“Tell me something,” he said. “You ever think about life after death?”
Rachel looked surprised. “Maybe you should ask my grandmother. She’s got a whole boatload of theories on the subject.”
“I’m asking you.”
Rachel sobered. Touched his hand. “Jack, if this is about Jessie, you can’t start thinking like that.”
“This is about me.”
“What are you saying?”
Donovan shook his head again, having second thoughts. “You’ll just think I’m crazy.”
“And that would be different how?”
Vintage Rachel, he thought, but it sounded forced. Unnatural. She shifted in her chair, but he sensed her discomfort was more than physical.
At the table next to them, a man in a gray suit was finishing up the last crumbs of a corned beef on rye as the fingers of his free hand toyed with the seal on a pack of Marlboros. The guy was obviously trying to quit and couldn’t decide whether to succumb to his addiction.
“Jack?”
Donovan returned his attention to Rachel, but said nothing.
She prodded. “Earlier you told me there were things going on. What things? What did you mean?”
Donovan hesitated, glancing again at the pack of Marlboros. Fingers scraped the cellophane. “You remember what the paramedics told you at the hospital? That I was dead?”
“You think I’d forget?”
He thought he saw a flicker of dread in her eyes, as if she was anticipating where he was headed and wasn’t quite sure she wanted to go there with him.
“I wasn’t just floating in the river, Rache. I went somewhere.”
“Went somewhere,” she repeated.
“At first I thought it was just some screwy dream, but now I know it was real. As real as you are. And this place.”
“You’re telling me that when your heart stopped…”
She didn’t finish, so Donovan finished for her. “Tunnel, bright light-the whole ball of wax. And that wasn’t the end of it.”
Rachel fell silent for a long moment and he was sure that once she’d processed his words, she’d give him that same look Waxman had. Then her gaze steadied and she reached across the table and grabbed both of his hands, holding them between hers.
“Tell me everything,” she said.
Twenty minutes later, her cell phone rang.
Donovan was halfway through his story, delivering it in fits and starts, remembering new details as they came to him, and hoping she wouldn’t run screaming from the place once he’d finished. At one point, the stout woman brought their sandwiches over, but Donovan barely noticed her.
Rachel answered the phone, listened a moment, then passed it across to him.
It was Waxman.
“The F-150’s a bust,” he said. “Stolen off a dealer’s back lot. They didn’t even know it was missing until we called them.”
“Wonderful. What about Reed?”
“Turns out our boy’s been riding his ass for weeks. Reed’s so terrified of the guy, he threatened to lawyer up and take his chances. Once I promised him a night in a cell with Bobby Nemo, he got very cooperative.”
“A name, Sidney. Give me a name.”
“Luther Dwayne Polanski. Like the movie director. Twenty-eight years old, did a six-year stint at Danville Correctional for armed robbery and aggravated assault.”
“Let me guess. He was there the same time as Gunderson.”
“Their sentences overlapped by about a year. Luther was released six months ago.”
Donovan thought back over the weeks immediately following the Northland First amp; Trust heist. Gunderson’s sheet had revealed a short stint at Danville for weapons possession, and Donovan and A.J. had been out there a half dozen times, looking for possible associates of Gunderson’s. Neither the warden nor the guards had ever mentioned the name Polanski.
“I talked to his PO,” Waxman said. “Says Luther’s been a model parolee. Shows up twice a week like clockwork, has a job washing dishes at a place called Millie’s Diner. They told me he hasn’t been to work for a couple days.”
“Where’s he living?”
“His mother’s house in South Deering.”
Donovan stood up, feeling the room sway only slightly this time, the news giving him a renewed sense of energy.
At the table next to them, the man in the gray suit crumpled his napkin, then rose and headed for the door, leaving the unopened pack of Marlboros behind.
Attaboy, Donovan thought. He’d never been a smoker himself, but at this moment he could almost understand the guy’s reluctance. There was something alluring about that little red-and-white box. Something
… familiar.
“Jack? You still there?”
“I’m here,” Donovan said. “Give me the address.”
37
They sat on the house for close to an hour before they saw any sign of life.
It was typical South Deering working-class, a two-story, rust-colored box with a neatly trimmed yard surrounded by a waist-high chain-link fence. An old Chevy Nova sat on blocks in the street out front, looking as if it hadn’t gone anywhere in decades.
Marilyn Polanski hadn’t either. According to Luther’s parole officer, his mother had been living in the place since the late seventies. A single mom, she’d been witness to the gradual change in the neighborhood makeup, from predominantly white to black and brown and even a few Vietnamese.
Luther had grown up in the house and immediately come home to roost after his stint at Danville. But unless the guy was a complete fool, Donovan didn’t figure he’d be returning anytime soon.
Unfortunately, the house was all they had.
They were parked half a block down, Waxman behind the wheel, Donovan riding shotgun. Al Cleveland and Darcy Payne-the lone female agent on his team-were nested in their beige sedan across the street.
Donovan had sent Rachel home. He didn’t want her in the line of fire in case things got hairy. She’d agreed, reluctantly, but insisted on getting their sandwiches to go and left them both behind for Donovan.
One veggie, one turkey breast.
Not a pastrami in sight, mile high or otherwise.
Donovan devoured them both, feeling like Popeye sucking down a gallon of spinach. As usual, Rachel had been right. The food was a tonic, a cure-all that pulsed through his body like an electric charge. The legs that had been so rubbery an hour ago suddenly couldn’t stay still. They felt cramped inside the car, wanting to move.
Add that to the ticking clock in his brain, the constant reminder that time was wasting, that those cylinders of oxygen Gunderson had buried along with Jessie could only last so long… and Donovan was ready to scream.
Waxman, however, had other things on his mind. Eyeing the half-crumpled take-out bag, he said, “You got any more of those?”
Before Donovan could answer, his radio crackled. Cleveland’s voice. “We may have movement inside the house.”
Donovan flicked his call button. “What, exactly?”
