A Smudge of Gray (17 page)

The other flat-screen still showed
Brian’s grim mug. The scrawny tech positioned his software over Brian’s face as
the detective now displayed in all 55 inches of glory. Both techs communicated
discreetly in hand gestures.

Lt. Foster surged into the room. The techs
didn’t even turn around. The lieutenant watched as the feeds highlighted face
after face of human life in the subway for a fraction of a second while blocks
covered the face of Brian. The computer compared the faces in lightning speed,
blowing through a hundred in a second, all unbeknown to the unsuspecting
commuters.

The lieutenant squinted his eyes.
“Where’s the photograph?”

The tech with glasses handed him the
photo that Brian had delivered. As the lieutenant held the thick glossy paper
in his hands, his heart stopped.

Chapter 25

Thousands of humans filled the
underground subway. The sound of their chatter echoed inside the belly of the
Earth. The screech of metal on metal cut through their collective voices. The stink
of sweat pelted the humans’ noses; most accepted it as they had every morning.
Graffiti-sprayed stainless steel zipped by in all directions like binary digits
navigating through the grid of a computer’s CPU.

A crowd collected near one of the
train stops. The business suits enveloping the professionals were all crisp, clean,
and lint free. They were at the top of their game because they were all freshly
showered and newly dressed, but at the end of a long day, wrinkles and filth
would taint their clothes.

A train approached—the one the isolated
crowd craved. Their shoes stood on top of the burgundy floor tiles covered with
dried urine and fornicating germs. Chocolate Hush Puppies, black closed-toed
heels, navy men’s tassel slip-ons all waited among the twenty pairs of footwear.
All of them had a certain style, a certain shine, but one stood out of the pack
like the diamond among talc. It was a deeply polished charcoal gray with a small
accent of white below its five laced holes. They were shoes for a man who knew
what shoes were. And other pieces of the businessman’s attire stood out of the
crowd. His black pants were crisper, his black trench coat richer, his black leather
gloves suppler, his briefcase sturdier, and his eyes more alluring.

*  *  *

Through the maze of tunnels and into a
different station stop, a man appeared to be in a grave hurry as he thrust down
an escalator through the dense crowd. It was Detective Brian Boise. He tried to
cut through the tight space, but bodies were everywhere.

“Police! Move aside!” Brian shouted, but
the crowd didn’t budge.

In fact, the men and women pushed him
back, some harder than others, but one thing was for sure, there was no way to
clear a path. Brian rolled onto the smooth metal in the center of the escalator
and road it down on his backside. He bypassed a dozen robots and flew out at
the bottom as a man engrossed in a music player cushioned his fall.

The detective saw a new obstacle, a
dozen turnstiles. He darted to the far end and jumped over one of the metal
gates. A buzzer blasted as the crowd watched him.

“What do you think you’re doing!?” a burly
voice pierced Brian.

Brian slowed as he felt a claw clutch
his back. He turned and saw the frame of a 6’4” uniformed security guard towering
over him like a linebacker ready to tackle.

“Watch it, asshole. Police!” Brian lashed
back as he flicked off the man with his left hand while his right flashed his
badge.

Brian poured onto the main waiting
platform. He looked to his left, and then to his right as people consumed the
subway’s belly like bacteria. He saw a sign reading “Northbound” and another
displaying “Southbound.” Brian stood without a clear direction, without even a
guess to the location of one man amongst ten thousand. His breathing intensified.
Sweat formed on his brow. As he waited, watched, and writhed, he felt a pulsing
in his chest. Brian clutched his heart, but the throbbing transferred to his
hand. He realized it was his vibrating cell phone in his shirt pocket; its
ringer dwarfed by the noise. Brian answered it.

“What do you got?” he yelled.

Lt. Foster stood over the techs as the
three men stared at one of the flat-screen monitors. It showed the live image
of Brian.

“Boise. What the fuck’s going on?”
Lt. Foster demanded.

“Do you have him?” A train stopped
displaying “Southbound.” “My gut says to go south.”

“Have…lost… Get…precinct!” Lt. Foster’s
voice broke up in Brian’s ear.

The crowd swarmed the stopped train.
Brian looked around for an answer, but his gut brought his eyes to the train.
“You’re breaking up! Where is Malloy!?”

The doors started to close. Brian moved
closer. He decided to go for it. The detective muscled on, but the doors
clamped shut on his trailing hand, the hand still holding his cell phone. He
wrestled the door. It finally yielded and opened a few inches, but then slammed
shut again, this time smashing his cell phone into pieces.

“Shit!” Brian snapped.

Even though there were people
everywhere, he was now all alone. Brian pushed his way to the front of the car.
All of a sudden, Brian’s brain clouded. A migraine gripped him. He was lost
inside his own mind. He saw a sign marked “Official Entry Only!” Brian opened
the door and saw three rooms just big enough to change clothes. The conductor
peered out of one of them.

“I need this space,” Brian said without
thinking as he flashed his police badge.

Chapter 26

Subway Central Station bustled at the
heart of the city. Chaos filled the dwelling, yet everyone had some sort of
plan, some reason for lining the underground. The synchronized clocks all
showed four minutes after seven in red digits. Then the clocks ticked to five.
A train stopped near one platform. As the brakes ground it to a halt, the doors
thumped open and the crowd spilled out. Several people waited to embark, but
just as it seemed everyone had exited, a pair of charcoal gray shoes stepped
from the train. Trevor strolled to an awaiting bench under a television as he
waited to meet a particular female. Even though disorder plagued the subway and
a random meeting appeared impossible, the businessman in black seemed to know
more than any other member of his species did.

*  *  *

Brian waited inside the casket. Although
he had only been on the train for seven minutes, it felt like seventy. He stood
motionless. He couldn’t reach his pistol or his badge. Brian was stuck with
only his thoughts as his mind filled with the image of the businessman, the image
of evil.

Several people grabbed their belongings
and readied to disembark. Brian sensed that he was close as he read the signals
of those who had done this commute morning after morning. The detective pushed
his way to the door. He tried to shift around a woman with a Kentucky
Derby-ready hat, but she wouldn’t let him pass.

“Hey, watch it!” Brian said, but she
didn’t move.

“Next stop, Subway Central Station. This
train returns Northbound and all connecting passengers should disembark at the
next stop,” the announcer explained.

This was it, the main event. Brian
could feel his heart pounding. The train slowed. The crowd shifted. Brian
gripped a metal pole. A howl spewed from the train. Brian jostled around. He grabbed
at something, at anything to prevent falling. A yuppie unintentionally took off
the lady’s hat as her chemo-provoked bald head reflected the overhead lights.
She barked. Brian tried to move to the front, but it was as if he weren’t even
there.

The train finally stopped, and then
there was silence. Everyone waited.

“What the fuck!?” the yuppie yelled
vocalizing the thoughts of everyone on the train.

Then the doors thrust open as the crowd
ruptured from the train like a broken blood clot. Brian finally escaped the
confined crowd. He gripped his holstered gun still resting under his untucked
shirt. The detective scanned his new environment, scanned the area for the
suspect, for the killer, but all he saw were thousands of people. He felt insignificant,
a grain of sand at the beach. Brian knew he had to look not at the tree, but at
the apples. He saw a beggar holding a change cup, a custodial worker in a red
uniform collecting the trash, and televisions hanging everywhere showing the
morning news. The detective was lost with too many paths, too many apples, but
then he realized he had something that no one else had—his instinct.

A sudden shriek filled the underground
space. Brian turned as the beggar was harassing a woman who had tried to avoid
his change cup. Two men in suits invaded as the bum sat down and the people
continued.

Brian’s body told him the killer was
here. It all felt too real, too raw to the detective. It was as if he were
seeing everything from two different angles, two different perspectives. Brian
looked to his left, but even his 6’2” stature was too short to see over the
mess. The detective ran ten feet to his right, which provided a slight incline,
enough to see over the washed faces and styled hair of the horde of humans.
Some thirty yards away, he saw two figures sitting on a bench. One wore black
and had coolness about him as he stared at his fellow occupant, a blonde. Brian
shifted his focus to the woman, the woman wearing a Burberry-patterned scarf,
the woman ready to meet death. He knew it was April, the female fawn who had wandered
into a lion’s grasp.

“How did he find her?” Brian said aloud,
but no one heard him.

A screech jolted Brian’s attention. He
glanced at a stopping train labeled with “Northbound” in red letters. Brian
returned his eyes to the couple on the bench. He pondered waving his badge, or
even his gun, but he knew more chaos was not what he needed. He had to play his
cards right, and he only had one chance to stop the mastermind’s plan, one
chance to save the woman from the front page of the newspaper.

Brian saw Trevor stand and help April
up. The detective looked at the train and the open door next to him.
Should
I enter? What are they doing?

Brian watched the couple strolling
toward the train, but he couldn’t be sure whether they were going to enter. He
knew he had to be certain. Suddenly, a passing body cut through Brian. He lost
his footing and spun around. The detective tried to look back, but he lost
sight of Trevor. He stood on his toes. The doors started to close. Brian moved
closer, and then saw the black trench coat leading a blonde into the next train
car. The detective dove through the door.

Brian tumbled on as a sparse crowd of
passengers sat without even looking at him. He stood up and felt the train
accelerate. He looked through the windows at the passing crowd and saw a
flat-screen television above another bench displaying the picture of a deceitful
man, a killer—Trevor Malloy.

Brian inhaled two deep breaths of choked
air as a tunnel inhaled the train. He unbuttoned his holster and grabbed his
badge. Only about a dozen people filled the forty-passenger car. Brian realized
that he was now only twenty feet away from the man who had kept him up all
night, the man who had tormented his mind and had driven his family away. Brian
removed his badge from his belt, took his 9mm out of the holster, and cocked it.

“Everyone remain calm and in your seats.
I’m a police officer,” Brian said, but no one looked at him.

“Everyone, listen,” Brian said a little
louder, but ignorance prevailed.

Brian clapped his hands, pounded his
feet, whistled. It was as if he were not even there, a spectator in a
nightmare. He questioned his self, his family, his life. Who was he? And who
was the man he had been stalking? The weight of a thousand bricks hit Brian
inside that train car. He realized that his life could all be a lie. There were
moments in his mind that were black, moments that lacked any sort of memory,
moments that started ever since his father had killed himself. Perhaps he was
already dead and perhaps these people were lost souls on a train entering the
confines of hell. But there was one thing he knew he had to do, one thing he
could only do—keep moving.

The detective continued to the end
of the car. The door had a large Plexiglas window with a sign overhead reading,
“Keep Door Closed!” Brian stopped and looked through the two scuffed glass
windows between train cars, the windows with a view into a place housing evil.
As his eyes rack-focused from scuff marks, he saw the next train scattered with
humans. Most seemed innocuous like grazing sheep—one man read a newspaper, a
woman read a book, a yuppie listened to an iPod. But a wolf hid amongst the
animals, a wolf who was bred from the darkest breed of beast. Brian saw the
back of Trevor Malloy, who sat nonchalantly next to the woman in white. April
had a glow about her, which radiated beyond the clouded glass. Her smile
glimmered as she sat in conversation with her seatmate—the wolf. She was a
touchy-feely woman, the kind who tapped a man on his arm playfully when he
wooed her with his wit. She seemed under Trevor’s spell as she played with her
scarf while she talked. It was a scene out of a romantic comedy, a seemingly
chance meeting that had brought the two together, but the movie that Brian was
watching was not from the comedy section; it was from the horror section.

Brian grabbed the handle, but the door
wouldn’t budge. He knew it shouldn’t be locked, but why was he not able to open
it? As Brian panicked, a man with a beanie walked through him and opened the
door. Brian wavered, the sound of speed filling his ears. He leaned over the
gap between the racing cars as acrid air blew over him. He stumbled forward,
his badge falling to its demise, and followed the man into Trevor’s train car.
Brian regained control in the corner of the car, but now he was just another
crazed man on the train with a gun. He tightened his grip on his 9mm, but as he
did, something gripped his gut. The knot inside him resurfaced. It clenched
like cancer. He suddenly felt weak. He was losing his grip. But Brian knew the
darkness that controlled the constriction would never leave him. He knew he had
to think of a motivation, so he thought about Anne Marie and Jonathan, but the
devious image of death quickly devoured them. Brian was in a trance, a moment
of truth. He had to do this right, and he had to do it quickly. He knew he had
only one chance—one chance to attack an attacker. The element of surprise was
on his side and that was exactly what he planned to exploit. But Brian hoped
that unlike inside the previous car, he would be real inside this one.

Brian clutched his gun as he felt blood
rush to his hand. He knew he was alive; he had to be. In one quick motion, he lunged
forward toward Trevor’s back and extended his gun.

“Freeze!” he blurted.

No one looked at him. The man still read
his newspaper, the woman with the book didn’t flinch, the yuppie bopped his
head to his music, the man with the beanie tied his shoelaces. Even Trevor kept
his back toward the detective.

“What’s going on!? Someone look at me!” But
Brian’s words were useless;
everything
seemed to be useless.

As Brian felt his heart pounding,
he looked at the window in front of him. He saw gouges and smudges, marks and
smears, dirt and grease, but what he didn’t see terrified him beyond that train
car; he didn’t see his own reflection.

Brian heard Trevor clear his throat. The
detective focused on the businessman, his black trench coat, his combed hair,
his erect posture. And as Brian looked at his suspect, he saw him turn his head
slightly. Brian knew Trevor had heard him.

Brian moved closer as April stared at
the man, the creature, next to her.

“I know you hear me, Trevor. Now turn…slowly.
Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Brian was close enough to smell Trevor’s
cologne, the same cologne that had entranced most in its path, but it was
useless on the enraged detective. Brian stood six feet away from the
unresponsive man holding his briefcase on his lap. Brian kept his sight planted
firmly on the black fabric of Trevor’s trench coat. The businessman was still, but
Brian knew that Trevor was aware of the gun planted on his back.

“Turn, asshole!”

Then like a soft sweep of a Rolex second
hand, Trevor rotated. With every degree of movement, more and more of Trevor’s
familiar face filled Brian’s eyes. The image that had plagued him finally
materialized. Brian studied Trevor’s freshly shaven face and his styled hair.
Then, he locked eyes with the beast. Trevor stared at him with a smirk of
arrogance. Brian felt the knot in his stomach rupture as pain traveled
everywhere inside him.

“Ma’am. I’m a police officer,” Brian
explained to April without removing his eyes from Trevor. “This man is wanted
for the murder of three prosecuting attorneys and you, ma’am, would’ve been his
fourth.”

April remained still as Brian questioned
whether she heard him. But then, he saw April spring from shock.

“No! Stay put!”

She clamored. Brian flinched as Trevor
scooped her up. The briefcase hit the ground sending vibrations through Brian’s
backbone. Brian watched the 5’5” shield now protecting Trevor.

“No! Get off me!” April exclaimed, but
she was already right where Trevor wanted her.

The dozen passengers screamed. The man
dropped his newspaper, the woman holding the book froze, the yuppie yanked the
earbuds from his ears, the man with the beanie fell to the floor.

Brian looked for a shot, but the
flailing woman in the businessman’s arms prevented any action. Suddenly, Trevor
reached into his trench coat and unearthed a silver PPK pistol. He dug it deep
into April’s blonde hair, and then like that, she froze.

“Very impressive, Detective Brian Boise.
How did you know where to find me?” Trevor asked with confidence.

“Your shoes leave a trail.”

“Ah, I see. Well, not all trails lead
out of the woods.”

“Cut the flowery shit!”

“So, how’s this going to end? We seem to
be in a bit of a strange situation here,” Trevor reasoned.

“Put the gun down and let her go,” Brian
replied matching Trevor’s coolness.

“Ha, you think you can negotiate with
me? Business is my middle name,” Trevor chuckled.

The train suddenly jolted. Everyone
lost control for a moment, except for Trevor. He threw his shield aside, ducked,
and then squeezed the trigger. A blast belted as a lead bullet hurled toward
Brian and impaled his leg. Brian fell; his back bashed into a metal seat and the
gun flew from his hand.

Conversely, the passengers in the train
car heard the blast, but they saw Trevor shoot at the empty seat across from
him.