Faces in the Fire (3 page)

“No such thing as a soda fountain anymore.”

Jenny looked thoughtful. “No, I don't suppose there is.” Another sip.

Her obvious discomfort was making him nervous. Maybe he shouldn't have called her after all, but . . . well, Marcus had given him her name. After listening to Kurt's full confession, Marcus had written Todd's and Jenny's names and phone numbers on a piece of paper.

“Call them,” he had said. “Todd will dig into your head, Jenny into everything else—and they'll both be quiet about it.”

Out of a sense of duty to Marcus (and he'd love to hear what Todd might say about
that
), he'd called her. And now here they were, in a bar, drinking diet sodas.

“So,” she said, “on with it, I guess.”

Kurt didn't like this. When he'd first met her, he'd been reassured. She seemed unflappable, someone who could keep her cool. Now she seemed . . . scared.

She opened a thin file. “There's not much to go on, as you know.” She paused. “I ran a check on your New Jersey driver's license. It's a fake. No such registered driver.”

He waited. “Okay,” he said.

“Thing is,” she said, “as fakes go, this one's good. Real good—has the holographic image on it and everything, which is something your typical guy-with-a-printer-in-his-basement operation can't do. So, you had to have some resources to get this.”

Kurt shifted uncomfortably, thinking of the ten thousand dollars in cash he'd found stuffed into a nylon money belt and strapped to his chest after . . . after the fire. He hadn't told Jenny about that. Or Todd. No need to.

“Now,” she continued, “I did a check of Social Security numbers registered to Kurt Marlowes with your birth date. Wanna guess how many hits I got?”

He itched at his cheek, and she continued without waiting for an answer. “Nada,” she said. “I did a criminal background search on the name, first in Jersey, then across the country. Some hits, but nothing that seemed like you.”

She handed him a computer printout, but he didn't stop to read it, so she continued.

“Missing persons, wanted persons, tax liens, traffic tickets, unclaimed property . . . I threw everything I had at it, and you
weren't a blip on anything, Kurt.” She picked up her drink and took a long draw, grimacing at the carbonation. “So basically,” she said, her eyes searching his face, “you don't exist. At least not on paper.”

He sat quietly for a few moments, sighed. “Can't say this is a big surprise,” he said.

Her eyes narrowed. “I don't get that impression, either. But I have some advice for you, if you'll take it.”

“What's that?”

“Stop.”

His throat was dry and scratchy, so he took a drink of his own. “Stop,” he repeated.

“You—or someone close to you—took great pains to conceal your identity,” she said. “Someone who has a lot of resources. That's two possibilities: government spooks of some kind, or the Mafia. Either way, it's bad news. You ever consider your amnesia might not be accidental?”

He shook his head.

“I think there might be a very good reason why you don't remember anything: because you're not supposed to. And I think the only reason you might be alive is because you're a clean slate. Long as you stay a clean slate, you're safe. You start digging into your past too much, you might show up on someone's radar. They might opt for some other way to keep you quiet.” She took another sip. “A more permanent way.”

Kurt thought of his recent conversations with Todd, the discussions of brain damage and broken bones. He—and Todd—had assumed he'd been through some kind of tragic accident. But what if he'd been through something much worse? What if someone had beaten and broken him, wiped him clean, put him on the ground in California with cash and a few pieces of paper? For what reason? He shuddered as he thought about it.

Jenny closed the folder on the table in front of her and pushed the rest of it toward him. “Thing is, if you're gonna do anything from here on out, you need a legit footprint.”

“A footprint?” He opened the folder and started to page through the papers inside: Social Security paperwork, bank statements, employment records.

“Like I said, you're a ghost right now. You graduate from that trucking school, apply for a job somewhere, what are you gonna do when they ask for a Social Security number?” She nodded at the folder. “Now, you have one to give them—a Social Security account with a full history of contributions, an employment record, a credit score. It's all in there. A full history for Kurt Marlowe.”

He looked at her. “How'd you do this?”

She gave him a disgusted look. “What do you think this is, amateur hour? Told you I checked the unclaimed property databases. You know there's billions of dollars that go uncollected each year in unclaimed property, estates with no heirs?”

“No.”

“Well, just call that investment capital for the kinds of things I do.”

He stared at her, dumbfounded, for a few moments. “But . . . why are you doing this? You don't even know me.”

“I know Marcus, though. Known him a long time, since before—well, since before his trucking days.”

“What days were those?”

“Prison days.”

Kurt narrowed his eyes. “You met Marcus in prison.”

She shook her head, evidently unimpressed by his wit. “No, I met Marcus long before he went to prison, when we were both on a traveling sales crew.”

“So what'd he go to prison for?”

She smiled, a bit wistfully. “For a couple years. Let's just say he got out of traveling sales the hard way. And after that he helped me get out of it. I think Marcus may be the only person ever truly rehabilitated by the United States penal system. In any case, I owe Marcus. And I think you do too.”

“More than you know.”

She nodded. “You showed up with that acceptance letter in your hand; Marcus knew it was a forge. But he knew it was a good forge, and he also knew it wasn't yours. He's been watching out for you since.”

Kurt stayed silent, unsure how to react. If not for Marcus, and Jenny, and Todd, he'd probably be dead by now.

“Then I guess all I can say is thanks.”

“And all I can say is you're welcome.”

“But there's one thing bothering me,” he said.

“Shoot.”

“If it
was
the government, or the Mafia, or whoever wiped me clean . . . wouldn't
they
fix me?”

She gave a grim smile. “Oh, I'd say you're in a fix.”

He shook his head. “No, what I mean is . . . Todd talked about some extensive injuries, but no signs they were treated. No pins or surgeries or anything. And then, if they
didn't
want to kill me . . . wouldn't they just give me a new identity? Brainwash me, make me think I'm someone else? Give me that legit footprint you're talking about?”

She bit her lip. “That's what worries me,” she said. “I think there's something about you that's wrong. Dead wrong. Something happened. Something didn't go according to plan, and you fell between the cracks.” She finished the last of her drink, smiled humorlessly. “And if whoever did this starts seeing some of those cracks, we're both drinking the wrong thing.”

58.

Kurt downshifted the big Peterbilt and hit the Jake Brake as he followed his headlights down Fourth of July Pass between Spokane and Coeur d'Alene. Few places he could hit the Jake Brake anymore—most city ordinances restricted their use—and he loved to hear the throaty roar of the diesel's engine holding back thirty tons of weight. Just one of the reasons why he often said yes whenever John called him in a bind.

He'd picked up a forty-foot storage container, fresh off the docks in Seattle, and now he was bound for Chicago. Not a bad route, really; he could make it in three days if he pushed it, then deadhead it back to Montana.

On his feet he wore the dead man's shoes. Not typically the kind of shoes he would wear, to be sure—he preferred lug-soled work boots, and these were somewhat dressy slip-ons—but what of it? The shoes felt right. More than that, they felt electric. Something about them made long-dormant parts inside light up, crackle with anticipation.

He even liked the tags on the inside of the shoes. They displayed a large symbol that looked like a reversed numeral 3, with other strange writing beneath the symbol. He'd seen that kind of writing on old Soviet Union propaganda posters, vodka advertisements, that kind of thing, so he guessed the writing was Russian.

Best of all, fueled by the ghost inside the shoes, his mind, as he drove the long miles following the white line of Interstate 90, was filled with constant images of the comforting catfish swimming in a pool of orange, unfettered by constraints.

Like Kurt himself on the open road.

So when he first heard the voice on the CB, he almost missed it. He wasn't listening, wasn't paying attention; only the mention of his name pierced his consciousness.

“Give her a ride, Kurt.”

Kurt looked at his citizens band radio. Yes, he was sure it came through the CB; he'd heard the hiss of static and squelch just before the voice spoke.

Like most truckers, Kurt still used the citizens band radio. And like most truckers, he could only stomach it in small doses; far removed from the good-buddy days of C. W. McCall's “Convoy,” it was now a wasteland of mindless egos and arguments. So he really only turned it on when he was near major truck stops or metro areas. Sometimes good for local weather or traffic or speed trap information, but mostly interesting in the way reality crime shows were interesting.

Kurt thought of all this as he stared at his CB radio, because the unit was turned off.

Which meant the voice had to be coming from his wardrobe of wearable ghosts. And the only problem with that was: he'd only brought along one item of haunted clothing.

Well, two, to be precise. The shoes on his feet.

He peered at the floor of the cab, trying to get a good look at the shoes in the darkness.

Odd. The shoes hadn't spoken to him the way the other haunted clothing always did. They had filled his mind with the image of the catfish, yes, but not with words. That's what made them special. What made them interesting.

If they were speaking now—and speaking in a static-filled voice—what did that mean?

Give her a ride, Kurt.

Well. That was the other bothersome part of the voice. No ghost had ever—ever—called him by name. The ghosts, in an odd way, were blind. Maybe
blind
wasn't quite the right word, but . . .
unaware
. They couldn't see him; he was sure of that. He'd come to think of it as a door between their world and his. The ghosts stood outside his door, knocking, T . L . H i n e s knowing someone was inside but never able to see or hear who it was.

For his part, Kurt always stood inside the door, listening to them—listening as they cried out for help and contact—but never answering.

Kurt could never answer them, because . . . well, those ghosts had to be from his past, didn't they? His past, filled with broken femurs and fractured skulls and forged identities and very real spooks (not ghosts but spooks) who would undoubtedly break him into even smaller pieces if he ever unlocked that door to the past and stared into their terrifying faces.

So Kurt kept that door closed. Still, he knew he needed to atone for something, needed to give the ghosts a voice. And that's what his welded art became. He channeled the plaintive whispers of the ghosts into twisted pieces of scrap metal, producing the melted faces that spoke of sorrow and despair and longing and loss.

What would good old Todd have to say about that? Would he call it Kurt's
coping mechanism
, his
manifestation
of guilt
? Probably something like that; Kurt himself knew these things to be true. But this wasn't just a simple case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, a need to count things or bring manufactured order to the world around him. It was a pressure valve; if he didn't give the ghosts a voice of some kind, didn't open that door the tiniest crack to let bits of them seep through into the physical world, their pain and sorrow would eventually shatter the door, and maybe him along with it.

Coping mechanism? Maybe. But also mere survival. Without the art, he would be consumed. He could feel that urgent desperation when he looked at one of his welded sculptures. And evidently, others could too.

But now. Now, the ghost—the wonderfully different ghost inside the shoes he was wearing—had not simply spoken to him. It had called him by name. The door wasn't just opened a crack; the door itself had a crack in it.

Which might mean all of them, the hundreds of ghosts that had crowded that massive door, might be finding some way through. Some way to sense him. Some way to reach him.

Some way to touch him.

Kurt felt his skin rippling with gooseflesh. He rubbed his face, opened the console next to his seat, took out a bottle of water, gulped down a few drinks. Had to be highway hypnosis. Every trucker knew if you were on the road long enough, the white line had a way of lulling you into a kind of trance, an almost hallucinatory state that signaled you were getting too tired.

(or brain damage)

He pushed the thought of brain damage away. Nothing to indicate that. Nothing at all. Well, yes, he did have brain damage; Todd had said as much. Todd's doctors had said as much, insisted they should see him and take his case so they could poke him and prod him and solve the mysteries of his past.

But like the ghosts, he'd never wanted the doctors to touch him. Never wanted anyone to touch him.

He calculated quickly. He was in Idaho's panhandle; Kellogg and Wallace weren't far away, and there was at least one rest stop where he could pull over and get eight hours in the sleeper berth, enough to reset his log book and give him eleven hours of straight driving in the morning. He could still make Chicago day after tomorrow, and he'd have to stop in the next two hours anyway.