Deadline Man

“That’s what substitute teachers are for.” Then the music is gone from her voice. “I’m worried about you.”

The last thing I had done before going home the previous night was to stop at a 24-hour Kinko’s and pay cash to use their computer. I signed up for a Gmail account. The Feds couldn’t track me that quickly—we’re talking about the government here. I had sent Rachel a message: “Please meet me where we first kissed. Urgent.” This morning I had arrived at the paper early and banged out my Sunday column, a report card on how the governor was handling the recession. I can write outrage. I can write heartbreak. But I had written the thing I wasn’t feeling: cool analysis, and I had filed it by eleven. Faith had given me the Samsung Blackjack, newly encrypted. Then I had driven out to Ballard, past the locks and Ray’s Boathouse, to the park. I had scoped it out for thirty minutes before Rachel might arrive. Then I had walked up the slight incline from the water, across the parking lot, and into the tunnel.

Now it is three p.m. and we stand in a small tunnel that carries a hiking trail from Golden Gardens Park under the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad tracks.

“We’re taking a terrible chance by meeting,” she says.

“Am I in that much trouble?” I try to say it light, like a joke. She says nothing and lets my hands fall away like regrets.

The tunnel is just long enough to go under the double tracks of the main line, and it is wide and filled with light. Outside a low cloud cover shelters the sky. Puget Sound is dark blue, the color of Rachel’s eyes, and three sailboats cut through the water half a mile or more from the shore. Across the water, the Olympic Mountains are jagged and purple. It’s far too beautiful an afternoon to harbor the sinister, so I am on edge. Still, something about her eases me. What is it about a blue-eyed brunette, contrasts that work so well together?

“Why no suit?” she asks.

“Casual Friday.” My suits aren’t cut large enough to conceal the gun, so under the black windbreaker, I am in khakis and a blue shirt.

“You hate casual Fridays, and I love you in a suit.” She glances both ways.

To allay Rachel’s fears—and mine—I position her so she is on the outer edge of the tunnel, facing toward the woods and the neighborhood to the east. I am inside and can go west, toward the parking lot and the shore. We’re close enough to talk, but at a 90-degree angle from each other. I tell her if anyone suspicious approaches, just walk away and I will, too. It seemed like a clever plan this morning. Now it seems a little silly. So far, the park is nearly deserted—a few dog-walkers close to the water. No one is on the trail. We take our positions.

I hear her voice from my side. “I asked you not to contact me.”

“Rachel, what happens on 11/11?”

“I don’t know.”

“Rachel…”

“I don’t know!” I glance around to see the back of her head. She runs a hand through her thick, curly dark hair. “I don’t know! Dad dictated that part of the note to me! He was trying to keep you out of trouble.”

“It’s too late.” She turns in and reaches for me, shaking her head in concern. I gently turn her back to watch her side of the approach.

“I went to see a hedge-fund guy named Troy Hardesty for a routine interview. The next thing I knew he was falling out of his office onto Fourth Avenue. He mentions eleven/eleven in our conversation—asked me if I’d ever heard of it. Later that night, a bag lady on the street yells it at me. ‘Eleven/eleven.’ She says, ‘You’ll get yours.’ I found it tattooed on the leg of a dead man. He just happened to be the boyfriend of this girl who’s missing, Megan Nyberg. Then I get your note. Eleven/eleven, again.”

A hundred yards away, a black Lab drags a woman to a minivan. They get inside and in a moment the car starts up and backs out. I wait for Rachel to say something, to make some sense of it. When she’s silent, I continue.

“After Troy’s death, I got picked up by federal agents. They flashed badges but never showed me their credentials again. They took me to an unmarked building in SoDo, asked what I knew about Troy, then they let me go.” I instinctively look down at the scar on the top of my hand. “A couple of days later, they kick down my door. They burn my hand with a cigarette and show me a National Security Letter. It demands all my notes and emails regarding Troy, Megan Nyberg, the boyfriend Ryan Meyers and someone else, Heather Brady. Do you know those names?”

“Only Megan, from TV.”

“This guy’s a hedge fund boss, and they’re teenagers. Both girls are missing and Ryan’s dead. The paper gives up the notes without a fight. I can’t believe it. The Seattle Free Press!”

“Please let this go!”

I curse and lower my voice. “It’s too late, Rachel. These agents are killers…”

“What do you mean, killers?”

“I need to know what happens on eleven/eleven. We’ve only got thirteen days.” Jill would have said that’s a bad omen in itself. I catch my wandering mind. “I learned that Troy Hardesty had his house on the market. He told the Realtor that he wanted to be on the other side of the Cascades by the second week in November. We’re back to eleven/eleven, and none of it sounds good.”

I hear a train whistle in the far distance and look around to see if Rachel is still there. She is looking back mournfully.

“We could just run away.” Her lips make a sad smile. “It wouldn’t be awful.”

“It would be wonderful, but you deserve way better than me. Soon-to-be unemployed journalist.”

“I know you think I’m just acting like a doormat. I’m not. I know you better than you think. Being with you felt right, righter than anything in my life. I just can’t let go of this vision I have about us. I went to a fortune teller a year ago…”

“I know.”