John Gilstrap - Hostage Zero

Harvey Rodriguez waited till daybreak before he ventured out to look at the body. He wanted to make sure that the men with the guns were long gone before he turned himself into a target, so hed spent most of the night lying still in his tent among the trees, trying his best to remain invisible.

If hed had a brain in his head, hed have used the cover of darkness to scoot out of here, but every time hed flexed his legs to move, hed talked himself out of it. Hed used the time to plot his strategy.

On the one hand, hed been living out here long enough to be running pretty low on everything, and even if the killer had stripped the dead mans pockets clean, the corpse was likely to have something of value, if only a pair of socks that actually covered his whole foot. Or maybe a watch. Harveys ten-year-old Timex had crapped out a month ago.

On the other hand, when youve got no home and you make your livingsuch as it isoff the sometimes unwilling largesse of others, the last thing you need is to get yourself wrapped up in a murder case. It wasnt as if he had people who could vouch for his alibi, you know? He could almost hear the interrogation in his head:

Where were you last night?

I was at home.

And wheres that?

Wherever I make it. Last night, it was in the woods out by Kinsale.

Right where a murder happened?

Yes, sir. Thats a hell of a coincidence, aint it? I was just lying there in my tent, and I heard somebody in the woods. I started to peek out, and then I heard a gunshot, and I ducked the hell back in.

Who would believe that? But running away would make it sound even worse. Harvey didnt know many people, but nobodys completely invisible. Sooner or later, somebody would find the body, and the homeless drifter would be the first suspect. Especially if the drifter was wearing the dead guys socks and watch.

Okay, stealing from the body was a bad idea. He wouldnt do that.

If he were a better citizen, hed have called for help, but in all fairness, he thought he deserved a break there. Hed chosen this spot as his camp precisely because it was in the middle of nowhere, which meant that calling for help had to be taken literallyas in, cupping his hands to his mouth and yelling, Help! Hardly compatible with his plan to remain invisible.

Bottom line, he was screwed no matter how it turned out, but after all this time, he was by God going to take a peek at the body. He owed himself that much. Hell, the dead guy owed him that much after costing him a whole nights sleep.

Finally, it was time. Taking care to keep quiet, Harvey crawled out of his last-legs Coleman camping tent and scanned the scenery. It had been a cool night compared to some of the sweltering nightmares of the past couple of weeks, but even now, he could feel the sun doing its duty to deliver a blistering day. Its the way it was in this part of the world. At least winter was long behind and long ahead.

Winter was the hardest part of being Harvey Rodriguez. People asked why he didnt spend his summers walking to someplace where they didnt have winters, but the truth was that he was now a Virginian through and through. In this part of the Commonwealthalong the Northern Neck on the Potomac Riverwinters were pretty mild. It rarely snowed, and nighttime ice almost always melted by midday. It was the rare day when he couldnt pull something edible out of the river and rarer still when he couldnt snare a squirrel or possum.

As he stretched to his full five feet eight inches, Harvey eyed his peeling Adidas but decided to leave them where they were. The rubber sole on the left shoe was about to give way to a hole, and he wanted it to last for at least one more rainy day. His eyes scanned the horizon as he adjusted the pull cord on the swim trunks he wore as shorts, hoping in vain to make them tighter. One thing about the hot weather: it was hard to keep weight on.

Making no sudden movements, Harvey turned a full 360 degrees, watching and listening for signs of danger. Satisfied that it was safe to move, he plucked his prized FBI T-shirt off the branch where hed left it to air out overnight, and slipped it on.

Harvey walked carefully through the tall grass and scrubby bushes toward the watertoward the spot where he presumed the body to be. He watched his feet. Poking a bare toe into somebodys guts would be a disgusting way to start the day.

Something caught his eye, off at his eleven oclock. He stopped in midstep and squinted. Had something moved? He didnt think so. It was one of those intuitive things that hit him from time to time, and he knew to wait it out until his brain could unscramble it. All around him, nothing stirred but the breeze, gently waving the top of the tall seed-tipped grasses in an undulating ripple that made land look like water.