Bloodleggers #3: Coming Home to the Mountains

Welcome back to the third part of Bloodleggers! In this episode you meet FBI Agent William Knox. William is on his way to Denver, where he’s been reassigned to investigate missing persons cases. We hope you enjoy the read!

–W. J. Howard & R. J. Robyn
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“When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.”

–C.P. Snow (1905-1980)

September 20, 2010, 12:01 A.M., Near Denver International Airport, Denver, Colorado

Flight attendant just announced we are twenty minutes from Denver. I can’t believe I’m starting over at the age of 48. Amy, I miss you.

William Knox sighed quietly to himself and closed the notebook where he’d written the words. As an FBI agent for 18 years, he’d scribbled his way through hundreds of the small flip-file notebooks. Somewhere far behind him those old notebooks, packed inside of a steel cargo container with everything else he possessed, were gathering dust in some gloomy warehouse on the outskirts of Chicago.

He rolled his head on his shoulders, trying to loosen the muscles that had stiffened over the six hours he’d been stuck on airplanes. A ninety minute downpour in Minneapolis had held the plane on the tarmac midway through the trip. Now the plane was finally within sight of the lights of Denver, Colorado which glowed through the tiny square window to his right.

As he leaned towards the window, Knox noticed his reflection in the scratched plastic surface. He was always surprised at the graying temples on the edges of his thick black head of straight hair. He knew he didn’t feel old enough to be going gray. Knox always felt that he’d fallen just short of handsome, and while the years had added some dignity, the hint of jowls wasn’t helping his looks get any better either. Amy had always called him handsome, but he’d never really understood it.

He began to pack up various notes and police reports on the cases he’d been assigned to in Denver – six different Missing Persons cases. In the FBI, the lowest priority of all the cases was given to missing persons, especially if the person missing was over eighteen. If young kids went missing, then people cared, the media made an attempt to care, and amber alerts went out if you were lucky. Once you passed into adulthood and weren’t a swimsuit model or politician, people could care less.

He glanced over at the tween girl sitting next to him, her iPod blaring into her ears. On the video screen of the iPod a bimbo gyrated in time to the music he could hear second-hand from the ear buds pounding sound into the girl’s brain. The cutaways to what he supposed were romantic scenes showed a boy whose dress sense would have gotten him a thorough beating as a queer when Bill Knox had been her age. He’d suffered through most of the flight from Minneapolis listening to the spillover of her teenage fantasy rock and he couldn’t wait for the plane to land.

He glanced up at the air marshal, three rows ahead and to the left, sitting one row behind the wing seat. His bulky suit jacket failed to hide the obvious bulge of the shoulder holster. The man eyed him back nervously, his right hand twitching. Every time Knox looked forward, the man had been looking back. Knox found himself wondering again whether the Assistant Director of the Chicago office that he’d pissed off might have suggested to the TSA that the man seated in 15F might just be a terrorist wielding a gun. Knox was quite pleased that he’d checked his weapon instead of flashing his FBI credentials and wearing it on the plane. No one would have blamed an air marshal with a twitchy finger for gunning down a gun-toting passenger.

There would have been apologies afterwards, of course, to his next-of-kin, when they wheeled the body off the plane and made the “startling discovery” he was an FBI agent.

He gripped the folders and flipped up the tray table, then reached down to grab his briefcase from under the seat in front of him. Opening it on his lap, he felt a wave of satisfaction as the eyes of the girl next to him widened at the official FBI logo on the inside of it. His sharp eyes caught the quick twitch as her left hand went instinctively to her jeans pocket, and wondered what was in the baggie she was keeping there. Knox hoped it was just pot, and there wasn’t another 12 year old crack-head running around the streets.

Not his department anymore. He was looking for Manuel Ramon, a 23 year old dish-washing Hispanic; Stephanie Drake, a tourist from Wisconsin, age 29, recently divorced; Charles Stevens, 21, University Of Denver student who disappeared after scoring straight F’s last semester. David Masterson, an unemployed, homeless crack head, last seen three months ago under a railway bridge. Samantha “Sammy” Daniels, 24, a girl mixed up in the gang scene since she was 12, with a list of warrants that spanned three pages. Finally there was Mike Taylor, a single 30 year old truck driver, whose rig had been found idling in an alley, the trailer emptied of its contents, and the driver nowhere to be found. Of course, he was a single, underpaid highway jockey, with three quarters of a million dollars of missing electronics.

He pushed the folders into his briefcase along with his notebook and snapped it shut. There were only two more years until he could retire from the bureau with a full pension. At least if the bureaucrats hadn’t pissed it all away on other social government programs.

He pushed the case under the seat, just as the female voice of the flight attendant gave the “return your seats to the full upright and locked position” announcement. Sighing, the girl next to him reluctantly switched off her iPod and shoved it into her pocket. He looked towards the window to ensure that she wouldn’t think to talk to him. He’d ridden enough airplanes to know that all the kids thought his job was much like they depicted on X-Files and Bones. He wondered how many of them knew that a real agent would be spending six months riding a desk and filing paperwork every time they fired their gun. He also wondered why none of these shows portrayed how much of a Special Agent’s time was spent sweating in the holding room of some courthouse, waiting for a fat, overpaid prosecutor to call them to the stand so they could read out of one of those little notebooks.

The loud whining squeak that he always thought sounded like the plane falling apart signaled the lowering of the flaps, and then the loud kerchunk and roar of the extending landing gear added to the rumble and shake of the airplane. Between the runways he could see the white circus-tent structure of the Denver airport gleaming in the spotlights that illuminated it at night. The mountains beyond reared up like grey shades in the light of the nearly full moon. He stared at the panorama, realizing that he’d never taken Amy to see the mountains, although she’d always wanted to see them.

The jar of the landing gear screeching on the ground returned him to the moment, and he blinked his eyes as the flight attendant, read off her normal speech. He double-checked his watch, which matched the time she’d mentioned, twelve seventeen A.M., as he’d turned it back an hour during the long wait on the runway in Minneapolis.

He waited for the other passengers to get up and file forward, bumping and jostling as they fed like cattle towards the front. When the seats behind him were clear, he stood up and emptied the bin of his jacket and garment bag, picking up the briefcase he’d set on the seat. With his jacket over his arm, he gave a quick smile to the air marshal who was loitering as well, and headed for the jet way. His stomach growled to remind him he hadn’t eaten in 12 hours, the sixteen pathetic pretzels and half a diet-coke notwithstanding.

* * *

After stopping to get his checked gun in a box wrapped with red tape reading “Caution: Firearm,” he grabbed his suitcase from the baggage carousel and headed towards the car rental garage.

He carefully peeled the tape off the box, as he pulled his luggage behind him; his garment bag now draped over it, and deposited the sticky blood-colored ball into the trash can just outside the door. Across the street, he could see the Hertz stand. In the very first spot sat a gray Ford Fusion in the “Environmentally Green Collection,” that all government agencies were currently being forced to rent. He glanced up and, to his dismay, saw his name blinking on the sign above it.  At least it was better than the Smart Car he’d been forced to drive in San Francisco last year while chasing down a Chinese money bundler.

He found that the trunk was already open, and that it was almost big enough for his suitcase and garment bag.  Mumbling under his breath he worked the bag around until he could finally slam the lid down on the two pieces of luggage that he’d be living from for the better part of a month.  The gun case and his briefcase he dropped on the passenger seat, before grabbing the paperwork off the steering wheel.  He checked that the rental term was right, and that the billing address was still to the Chicago office. That was his last act of defiance towards his old boss.

Sighing at his own feeble form of revenge, he looked across the street at the line of cabs on the terminal side of the thoroughfare, and realized that there wasn’t a single non-Hispanic face in the entire line of fifteen cabs.  He wondered how many… no, he corrected himself, if any of the drivers were legal.  Denver, he’d learned, was a Sanctuary City.  That meant that any illegal alien could live in the city without fear of being deported.  And here they were, taking jobs that American citizens used to do.  He knew for a fact, having chased many money trails while hunting terrorists that over forty percent of Mexico’s economy was based on money sent home by illegals in American cities, it was Mexico’s second biggest industry.  Every month, Denver alone sent over two hundred million dollars south of the border.

With that much being given to the illegals, he wondered what the cost they faced was in return.  They rented apartments, bought houses, owned cars, and cheated the system.  They got all the benefits of American life, he thought, without any of the nasty little gotchas, like paying taxes, or registering for the draft.  In his mind, it was a cozy life, but there had to be a catch somewhere.  In most cities, it was the looming fear of deportation, but in Denver, they were safe.  So where was the catch?

He shook his head, and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.  Six hours on a plane with no food and his internal clock reading one thirty in the morning was making his mind wander.  This wasn’t his worry any more.  He was looking for people who’d gone missing.  For whom the trail was so cold, he’d need to wear a parka when looking for clues.  Let the politicians sort the illegals out.

The car hummed to life, and he headed out, pausing only briefly to hand the signed contract to the distracted guy at the exit gate to the garage.  The GPS unit in the car told him to stay on Peña Boulevard all the way to the Residence Inn Hotel.  He followed the curving boulevard through the darkened open fields until he saw the hotel sign just beyond an overpass for a highway that appeared to lead straight into Denver.

Parking in front of the columned entry, he walked in to the counter and presented his official ID, as well as the department credit card for the room reservation.  The attendant blinked momentarily at the official logo on the card, but quickly keyed in the details, and within seconds was handing over a pair of white plastic key cards in a paper folder.  Knox grunted thanks, and walked back to the car.

Following the directions painted on the lot, he found a spot only a mild hike from the nearest entry to his room, and emptied the trunk of the suitcase, wheeling it behind his left hand, while he carried the gun case in his right.

Behind the hotel, he could see a delivery truck pulled up to the loading dock, with two pale men standing next to the cab arguing loudly with another thin man on the dock who was  screaming obscenities at both of them in some Slavic language.  Knox watched for a second while they gestured, signaling moving things from the hotel to the truck, and the man on the dock screaming more obscenities.  Knox shook his head and rolled up to the door, hoping his suite was nowhere near the loading dock.

Inside, he gratefully found that his room was on the other side of the building from the loading dock, and the plastic key opened the door with a buzz and a green light. Inside was a small kitchenette with a table almost big enough to seat two people, with four chairs around it. Off to one side was a queen sized bed, stacked with uncomfortable pillows and a cover sheet, that a brief touch confirmed was less soft than the green scrubby pad on Scotch sponge.

Knox unzipped the garment bag and hung his five suits in the closet, hoping that hanging would take out the wrinkles. He emptied the suitcase into the drawers of the dresser next to the bed, and then set his briefcase on the small table. He looked around for a minute, and checked the leather binder on the table. All of the restaurants in the area had closed almost three hours earlier, and there was no room service in the hotel. He checked further, and found the nearest convenience store was some seven miles away. Apparently Denver had built its airport somewhere near Kansas. Despite his hunger pains, he decided it wasn’t worth the trip for an overcooked hot dog or some microwaved burrito.

Well, he reflected, there were still two more things to do. Carefully, he set the gun case on the table, and opened it. Pulling out the Glock he preferred over the standard Colt 1911, he snapped out the magazine, and filled it with shells from the small box tucked into the corner of the gun case. Snapping the magazine back into place, he chambered a round, feeling a certain comfort in the metallic snap of the slide smacking the round into the chamber. He checked the safety, and then set the gun on the nightstand away from the windows.

Knox pulled down the bed sheets, and slipped off his shirt and pants, kicking off his shoes and socks, leaving him in just a white cotton undershirt and his boxers.

Opening his briefcase, he set aside the stack of folders and pulled out a single, plastic framed photo, and set it next to the gun on the nightstand. Within it, the smiling face of his late wife Amy looked out at him.

Knox sat on the edge of the bed staring at the photo for several quiet moments. Finally, while looking at the photo, he swept his hand around, to include the whole room. “Well, honey, I guess we’re home.”