From A Dead Sleep Page 13

  Monday

  Chapter 17

  The pulsating screech of a small, digital alarm clock coated with the grimy smudges of fingerprints from past occupants tore Sean from a lumbering sleep. He hadn’t set the alarm, but he was relieved that the guest from the previous night presumably had. Eight-thirty in the morning. He stared at an egg-shaped, reddish-brown water stain on the ceiling for a minute or so before he heard the slamming of two car doors just outside his window. He lurched over to the drawn blinds to make sure the police hadn’t come for him, but before he even reached the glass, the loud voices of two Spanish-speaking men squelched the worry. They seemed to be arguing. Their conversation was soon muffled out by a loud car engine that torqued to a start.

  Cursing his own grogginess, Sean stumbled around in the dark. With the window facing the opposite side of the building from the rising sun, his body was convinced it was earlier than it actually was. He got dressed in the previous day’s clothes and thumbed through his road atlas.

  On his way to his car, he tossed his room key with its orange, plastic key chain shaped like a diamond across the check-in counter in the motel office. The kid working the desk paid him no attention and instead doodled pictures of rock band insignias in a wide-ruled notebook with a dull pencil.

  When Sean stopped later for gas at a station along the exit, he grabbed two overcooked hotdogs and a Coke from the connected convenience store. A wrinkly faced woman in her fifties with wiry hair and a peach-fuzz beard worked the register. She told Sean the dogs had been sweltering under a heat lamp all night and she was about to throw them out. That was fine by Sean, who got them for free.

  With the hotdogs stacked in aluminum foil sleeves and cradled above his forearm as if he were holding a football, Sean’s gut sank the moment he stepped outside of the station. A teenage girl with long, blonde hair was walking toward him on her way up to the entrance of the station. Her head was tilted down as she intently shuffled her hand through her denim purse, searching for something inside it. At first glance, he was sure it was the waitress who had sat next to her boyfriend in the bar last night. He swallowed before stepping aside to let her pass, worried she’d lift her eyes at any moment to recognize the man who’d run out of the bar in the midnight hour with a couple hundred dollars that wasn’t his.

  Her head did rise, but a sigh of relief rather than a gasp was the reaction that dropped from his mouth. It was a different girl. A woman, really, whose older age became apparent when her sunken eyes revealed themselves. It was merely her button nose that made her appear more youthful.

  The side of his mouth curled before twisting into a full-fledged grin. This didn’t go unnoticed by the woman, who brandished him a thoroughly annoyed glare in return, as if she thought she was being ogled by some creep who didn’t deserve to be breathing the same air as her.

  Back in the car and on the road again, the miles and miles of flat farmland that surrounded him on both sides as he roared down the highway were now entirely visible under the bright sun. They were spread out across the vast horizon and served as a testament to how far he had already come. He knew the landscape would change significantly as he swung up to the north.

  His thoughts leapt back to his brief run-in with the woman at the gas station and the scowl she had flashed him. It was either her face or the expression on it that reminded him of someone from his past. After a few seconds, he realized who. Susan. She was a woman he had once gone on a date with a few years back. Similar build. The same button nose.

  He had met her in the back office of a ranching equipment warehouse just east of Lakeland. She was a receptionist. Sean was there for a two-night job, watching over a couple of high-end tractors that were being stored for an expo in town. She’d been friendly with him during the stint and had engaged him a few times in some small talk that he didn’t find irritating like he found it with most people. He noticed as she was signing the invoice check to Hansen Security on the last day that she wore no wedding ring. He built up enough nerve to ask her out, and he was pleasantly surprised when she accepted.

  He had never felt comfortable dating. He found it to be a tedious, completely unnatural ritual of portraying something that he just wasn’t: a charming, considerate person. Numerous times throughout his life he’d heard the standard advice, “Just be yourself.” It’s what his sister, Diana, would tell him. It’s what the talking heads on daytime television talk shows would say. However, the phrase always struck him as cynical and simplistic, because it had to have been concocted by someone who had clearly never met a man like Sean Coleman.

  Even back in high school it was difficult. He played football, a warrior’s sport where female fans typically swooned over the combatants. They never swooned over him, though—at least not the ones from his own school. Most high school girls in Winston had grown up alongside him from an early age, sharing small classrooms where he often occupied a corner at the command of spent teachers. The local girls knew all there was to know about Sean Coleman, and if they ever forgot, their parents would remind them. He would get some attention from the groupies he’d meet at away games, but it would never take long for their interest to dry up as well.

  He learned that wisdom didn’t accompany age when it came to courting women. In fact, meeting people became a more grueling process as the years passed him by. He was well aware that he wasn’t getting any younger. The scant, gray hairs that stemmed up from his scalp were gaining friends. The joints in his knees were growing tighter. The meter on his bathroom scale seemed to be laughing at him.

  He fancied himself a rugged individualist, but he knew loneliness, and he didn’t like that time sometimes felt like a persistent adversary intent on condemning him to a fate of solitude. Whenever his uncle would give him a hard time about women, Sean would insist that he was happy with the bachelor life and planned on avoiding marriage like the plague, but that was a lie. Sean suspected that all men who talked like that were lying. He had no interest in being terminally single.

  It was that fear that made taking women out to a restaurant for dinner an exhausting routine. It wasn’t about trying to have fun and getting to know someone. Instead, it felt like the heat of a self-imposed microscope was bearing down on him, intent on exposing his slightest misstep as a lethal contaminant in a time-sensitive experiment. The pressure would reliably lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure, as it did with Susan.

  By the end of their date, Sean had accidentally laughed at a sentimental story she had told him of her grandmother’s funeral, got caught in a lie about being co-owner of his uncle’s business, and spilt hot coffee across her lap during the loud and animated retelling of a memorable football play from his glory days.

  It was possible that something could have still been salvaged from the night if he hadn’t wrapped a headlock around a man in the restaurant parking lot after watching him back his car into the Nova’s bumper.

  The drive back to Susan’s place was silent and overbearingly awkward, and when he walked her up to her front door and asked her if she’d like to go out again sometime, the appalled expression on her face burned itself into his memory. It was the same look he received from the woman at the gas station—the scorching condemnation of not only his gall but his mere existence.

  As the sun bore down on his thick arm resting along the lower window frame of the driver’s side door, he wondered if anyone back in Winston had even noticed he’d left. He rubbed a nagging soreness at the back of his head before twisting the tuner knob on his factory radio from country song to country song until he found a classic rock station that was winding down “Hot Blooded” by Foreigner.

  The open road provided him with a lot of time to think about the stranger from the bridge and Lumbergh’s flippant handling of his claims. The last sentence the chief had left on his answering machine the night before he’d left kept replaying in his mind: “I don’t know what else to say, Sean.”

  He wanted to give the chief something to say, and that
something would be, “I’m sorry, Sean. You were right and I was wrong.”

  But the longer he drove, the more he came to realize that it wasn’t just about Lumbergh. It was also about himself and what he believed was a ripe opportunity to finally follow through with something in his life—to see something through until its end. And when he completed his journey and had answers to his questions, only then would he have proven his relevance not just to him, but everyone who knew him.

  Chapter 18

  A jubilant grin had been pinned to Toby Parker’s round face from the moment he’d peeled a bag of dog treats off a dusty general store shelf that drizzly late morning. Beef flavored, in the shape of bones. Despite the dampness in the air and on the ground, he briskly rode his bike along the pebbly and intermittently steep back roads of Winston to Sean’s place. He paid no mind to the splattered mud gathering on his shoes and pant legs. Instead, he pictured the gritty old dachshund’s gray jowls flopping from side to side as he devoured the food from his open hand.

  The boy wasn’t really a dog lover, but he was fascinated with Rocco. Being Sean Coleman’s companion certainly earned the dachshund points, but it was more than that. Rocco was also a lot like his master—tough, tenacious, and blind to the things around him.

  Toby’s mother often asked her son what he saw in Sean Coleman.

  “He’s not nice to you,” she’d say. “He’s not nice to anyone.”

  One time, after pressing for an answer to her question, Toby reluctantly responded, “He treats me like he treats everyone.”

  His mother took the statement as a validation of her argument, but that wasn’t what the boy meant. He was drawn to Sean Coleman for his blindness. The crass security guard never treated Toby like someone whose feelings required special consideration. He never viewed Toby through a window of sympathy. He treated the boy with the same annoyance and discontent as he treated the rest of the town of Winston. The boy’s mother probably never considered that her son was well aware of the favorable discrimination he was subjected to, but he was. He certainly didn’t begrudge those who treated him as someone who was different, but he felt unsolicited loyalty toward the one person who didn’t.

  The boy pinched the bell on his bike as he pulled up to Sean’s front steps—a special greeting to let Rocco know he had arrived. Though he didn’t feel that cold, he could see his own breath.

  Large evergreens hovered above. Steady beads of water fell from their branches and tapped the ground cover below. The faint, more constant sound of slow-flowing water trickled up from the creek that wound its way along the opposite side of the building. There were no other buildings in sight. Sean’s home was fairly secluded. Far enough away from others to avoid chit-chatty neighbors but close enough to town for him not to be mistaken for a hermit. Bailey lived in the walkout basement below. Neither he nor Sean liked company.

  Toby leaped up the stairs, skipping the middle step and nearly wiping out when he got to the slick landing. He jammed his hand into the pocket of his beige cargo pants to retrieve the spare key Sean had left in his care. Because he always preferred to be underdressed for the weather, his mother had to plead with him that morning not to wear shorts. She also had to compromise on a windbreaker instead of a more suitable coat.

  While fiddling with the door, he was curious why the dog hadn’t responded with an aroused flurry of barking. The boy had never walked up Sean’s front steps before without receiving the coarse greeting. Perhaps he was still asleep. Toby unlocked the door, entered, and closed the door quickly behind him, unsure whether or not the dog would try to bolt outside. He figured it was unlikely, but he didn’t want to take the chance.

  Particles of dust swam aimlessly in the faint glow of hampered daylight that streamed in around the edges of the closed living room curtains. He took notice that the well-worn curtains nearly matched his orange and white striped shirt that hung down from under his jacket. Still, nothing from the dog—not even the pitter-patter of paws.

  “Rocco,” the boy said slowly with a mischievous smile draped between his cheeks. “I’ve got something for you.”

  The loud creak of a floorboard sounded off from a dark corner of the room, prompting him to turn his head.

  “Something tells me that you’re not Sean Coleman,” an unexpected statement plunged out from the gloom.

  Toby gasped and felt his body hurl itself away from the haunting voice. His wobbly legs collapsed under the weight of his own indecision, and he toppled to the floor with a loud thud. His heart battered the inside of his chest while his breath eluded his lungs. The bottomless tone and calmness of the male voice left a deep chill in the already cold air. The boy rapidly scooted backwards on his butt, creating a rasping sound from his nylon jacket until he felt the corner of a kitchen cabinet press into the swell of his back. His eyes shifted feverishly back and forth from the darkened corner to the closed front door until he spotted some movement from the corner, accompanied by another groan from the floorboards. Entering into one of the narrow beams of light was a large hand clasping an even larger, black pistol. Toby’s watering eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room and he could make out the silhouette of a large figure nearly six and a half feet tall with very broad shoulders.

  “I know Mr. Coleman lives in this shit-hole. Who lives in the shit-hole downstairs?” asked the voice.

  Toby couldn’t speak. His head was light from adrenaline pumping through his body. His eyes bobbed back and forth in every direction. The intruder almost sounded as if he was speaking through some sort of low-pitched, voice manipulation device, but the clarity and steadiness of his query suggested otherwise. The voice waited for the boy to answer.

  Trembling, Toby forced himself to talk. “Mr. Bailey, sir. Mr. Bailey lives downstairs. Did . . . did he let you in?”

  The man ignored the boy’s question. “Who are you, kid?”

  Toby’s lips felt numb. The trembling was getting worse, making his next attempt to speak even more difficult.

  “Who are you?” the man pressed.

  Toby tried has best to focus. “T . . . T–Toby. I’m Toby, sir,” he said before flipping his eyes back to the door.

  “Don’t look over there. You keep your eyes on me.”

  Toby’s eyes swept back to the man’s hand, still partially illuminated. He glanced up toward the man’s face for a second before looking back to the hand.

  “So tell me, Toby . . . What brings you here today?”

  Toby swallowed and replied, “I’m h-here to feed Rocco.” He could hear the man’s steady breathing, as if he was closer than he really was.

  Seconds that seemed like minutes streamed by before the stranger spoke again. “Is Rocco the dog?”

  Toby nodded quickly, then discreetly scanned the room with his eyes. He had still heard nothing from Rocco.

  “Keep your eyes on me,” the voice calmly commanded.

  Toby homed back onto the gun. “I’m s-s-sorry. Yes, sir; he’s the dog.”

  The intruder asked Toby how he knew Sean. The boy managed to keep himself from hyperventilating. Seconds later, a sporadic, largely incoherent account describing the time when Sean and he first met began dribbling from Toby’s mouth. If someone would have asked him a minute later what he had just said, he wouldn’t have remembered. He stopped the story short when he saw the man raise his gun toward him.

  “You’re friends. I get it,” the intruder said. “Where can I find your friend?”

  “I don’t know where he is, sir. I know he’s not in Winston, but he didn’t tell me where he was going. I know he’ll be back in a few days. Maybe you can come back then.”

  Toby attempted to form a smile, his eyes pleading with the man for some sense of kindness or at least some alleviation from the intensity of the situation. His eyes ticked up from the gun to the man’s face again. He could see him better now. Short, wavy hair. Glasses that looked to have metal frames, possibly gold in color. His unshaven jaw was square, and his cheeks had noticeable poc
kmarks. He wore a lightweight jacket with small straps above the shoulders, jeans, and cowboy boots. Toby couldn’t see beyond the lenses of his glasses. They weren’t tinted, but the darkened room kept them opaque. Regardless, the boy could sense diabolism staring down on him.

  “Kid, I don’t know if you’re stupid or if you’re trying to be funny. For your sake, I hope you’re just stupid. Listen to me carefully,” the man said. “I’m going to ask you some questions, and you’re going to answer them. If you don’t, or you lie to me, I’m going to shove this gun down your throat, pull the trigger, and leave you here with a second asshole. Do we understand each other?”

  Toby swallowed hard. The crater in his stomach opened wider. No one had ever spoken to him like that, not even Sean. Despite the volatile threat, the man’s tone was still one of composure, as if he was unemotionally reading his words off of an affidavit.

  “Y–y–yes, sir,” he managed to respond before collecting a couple shallow breaths.

  The man angled his gun toward the kitchen table under the window while running his knuckles along the underside of his grainy chin. “Where’d your friend get that briefcase?”

  Toby’s shoulders shook as he slowly panned his head from the man to the kitchen table where the dead man’s satchel rested on its side. It was still caked with dried mud. He explained that he didn’t know where Sean had gotten it. The man then reached into his jacket pocket with his free hand and pulled out the spiral notepad that Sean had written down unanswered questions in Saturday night regarding the man who’d shot himself on the bridge. He held it out in front of Toby with his large hand making it look close to the size of a Post-It notepad.