After two more aspirin, Justice was feeling even better. He saw his pants, folded up neatly beside him. He was wearing only his shirt and his boxers and a thick pad of paper towels wrapped around his thigh. He vaguely remembered the Uber he’d taken to Alexandria, to a blighted neighborhood he’d passed through three years before, and then he’d walked three blocks to the warehouse district. It was desolate, derelict, the buildings falling in on themselves. It was home to a dozen or more homeless people, depending on the season, their cardboard nests propped against the buildings to keep them from collapsing inward. Odd how he’d remembered this place, known to his bones he’d be safe here. If his leg didn’t kill him.
Justice looked at Dougie, who was humming again, then at Major Hummer on his knees beside him. “Thank you both. I owe you my life, Major Hummer. And no, I didn’t kill anybody. But people are after me and I don’t know who they are. I ran out into the street and slammed onto the hood of a car that was spinning around because another car had hit it. They ran after me, but I got away.”
“You’re young,” Dougie said. “You should be able to run even with a gimp leg. I once had a daughter—I think she was my daughter, and I do remember she liked to run, but it was a long time ago. Maybe she’s about your age, that’s what I thought when I saw you. Had to help you, could have been my daughter. Did Ruth send you?”
“Who’s Ruth? Is she your daughter?”
“No, she’s not my daughter, but she’s real important. I’m her snitch.” Justice watched Dougie preen. “She’s an actual special agent, FBI, and she’s a good person. She’s smart, is Ruth. Hummer, you got your cell phone? I can call Ruth for you, Justice. She’ll know what to do.”
FBI? Dougie was a snitch? Justice felt like he’d fallen down the rabbit hole, but then he really looked at Dougie, realized he wasn’t crazy—well, he was, but still, it did sound like this Ruth woman might indeed be FBI.
He started to say no, don’t call her, but then he thought about it. She wasn’t CIA, no way would this Ruth agent even know about him, no way could she be involved with the people after him.
“Let me think about it, Dougie,” Justice said. “Do you know Ruth’s last name?”
“I did, once upon a time, but time’s slippery, you know? Names are slippery, too.”
“Yes, I know. Let me rest awhile, think this through—” And Justice closed his eyes under the watch of two homeless people who’d probably been on psychotropic meds once, but no longer. They were forgotten now, left to fend for themselves, but they’d helped him. Justice heard Dougie rise. “I’m gonna get Sally, Hummer, she can come and watch him awhile. I got to get more Wild Turkey. Over at Bilbo Baggins—you know Stan the barkeep, he puts a half bottle near the dumpster for me, wrapped in the Washington Post.”
Justice had eaten at Bilbo Baggins a couple of weeks before. He didn’t know Stan the barkeep, but realized he liked him. Justice fell asleep and dreamed he was running, running so hard his side was hurting something fierce, but he knew he had to keep going or they’d catch him. And what? Kill him? He saw her face, a strong face, set and hard with purpose. Why? The woman was gone and he saw his boss’s face. Mr. Besserman was standing over him at his workstation, eyeing the odd intel Justice had come across, and he was saying something, but what? Then he was running again and he saw another woman’s face, frozen with disbelief, wild red hair in bouncing curls all over her head and blue eyes, yes, she had blue eyes, but somehow she was out of time. Then everything hurt, and he jerked awake, blinking in the dim light.
He heard breathing, knew someone was close, and tightened with fear. A woman’s scratchy voice said, “Hold on, Justice—that’s your name, isn’t it? That’s what Hummer told me. Okay, let me turn on some light. It’s always so dark in here, but that’s the way Hummer likes it even when the sun’s shinin’ real bright outside like it is right now. I’m Sally. Dougie was drinking his Wild Turkey Stan left him, but Hummer, he’s upstairs in his nest, napping with the angels, like he always does for a while after he comes back from the world out there. Did I tell you? I’m Sally.”
A flashlight came on. And he looked into the raddled face of an older woman who might have been his mother if she didn’t look so derelict. She was wearing ragged clothes, her hair an improbable red with black and gray roots two inches long, but she was smiling at him sweetly. She was no threat. “Open up,” she said, and when he did, she poured some more water into his mouth. “Slow—good. Now, how is your leg? Your nose?”
He thought about that. “A dull throb, but nothing bad.”
“Doesn’t matter. Hummer said to give you more aspirin anyway.”
He dutifully swallowed the aspirin, drank more water, and lay back against what was probably a very dirty pile of—what? Blankets? He didn’t know, didn’t really care.
“Did you kill anybody?”
Was that their only theme? He couldn’t blame them, living this hardscrabble life. “No. I didn’t kill anybody. I don’t know what I did, but someone sure wants me bad, someone wants to kill me.”
Sally sat back, straightened her long, once dark-blue skirt, now a dingy gray around her skinny legs. She wore ancient flip-flops on her dirty feet. “I wish someone wanted me, not to kill me, you know, wanted me the other way, the good way.” She shrugged, shined the flashlight in his eyes, then turned it off. “Gotta save the batteries. You promise no cops are gonna come here and shoot us?”
Could he make that promise if they—whoever they were—found him? “No,” he said firmly. “No one will find me here.”
“Well, you can’t trust the cops, now can you? But Ruth, she’s good people.”
Ruth, Justice thought. Ruth, the FBI agent. He slept again.