Page 18 of A Week Away
I’d probably have to leave as soon as I signed a quit claim for Ronnie. Hell, I could tell him to sign it himself and not even go back. And then what? The kid could get Ronnie in trouble. The fact that I’d gotten a mortgage as someone I’m not was kind of a federal crime, and if they thought Ronnie knew about he’d be in a lot of trouble even if I were nowhere to be found. For a real estate agent to be accused of mortgage fraud or even suspected—well, that was definitely a career killer. Which meant he’d lose his boyfriend and his career in short order. I couldn’t do it. I loved him too much for that. I was running out of options.
When I got back to the ticketing area there were still no agents. I picked the time off the arrivals and departures sign. It was almost two. We had about two more hours to wait before we could buy tickets to anywhere.
Cass had found a bench next to the start of the construction. He was sitting there just staring. I stood a bit away just watching him. I wished I was the kind of guy who could drag the kid into the men’s room and drown him in a toilet. Then I could come out, leave the terminal, find a taxi, and go to the bus station to catch a Greyhound to Long Beach. Problem solved.
Who was I kidding? I couldn’t kill a teenager. Not with my shoulder. Also… I didn’t actually like killing people. Even when they deserved it.
I went over and sat down next to the kid. I said, “You know, killing people isn’t as much fun as it sounds.”
“I never said it sounded fun.”
“No. But you did make it sound like a rational response and it’s not that either.”
He shrugged. “That’s your opinion.”
“I’ve killed three men. In self-defense. Drowned one, stabbed one, shot one. I feel guilty. People think I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it. I think about those deaths and try to image scenarios where I didn’t have to kill them, where I talked my way out of things, where it didn’t come down to my life or theirs. They weren’t good guys, they did bad things and they’d have kept doing bad things if I hadn’t killed them. But the thing is, it’s not up to me. I don’t get to be judge and jury and executioner all rolled into one. And neither do you.”
“You think you’re a better person than I am.”
“That’s what you took from that?”
“You feel bad because you killed bad people. I think I’m going to feel bad if I don’t.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that. I kept trying to come up with an argument that would convince him to go home and forget all this, but that didn’t happen. After a while, the kid fell asleep.
I was going to have to figure out who killed Dom Reilly. I had no other choice. Now I really hoped The Partnership didn’t kill him. I had experience with The Outfit in Chicago. A lot of experience. And I knew it was best if you kept those people as far away from you as possible.
We were going to have to talk to people who knew Dom and Joanne around the time of his disappearance. Maybe we shouldn’t come right out and ask if there were any connections to The Partnership. Let people volunteer that information and then pretend to ignore it. What else? I was looking for motive. If I knew who might want him dead, then I had the possible murderer. Was he having an affair? Did he owe anyone money? Did he have enemies? Standard stuff, but it didn’t hurt to remind myself.
The kid was still asleep when the United ticket counter opened at four-forty-five. A woman in her late twenties opened it up. She was pretty but not stewardess pretty. She wore a white, long-sleeved shirt with a burgundy tie. Over that was a navy sweater vest that had a United Airlines logo embroidered into it.
“Good morning, how can I help you?” she asked when I reached the counter.
“I’d like two tickets on your first flight to Detroit.”
She clicked her CRT terminal a few times. Then a few more times. She looked up and smiled at me before she said, “It’s a little slow first thing.” A couple moments later she said, “Oh, there we go. Let’s see… Yes, I have two tickets. Do you have a seat preference?”
“Aisle please.”
The kid might want to sit by the window, but I was paying for these so screw him.
“All right then. I have a flight leaving at 5:15 with boarding beginning momentarily. That gets in to Denver at 8:37 mountain time. You’ll have an hour and twenty-seven-minute layover. You’ll leave at 10:04 and arrive in Detroit at 2:48 eastern time. You’re lucky, you’ll be getting breakfastandlunch.”
Then she told me the price for two tickets, just over a thousand dollars, and I didn’t feel so lucky. I handed her a credit card. She read my name off the card as she put it into the CRT. “Dominick Reilly. And your fellow passenger?”
“Cassidy Reilly.”
She looked by me to Cass sleeping on the bench. “Son?”
“Nephew,” I replied. Well, I certainly wasn’t going to try and explain our actual relationship.
She ran my card through a credit card reader and made me sign the slip. As I did, she said, “I have you in seats 27D and 27E Reno to Denver and then seats 34B and 34C Denver to Detroit. The first flight isn’t full so you should be able to spread out. The second flight is a little busier.”
Then she printed out the tickets, took them out of the printer, folded everything up, and put it all into a custom folder about the size of an envelope.
“Your tickets are in here, your tickets serve as your boarding passes, no need to stop at the desk, you can get right on the plane. Your carbon is in there as well. Just go to gate C5. Any questions?”
“No, I think we’re fine. Thanks.”
