More Waiting

I had a few hours of that uncomfortable, worthless, semi-waking sleep that most people settle for on airplanes or friends' couches. Bremer and a few FBI technicians were still in the suite, but the police had all left. I was annoyed that I had to put on the same clothes I'd been wearing, but by now it was too late to go shopping. My stomach was practically digesting itself as well. There was a picked-over tray of croissant sandwiches set up on the kitchen table that I eyeballed warily.

"Don't worry," Bremer said, "we had some police officers down in the kitchen watching them make these."
I couldn't tell if he was joking or not, but I didn't see anybody writhing on the floor from strychnine poisoning so I threw caution to the wind and ate a dry turkey sandwich, then roast beef, then another turkey.

The FBI techs seemed to be on their way out. All the gear they'd been using was packed up into metal locking cases and the bags of tainted food were nowhere to be seen. When one of them carried a case out and through the door I saw there were still two police officers standing in the hall and I felt a little bit better.

I looked around for my mom and didn't see her, but the door to her room was closed so I assumed she'd gone to sleep. Bremer pulled out a chair at the small kitchen table and sat across from me.

"You're wondering what you're supposed to be doing now," he said.
"You're going to tell me that we're waiting for him to try again," I said.
"That's what you're doing. We're hoping to find him first. Local PD is on it, and our people are looking too. It would help if you could give us any more of a description of the guy."
"I told you, I never got a good look at his face. He seemed average height, average build, and some kind of accent. Scottish, I think."
"Right. Well, you just described almost everybody in Scotland."
"There was some of his blood at the house. Can't you analyze that and get his DNA signature or something?"
Bremer scratched his almost-leathery cheek. "No, it doesn't really work like that. We could try to match his DNA against something, but we don't have anything to match it against."
"Prints from the gun?"
"Just yours."
"Security cameras from the hotel?"
"He looks away from every camera."
"But you have a shot of him, you know what he looks like?"
"Like almost everybody in Scotland."

I tried to recall any of the cop shows or detective movies I'd seen, tried to cull together a list of all the ways to catch a killer. It seems like in the stories they always left behind some kind of clue, and got in some kind of battle-of-wits with the lead detective. For lack of that, I didn't know how any real crimes are ever solved.

"What about grocery stores?" I asked.
Bremer's mouth tightened a bit. "What about them?"
"Can't you go to all the local stores and pull up receipt logs to look for transactions matching all the stuff he bought? That'd give you a timestamp, then you could check their security footage from that time and see if you can get a shot of his face. Or maybe he paid with a credit card."
Bremer tapped his middle finger against the surface of the table for a moment. "Ever considered a career in investigation?" he asked.
"I'll be done with mysteries as soon as this crap is sorted out," I said.
"We already put PD on grocery store duty. Most of the smaller stores don't have indexable logs so they have to be sifted through by hand. It could take a while."

I frowned, more upset that my genius idea wasn't very original than the fact that we were no closer to stopping the guy who wanted to kill me.

"Are you going to put me in a safe house or something? Protective custody? This guy clearly knows where I am."
"We can, at least we're going to be moving you to a different hotel and we'll leave some police on the place for a while until we can sort out some kind of legitimate security detail. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that these situations usually aren't like the movies."
"In what way?"
"Well, this guy isn't sitting around in a darkened room, staring at a photograph of you and sharpening a bowie knife. Professionals aren't the relentless at-all-costs arbiters of mayhem you'd imagine them to be. Right now the guy's probably got more on his plate than you, he's got covers and papers to deal with. You're just a job, and if was actually contracted to take out a teenager he probably expected little resistance. If anything, he's probably contacting his client and asking for more money."

I didn't say anything, just stared at the remaining sandwiches.

"All I mean," he continued, "is that this is a low-profile job. He's not going to blow up any buildings just hoping you'll be in it, and he's not going to take a thousand-yard shot at you from a clock tower. He might not even know how to work a gun. Maybe all he knows how to do is squirt strychnine into bottles of tea."
"If I happened to see this guy, and I happened to shoot him, where would I stand with the law there?" I asked.
"What, you going to go looking for him?"
"No, I need to buy some clothes and go back to the hospital. If he should jump around a corner and try to splash strychnine on me or something, I can shoot him, right?"
Bremer sighed and dropped his head into his palm.

The next morning, after some more worthless sleep, I put on the same damn outfit and grabbed my dead cell phone, wallet, knife, and the USP and headed out. Out in the hall were two police officers sitting in two chairs from the kitchen table from my suite. I hid the gun from view and told them, if they even cared, that I was going downstairs for some food. One of them nodded, the other said that there was another officer down in the parking lot.

The officer outside was easy enough to avoid.

I got in my car, pulled the gun from my pants, and slid it between the center console and the passenger seat. If I needed it, I could grab it and fire out the passenger window in one motion. For a moment I thought that was a weird thing for a person to think, but just added it to the pile of similar things I'd thought lately.

Across the street from the hotel was a shopping center with a few stores I could use. I'd thought about going to Old Navy, where I usually got my $18 jeans and $8 t-shirts, but opted instead for an outlet store of a more upscale department store. For some reason I felt like having some nicer clothes, maybe it was just because I could afford it. I left the gun in the car and did my shopping, consistently looking over my shoulder and trying to avoid blind corners. I bought some expensive pants and shirts that didn't have the brand's logo plastered all over the front for once. A few stores down was a Radio Shack, where I got a car and a wall charger for my phone. I looked at the fancy new phones and considered an upgrade, but really didn't feel like dealing with contracts and the fact that I wasn't 18 yet.

I changed into some of the new clothes in my car, somehow, plugged my phone in for the first time in nearly a week, and headed off toward the hospital.

At the front desk I asked where the ICU was and the lady said that only family members could visit people in the ICU. I told her I wanted to visit my sister, Amy Westborne. The lady typed into a computer for a bit, then announced that she'd been moved to a regular room that morning and gave me the number and directions.

I supposed that was a good thing.

After some tedious navigation of the poorly-laid-out hospital I found the right floor, wing, then room. I paused outside the door for a while, listening to hear if Amy's dad was in there and trying to figure out what I was supposed to do. Everything inside of me said I should feel horrible, feel scared, feel guilty that I'd almost gotten Amy killed. Somehow, though, I felt nothing. I knew how I should feel, but I couldn't get myself to feel it. It was like the first time I'd seen Citizen Kane and everything said I should be blown away, but all I felt was that I'd just seen an overly-complicated movie about an old rich guy who wishes he were young and poor again.

It didn't feel like denial. I'd been in denial when I heard my dad had died. It wasn't shock, either. It was just a kind of mechanical lack of emotion. Like whatever I was turning into wasn't the kind of creature who cared whether friends lived or died. Maybe I was compartmentalizing, I thought. Putting away the things I should be feeling now so I can feel them later when I'm in less danger. Maybe I'm just a robot.

After a few minutes I took in a deep breath and stepped in.

There she was. In the middle of the small, tan-colored room was a fancy-looking hospital bed. In it, under a sheet and attached to more tubes than I could account for, was Amy. She was asleep, her skin looked pale and her hair drawn back awkwardly. She was asleep; I hadn't anticipated that.

I thought about what to do for a bit, then decided to it down in one of the visitor's chairs against the window. I sat for a few minutes, used the bathroom attached to the room, then sat some more.

I almost felt myself drift off to sleep when I heard a weak, distant voice.

"You're here," she said, roughly.
I stood up and crossed the room. She was awake, grinning almost stupidly. "I'm everywhere," I said.