess but he got over it real quick. That part about the rhymes was just something I heard but I didn’t pay much attention to it. I know for sure about the spider one ‘cos he would say it to his stuffed animals. I just thought he’d heard two others before because he learned them right off when I read them to him. The one about birds in a pie and the counting one, you know, buckle my shoe and the rest of them. That’s all I know.”
Eden stared in disgust at the writhing woman and spoke over her shoulder to Deakin. “Does any of this make sense to you? What else can we ask her?”
Deakin appeared soundlessly at her shoulder and spoke in her ear. “Ask her who ‘they’ are and what they were hoping to find out.”
“Tell us about the person in charge. Everything you can remember, okay?” Eden knelt in front of the couch and leaned her elbow in the woman’s stomach. “Now, Jeannette, it’s time to answer our questions. Who paid you to be Deakin’s mother? Who paid for the whole fake life? Tell us now and we’ll go away and never come back.”
Jeannette Murphy glared at Eden and said through clenched teeth. “Sure, sure. I tell you all my secrets and you’ll go away. Then, what happens to me later? I’ll lose my job, I’ll lose my house, and I’ll probably lose my life. Go ahead, hurt me. I’ll still be alive when you’re through. That’s a lot better than telling you everything and then getting killed. Why don’t you just go away and leave me alone? I know very little about this boy. Someone, somewhere, thought he might remember something from his life with his real parents but he didn’t. We tried everything we could but there was nothing there. That’s why we never called the police when he disappeared. We all just moved away and nobody cared. Go away. I can’t help you.”
She turned her head away from the two people in her living room and hid her face in a pillow. Eden backed away from the couch and joined Deakin at the front window. They peered out at the traffic on the small street and saw nothing to scare them. Without a word they grabbed their props and left the house. Jeannette Murphy stayed on the couch for twenty or thirty minutes before she dragged herself to the bathroom to clean up. Then she approached the phone with trepidation. She stood with her hand on the phone for several minutes until she quickly made her decision. She dialed a long distance number from memory and waited impatiently for it to be answered.
“Jeannette Murphy, here in Dallas, Texas. I’ve just had a visit from the boy Deakin and a friend of his. I don’t know how he tracked me down but they asked a lot of questions. I didn’t tell them anything.”
Then she carefully put the phone down on the table and wandered around her small house. She touched the furniture in the living room as she passed by it. She picked up each small china figurine on the mantel and then set it carefully back into place. She opened her closet door and ran her hands along the clothes hanging from the rod. She slowly opened each cabinet door in the kitchen and looked at all the dishes stored inside. As she returned to the living room from her circuit of the house, she realized she’d just said goodbye to everything she owned. Tears poured down her cheeks but she did nothing to stop them. They dripped onto her clothes and spotted the carpet as she walked. She leaned in the doorway as her body shook with sobs. After a time, she pushed herself to move and walked in the bathroom to wash her face. She knew someone would come to see her soon and they also wouldn’t believe she didn’t know anything about Deakin and his friend. Best case scenario – they would let her pack up her stuff and move to some other town. Worst case scenario – they would kill her and bury her body somewhere it would never be found. She hoped for the best, but her experience with life had led her to expect the worst.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
THE BANDIT QUEEN - Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
Eden peered through the curtains of yet another motel room and stared at the large office buildings that inhabited downtown Dallas. The term skyscraper was very apt. From her ground floor viewpoint, those buildings looked as if they at least touched the sky with their pointed tops. Now she knew where the idea for Legos came from. She turned back to the room and contemplated her roommate. Deakin sat on the bed playing her laptop computer just like a concert pianist. He even moved to unheard notes and rhythms. Eden enjoyed using her laptop for her college work and to play games and keep in contact with friends and family, but she knew Deakin understood the Internet in ways she never would. To her, she was separate from the sites and computers at the other ends of her transactions. Deakin sat at the keyboard and his fingers grew and lengthened and became beams of energy just like the laser pointer Eden carried in her backpack. Those beams of energy ran from her little laptop off into a world she couldn’t see but Deakin could. His energy bounced from point to point, from server to server, from site to site, gathering in information and bringing it back home after obscuring his trail. He was the modern day version of the Native American running the trails through the forest while he hunted food for his tribe and expected a hero’s welcome on his safe return. Eden was ready to go along for the ride, wherever it led. It was time for some adventure in her life.
Deakin looked up from his communion with the computer and smiled a particularly sweet smile at her. “I’m just about through here and then we can leave. I’ve tracked down my ex-family and we’ll go there next.”
“Are they all still living together?”
“No, they’re not. My ‘mother’ works for a company called Gianni Industries and my ‘father’ works for a security service. I haven’t found the two boys yet but I don’t think they’re very important. Okay, let’s go.”
Deakin packed up the laptop and headed for the door. Eden brought up the rear with all the rest of their belongings. In the car, Deakin directed her to an industrial area out near the airport. She threaded through the maze of warehouses and offices until Deakin pointed to a building no different from any of the others in the vicinity. He reached for the door handle but Eden stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“Shouldn’t we scope out the place first? I mean, you can’t just barge into that office and expect this woman to answer all your questions. If what you say is true, then this was some deep cover operation. We don’t know whether it was for the CIA or the FBI or some other group of initials or even somebody totally different. You know, like the mafia or terrorists of some kind.”
Deakin’s eyes turned blank as she spoke but not with shock. He had turned all his attention inward and was considering all the aspects of her speech. Then he nodded his head decisively, and said, “You’re right. We’ll wait out here and follow her home. Then we’ll try to talk to her.”
“Do you know which car is hers? Can you get that information from somewhere?”
Deakin immediately flipped open the computer and popped in her cell phone card. “By the way, Eden, we need to get a cord so we can plug this into your car battery. We should do that next.”
While Deakin’s fingers flew over the keyboard, Eden unzipped her backpack and collected all her money into one pile. She carefully counted it, stuffed it different pockets and hiding places, and set aside a small pile to give to Deakin.
“She drives a two year old Chrysler. Do you see one in the parking lot?”
Eden drove slowly between the rows of parked cars and pointed out each Chrysler including the minivans. Deakin compared license numbers and pointed to a white minivan with the correct plates on it.
“Don’t you imagine she’ll be here until four or five o’clock this afternoon? Did the computer give a home address for that license? Why don’t we check out the address for your ‘father’ and maybe get some food and a cord for the computer?”
“Yeah, but it’s the same address as this place.”
Deakin immediately called up directions for the next address and showed Eden the map on the display of the laptop. He called out the directions one by one and they found themselves in an older, seedier part of town south of downtown. The address they were looking for turned out to be a small office surrounded by a large asphalt parking lot. The roof bristled with antennas and satellite dishes and all the cars had security service signs on their doors and antennas on their roofs. The whole place was enclosed by a ten foot chainlink fence with barbed wire at the top.
Deakin waved her down the road and said, “Put binoculars on that shopping list. We can’t read the plates on any of those cars.”
Eden thankfully drove to a cleaner part of town and stopped in front of a shopping center. She and Deakin quickly shopped for food and drinks plus a small ice chest to keep everything cold. Then they hit the aisles of the large computer store. Deakin worked quickly but Eden just as quickly returned everything to the shelves.
“What are you doing? We need this stuff, Eden. How are we going to get the information we need if we don’t have it?”
“Frankly, we can’t afford all this. Get the cord you want and pick out a pair of decent binoculars and let’s get out of here.”
Back at the car, Deakin sulked in his seat for ten or fifteen minutes until he realized Eden didn’t care. Then he opened the binoculars and twirled all the knobs and adjustments. Soon Eden drove slowly past the security building while Deakin checked the license plates of the cars.
“Not there. Maybe he works at night or maybe he drives a company car home. What now, Eden? Stay here or go back to the other place?”
“Stay here to see if these guys change shifts at three o’clock. If we still don’t see the man or his car, we’ll go back to the other office and watch for the woman. Do you have another address for the man? If we miss on all counts, we could go there this evening.”
Deakin shook his head. “Same address as his place of work. They must not want anyone to know where they live.”
Eden slid the small car into a parking place on the street with a fairly good view of the gate in the fence. They ought to be able to see anyone who drove in or out. She wouldn’t let Deakin plug into the car battery for more than fifteen minutes because she didn’t know how much the computer would drag on the battery. She certainly didn’t want to be stranded in this seedy part of Dallas with a dead battery and a pair of binoculars on the dashboard. At the best, people would think they were police on a stakeout or maybe that would be the worst. Deakin started to sulk again but quickly remembered Eden’s reaction or nonreaction to his bad humor. Instead he rummaged through the ice chest on the small back seat and pulled out a bottle of orange juice in one hand and a banana in the other.
“What happened to the candy bars and the chips and the sodas I put in the basket?”
“I took them out. They’re bad for your health and your complexion.”
Deakin worriedly flipped down the visor and checked his face in the mirror. “There’s nothing wrong with my face.”
“Now there won’t be, okay?”
They both jumped to attention like bird dogs as a couple of cars stopped in the driveway and waited for the gate to open. Deakin fumbled with the binoculars and finally got them to his eyes just as the cars pulled up in front of the building. A man stepped out of each car and cast a quick glance around the parking lot. Then they both walked through the front door of the small building. Deakin dropped the binoculars in his lap and shook his head.
“Not the right man.”
Several times during the next two hours, Eden drove the car around the block and parked it in a different space. With all the traffic on the street, she figured no one would pay much attention to one car. Around the middle of the afternoon, more and more cars drove through the gates of the security service. Deakin recognized none of the men but he wrote down the license numbers of every car that drove in or out of the gate.
After the next shift of security guards had zoomed out the gate and gone on their separate ways, Eden drove back to the office of Gianni Industries. The minivan still sat in the same parking place so Eden parked on the street to wait.
“Wake me when you see some people moving around.”
Eden woke when Deakin punched her in the shoulder. She looked quickly at the parking lot and saw a minivan pulling out of its parking place. She glanced at Deakin and noticed the tension in his face as he stared into the binoculars. She started the car and slowly pulled out of her parking place. The white minivan slid out of the parking lot with the small red convertible close behind. Eden slapped the binoculars down from Deakin’s face and said tersely,
“That looks suspicious. Just help me keep her in sight. I’ll have to drop back and change around so she doesn’t notice us. Do you think she’ll recognize you?”
“It’s only been a couple of years so she should know who I am. Look, she’s turning to the right.” He opened out a large map of Dallas and called out some street names for Eden. “We could be heading for some large highways. I-35 is up ahead just a mile or so. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Look behind us occasionally. It would certainly be ironic if someone was following us and we never noticed. Or maybe someone else could be following the same car as we are.”
Deakin swiveled his head around and catalogued the cars and trucks on the road behind them. After that he divided his time between the minivan in front of them, the map in his lap, and the traffic behind them. Eden moved smoothly from lane to lane and sometimes even pulled up next to the van to give Deakin a look at the driver. By the sudden pallor of his face, Eden knew they’d found the right woman. Deakin gulped a few times and held his face in a stiff blank stare. Finally, he sniffed one time and found his place on the map again.
“It’s her. I mean, she’s the right lady.” Then he surreptitiously wiped his eyes and his nose on his sleeve and regained control of his emotions.
Eden followed the woman for miles and then parked on the street in an older residential area. The two of them watched the minivan drive up a cracked cement driveway and disappear behind a rather small house covered with white siding. The bushes in the front yard hadn’t been trimmed in a few years and the fence sagged with age. Actually, the whole house looked to have an acute case of fatigue. Eden already knew the inside walls were painted “renthouse beige” and matched the cheap carpet on the floor.
“Is this the sort of neighborhood you lived in when you lived here in Dallas?” she asked Deakin.
He looked around and shook his head. “No way, Eden. Our house was a two-story brick with a great yard. There weren’t very many cars parked on the street either. Most of the houses had large garages and wide driveways. We can drive past it later. Maybe I can find out who used to own it and when they sold it.” Deakin reached for the laptop but Eden stopped him. “Later, Deakin, later. Right now we have to decide what to do about this woman. Do we just knock on the front door or do we wait for her to go to work tomorrow and search the house while she’s gone?”
Deakin’s hands twitched in his lap as he looked from the house to Eden’s face and then back to the house. “I don’t know whether I can face her or not. What if her house is wired to the security service? She could just push a button and someone would come to her rescue. What would we do then?”
Eden grasped both his hands and held them prisoner between her own. “We won’t do anything you wouldn’t like but we can’t just sit out here and watch until someone calls the police on us. Fold up that map and grab some of the manuals out of the glove box. We’ll pretend we’re from some church and we have some pamphlets in our hands, okay?”
Eden peered through the curtains of yet another motel room and stared at the large office buildings that inhabited downtown Dallas. The term skyscraper was very apt. From her ground floor viewpoint, those buildings looked as if they at least touched the sky with their pointed tops. Now she knew where the idea for Legos came from. She turned back to the room and contemplated her roommate. Deakin sat on the bed playing her laptop computer just like a concert pianist. He even moved to unheard notes and rhythms. Eden enjoyed using her laptop for her college work and to play games and keep in contact with friends and family, but she knew Deakin understood the Internet in ways she never would. To her, she was separate from the sites and computers at the other ends of her transactions. Deakin sat at the keyboard and his fingers grew and lengthened and became beams of energy just like the laser pointer Eden carried in her backpack. Those beams of energy ran from her little laptop off into a world she couldn’t see but Deakin could. His energy bounced from point to point, from server to server, from site to site, gathering in information and bringing it back home after obscuring his trail. He was the modern day version of the Native American running the trails through the forest while he hunted food for his tribe and expected a hero’s welcome on his safe return. Eden was ready to go along for the ride, wherever it led. It was time for some adventure in her life.
Deakin looked up from his communion with the computer and smiled a particularly sweet smile at her. “I’m just about through here and then we can leave. I’ve tracked down my ex-family and we’ll go there next.”
“Are they all still living together?”
“No, they’re not. My ‘mother’ works for a company called Gianni Industries and my ‘father’ works for a security service. I haven’t found the two boys yet but I don’t think they’re very important. Okay, let’s go.”
Deakin packed up the laptop and headed for the door. Eden brought up the rear with all the rest of their belongings. In the car, Deakin directed her to an industrial area out near the airport. She threaded through the maze of warehouses and offices until Deakin pointed to a building no different from any of the others in the vicinity. He reached for the door handle but Eden stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“Shouldn’t we scope out the place first? I mean, you can’t just barge into that office and expect this woman to answer all your questions. If what you say is true, then this was some deep cover operation. We don’t know whether it was for the CIA or the FBI or some other group of initials or even somebody totally different. You know, like the mafia or terrorists of some kind.”
Deakin’s eyes turned blank as she spoke but not with shock. He had turned all his attention inward and was considering all the aspects of her speech. Then he nodded his head decisively, and said, “You’re right. We’ll wait out here and follow her home. Then we’ll try to talk to her.”
“Do you know which car is hers? Can you get that information from somewhere?”
Deakin immediately flipped open the computer and popped in her cell phone card. “By the way, Eden, we need to get a cord so we can plug this into your car battery. We should do that next.”
While Deakin’s fingers flew over the keyboard, Eden unzipped her backpack and collected all her money into one pile. She carefully counted it, stuffed it different pockets and hiding places, and set aside a small pile to give to Deakin.
“She drives a two year old Chrysler. Do you see one in the parking lot?”
Eden drove slowly between the rows of parked cars and pointed out each Chrysler including the minivans. Deakin compared license numbers and pointed to a white minivan with the correct plates on it.
“Don’t you imagine she’ll be here until four or five o’clock this afternoon? Did the computer give a home address for that license? Why don’t we check out the address for your ‘father’ and maybe get some food and a cord for the computer?”
“Yeah, but it’s the same address as this place.”
Deakin immediately called up directions for the next address and showed Eden the map on the display of the laptop. He called out the directions one by one and they found themselves in an older, seedier part of town south of downtown. The address they were looking for turned out to be a small office surrounded by a large asphalt parking lot. The roof bristled with antennas and satellite dishes and all the cars had security service signs on their doors and antennas on their roofs. The whole place was enclosed by a ten foot chainlink fence with barbed wire at the top.
Deakin waved her down the road and said, “Put binoculars on that shopping list. We can’t read the plates on any of those cars.”
Eden thankfully drove to a cleaner part of town and stopped in front of a shopping center. She and Deakin quickly shopped for food and drinks plus a small ice chest to keep everything cold. Then they hit the aisles of the large computer store. Deakin worked quickly but Eden just as quickly returned everything to the shelves.
“What are you doing? We need this stuff, Eden. How are we going to get the information we need if we don’t have it?”
“Frankly, we can’t afford all this. Get the cord you want and pick out a pair of decent binoculars and let’s get out of here.”
Back at the car, Deakin sulked in his seat for ten or fifteen minutes until he realized Eden didn’t care. Then he opened the binoculars and twirled all the knobs and adjustments. Soon Eden drove slowly past the security building while Deakin checked the license plates of the cars.
“Not there. Maybe he works at night or maybe he drives a company car home. What now, Eden? Stay here or go back to the other place?”
“Stay here to see if these guys change shifts at three o’clock. If we still don’t see the man or his car, we’ll go back to the other office and watch for the woman. Do you have another address for the man? If we miss on all counts, we could go there this evening.”
Deakin shook his head. “Same address as his place of work. They must not want anyone to know where they live.”
Eden slid the small car into a parking place on the street with a fairly good view of the gate in the fence. They ought to be able to see anyone who drove in or out. She wouldn’t let Deakin plug into the car battery for more than fifteen minutes because she didn’t know how much the computer would drag on the battery. She certainly didn’t want to be stranded in this seedy part of Dallas with a dead battery and a pair of binoculars on the dashboard. At the best, people would think they were police on a stakeout or maybe that would be the worst. Deakin started to sulk again but quickly remembered Eden’s reaction or nonreaction to his bad humor. Instead he rummaged through the ice chest on the small back seat and pulled out a bottle of orange juice in one hand and a banana in the other.
“What happened to the candy bars and the chips and the sodas I put in the basket?”
“I took them out. They’re bad for your health and your complexion.”
Deakin worriedly flipped down the visor and checked his face in the mirror. “There’s nothing wrong with my face.”
“Now there won’t be, okay?”
They both jumped to attention like bird dogs as a couple of cars stopped in the driveway and waited for the gate to open. Deakin fumbled with the binoculars and finally got them to his eyes just as the cars pulled up in front of the building. A man stepped out of each car and cast a quick glance around the parking lot. Then they both walked through the front door of the small building. Deakin dropped the binoculars in his lap and shook his head.
“Not the right man.”
Several times during the next two hours, Eden drove the car around the block and parked it in a different space. With all the traffic on the street, she figured no one would pay much attention to one car. Around the middle of the afternoon, more and more cars drove through the gates of the security service. Deakin recognized none of the men but he wrote down the license numbers of every car that drove in or out of the gate.
After the next shift of security guards had zoomed out the gate and gone on their separate ways, Eden drove back to the office of Gianni Industries. The minivan still sat in the same parking place so Eden parked on the street to wait.
“Wake me when you see some people moving around.”
Eden woke when Deakin punched her in the shoulder. She looked quickly at the parking lot and saw a minivan pulling out of its parking place. She glanced at Deakin and noticed the tension in his face as he stared into the binoculars. She started the car and slowly pulled out of her parking place. The white minivan slid out of the parking lot with the small red convertible close behind. Eden slapped the binoculars down from Deakin’s face and said tersely,
“That looks suspicious. Just help me keep her in sight. I’ll have to drop back and change around so she doesn’t notice us. Do you think she’ll recognize you?”
“It’s only been a couple of years so she should know who I am. Look, she’s turning to the right.” He opened out a large map of Dallas and called out some street names for Eden. “We could be heading for some large highways. I-35 is up ahead just a mile or so. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Look behind us occasionally. It would certainly be ironic if someone was following us and we never noticed. Or maybe someone else could be following the same car as we are.”
Deakin swiveled his head around and catalogued the cars and trucks on the road behind them. After that he divided his time between the minivan in front of them, the map in his lap, and the traffic behind them. Eden moved smoothly from lane to lane and sometimes even pulled up next to the van to give Deakin a look at the driver. By the sudden pallor of his face, Eden knew they’d found the right woman. Deakin gulped a few times and held his face in a stiff blank stare. Finally, he sniffed one time and found his place on the map again.
“It’s her. I mean, she’s the right lady.” Then he surreptitiously wiped his eyes and his nose on his sleeve and regained control of his emotions.
Eden followed the woman for miles and then parked on the street in an older residential area. The two of them watched the minivan drive up a cracked cement driveway and disappear behind a rather small house covered with white siding. The bushes in the front yard hadn’t been trimmed in a few years and the fence sagged with age. Actually, the whole house looked to have an acute case of fatigue. Eden already knew the inside walls were painted “renthouse beige” and matched the cheap carpet on the floor.
“Is this the sort of neighborhood you lived in when you lived here in Dallas?” she asked Deakin.
He looked around and shook his head. “No way, Eden. Our house was a two-story brick with a great yard. There weren’t very many cars parked on the street either. Most of the houses had large garages and wide driveways. We can drive past it later. Maybe I can find out who used to own it and when they sold it.” Deakin reached for the laptop but Eden stopped him. “Later, Deakin, later. Right now we have to decide what to do about this woman. Do we just knock on the front door or do we wait for her to go to work tomorrow and search the house while she’s gone?”
Deakin’s hands twitched in his lap as he looked from the house to Eden’s face and then back to the house. “I don’t know whether I can face her or not. What if her house is wired to the security service? She could just push a button and someone would come to her rescue. What would we do then?”
Eden grasped both his hands and held them prisoner between her own. “We won’t do anything you wouldn’t like but we can’t just sit out here and watch until someone calls the police on us. Fold up that map and grab some of the manuals out of the glove box. We’ll pretend we’re from some church and we have some pamphlets in our hands, okay?”
Monday, November 10, 2008
THE BANDIT QUEEN - Chapter 2 continued
After a few judicious inquiries, Eden decided she would never hear the whole story of Deakin’s trip to California and his search for his “real” parents. The most he let slip were a few references to names and places in Los Angeles. He’d evidently spent the last eighteen months trying to stay alive while he searched for the two unknown people named on his birth certificate.
Eden pulled into a small hotel on the outskirts of Phoenix and rented a room for the two of them. She ushered Deakin inside the room and straight into the shower. Then she yelled through the door that she’d be back soon with pizza. When she stepped through the door with the pizza box in her hand, she stepped into total darkness. There were no sounds inside the room, just the tinny echoes of a cheap television from the room next door. She let the door close behind her and reached her hand back to click the lock. Then she stood still and let the silence settle around her. Her breathing sounded loud in her ears so she quietened it to a lower level. Then the sound of another human being drew her attention to the far side of the room.
“May I turn on the light, Deakin? This pizza is pretty hot.”
The boy standing in the darkest corner of the room took in a shaky breath and flipped on the light next to the bed. Eden pretended she hadn’t seen the tracks of tears on his cheeks and set the food on the small desk. Then she set a sack down next to it. Within seconds Deakin had moved around the bed and was peering into the brown paper sack. He pulled out several bottles of orange juice, a sack of cookies, granola bars, a toothbrush, and a newspaper. He quickly twisted the top off a bottle of juice and drank half the contents. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and asked,
“What kind of pizza did you get? Please tell me you didn’t get one with anchovies on it!”
“Calm down, calm down. Anchovies are not very high on my list of favorites. I picked pepperoni and cheese as the safest choice.” She picked up a slice of pizza and leaned against the head of the bed to eat. Deakin sat in the one chair and stuffed pizza in his mouth almost faster than he could chew. Eden snagged two more slices before it all disappeared and opened a bottle of juice to drink.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t come back.” Deakin smiled through a mouth full of pepperoni. “I thought you might have called the police or the milk carton people.” He tipped his head to the side and considered his last statement. Then he smiled again at Eden and said, fairly, “I didn’t really, deep down, think you’d called the police but you’d been gone so long I began worrying. That’s when the bad thoughts come in, you know.”
Eden watched him in the mirror over the desk and felt the weight of her years. She had no idea how this boy had stayed so innocent. In the two years she’d been living alone and going to college, she’d found herself becoming cynical and sarcastic. Deakin had lived through much worse and still could smile at himself and trust other people. She began her questioning again.
“Why are we going to Dallas? Who are we going to see there? Do you want to see your pretend family?”
Deakin smiled at her choice of words and swallowed his mouthful of pizza. The farther they drove from Los Angeles, the lighter his mood became. “I got some leads from the Internet. I traced some of my father’s family to a small town outside of Dallas. I’m going to see them and find out what they know about my father. My mother came from Russia, I think. I’ve sent out several probes for information about her but it’s pretty hard to get information out of Eastern Europe. It’s not that there aren’t people who will help. It’s more like the breakup of the Soviet Union left big gaps in governments.”
Eden smiled at his knowledge of Eastern European politics but then immediately gave him the benefit of the doubt. She wiped the grease from the pizza off her hands and reached under the bed for her backpack. She pulled out her laptop and turned it on. Then she slid in her cell phone card and logged on to the Internet. She raised her eyes and met Deakin’s stare in the mirror. He quickly turned in his chair and almost jumped onto the foot of the bed.
“You didn’t tell me you had a laptop. Are you logging on?” Then he looked around the room and said, “We should have stayed at a motel with online connections. I really need to check my mail and let some people know I’m still alive. All that is going to lay some pretty heavy charges on your cell phone bill.”
He reached for the laptop but Eden kept it on her lap until she’d checked her own mail and then sent some reassuring messages to some of her friends: a sorta boyfriend who was supposed to take her to a concert the next night, her supervisor at the bookstore, her best friend at college, and one of her professors who’d taken an interest in her. Actually, he’d taken entirely too much interest but Eden thought she ought to tell him why she was skipping his class. At the very last, she sent a message to her younger brother and asked him to pass it on to her parents. Duty done, she handed the computer to Deakin and watched his fingers fly over the keyboard. He would type for several minutes and then stare at the screen while he snapped his fingers, faster and faster until it was time to type some more. Eden decided his mind moved so fast his fingers were always minutes behind and the download time for his answers seemed to drive him crazy. The slower the download time, the faster his fingers snapped. Eden finally had enough and pushed him slowly off the bed onto the floor. Then she crawled under the covers and fell into a deep sleep.
When the morning sun peeked through an opening in the curtains, Eden stretched her arms above her head and threw the covers off her body. She looked quickly around the room as she ran to the bathroom. When she reentered the room, she stepped quietly to the other side of the bed and found Deakin curled up on the floor sound asleep. He’d used the bedspread as a sleeping bag and her backpack as a pillow. Her laptop sat on the small table, open and waiting for Deakin’s next assault on the world of information. She exchanged a pillow for her backpack and took it to the bathroom with her. Deakin was still sleeping after her shower and she quietly left the room to scout for breakfast. She checked out at the same time and paid with cash. An hour later, the two of them were heading east towards Texas.
Eden pulled into a small hotel on the outskirts of Phoenix and rented a room for the two of them. She ushered Deakin inside the room and straight into the shower. Then she yelled through the door that she’d be back soon with pizza. When she stepped through the door with the pizza box in her hand, she stepped into total darkness. There were no sounds inside the room, just the tinny echoes of a cheap television from the room next door. She let the door close behind her and reached her hand back to click the lock. Then she stood still and let the silence settle around her. Her breathing sounded loud in her ears so she quietened it to a lower level. Then the sound of another human being drew her attention to the far side of the room.
“May I turn on the light, Deakin? This pizza is pretty hot.”
The boy standing in the darkest corner of the room took in a shaky breath and flipped on the light next to the bed. Eden pretended she hadn’t seen the tracks of tears on his cheeks and set the food on the small desk. Then she set a sack down next to it. Within seconds Deakin had moved around the bed and was peering into the brown paper sack. He pulled out several bottles of orange juice, a sack of cookies, granola bars, a toothbrush, and a newspaper. He quickly twisted the top off a bottle of juice and drank half the contents. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and asked,
“What kind of pizza did you get? Please tell me you didn’t get one with anchovies on it!”
“Calm down, calm down. Anchovies are not very high on my list of favorites. I picked pepperoni and cheese as the safest choice.” She picked up a slice of pizza and leaned against the head of the bed to eat. Deakin sat in the one chair and stuffed pizza in his mouth almost faster than he could chew. Eden snagged two more slices before it all disappeared and opened a bottle of juice to drink.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t come back.” Deakin smiled through a mouth full of pepperoni. “I thought you might have called the police or the milk carton people.” He tipped his head to the side and considered his last statement. Then he smiled again at Eden and said, fairly, “I didn’t really, deep down, think you’d called the police but you’d been gone so long I began worrying. That’s when the bad thoughts come in, you know.”
Eden watched him in the mirror over the desk and felt the weight of her years. She had no idea how this boy had stayed so innocent. In the two years she’d been living alone and going to college, she’d found herself becoming cynical and sarcastic. Deakin had lived through much worse and still could smile at himself and trust other people. She began her questioning again.
“Why are we going to Dallas? Who are we going to see there? Do you want to see your pretend family?”
Deakin smiled at her choice of words and swallowed his mouthful of pizza. The farther they drove from Los Angeles, the lighter his mood became. “I got some leads from the Internet. I traced some of my father’s family to a small town outside of Dallas. I’m going to see them and find out what they know about my father. My mother came from Russia, I think. I’ve sent out several probes for information about her but it’s pretty hard to get information out of Eastern Europe. It’s not that there aren’t people who will help. It’s more like the breakup of the Soviet Union left big gaps in governments.”
Eden smiled at his knowledge of Eastern European politics but then immediately gave him the benefit of the doubt. She wiped the grease from the pizza off her hands and reached under the bed for her backpack. She pulled out her laptop and turned it on. Then she slid in her cell phone card and logged on to the Internet. She raised her eyes and met Deakin’s stare in the mirror. He quickly turned in his chair and almost jumped onto the foot of the bed.
“You didn’t tell me you had a laptop. Are you logging on?” Then he looked around the room and said, “We should have stayed at a motel with online connections. I really need to check my mail and let some people know I’m still alive. All that is going to lay some pretty heavy charges on your cell phone bill.”
He reached for the laptop but Eden kept it on her lap until she’d checked her own mail and then sent some reassuring messages to some of her friends: a sorta boyfriend who was supposed to take her to a concert the next night, her supervisor at the bookstore, her best friend at college, and one of her professors who’d taken an interest in her. Actually, he’d taken entirely too much interest but Eden thought she ought to tell him why she was skipping his class. At the very last, she sent a message to her younger brother and asked him to pass it on to her parents. Duty done, she handed the computer to Deakin and watched his fingers fly over the keyboard. He would type for several minutes and then stare at the screen while he snapped his fingers, faster and faster until it was time to type some more. Eden decided his mind moved so fast his fingers were always minutes behind and the download time for his answers seemed to drive him crazy. The slower the download time, the faster his fingers snapped. Eden finally had enough and pushed him slowly off the bed onto the floor. Then she crawled under the covers and fell into a deep sleep.
When the morning sun peeked through an opening in the curtains, Eden stretched her arms above her head and threw the covers off her body. She looked quickly around the room as she ran to the bathroom. When she reentered the room, she stepped quietly to the other side of the bed and found Deakin curled up on the floor sound asleep. He’d used the bedspread as a sleeping bag and her backpack as a pillow. Her laptop sat on the small table, open and waiting for Deakin’s next assault on the world of information. She exchanged a pillow for her backpack and took it to the bathroom with her. Deakin was still sleeping after her shower and she quietly left the room to scout for breakfast. She checked out at the same time and paid with cash. An hour later, the two of them were heading east towards Texas.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
THE BANDIT QUEEN - Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
Over the course of the next thousand miles, Eden pried more information out of Deakin than he intended to tell her. She’d been right about his age. He really was seventeen but it had been several years since he’d lived what most people would consider a normal life. At one time, he’d lived with a father and a mother and two older brothers in squeaky-clean neighborhood in Dallas. He’d done the things all middle-class boys did. He played soccer, he played baseball, he went to school, he played video games, and he went to a pasteurized church every Sunday. As he grew older, Deakin realized there was something just a little skewed about his family. His mother acted almost exactly like the mothers of all his friends. His father went off to work every morning and did yard work on the weekends. He even coached Deakin’s soccer team. His two brothers were like other big brothers, sometimes mean and nasty and sometimes nice and friendly. But they all four watched every move Deakin made. Deakin never slept over at a friend’s house. He never went to camp by himself. His brothers went with him and stayed in the same cabin, no matter how much trouble it was to arrange. His mother drove him to school every day and picked him up afterwards.
One morning, he’d waked up and looked around his bedroom. He slept on the top bunk and his older brother Travis slept on the bottom bunk. His oldest brother Davis slept on a single bed against the opposite wall. Deakin listened to the breathing of the other two boys and realized he’d never slept in a room by himself. Actually, as he flipped through the mental slides of his past life, he didn’t find one picture that didn’t include at least one other person in his family. After that day, he tried to find time alone but someone followed him everywhere, except the bathroom. At least, he was allowed to shower solo. Someone always checked out the bathroom after he left, but Deakin didn’t know why.
Deakin finally began staying after school every day. He joined clubs and teams. He made friends with some of his teachers and stayed late to help them. Anything to keep from going home. The computer teacher let him loose in the lab every afternoon and Deakin finally learned how to be alone. It was like piloting your very own spaceship and you could invite anyone you wanted to come with you or you could go all by yourself.
When Deakin asked his parents for a computer fast enough and large enough to surf the Internet, tension filled the whole room. “Why do you want a new computer? What’s wrong with the one you have?”
“Travis and Davis are always using it to play games. Anyway, it doesn’t have enough memory or speed for any serious surfing.”
Unspoken messages zipped through air over the dinner table and bounced from his father to his mother to his two brothers and back again and again. Deakin calmly ate his dinner and played like nothing was out of the ordinary. Actually, nothing was out of the ordinary at his house. He continued to play the part of the prisoner and the other four were his jailers. More than anything else, he wanted to know why. What was different about him? Why was he so important? Who thought he was important? This whole family thing was costing someone a bundle of money and Deakin had no answers.
Deakin continued to surf the net on the computers at school until the day he walked into the house and found a large box standing by the front door. His mother followed him into the house and pointed to the box. “It’s for you. Your father and I decided it was time you had one of your own.”
Deakin fell on the box and ripped open the top. Styrofoam peanuts fell like snow as he reached into the box. Then he looked around the living room and realized he had nowhere to put his computer. There was no extra space in his bedroom. His mother stood in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, wiping her hands over and over on a white dishtowel.
Deakin stared at her without saying a word. She finally jerked her head toward the back of the house and said, “You can set it up in the workroom. We’ll get you a chair somewhere. We’ll have the cable connection put in there but you’ll have to pay the monthly payments for your access service, okay?”
Deakin nodded happily. He didn’t care about the monthly payments. He’d do whatever he had to do to make money. He happily dragged the box to the small room off the laundry room and unpacked his new computer. He set it up on the counter that ran around two sides of the room and plugged in all the cords. His mother found him hours later, sitting on the floor in the middle of a field of styrofoam snow. He had read the operating manual from cover to cover and was now ready to boot up for the first time.
Sometime during the next few weeks, Deakin began his new hobby. He surfed the Internet any time he could. He would have stayed up all night if his parents had let him. As it was, any time they wanted to find him, they only had to look in the workroom. For the first time in his memory, Deakin was left alone. No one watched him when he was sitting in front of the computer.
Deakin’s isolation had a very curious effect on his family. Since the constant observation of Deakin was the sole reason these five people lived together, Deakin’s absence left them without anything to do. Cracks and fissures developed in the happy family fiction and arguments flared up at the slightest word. Screaming, yelling, and slamming doors became the order of the day. Deakin withdrew from them all and shut the door to his computer room. There he found all the silence he’d ever craved and never felt lonely. The flickering screen in front of his eyes was constantly changing and constantly interesting. The sounds of the world around him receded as he concentrated on the images in front of him.
Deakin played games and talked with people in chat rooms. First they talked about the games and then slowly moved into more personal waters. As he asked and answered questions in the chat rooms, he realized just how strange his life had been and he began to wonder why. From the first nebulous questions to the definite belief in his bizarre situation took only a few months. He slowly asked his new acquaintances questions that would help him find answers and stored these answers away in password-protected files. The more he learned, the more he realized that someone had been messing with his computer while he was at school. Even after he tried to set up an overriding password for entry to any program or file, he felt someone had been snooping around. He began to leave traps in the room, papers laid out over the keyboard or leaving the mouse unplugged, small things like that. Sometimes, he was positive someone had snooped and other times he was undecided. He didn’t know what to do and had no one to turn to for help.
One night the argument between his “parents” became so loud and so violent the neighbors called the police. After that, his “parents” and his “brothers” quit speaking to each other. Deakin began surfing for answers and then trying to wipe everything from his hard drive before he shut down for the night. His searches took him to websites that offered to investigate the background of any person or offered to find some missing person. He would have used these sites but he had no way to pay for their services.
He now needed information about his so-called parents and a credit card number. He sneaked around and finally liberated his mother’s billfold from her purse. He scanned in her driver’s license, her social security card, all her credit cards, and even her insurance card. After a few more days, he took his father’s wallet from the top of the dresser and scanned in all his cards and identification. Now, he needed anything he could find out about his brothers. He finally found their immunization records and noted down their Social Security numbers and full names. Now he was ready to find out about these people he lived with.
The first website turned him down when he filled in his correct age on the information page. He soon learned to lie about his age and to make up stories about why he wanted to know about these people. After a short time, he realized the story didn’t even matter. The only important thing was the ability to pay.
After trying three different search agencies, Deakin was almost ready to quit. These three agencies had found nothing. They couldn’t find birth certificates for his parents and brothers. His father didn’t even work where Deakin had been told he did. The phone number Deakin had dutifully written down on all his school forms led nowhere. It was an unlisted number and was answered by a machine twenty-four hours a day.
The fourth agency Deakin contacted seemed much more interested in the puzzle he presented them and began from a different direction. The agency started by searching for Deakin. This time a little information surfaced. They matched his Social Security number with someone named Deakin Alex Kimbrough which did not match Deakin’s last name of Williams. From there, the agency found a birth certificate in the Kimbrough name in Los Angeles. He’d been born on the correct day to Alexander David Kimbrough and Helena Rimchova Kimbrough who lived in Los Angeles.
Deakin stared at the information scrolling down his monitor screen. A few small tears slid down his cheeks as he wondered why Alexander and Helena had gone away and left him with these other people. Then he quickly printed out the information and typed in a request for a search for these two new names. He was nervous and inattentive at school for the next few days. He wanted the information so badly he couldn’t even sit still in class. Finally, one of his teachers sent him to the counseling office. Deakin lied his way out by using the excuse of peer pressure to try smoking and drinking. The counselor gave him several pamphlets on the dangers of drugs and sent him back to class.
Deakin hurried home that afternoon and checked his monitor for information. This time, he really had mail. He had copies of death certificates for both his parents but there hadn’t been any newspaper stories about the accident that had killed them. There hadn’t been obituaries printed in the newspaper and no adoptions for a boy named Deakin in the county of Los Angeles.
Deakin made a quick decision and loaded all his detective files onto two different floppy disks along with the identification information about his “family.” Then he wiped out everything on his hard drive. He’d talked with lots of people on the Internet and he did the best he could to cloud his intentions. Then he ate dinner for the last time with these four strangers and went to bed. In the early hours of the morning, he stole out of his bed and tiptoed downstairs. He’d packed his backpack earlier while the rest of the family watched television. He slid out the back door, locked it behind him, and walked away without any regrets. He didn’t know how he was going to do it, but he would make it to Los Angeles and find out about his real parents.
Over the course of the next thousand miles, Eden pried more information out of Deakin than he intended to tell her. She’d been right about his age. He really was seventeen but it had been several years since he’d lived what most people would consider a normal life. At one time, he’d lived with a father and a mother and two older brothers in squeaky-clean neighborhood in Dallas. He’d done the things all middle-class boys did. He played soccer, he played baseball, he went to school, he played video games, and he went to a pasteurized church every Sunday. As he grew older, Deakin realized there was something just a little skewed about his family. His mother acted almost exactly like the mothers of all his friends. His father went off to work every morning and did yard work on the weekends. He even coached Deakin’s soccer team. His two brothers were like other big brothers, sometimes mean and nasty and sometimes nice and friendly. But they all four watched every move Deakin made. Deakin never slept over at a friend’s house. He never went to camp by himself. His brothers went with him and stayed in the same cabin, no matter how much trouble it was to arrange. His mother drove him to school every day and picked him up afterwards.
One morning, he’d waked up and looked around his bedroom. He slept on the top bunk and his older brother Travis slept on the bottom bunk. His oldest brother Davis slept on a single bed against the opposite wall. Deakin listened to the breathing of the other two boys and realized he’d never slept in a room by himself. Actually, as he flipped through the mental slides of his past life, he didn’t find one picture that didn’t include at least one other person in his family. After that day, he tried to find time alone but someone followed him everywhere, except the bathroom. At least, he was allowed to shower solo. Someone always checked out the bathroom after he left, but Deakin didn’t know why.
Deakin finally began staying after school every day. He joined clubs and teams. He made friends with some of his teachers and stayed late to help them. Anything to keep from going home. The computer teacher let him loose in the lab every afternoon and Deakin finally learned how to be alone. It was like piloting your very own spaceship and you could invite anyone you wanted to come with you or you could go all by yourself.
When Deakin asked his parents for a computer fast enough and large enough to surf the Internet, tension filled the whole room. “Why do you want a new computer? What’s wrong with the one you have?”
“Travis and Davis are always using it to play games. Anyway, it doesn’t have enough memory or speed for any serious surfing.”
Unspoken messages zipped through air over the dinner table and bounced from his father to his mother to his two brothers and back again and again. Deakin calmly ate his dinner and played like nothing was out of the ordinary. Actually, nothing was out of the ordinary at his house. He continued to play the part of the prisoner and the other four were his jailers. More than anything else, he wanted to know why. What was different about him? Why was he so important? Who thought he was important? This whole family thing was costing someone a bundle of money and Deakin had no answers.
Deakin continued to surf the net on the computers at school until the day he walked into the house and found a large box standing by the front door. His mother followed him into the house and pointed to the box. “It’s for you. Your father and I decided it was time you had one of your own.”
Deakin fell on the box and ripped open the top. Styrofoam peanuts fell like snow as he reached into the box. Then he looked around the living room and realized he had nowhere to put his computer. There was no extra space in his bedroom. His mother stood in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, wiping her hands over and over on a white dishtowel.
Deakin stared at her without saying a word. She finally jerked her head toward the back of the house and said, “You can set it up in the workroom. We’ll get you a chair somewhere. We’ll have the cable connection put in there but you’ll have to pay the monthly payments for your access service, okay?”
Deakin nodded happily. He didn’t care about the monthly payments. He’d do whatever he had to do to make money. He happily dragged the box to the small room off the laundry room and unpacked his new computer. He set it up on the counter that ran around two sides of the room and plugged in all the cords. His mother found him hours later, sitting on the floor in the middle of a field of styrofoam snow. He had read the operating manual from cover to cover and was now ready to boot up for the first time.
Sometime during the next few weeks, Deakin began his new hobby. He surfed the Internet any time he could. He would have stayed up all night if his parents had let him. As it was, any time they wanted to find him, they only had to look in the workroom. For the first time in his memory, Deakin was left alone. No one watched him when he was sitting in front of the computer.
Deakin’s isolation had a very curious effect on his family. Since the constant observation of Deakin was the sole reason these five people lived together, Deakin’s absence left them without anything to do. Cracks and fissures developed in the happy family fiction and arguments flared up at the slightest word. Screaming, yelling, and slamming doors became the order of the day. Deakin withdrew from them all and shut the door to his computer room. There he found all the silence he’d ever craved and never felt lonely. The flickering screen in front of his eyes was constantly changing and constantly interesting. The sounds of the world around him receded as he concentrated on the images in front of him.
Deakin played games and talked with people in chat rooms. First they talked about the games and then slowly moved into more personal waters. As he asked and answered questions in the chat rooms, he realized just how strange his life had been and he began to wonder why. From the first nebulous questions to the definite belief in his bizarre situation took only a few months. He slowly asked his new acquaintances questions that would help him find answers and stored these answers away in password-protected files. The more he learned, the more he realized that someone had been messing with his computer while he was at school. Even after he tried to set up an overriding password for entry to any program or file, he felt someone had been snooping around. He began to leave traps in the room, papers laid out over the keyboard or leaving the mouse unplugged, small things like that. Sometimes, he was positive someone had snooped and other times he was undecided. He didn’t know what to do and had no one to turn to for help.
One night the argument between his “parents” became so loud and so violent the neighbors called the police. After that, his “parents” and his “brothers” quit speaking to each other. Deakin began surfing for answers and then trying to wipe everything from his hard drive before he shut down for the night. His searches took him to websites that offered to investigate the background of any person or offered to find some missing person. He would have used these sites but he had no way to pay for their services.
He now needed information about his so-called parents and a credit card number. He sneaked around and finally liberated his mother’s billfold from her purse. He scanned in her driver’s license, her social security card, all her credit cards, and even her insurance card. After a few more days, he took his father’s wallet from the top of the dresser and scanned in all his cards and identification. Now, he needed anything he could find out about his brothers. He finally found their immunization records and noted down their Social Security numbers and full names. Now he was ready to find out about these people he lived with.
The first website turned him down when he filled in his correct age on the information page. He soon learned to lie about his age and to make up stories about why he wanted to know about these people. After a short time, he realized the story didn’t even matter. The only important thing was the ability to pay.
After trying three different search agencies, Deakin was almost ready to quit. These three agencies had found nothing. They couldn’t find birth certificates for his parents and brothers. His father didn’t even work where Deakin had been told he did. The phone number Deakin had dutifully written down on all his school forms led nowhere. It was an unlisted number and was answered by a machine twenty-four hours a day.
The fourth agency Deakin contacted seemed much more interested in the puzzle he presented them and began from a different direction. The agency started by searching for Deakin. This time a little information surfaced. They matched his Social Security number with someone named Deakin Alex Kimbrough which did not match Deakin’s last name of Williams. From there, the agency found a birth certificate in the Kimbrough name in Los Angeles. He’d been born on the correct day to Alexander David Kimbrough and Helena Rimchova Kimbrough who lived in Los Angeles.
Deakin stared at the information scrolling down his monitor screen. A few small tears slid down his cheeks as he wondered why Alexander and Helena had gone away and left him with these other people. Then he quickly printed out the information and typed in a request for a search for these two new names. He was nervous and inattentive at school for the next few days. He wanted the information so badly he couldn’t even sit still in class. Finally, one of his teachers sent him to the counseling office. Deakin lied his way out by using the excuse of peer pressure to try smoking and drinking. The counselor gave him several pamphlets on the dangers of drugs and sent him back to class.
Deakin hurried home that afternoon and checked his monitor for information. This time, he really had mail. He had copies of death certificates for both his parents but there hadn’t been any newspaper stories about the accident that had killed them. There hadn’t been obituaries printed in the newspaper and no adoptions for a boy named Deakin in the county of Los Angeles.
Deakin made a quick decision and loaded all his detective files onto two different floppy disks along with the identification information about his “family.” Then he wiped out everything on his hard drive. He’d talked with lots of people on the Internet and he did the best he could to cloud his intentions. Then he ate dinner for the last time with these four strangers and went to bed. In the early hours of the morning, he stole out of his bed and tiptoed downstairs. He’d packed his backpack earlier while the rest of the family watched television. He slid out the back door, locked it behind him, and walked away without any regrets. He didn’t know how he was going to do it, but he would make it to Los Angeles and find out about his real parents.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
THE BANDIT QUEEN - Chapter 1 continued
Eden stared at the boy’s face, noticing the gaunt cheeks and dark circles under his eyes. She searched for the marks and scars that would result from the type of beating she’d interrupted in the alley behind her apartment building in Los Angeles. A very large, very angry man had been slapping the boy around when the headlights from Eden’s car had lit up the alley as she turned her car around to park. Without even stopping to think of her own safety, Eden had driven quickly into the alley and stopped her car just inches from the surprised face of the attacker. The man had stared at her car with a baffled look on his face and then had let go of the boy. He ran clumsily off down the alley while the boy slid down to the ground and lay still. Eden had pulled out her cell phone to call for help but set it back on the seat before her call was connected. She stepped out of the car and approached the ominously still boy. She spoke softly as she knelt down next to him as she had spoken many times to her dog when he stumbled home after a long run through the woods. The boy twitched away from her hand and tried to stand up by himself. He reached behind him and gripped the wall of the building with his dirty but surprising long and sensitive fingers. Eden looked long and hard at his hands and then grasped his arm to steady the boy on his feet. He stood about six inches taller than she did but he allowed her to pull him slowly in the direction of her car. The boy tried once to pull away from her but he couldn’t. The will was there, but the energy was not.
Eden folded him and stuffed him quickly into the front seat of her car before she reversed out of the alley. As she fishtailed down the darkened street, another pair of headlights appeared in her rear view mirror and followed her closely, corner for corner. On some of the longer blocks, the car closed in on her bumper. Eden felt fleetingly grateful that she was familiar with the neighborhood and turned corner after corner, keeping barely in front of the other car until she turned onto a well-traveled four-lane street. She turned to the right and slid effortlessly into the traffic. The other car, a two-door white one of indeterminate origin, sat fuming at the corner until the light changed to green. He gunned around the corner and was brought up short by two full lanes of traffic going nowhere. Eden imagined him pounding on the steering wheel in frustration and craning his neck out the window to look for her car. She had one fleeting moment of regret that she was driving her own beloved red convertible instead of some mid-sized gray four-door Buick. She quickly shook the regret out of her head and concentrated on getting away from her pursuer.
Eden drove the highways of Los Angeles for the next two hours with no destination in mind. When she was finally sure no one was following them, she pulled up outside the entrance to a small hospital and parked under a street lamp. She reached across the seat and slightly shook the thin shoulder of the boy. He jerked away from her hand and curled into a tight ball.
Eden leaned over and spoke softly into the boy’s shoulder. “They’ve gone away. This is a hospital. Do you want to go inside? Are you bleeding or are any of your bones broken?”
The boy shook his head emphatically and mumbled, “Just let me out anywhere. I’ll hide until they quit looking for me.”
Eden leaned against the back of her seat and contemplated the miserable form sitting next to her. “Who’s after you and what do they want from you? Did you steal something from them or what?”
The shoulder hunched even higher to shut Eden out. “C’mon, you’ve got to tell me something. At least tell me where to take you. I don’t imagine you want to be dropped off at a police station so give me some ideas here. I’ll get you something to eat if you’re hungry.” A quick convulsion shook the boy’s body. “Okay, food coming up next.”
As they sat in the parking lot of a twenty-four hour convenience store eating greasy burritos and drinking cokes, Eden watched the boy out of the corner of her eye. He looked as though he’d been living rough for some time but not for years.
As he finished his food, she said, “I don’t imagine it’s very safe for us to drive back to my apartment, is it? That’s where I was going when I broke up your little fight. We might need to save that trip until later.”
The boy shook his hair at Eden and mumbled again, “I’ll just take off from here. You go on and do what you want.” He opened the car door to leave and swayed as he tried to stand on his feet. Eden leaned across the car and grabbed his shirtsleeve to pull him back into the seat.
“Just get in the car and I’ll take you where you need to go, okay? You’re not in any shape to walk away from here. Buckle your seat belt and tell me where to go. By the way, Hell is not the answer I’m looking for.”
A very small chuckle rose from the boy and he said, “If you really want to know, I need to get to Dallas, Texas. You can drop me along the highway and I’ll get a ride with a trucker. Some of them drive all the way and are glad for a little company.”
Eden put her hands on her steering wheel and stared through the windshield of the car. Then, with a decisive nod, she started the car and drove up to the gas pumps. She filled the car with gas, paid with a credit card, and drove quickly away. As she drove down a partially empty business street, she noticed the bright lights surrounding an ATM kiosk. She quickly pulled in and drew out a handful of cash. She stashed the money in her backpack and drove on to the next ATM. She took cash on every card in her wallet including the one belonging to her parents. She thought it might not be a good idea to leave a paper trail all across the Southwest on the way to Texas. The boy paid no attention to her actions. He’d flipped back his seat and closed his eyes to shut out the world. Before long, Eden heard light snores from that side of the car and hoped he’d sleep for hours. She had more things to do before they left Los Angeles.
The nameless boy stirred a little as she finally passed the LA city limits around 10:00 the next morning. She’d slept a few hours herself parked in a hospital parking garage after she’d sneaked into her apartment building and quickly snatched up clothes and other necessities. She’d left by the back door and reached her car before the boy woke up and wandered off. She cashed a large check at the nearest drive-through bank on the way out of town and liberated most of the money in her checking account.
As she drove through the heavy traffic, the watery sunshine raised her spirits higher than they had been for months. The last eighteen months had ground her down. The endless days of driving for over an hour to get to school and then walking all over campus only to get back into her car and drive to her job. Then, finally, the long drive back to her apartment after the world had turned dark. She needed a definite break in her routine. Actually, she decided to get rid of all routines. She’d been a good girl for long enough. Sometime, later, maybe even tomorrow or the next day, she’d call her parents to tell them some lie or another about what she was doing and where she was going. She smiled at the highway in front of her and tried to imagine what would happen at the end of the road. When she realized she had no idea why they were even driving to Dallas, she gave up the effort and smiled with the joy of getting away from the millions of people who lived and breathed in Southern California. She was ready to enjoy the sheer quiet of the trip through the desert. Wide-open spaces had a great appeal for her this morning.
Eden looked again into the eyes of the boy seated across from her and waited for him to finish chewing his latest bite. “Uh, can you give me a name? I’d sure like to quit thinking of you as the ‘boy.’ Any name would be fine. It doesn’t have to be yours. Make one up for me.”
The boy smiled slightly and looked at Eden with even more interest. “Why are you doing this for me? Why didn’t you just drive away from that alley last night and forget about me? Why did you rescue me?”
Eden filled her mouth with a handful of chips and chewed slowly to play for time. For the first time, she really thought about what she’d done the night before and she, too, wondered why she’d done it.
“Okay, here’s what I think. Decisions are made in just one second. It doesn’t really matter why a person makes a certain decision. As soon as it’s made, the next thing will happen and then the next decision will have to be made. Most of the time people don’t even weigh the consequences of every little decision they make during their lifetime. If they did, they wouldn’t get anything done. They’d still be back in time somewhere, wondering whether to take that first step or not. Anyway, people usually make up reasons later on after everything has already happened. There are all kinds of words for that: rationalization, justification, excuses. But, in reality, most decisions are made unconsciously and a course of action has been started. So the reason for the decision is unimportant. The decision itself is the only important thing. Once it’s been made, for good or bad, there’s no going back.”
The boy smiled really widely this time and said, “You mean, shit happens.”
Eden laughed explosively and sprayed her next mouthful of chips all over the table. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to coat you with half-chewed food. Oh, wait a minute, maybe unconsciously I did mean to do that. That could just be one more of those decisions that can’t be taken back.”
“Deakin.”
“What did you just say?”
“Deakin, that’s my name.”
“You mean, like at church. D-E-A-C-O-N.”
“No, nothing to do with church. D-E-A-K-I-N. Thanks for helping me get away from Joey. He was really mad last night.”
“Why?”
“Uh, it’s a long story. You don’t want to hear it right now.”
“We have a long drive ahead of us. You can tell me while we drive. Now, we need a Wal-Mart or a K-Mart or something like that. You need some new clothes. You’re way too tall to fit into mine. I’ll drive and you look. Holler when you see something suitable.”
Eden folded him and stuffed him quickly into the front seat of her car before she reversed out of the alley. As she fishtailed down the darkened street, another pair of headlights appeared in her rear view mirror and followed her closely, corner for corner. On some of the longer blocks, the car closed in on her bumper. Eden felt fleetingly grateful that she was familiar with the neighborhood and turned corner after corner, keeping barely in front of the other car until she turned onto a well-traveled four-lane street. She turned to the right and slid effortlessly into the traffic. The other car, a two-door white one of indeterminate origin, sat fuming at the corner until the light changed to green. He gunned around the corner and was brought up short by two full lanes of traffic going nowhere. Eden imagined him pounding on the steering wheel in frustration and craning his neck out the window to look for her car. She had one fleeting moment of regret that she was driving her own beloved red convertible instead of some mid-sized gray four-door Buick. She quickly shook the regret out of her head and concentrated on getting away from her pursuer.
Eden drove the highways of Los Angeles for the next two hours with no destination in mind. When she was finally sure no one was following them, she pulled up outside the entrance to a small hospital and parked under a street lamp. She reached across the seat and slightly shook the thin shoulder of the boy. He jerked away from her hand and curled into a tight ball.
Eden leaned over and spoke softly into the boy’s shoulder. “They’ve gone away. This is a hospital. Do you want to go inside? Are you bleeding or are any of your bones broken?”
The boy shook his head emphatically and mumbled, “Just let me out anywhere. I’ll hide until they quit looking for me.”
Eden leaned against the back of her seat and contemplated the miserable form sitting next to her. “Who’s after you and what do they want from you? Did you steal something from them or what?”
The shoulder hunched even higher to shut Eden out. “C’mon, you’ve got to tell me something. At least tell me where to take you. I don’t imagine you want to be dropped off at a police station so give me some ideas here. I’ll get you something to eat if you’re hungry.” A quick convulsion shook the boy’s body. “Okay, food coming up next.”
As they sat in the parking lot of a twenty-four hour convenience store eating greasy burritos and drinking cokes, Eden watched the boy out of the corner of her eye. He looked as though he’d been living rough for some time but not for years.
As he finished his food, she said, “I don’t imagine it’s very safe for us to drive back to my apartment, is it? That’s where I was going when I broke up your little fight. We might need to save that trip until later.”
The boy shook his hair at Eden and mumbled again, “I’ll just take off from here. You go on and do what you want.” He opened the car door to leave and swayed as he tried to stand on his feet. Eden leaned across the car and grabbed his shirtsleeve to pull him back into the seat.
“Just get in the car and I’ll take you where you need to go, okay? You’re not in any shape to walk away from here. Buckle your seat belt and tell me where to go. By the way, Hell is not the answer I’m looking for.”
A very small chuckle rose from the boy and he said, “If you really want to know, I need to get to Dallas, Texas. You can drop me along the highway and I’ll get a ride with a trucker. Some of them drive all the way and are glad for a little company.”
Eden put her hands on her steering wheel and stared through the windshield of the car. Then, with a decisive nod, she started the car and drove up to the gas pumps. She filled the car with gas, paid with a credit card, and drove quickly away. As she drove down a partially empty business street, she noticed the bright lights surrounding an ATM kiosk. She quickly pulled in and drew out a handful of cash. She stashed the money in her backpack and drove on to the next ATM. She took cash on every card in her wallet including the one belonging to her parents. She thought it might not be a good idea to leave a paper trail all across the Southwest on the way to Texas. The boy paid no attention to her actions. He’d flipped back his seat and closed his eyes to shut out the world. Before long, Eden heard light snores from that side of the car and hoped he’d sleep for hours. She had more things to do before they left Los Angeles.
The nameless boy stirred a little as she finally passed the LA city limits around 10:00 the next morning. She’d slept a few hours herself parked in a hospital parking garage after she’d sneaked into her apartment building and quickly snatched up clothes and other necessities. She’d left by the back door and reached her car before the boy woke up and wandered off. She cashed a large check at the nearest drive-through bank on the way out of town and liberated most of the money in her checking account.
As she drove through the heavy traffic, the watery sunshine raised her spirits higher than they had been for months. The last eighteen months had ground her down. The endless days of driving for over an hour to get to school and then walking all over campus only to get back into her car and drive to her job. Then, finally, the long drive back to her apartment after the world had turned dark. She needed a definite break in her routine. Actually, she decided to get rid of all routines. She’d been a good girl for long enough. Sometime, later, maybe even tomorrow or the next day, she’d call her parents to tell them some lie or another about what she was doing and where she was going. She smiled at the highway in front of her and tried to imagine what would happen at the end of the road. When she realized she had no idea why they were even driving to Dallas, she gave up the effort and smiled with the joy of getting away from the millions of people who lived and breathed in Southern California. She was ready to enjoy the sheer quiet of the trip through the desert. Wide-open spaces had a great appeal for her this morning.
Eden looked again into the eyes of the boy seated across from her and waited for him to finish chewing his latest bite. “Uh, can you give me a name? I’d sure like to quit thinking of you as the ‘boy.’ Any name would be fine. It doesn’t have to be yours. Make one up for me.”
The boy smiled slightly and looked at Eden with even more interest. “Why are you doing this for me? Why didn’t you just drive away from that alley last night and forget about me? Why did you rescue me?”
Eden filled her mouth with a handful of chips and chewed slowly to play for time. For the first time, she really thought about what she’d done the night before and she, too, wondered why she’d done it.
“Okay, here’s what I think. Decisions are made in just one second. It doesn’t really matter why a person makes a certain decision. As soon as it’s made, the next thing will happen and then the next decision will have to be made. Most of the time people don’t even weigh the consequences of every little decision they make during their lifetime. If they did, they wouldn’t get anything done. They’d still be back in time somewhere, wondering whether to take that first step or not. Anyway, people usually make up reasons later on after everything has already happened. There are all kinds of words for that: rationalization, justification, excuses. But, in reality, most decisions are made unconsciously and a course of action has been started. So the reason for the decision is unimportant. The decision itself is the only important thing. Once it’s been made, for good or bad, there’s no going back.”
The boy smiled really widely this time and said, “You mean, shit happens.”
Eden laughed explosively and sprayed her next mouthful of chips all over the table. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to coat you with half-chewed food. Oh, wait a minute, maybe unconsciously I did mean to do that. That could just be one more of those decisions that can’t be taken back.”
“Deakin.”
“What did you just say?”
“Deakin, that’s my name.”
“You mean, like at church. D-E-A-C-O-N.”
“No, nothing to do with church. D-E-A-K-I-N. Thanks for helping me get away from Joey. He was really mad last night.”
“Why?”
“Uh, it’s a long story. You don’t want to hear it right now.”
“We have a long drive ahead of us. You can tell me while we drive. Now, we need a Wal-Mart or a K-Mart or something like that. You need some new clothes. You’re way too tall to fit into mine. I’ll drive and you look. Holler when you see something suitable.”
Sunday, November 2, 2008
THE BANDIT QUEEN
CHAPTER 1
The wind whipped Eden’s hair into her face and blanked out her view of the road. She slid her eyes to her left and guided the car along the white lines in the center of the road. She slowly raised her right hand and swept her long brown hair behind her ear. Without another thought, she raised her head and stared again through the windshield. The road ran straight to the horizon with not a bend or curve in sight. Eden shifted her position and glanced up into the sky directly overhead. The sun had disappeared behind the corner of a large white cloud. She shivered in the chill of the winter day and hoped the sun would break out again. It wasn’t exactly the season for driving with the convertible top down but she welcomed any sun she could get right now. She glanced over at the boy curled up in the seat next to her. His shoulder blocked his face from her gaze and his hands twitched in his lap. She reached out and touched his shoulder with one gentle finger and left him to his dreams.
The huge trucks on the other side of the road sucked her closer and closer to the center of the road. Eden stared down the road and smiled as a tiny town appeared on the horizon. Billboards popped up on the side of the road to extol the churches, restaurants and motels to be found a few miles up the road. The only amenity Eden was interested in was a gas station complete with restroom. She pulled off the highway and then turned immediately into a shiny gas station. She nestled the car up to the closest pump and turned it off. She stepped stiffly out of the car and stretched her arms into the air over her head. The boy in the other seat curled into an even tighter ball and hid his face from the bright lights of the station. Eden stood next to his side of the car and watched the numbers on the face of the pump change with each surge of gas into her tank. After she twirled the cap on her tank, she leaned over the still form of the boy and said, very quietly, “I’m heading for the bathroom. Stay where you are until I get back. Then you can have your turn.”
She lightly touched the tangled light brown hair and patted his shoulder before she strode into the building. She returned several minutes later with a sack that she stowed in the floor of the back seat. The boy peered through his hair and deliberately closed his eyes and slid even further down in his seat. Eden nodded in understanding and drove quickly away from the lights and noise of the gas station.
“Food and drinks in that sack, if you’re interested. I’m pulling into that park over there to the right. I need to walk around a little bit and so do you.”
Eden slid out of the door of the car and picked up the bag of food with one continuous movement. She slammed the car door without another word to her passenger and walked across the dead grass to a picnic table. She stretched her legs a few times and then ran to the far end of the small park. She turned and jogged slowly back to the table. From the corner of her eye, she could see the boy had changed his position. His face had turned up toward the sun that was just feeling its way around the edge of the cloud. Eden rattled the sack noisily as she pulled out the drinks and sandwiches. She had only eaten three bites of her sandwich when the boy slid quietly out of the car and glided up to the table. He quickly folded his lean height and dropped to the bench across from Eden. They ate in silence. At least as much silence as possible thirty feet from the edge of a busy highway. The trucks and cars whooshed back and forth along the highway and covered up the smaller sounds of the park. Eden watched the bare branches of the trees waving above her head but she didn’t hear the wind that caused the movement. She set more food in front of the boy and studied him as he ate. He was probably two or three years younger than her nineteen years but he wore his age with a definite wariness. He’d left his childhood long behind but his body hadn’t matured to match his eyes. His shoulder-length brown hair blew into his mouth as he ate and he pushed it out of the way without conscious thought. He had obviously worn his hair fairly long for quite some time. His beard was light even though Eden knew he hadn’t shaved in at least two days. His clothes had been made for a much larger person and hung on his slight frame.
“Are you going to tell me your name now? We’re a whole day away from the coast and no one seems to be following us. So, how about telling me who you are and what was going on back there?” The boy looked through the tangled hair covering his face at the young woman sitting across the picnic table. Her brown hair hung halfway down her back and her blue eyes watched him with interest. She wore no makeup but her clothes and her new convertible told the boy she had access to money. Gold earrings sparkled on her ears and a Rolex watch peeked out below the sleeve of her cotton sweater. Her shoes were the same brand he once wore, back when he was just a child. Eden saw his eyes cloud over and she imagined him looking back over his life for the answer to her questions. The boy looked at her again but with wonder not with envy. He’d once lived the kind of life she obviously inhabited but he’d run away from it and had never looked back. The only remnant of his past life could be seen whenever he smiled, which was seldom. He still wore braces on his teeth, a definite holdover from his childhood. He knew he should have them removed but it was way down on the list of important things, right behind food, shelter, and safety.
The wind whipped Eden’s hair into her face and blanked out her view of the road. She slid her eyes to her left and guided the car along the white lines in the center of the road. She slowly raised her right hand and swept her long brown hair behind her ear. Without another thought, she raised her head and stared again through the windshield. The road ran straight to the horizon with not a bend or curve in sight. Eden shifted her position and glanced up into the sky directly overhead. The sun had disappeared behind the corner of a large white cloud. She shivered in the chill of the winter day and hoped the sun would break out again. It wasn’t exactly the season for driving with the convertible top down but she welcomed any sun she could get right now. She glanced over at the boy curled up in the seat next to her. His shoulder blocked his face from her gaze and his hands twitched in his lap. She reached out and touched his shoulder with one gentle finger and left him to his dreams.
The huge trucks on the other side of the road sucked her closer and closer to the center of the road. Eden stared down the road and smiled as a tiny town appeared on the horizon. Billboards popped up on the side of the road to extol the churches, restaurants and motels to be found a few miles up the road. The only amenity Eden was interested in was a gas station complete with restroom. She pulled off the highway and then turned immediately into a shiny gas station. She nestled the car up to the closest pump and turned it off. She stepped stiffly out of the car and stretched her arms into the air over her head. The boy in the other seat curled into an even tighter ball and hid his face from the bright lights of the station. Eden stood next to his side of the car and watched the numbers on the face of the pump change with each surge of gas into her tank. After she twirled the cap on her tank, she leaned over the still form of the boy and said, very quietly, “I’m heading for the bathroom. Stay where you are until I get back. Then you can have your turn.”
She lightly touched the tangled light brown hair and patted his shoulder before she strode into the building. She returned several minutes later with a sack that she stowed in the floor of the back seat. The boy peered through his hair and deliberately closed his eyes and slid even further down in his seat. Eden nodded in understanding and drove quickly away from the lights and noise of the gas station.
“Food and drinks in that sack, if you’re interested. I’m pulling into that park over there to the right. I need to walk around a little bit and so do you.”
Eden slid out of the door of the car and picked up the bag of food with one continuous movement. She slammed the car door without another word to her passenger and walked across the dead grass to a picnic table. She stretched her legs a few times and then ran to the far end of the small park. She turned and jogged slowly back to the table. From the corner of her eye, she could see the boy had changed his position. His face had turned up toward the sun that was just feeling its way around the edge of the cloud. Eden rattled the sack noisily as she pulled out the drinks and sandwiches. She had only eaten three bites of her sandwich when the boy slid quietly out of the car and glided up to the table. He quickly folded his lean height and dropped to the bench across from Eden. They ate in silence. At least as much silence as possible thirty feet from the edge of a busy highway. The trucks and cars whooshed back and forth along the highway and covered up the smaller sounds of the park. Eden watched the bare branches of the trees waving above her head but she didn’t hear the wind that caused the movement. She set more food in front of the boy and studied him as he ate. He was probably two or three years younger than her nineteen years but he wore his age with a definite wariness. He’d left his childhood long behind but his body hadn’t matured to match his eyes. His shoulder-length brown hair blew into his mouth as he ate and he pushed it out of the way without conscious thought. He had obviously worn his hair fairly long for quite some time. His beard was light even though Eden knew he hadn’t shaved in at least two days. His clothes had been made for a much larger person and hung on his slight frame.
“Are you going to tell me your name now? We’re a whole day away from the coast and no one seems to be following us. So, how about telling me who you are and what was going on back there?” The boy looked through the tangled hair covering his face at the young woman sitting across the picnic table. Her brown hair hung halfway down her back and her blue eyes watched him with interest. She wore no makeup but her clothes and her new convertible told the boy she had access to money. Gold earrings sparkled on her ears and a Rolex watch peeked out below the sleeve of her cotton sweater. Her shoes were the same brand he once wore, back when he was just a child. Eden saw his eyes cloud over and she imagined him looking back over his life for the answer to her questions. The boy looked at her again but with wonder not with envy. He’d once lived the kind of life she obviously inhabited but he’d run away from it and had never looked back. The only remnant of his past life could be seen whenever he smiled, which was seldom. He still wore braces on his teeth, a definite holdover from his childhood. He knew he should have them removed but it was way down on the list of important things, right behind food, shelter, and safety.
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