The Hollow Ones(24)
The other officer was yelling at him. Obediah turned, reached for a kitchen knife.
The other officer shot his partner, and Obediah jumped into him.
Odessa sat on the sofa next to Linus, eating Indian food delivered by Postmates—costing almost twice as much as the menu price of the food itself, but Linus knew she didn’t want to venture out after dark, for fear of being ambushed by some click-hungry blogger with an iPhone, nor did she want to be left alone in the apartment.
It didn’t feel like a splurge. Nothing felt special anymore.
Normally they would be watching Netflix on Linus’s laptop or streaming a basketball game (if she was feeling generous), but she wanted to stay away from anything that might cause her to trip over a news report. Invisible walls had gone up around her life, and Linus’s by extension. She didn’t like it, but it felt necessary. Her mood was like the tiny air pocket in a bubble level, supersensitive to any gradient change and impossible to keep centered.
Linus was a sweetheart, filling the quiet spaces with small talk about his day, trying to keep the second hand moving. But inside Odessa’s mind, a second voice spoke to her, and it was her own.
You took a life.
She had killed a fellow agent in the line of duty. That point was not in dispute. In her healthiest moments, she ticked off all the events that led her to shoot Walt Leppo; in her darkest moments, she questioned everything about that night, including her own rationality.
Your career is over.
Another fact that was hard to dispute. Everything she had worked for, all the shit she had taken to rate as a special agent of the FBI, the long hours, her ideals: All of it added to nothing. She had a law degree but she did not want to be a lawyer. She wanted to serve her country and in doing so make it a better place for all.
You don’t come back from this.
Why delay the inevitable? She wanted to resign, though she knew that would send all the wrong signals. She was trapped in limbo, suspended in a netherworld while a bureaucracy grinded somewhere above her, going through the motions of an endgame, the result not in doubt.
As Linus did his best to retell a funny story from work that day, Odessa’s gaze fell upon the carton of Agent Earl Solomon’s office belongings on the floor by the door. The spicy food did not register upon her taste buds. The world had lost its flavor.
After letting the New York office know about her morning mission by email, Odessa summoned an Uber via her cell phone, entering Earl Solomon’s home address as her destination. As she entered the crossover SUV, the driver, a burly Middle Eastern man conversing via a Bluetooth earpiece, got out to open his trunk. As she thanked him and loaded in the carton of belongings, while glancing up and down the street in fear of an ambush, she understood the look in the driver’s eyes. Another crazy fare.
She rode southwest to a street just blocks from the Delaware River, which served as the border between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The car pulled up at a prewar, one-story brick house ringed by a desultorily short—no taller than three feet—decorative chain-link fence. She noticed that other homes on the street had long since added on or built up, but this residence remained stubbornly modest. The driver pulled the carton from the trunk and set it in Odessa’s hands as though relieved to have discharged her.
“Good luck, miss,” he said.
Maybe he assumed she was going through a breakup. And in a sense—from her career, from her expected life—she was. She thanked him and gave him a five-star review before his vehicle was out of sight.
With difficulty, she emptied the contents of the mailbox into the carton in her hands, then pushed through the short gate and up the walkway to the front door. For security’s sake, in case any neighbors were watching her, she dropped a few letters at the door, setting down the carton to retrieve them and, in doing so, retrieving a key from beneath a planter made of blue pottery.
It would take some time to forget her police procedure instincts.
She unlocked the door and carried the carton inside. The air within smelled stale but not unpleasant. She closed the door behind her, called out, “Hello?” just in case, and, receiving no reply, walked through a small living area to the adjoining kitchen. She set the carton and mail down on a small kitchen island, relieved to have delivered the possessions to their rightful owner at last.
The house was quiet, and there was no sign that anyone had been inside for days. She turned and looked at the living area, where a two-cushion sofa faced an old box television set on a wooden cart. An old padded rocker, angled toward the television, appeared to be the favored piece of furniture. Framed advertising signs for Cuban cigars hung on the walls. The décor was very spare, very male. Also, very orderly—which stood out in sad contrast with the current state of Agent Solomon’s mind. She shook her head, remembering his nonsensical recommendation to deposit a letter in an unmarked mailbox somewhere near Wall Street.
Dennis the fish swam in a small bowl near the television. He was alive. Odessa carried the bowl near the sink. The water was cloudy and needed to be changed. A shaker of fish food sat on the sill of a window looking out at the backyard. Dennis sipped at the crumbs as soon as they hit the surface of the water.
“There you go, Dennis,” she said. “You’re welcome.”
She opened the refrigerator, and it wasn’t bad inside. A few suspect leftovers inside covered Pyrex dishes. Bottles of nutrition shakes and sugary sodas. Not much to throw out.