“Well, that’s not me.”
Now that he thought about it, the only girl he’d ever watched in the bathroom was his daughter, Callie. But that had been when she was toilet training. And that he’d stopped about a year ago, when she was three. “I need privacy, Daddy,” she told him one day. Made him laugh and broke his heart at the same time.
Kelly finished. He heard her rip some toilet paper from the roll, then flush. As she stood to pull up her pants, Jack found himself turning back to face her.
He told himself he thought she was done, already covered, but the moment the thought entered his brain, he knew it was a lie. Because he wanted to see. Because he was a guy.
Men were visual creatures, endlessly fascinated by the random body parts of women they didn’t even find particularly attractive. In his case, even a woman who had poisoned him. He couldn’t not look.
“Hey.”
Jack caught a fleeting glimpse: Kelly’s pale white skin, with a perfectly trimmed triangle of red hair, shaved close. Definitely not a natural blonde. Then it was gone, hidden by the pink stripes of a pair of bikini briefs.
“I’m sorry. Thought you were done.”
“Right.” Kelly smirked. “Though I suppose I owe you at least a look, don’t I? After all I’ve put you through?”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“I owe you an explanation. But are you ready to hear it?”
12:18 a.m.
Edison Avenue
Explain it to me best you can.”
Kowalski was on his cell. He’d convinced Ed’s wife— Claudia, her name was—to return to her bedroom for a moment while he called for backup. He, of course, was doing no such thing, and Claudia would know within a minute something hinky was going on. The clock, as always, was ticking.
Welcome to my life.
Then he’d headed back to the bathroom. Christ. The Dydak Brothers would have come in their pants, all this blood. This was at least a six- or seven-hour detail.
Next, he’d hit the phone. Called his handler on the last number he’d memorized. Asked her what to do.
“Explain it to me best you can,” she’d said.
Kowalski stepped inside the bathroom, closed the door—he didn’t want Claudia hearing this stuff—and quickly described the injuries. It was all from the neck up. No visible gunshot wounds or lacerations. All of the blood seemed to have spurted out through the eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. Like the man’s brain were a blood orange and some invisible force had reached in and squeezed tight in one spasmodic jerk.
“Hold, please.”
Claudia started sobbing again. He could hear her through the wall. Damn it, this wasn’t going to last long. Hopefully, the brain boys up in CI-6 were moving fast. Telling his handler how to respond. What to do next.
“We’re going to need the subject’s head,” his handler said. “Seal it and await pickup instructions. I’ll call you on this phone.”
That’s what Kowalski thought. Fuck. With the wife next door, this was going to be complicated. Then another thought occurred to him. One subject, kissing another, the new subject dead within an hour. Bioweapon? Supervirus? Ebola?
“Should I quarantine the house? The subject’s wife is here.”
I’m here,
“No need. But do not let any of the subject’s blood to come in contact with any open wounds or scrapes or mucous membranes. Treat it like AIDS. Clear? We also need you to clean the house.”
Kowalski didn’t need clarification on that one. “Clean” didn’t mean Windex and rags.
Claudia was still crying.
Now this joker in the bathroom might or might not have gotten what he deserved. It’s never good karma to kiss a strange woman in an airport when you’ve got a wife at home. But the wife was innocent, as far as he knew.
Claudia, grieving like anyone would.
Anyone normal.
Push it away, Kowalski. Look for tools at hand; obsess over this shit later. It’s what you’re good at, remember? Push everything away.
He opened the medicine cabinet. He found what he needed in three seconds. His eyes checked the label. Yeah, it was the kind he needed. The kind that wouldn’t snap halfway through. Claudia came back to see what was taking so long, why there weren’t a thousand flashing lights and sirens outside her house because her husband, Christ in heaven, her husband’s brain had exploded inside his skull, and the entire fucking world should be racing to the scene to help, to figure out what went wrong. That’s what Kowal-ski would expect her to be thinking anyway.
“What are you doing in there?”
He grabbed the plastic box of dental floss, flicked the top open.
The best operations supplied their own tools.
“There’s something you need to see, Mrs. Hunter.”
12:25 a.m.
Sheraton, Room 702
They sat on the couch in the upper level of the room, three steps up from the bedroom pit. It was a soft couch, decorated in a bland pattern of light tans and browns. Look at it too long and you’d fall asleep. That was the point, in a hotel like this. Spend most of your time unconscious. Then pay us and head back home. Jack sat on one end, while Kelly sat on the other. She removed her shoes and put her bare feet up on the couch, mere inches away from Jack.
“Okay, let’s get to it. First, I have to tell you why I selected you.”
“So this wasn’t random.”
“Hardly. Had you picked out on the plane from Houston. I was sitting two rows behind. I can’t blame you for not noticing me. You walked to the bathroom in the rear of the place only once, but the plane was rocking a bit. You fought hard to keep your balance. Remember?”
It was true. Jack damn near sprayed his own pants in the rest room, with all the turbulence.
“I heard you talking to the guy in the next seat. He was a lawyer, and you told him you were a journalist. Were you telling the truth?”
“Yeah, I’m a reporter. I work for a weekly newspaper in Chicago. You know, if this is about a story pitch, you could have explained this to me. We could have set up interviews on tape, on the record. I could have helped you, whatever kind of trouble you’re in. Why did you do all of this?”
“Because without you, I’d be dead.”
“Oh.”
Jack paused.
“What does that mean}”
“I mean that literally. If I don’t have someone within ten feet of me at all times, I’ll die.”
12:28 a.m.
Basement, Edison Avenue
Tool time. Kowalski found oversized Glad freezer bags in a kitchen drawer; the Hunters liked to freeze large slabs of meat. Inside their 20.3-cubic-foot Frigidaire freezer chest, he founds whole chickens, legs of lamb, pork chops, flank steaks, you name it. They probably belonged to a warehouse shoppers’ club. Kowalski wondered if Katie would have tried to talk him into something like that—something that went against his longtime ethos of spare, frugal living. Then again, with a baby on the way, it would have been different. Hard to scrounge a diaper at the last minute. You needed stacks of those on hand. Or so he’d heard.
Stop that shit. Get the head, get out.
The freezer bags were the perfect size for a human head.
Down in the basement, Kowalski had his pick of gym bags in a cedar closet. He chose the blandest and sturdiest: a small Adidas Diablo duffel with an easy-access U-shaped opening at the top.