The R.E.M. Project: A Thriller (The Ocula Series, Book 2) Page 4

  Claire’s answer was written all over her face. Jokingly, “Since when have I ever needed a man to keep me safe?”

  Aguilar couldn’t contest that. He was just about to sit down across from her to eat when Claire checked her wristwatch. 11:30.

  “Shit,” she said, grabbing her bagel to go. “I’m supposed to meet someone in town at noon.”

  “But, your breakfast, Claire?”

  “Sorry. No time.”

  She snatched her jacket off the hook by the door, then doubled back for her cellphone.

  “And I assume there’s no point in asking where you’re going, is there?” Aguilar asked.

  Claire shook her head no, then left in her typical manic, I’ve-got-places-to-be fashion.

  Aguilar sat, eating his eggs, smiling, and staring at the door. She was a complete mess, he thought, but it sure was nice to have some company.

  Chapter 3:

  The Fugitive

  Dawa’s eyes were comfortably shut, deep in meditation as he sat at the front of the large meditation room in the Vajrayãna Monastery. Incense burned as smooth lines of smoke twisted upward before dissipating into a light and fragrant cloud spread thinly below the vaulted ceiling. Maroon walls surrounded a dozen of his young students as the group sat quietly on pillows with minds far from the material desires and afflictions of this world.

  Dawa had drifted far away, too, leading his students down the path toward some unknown spiritual plane a person couldn’t explain to another—it had to be experienced. But, no matter how distant he seemed, the slam of a car door outside was impossible to ignore. He opened his eyes and addressed his students.

  “It sounds like today’s teachings have come to a close.”

  The students collectively opened their eyes, alert and refreshed from the half-hour session. They stood and bowed, and Dawa returned the gesture. But as the majority of students left through the double doors, two stragglers stayed behind, whispering to one another and cutting their eyes toward the teacher.

  “You ask him,” one said.

  “No, you ask him,” said the other.

  Dawa called upon the older of the two. “What is it, Christopher?”

  Christopher was silent, and Dawa waved him over. The preteen timidly approached.

  “It’s okay, Chris. Tell me, what’s on your mind?”

  Chris looked back at his friend, then said, “Me and Thomas were wondering when we were going to learn about the fire within.”

  “You were, were you?”

  “Yes, teacher. Thomas said he saw a video online where this guy puts wet towels on his back, then they get so hot they start steaming up. After like ten minutes, the towels are totally dry—all from just meditating. Another guy said he survived a week in the snow with nothing but a bathing suit by practicing the fire within. So, you know, we were wondering when we were gonna learn cool stuff like that, too.”

  “I see,” Dawa said, rubbing his chin. He placed a hand on Christopher’s shoulder and walked him to the door. “Do you remember the first time you came to the monastery, Christopher?”

  “Yes, teacher. You told me to be here at noon, and then you made me wait outside for three hours in the middle of January. It was so cold.”

  “That’s right, Christopher. I remember the day well, too. Tell me, have you ever asked yourself why I made you wait in the cold for so long that day?”

  Christopher hadn’t.

  “You see, Christopher, when your father came to me and asked if I would accept you into the monastery, I already had a feeling you would be a fine student. I have known your father for years. He is a good man. A patient man. But I had never met the son.” Dawa stopped at the door and faced his student.

  “Do you remember our lesson on Kshanti?”

  “Yes, teacher. Kshanti is a kind of patience, right?”

  “Right. Patience leads to endurance, which leads to the discipline necessary to achieve enlightenment. It’s a marathon, Christopher, not a race, so try and have the kind of patience that you showed me the first day we met. I promise that, in time, the rest will follow.”

  Dawa opened the front monastery door to let his student out, just as another door was opening down the hall behind him. The echo of creaky door hinges alarmed both teacher and student, who turned to see a shadowy, bearded figure step out of the room and limp across the dimly lit hallway to one of the private prayer rooms on the other side.

  “Who was that?” Christopher asked.

  “Just an old friend,” Dawa said, ushering the young student out the door. “See you next week, Christopher. And tell your father I said hello.” Christopher nodded and left.

  Dawa quickly shut the door behind him, then walked briskly down the hall to the prayer room at the end. He threw open the door, the knob slamming hard into the oak-paneled wall. Sitting on a rug in the middle of the floor was Donny Ford, legs crossed, eyes closed. The wanted man-in-hiding pretended Dawa’s forceful entrance hadn’t fazed the first few moments of his meditation, but Dawa wasn’t buying it.

  “What exactly are you thinking, Donald? Didn’t we discuss you making appearances in front of the students?”

  Donny slowly opened his eyes, silent.

  “You cannot be this careless, Donald. Do I really have to stress how much I have stuck my neck out for you here? Keeping you hidden for the last six months, while every agency in the state is looking for you? Filing warrants ranging from questioning in a twelve-car pileup to two murder cases? I have put my entire career in jeopardy for you, and you walk around the monastery in plain view, waiting for someone to recognize you as the foolish fugitive on TV?”

  “They’re just kids, Dawa.”

  The guru scoffed. “You say that like it is a handicap, Donald. Those students out there have seen your face on their newsfeeds everyday now for the last six months, and all you have to say is ‘They’re just kids, Dawa.’”

  Donny raised his eyebrows and pressed his lips. Dawa had him dead to rights, and he knew it. Still, what could he expect from someone who had gone from selling out crowds of thousands to an indefinite purgatory, away from the limelight, away from the publicity, and away from human contact, save for a workaholic Atlanta detective and a recent acquaintance living abroad who never answered her cellphone?

  Not much more, apparently. Donny had embraced seclusion for the first few months, mainly because he had to. Broken bones had a way of sidelining the haughty and proud. But after spending the first few months on the mend, he was almost back to normal, minus a limp in his step on the days his leg decided not to cooperate.

  For the most part, Donny was looking like his old self again. And now he was growing restless. A life of hiding wasn’t something the old showman was built for, even if it meant turning himself in. Such an act would likely result in a life sentence; murder suspects on the lam didn’t exactly fare well in court once the law caught up with them, innocent or not.

  With Dawa’s involvement, the situation grew much more complicated. Dawa had put Ford’s well-being before his own, and now he was paying the price. If Dawa couldn’t rein in his old friend, Donny’s carelessness was going to land them both behind bars.

  No good deed goes unpunished.

  Never had the Buddhist-slash-detective had such a hard time reconciling his two lives than in the last six months of his life. He shook his head as Donny continued to sit in silence, waiting for one of the teacher’s trademark allegorical responses.

  “Look, Donald. I know being shut up in the monastery is difficult for you, but until we make some real progress with the outliers case, I’m afraid you are stuck here.”

  Dawa knelt to Donny’s level. “That doesn’t mean you have your run of the place, either. When I have students over, you have to stay hidden. You simply cannot be seen by anyone; the risk is too great. Not just for you, Donald. My career hangs in the balance. Do you understand, old friend?”

  Donny lowered his head and said, “Yes. Of course, Dawa.” It was apparent Dawa ha
d made his reckless old friend feel like a complete ass.

  Good, Dawa thought. If he had to shame him into good behavior, so be it.

  Dawa stood to walk out when Donny spoke. “I just never thought I’d be put through such a crucible, Dawa. First, Bill dies, then Marci—I worked with these people every day. There’s just no way anyone in their right mind is going to believe I had nothing to do with their deaths. All because of some stupid clinical trial I never should have been a part of in the first place.”

  “You know I don’t believe—”

  “I know, I know,” Donny stopped him. “But it doesn’t matter what you think caused all of this, because we already know what the result was. People I cared about are dead, and if Asteria’s not behind the wheel, then they’re definitely riding shotgun.”

  That was something Dawa could agree on. Even though he stood firm in his belief that a concoction of drugs and meditation could never have been responsible for the deaths of Donny’s friends, he did believe the drugs had altered Donny’s state of mind in a way no legally prescribed pharmaceutical should be able to do.

  That by no means washed Donny’s hands of a crime. Ford had given Dawa his word that once charges were filed against Asteria, he would turn himself in. The Atlanta detective had considered doing just that the moment warrants had been issued, but a strong internal conviction that the pitchman was innocent had kept Dawa from doing so.

  Now he was harboring a fugitive.

  Donny went on. “Then there’s Claire. She’s the only one who’s gone through the same crap the other outliers have, and I can’t even get her to return a phone call.”

  “I told you she needed space, Donald. She has just as much chance of locating the others as we do. When and if she finds out anything, I am sure she will let us know. But you need to tread lightly, my friend. If you do not stop harassing her, she may disappear for good.”

  “Well, what else am I supposed to do, Dawa? I’ve been locked away for half a year, Ocula’s on the market, and we’re not one step closer to bringing Asteria to justice.”

  “Says who?” Dawa reached in his pocket and took out a business card, tossing it on the rug in front of Donny.

  “What’s this?” Donny asked.

  “Look on the back. There is a phone number, and an address for an old friend of yours.”

  Donny flipped the card over and read the note, hastily scribbled in ballpoint on the back:

  Wayne Rider, a.k.a. Fenton Reed

  724 Peachtree Street, Atlanta

  555-9858

  “Your online pen pal from the Ocula trials,” Dawa said. “Got a hit on his real name early this morning, just before getting in.”

  Donny looked up, speechless.

  Dawa said, “Perhaps you could use a lesson in Kshanti, too.” Then he left.

  Chapter 4:

  Running Down a Dream

  The single-story cinder-block motel was right off Highway 79, a meager ten rooms sprawled across a modest hundred-foot stretch of South Georgia flatland in the middle of nowhere. Seagulls harassed the tenants unlucky enough to get a room on the far end of the building near the dumpsters, and the occasional gator could be spotted in the algae-covered retention pond in the back. The rural rest stop was dated, secluded, and barely up to code. A real magnet for undesirables—or folks on the run.

  Managing a motel by the highway took a healthy dose of tenacity, grit . . . even an iron gut. Rooms were trashed nearly every Sunday in the fall (a result of college game-day celebrations running into overtime). Linens took a toll every spring as the pervs came out of hibernation to shed their winter clothes, looking for something, anything, to soil after being bundled up for the cold season. If tenants weren’t breaking shit in drunken tirades, then shit was breaking all on its own—and the repairs were never cheap.

  Thing of it was, Manager Jerry Kirkland thrived on the chaos, handling the druggies and the cheaters and the occasional dead bodies without batting an eye. The gray-headed Vietnam vet had seen it all, and there wasn’t a soul on earth he couldn’t size up in the time it took for that little bell on the counter to stop ringing. For Jerry, profiling was part of the job. Meth heads had a habit of covering their mouths when they asked for a room. Cheaters kept their heads down, unable to look the hotel keep in the eyes. In the forty-plus years he had owned and managed the property, the stone-faced vet had learned to spot the problem customers a mile away.

  That might have been why he was so pissed, not so much at the young man he was kicking out of his motel, but at himself. He couldn’t remember the last time a tenant had gotten the best of him—if ever—but now it had happened, and at the hands of a kid barely old enough to buy a pack of cigarettes. His raspy voice crackled from behind the front desk as a pimple-faced white kid stood across from him, his slender fingers nervously twitching with palms down on the counter, desperately trying to talk his way back into his motel room.

  Jerry said, “Now listen, young man. I don’t want to make a scene, but if you don’t get your shit and get going, I’ll have no other choice but to call the police.”

  “So it’s young man now. Come on, Jerry. I thought we had a good thing going here!”

  “Good thing going? Well, I guess you did, Fenton, considering you’ve been living here rent-free for the last month.”

  “But that was all part of the agreement, Jerry. Remember? You told me I could live here rent-free, so long as I took care of the grass.”

  Jerry looked out the window at the narrow strip of land separating the motel from the highway. Rocks and dirt. Not a blade of grass in sight.

  He set two fists on the counter and leaned in. “I’m not gonna tell you again, son. Get your shit and get—”

  Jerry stopped, his brow furrowed. He watched curiously as Fenton raised two fingers to his right temple.

  Persuasively, “You don’t want to kick me out,” Fenton said.

  “My God, son. Just what in the hell is the matter with you?”

  Fenton slowly waved his hand from left to right.

  “I said, you don’t want to kick me out of my motel room. You want to give me till the end of the month.”

  Jerry’s eyes widened. He couldn’t believe what he was watching. He marched around the counter, grabbed Fenton’s bag, and threw it out the front door. Fenton quickly dropped the act.

  “Hey, man, there’s a laptop in there!”

  Jerry stood with the door open and said, “You got three seconds to get your scrawny little ass outta here. Count ’em. ONE. TWO . . . ”

  Jerry didn’t make it to three. Fenton scooted out the door, picked his bag up from the handicapped space in front of the Mulberry Motel, and got to walking, unzipping his bag to check his laptop along the way. The old man watched the young con artist straddle the white line of the highway as he moved further into the distance. Soon, he was little more than a mirage. Then he was gone.

  Jerry walked back inside and returned to the comfort of the lounger set up in the room behind the front desk. He kicked back and started to reach for the newspaper, but a thought stopped him halfway.

  How could I have ever been so stupid?

  He stared into the dark knotholes of the wood-paneled wall in front of him and thought over all the years he had managed the motel. Ages had passed since he’d first opened the doors in the early 80s, back when the paint on the faded exterior was as fresh as the newly laid highway connecting Tifton to Jacksonville. A lot had changed in the time since he had traded his dog tags for a set of room keys, but one simple fact had become clear: he had never let anyone stay for free. Not once.

  Jerry had never been gullible enough to let a kid stay for free for a single night, let alone an entire month. What could he have been thinking? The kindness shown toward Fenton over the last month had washed over him like some foreign, charitable spirit come to transform the hardened war vet into Mother Theresa.

  He recalled the moment he’d decided to sober up some twenty years ago. An all-nighter at the l
ocal VFW had been interrupted by a moment of clarity that had led him to his first AA meeting the following day. It was the sharpest his thoughts had been since making it back from Vietnam in one piece.

  That was exactly how he felt now.

  Clear and thoughtful. Not like the last month; a month that felt like he had fallen off the wagon again, a bumbling drunk who had finally come to the realization that he was being taken advantage of by a freeloading wiseass.

  He rose from his recliner and checked the mini-fridge. Nothing but Cokes and sandwich meat. Then it was on to the cabinets, rummaging past the Tupperware and pots and pans in search of the strong stuff. He knew he hadn’t bought a stiff drink in decades, but he had to check. Had to be sure.

  He looked around the cluttered office, grimacing and perplexed. In a way, he almost wished he had found a half-empty bottle of scotch in the fridge, or a pile of crumpled beer cans lying on the counter or stuffed in the trash.

  Because, alcohol aside, there was no explanation for the way a crater-faced kid like Fenton Reed had pulled one over on Vietnam vet Jerry Kirkland.

  ***

  Fenton walked the shoulder of Highway 79, thumb out, headphones in, bookbag sagging low. The laptop, narrowly escaping Jerry’s wrath, had been protected by a wad of clothes packed tightly around it in the nylon bag. It was a silver lining to an otherwise crappy situation. Had Jerry busted the laptop on the curb outside of his motel, six months’ worth of work would have been lost.

  A part of him could have been angry with his current situation, but Fenton had learned early on that feeling sorry himself was never going to get him anywhere. He had always been short and skinny; two attributes that had made living through grade school a trial by fire. Had he not developed the ability to make everyone laugh with his quick wit and sharp tongue, he likely would have been the victim of countless meathead offenses like death by wedgy or locked-in-locker asphyxia well before junior high.