“You shot him?” Donald felt aghast; was he talking to a murderer?
“Yeah.” Jay took another drag of his cigarette. “Not like I wanted to. I didn’t have a choice. It was him, the guy that was following me, and I knew he was coming in to the bathroom to kill me, so I didn’t hesitate. I plugged that motherfucker, two in the chest and one in the head. He didn’t even see it coming.” Jay took another drag of his cigarette. Donald could tell that reliving this episode had affected him; his hands were shaking and his voice trembled. Donald felt his fear flare up again briefly and then it subsided. “For just a split second I thought I’d really fucked up. I was thinking, ‘fuck, dude, you just plugged a guy who wanted to take a leak; you just plugged a guy who was just taking the same route you’re taking, that’s all’. But I didn’t have to think those thoughts for very long because I saw it. He had a pistol clutched in his right hand.” Another drag of the cigarette. “Dude was holding a nine-millimeter Bulldog with a twelve round magazine. There’s only one thing you use those for, dig?”
Donald nodded.
“Once I realized the shit was real, that my mind wasn’t just fucking with me, I took his gun and got the hell out of there. I took off in my car and had to force myself to drive the speed limit, I was so nervous. But I made it. I drove the rest of the night and made it to a little town in Missouri, I don’t remember the name now, and pulled over at a truck stop and got something to eat. I bought a newspaper and tried to chill out. There was a TV on in the diner and the news was on, but there wasn’t anything about the guy I’d shot in Oklahoma.
“So when I was done, I felt better. I picked up a Rand McNally map and got back on the road. I got to St. Louis that afternoon and headed straight to the east side and left the car unlocked in a parking lot, got my shit, and checked into the cheapest motel I could find. Before I split El Paso I took out as much cash as I could out of my checking account and I made sure I had it all in one place, then I checked all my other shit. I needed another set of wheels but I didn’t want to spend the money on ’em, dig? So I hung out a little bit at the motel and waited until dark, got a little sleep, then about midnight I set out and found a new set of wheels real easy. Then I packed up all my shit, threw my nine in a trashbin and tried to bury it beneath the junk, and got the hell out of the city. I crossed the river and got to Springfield the next morning, checked into another motel under a false name and paid cash, crashed and slept till about four. Then I got up, found a gun store in town and bought some rounds for the Bulldog. I came back to the motel and there was still nothing on the news about the guy I’d plugged in Oklahoma. And the motel was one of those low rent things, no broadband internet connection, so I had to use dialup and that was slower than snail shit. I checked the Oklahoma news and saw a little story about some guy whose identity the cops were withholding who’d been killed in a rest stop bathroom off Interstate Forty. No witnesses.” Jay took a drag of his cigarette. “I was pretty confident there were no witnesses either, but I still didn’t want to chance it. Ballistics will still point to me, and I figure the law is on to me now.”
Jay took another drag of his cigarette. “I threw my cell phone away for obvious reasons. Then I called my in-laws in Wyoming from a phone booth. Julie was frantic, but she was safe. As far as I could tell, the cops hadn’t come poking around up there yet. She said she’d called our voice mail and there were messages from the police, that they were looking for me. I told her that if the cops showed up to not believe anything they told her, that I didn’t do anything wrong. I couldn’t tell her where I was, just that I was safe. Then I hung up before any kind of trace could be established. I felt good she and Danny were safe. Her parents live in a rather rugged area and her dad has an arsenal like you wouldn’t believe. The minute you get on their property you trigger their security system.”
“Nice,” Donald said. Now he wished for a cigarette. He used to smoke when he was in college and gave it up during his first year of practice.
“So anyway, here I am.” Jay took another drag on his cigarette. “We need to make sure Michelle’s safe. First thing we should do is if she doesn’t call by nine or so, call her cell.”
“Then what?” Donald asked, his voice low. “If what you said is true and you think they—whoever they are—are on to her, they could be listening in to our communications.”
“True. We just need to find out where she’s staying. We can take it from there.”
Donald didn’t know what to think. If Michelle hadn’t spoken so highly of Jay the other night he would still be fearing for his safety; Jay exhibited all the signs of paranoia. He had severe doubts on the validity of his story about Dennis Harrington. Most likely Jay had spooked himself when he broke into the hotel room and his imagination got the best of him. He found it highly unlikely that Michelle would have been suckered in by any form of delusions Jay may harbor. Jay was right about their next step in this sense; he had to talk to Michelle, had to make sure she was okay, then he had to somehow get her to convey to him that Jay O’Rourke wasn’t entirely insane. This was going to be a tall order, but one he’d have to undertake if he was to completely trust Jay because right now he didn’t completely trust him. Not by a long shot.
“Well, let’s see if we can reach her,” Donald said, glancing at his watch. “It’s quarter past nine now.”
Jay nodded, took a final drag on the cigarette and crushed it beneath the toe of his boot. Then he followed Donald back into the house.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT WAS SIX p.m. on Friday and Jennifer Faus was still chained to her desk on the tenth floor of 156 Broadway in San Francisco, California where the offices of PeopleReady, Incorporated were located.
Jennifer had been coasting along in a mindless haze since two p.m., fruitlessly faking her job duties. She was ragged emotionally and physically. As one of twenty staff accountants for a mid-sized company that provided desktop IT and telecom support to various small and mid-size companies throughout the country, Jennifer’s job was rather mundane and run-of-the-mill. She was in Accounts Receivable, which meant she processed daily incoming EDI transactions, matched them with scanned paper invoices, updated the aging files, and ran various reports for a wide range of company personnel. She liked numbers and she liked her job. She was cheerful, always looked forward to starting the day with a smile and a positive attitude, and it showed in how her co-workers reacted to her; she felt she was very well liked in the company. It also helped that she was knowledgeable, competent at her job, and had a good attitude. Like every job, she had to deal with her share of difficult people, but those were skills one learned from life experience and a little bit of Psych 101 in college. Office Behavior workshops helped, too. As a result, out of most of the people she worked with, she had a good life/work balance. She took her job seriously and worked hard when she was at her desk from eight to five—after that she was her own person and the trivial matters of the day were forgotten.
But today… this week… had been hell.
On Monday morning Jennifer and the rest of the accounting staff were informed by the Controller and Vice President that a new corporate policy had been levied—all projects must be completed as quickly as possible on the day they were started. This brought protests from half of the accounting staff. The Vice President, a sullen, mousy-looking woman named Shannon Albright, informed them the decision was final and that they were free to tender their resignations if they no longer wanted to be part of this new team effort. She further explained that management was initiating this new policy due to increased competition from rival firms. “We need all daily accounts closed by five p.m. and we need preliminary work on the next day’s business in place before the start of business.” That meant two to three hours of prep work in some cases. Jennifer asked the inevitable question that was on everybody’s mind: what if they were physically unable to finish with closing due to circumstances beyond their control? Network or hardware failures, scheduling conflicts, that sort of thing. When Shannon asked, “What kind of scheduling conflicts?” Peggy Brenner, one of the accountants who had been at the company for thirty years answered. “I baby-sit my grandson from five-thirty to eight every night for my daughter while she attends UCSF. There’s no way I can work beyond five.”