In the previous installment, Dr. Kerr considers various trains of thought: would Tom's life have been any different if Trazmo hadn't disappeared? There was Emaline Norton to consider, too, especially given the situation in which he'd met her and the man she ended up marrying. It's when he starts examining Jeckelson Hyde's odd little piano piece, "Minotaur's Gate" – a sketch? just a bunch of possible ideas? – apparently jotted down in code. What does it mean? What would it sound like? Could this possibly be an atonal piece, written in 1892? Kerr tries to decipher the code but when he checks it at the piano – amazing! – he hears a low voice humming somewhere else in the house behind him. Unsettling, but it must be Tom, snoring from the recliner in his study (no, maybe it's coming from the kitchen). Anyway, as Kerr goes upstairs, he's pretty sure someone's been standing in the room behind him...
= = = = = = =
CHAPTER 6
Monday morning was, traditionally, the most dreaded day of the week in the American workplace, no matter how much you looked forward to each weekend, unless you have to work overtime over the weekend. Add to that the adjustments needed when moving into a brand new, recently renovated office space, already several weeks behind schedule. Like any corporation trying to exist within dwindling budgets, shortcuts were taken and not everything worked smoothly according to somebody's plan. The practical consolidation of numerous agents into centralized headquarters outweighed any immediate obstacles. Limitations at the old location were one thing, unable to accommodate this expansion, but upgrading necessary technology also became a priority. In fact, too many departments given “Number One Priority” had caused considerable confusion. Combining British thoroughness with German efficiency would have been the most obvious solution. Unfortunately, everything was assigned by American bureaucratic know-how.
Despite the cube-farm's long having been dismissed as detrimental to office productivity, it made the space cheaper and easier to renovate. At least they looked nice with their muted colors and matching office furniture. To save money on rent, they'd relocated to a remote corner of Brooklyn, requiring two additional subway changes and a bus. The building's elevator opened on the opposite side from the office's main entrance. A new sign had only just been installed. “Welcome,” it read, “to Central Headquarters of the Interational Music Police, American Headquarters.”
Visibly annoyed, Capt. Jean-Baptiste Ritard, already an hour late like most of the staff trying to figure out their commutes, figured the sign assumed being “rational” was logically the key to good police work. After a brilliant career in his native Paris, he'd recently been transferred from London to head the SHMRG Investigation Task Force. The old headquarters had been cramped and in need of serious repairs, but now he found himself assigned to his own office on the top three floors of a relatively new twelve-story office building.
Discovering his office's vast window looked across the hive of activity buzzing in two dozen cubicles, he became even more annoyed after fumbling with his ID badge to find his office door wouldn't open. His Second-in-Command, Wilhelm Streicher, was already sitting at his desk when Ritard asked rhetorically why his door should refuse to budge.
A tall, dignified man with close-cropped, graying hair and piercing gray eyes, Ritard did not like looking helpless, much less stupid. The same height, Streicher had a broader chest, dark hair and darker eyes. The two were often mistaken for father and son, leading Ritard to nickname him “Sgt Nebenstimme,” meaning “under- (or background-) voice.”
“To improve internal security, most critical offices and meeting rooms are soundproofed,” Streicher explained, “but since vacuum-sealed doors are nearly impossible to open, everybody assumes they remain locked – good for building up arm strength.”
A former virtuoso who owned a priceless 1722 violin made by Leipzig-based luthier and friend of Bach, Christian Hoffman, Streicher, given his ample experience with Saxon violins, suggested Ritard give it “more upper-body oomph.” A hefty yank from his bow arm broke the seal: the door floated open. “Sgt. Nebenstimme,” he smirked, “at your service.”
Agent Ghabatti rushed in, breathless in mid-apology about the confusion of finding the right bus but Ritard quickly cut her off. She'd moved to New York from the London office about six months ago. Soon after they announced the impending relocation, she discovered getting from Manhattan to Brooklyn was like traveling to a foreign country.
“I live at the opposite end of Brooklyn and it still took me over an hour to get here,” Agent Boumdier complained. “That's even longer than it took to get to the old office...”
“There'll be many adjustments we'll need to make. Get some coffee, then join me in my deluxe, soundproof, presumably inaccessible office. I need to bring you three up to speed on the SHMRG investigations.” Not sure about closing the door, he looked around, realizing other than a pile of boxes (paperwork, probably) something was missing.
“Which investigation,” Streicher asked. “Oh, by the way,” he added, “the coffee machine was damaged in the move. I've requisitioned a replacement but they told me it might be three weeks till it arrives.”
“Shouldn't there be a computer and a phone on my desk?” Ritard asked. “Weren't we supposed to get new desktop computers?”
Streicher went to call I.T. but discovered his own phone hadn't been connected.
Each of the four agents automatically went for their cell phones only to realize there was neither signal nor wi-fi network.
Streicher hurried off to find someone in I.T., checking the printed map and directory which didn't seem to be quite accurate: the dispatchers' command center was an open area with a bar and piano.
Agent Michael Melzel, the department's Gadget Man, fiddled with the piano's pedal mechanism.
Streicher tried explaining the immediate problem: the map.
“Odd,” Melzel said, “that's the floor plan's second iteration. There've been three more since then. These must've been distributed by mistake.”
“And what's that horrible buzzing sound?”
“White noise – cuts down on distracting conversations.”
“I may have no computer,” Ritard announced, “and we've no functioning phones, but step into my office which apparently also lacks what passes for privacy. I'm sure Agent Streicher will sort everything out splendidly.” He followed Tootsie Ghabatti and Tamara Boumdier, shutting the door behind them. “Let's bring everybody up to what passes for speed.”
There were many investigations pending about SHMRG, now one of the most powerful and ruthless music licensing organizations on the planet. Their previous CEO, N. Ron Steele, was a suspect in numerous unsolved murders.
“As we know, Steele, paranoid when composer Robertson Sullivan presumably threatened to expose an earlier crime, ordered him to be murdered. Shortly afterward, Steele disappeared into various 'undisclosed locations,' always managing to elude capture. This last time, he'd escaped from a South Pacific island during an earthquake minutes before IMP agents arrived on the scene.
Boumdier and Ghabatti nodded, both well aware how narrowly Steele managed that escape. Ghabatti remarked several local witnesses who'd fled the volcano's eruption saw a helicopter land on the beach and quickly take off.
“Presumably, Steele's getaway – with him, his loyal secretary Holly Burton and SHMRG's resident I.T. Guy, Bill Cable, on board,” Boumdier added.
Two witnesses reported something fell from the helicopter over the sea, whether a body or some discarded luggage, none could say. The earthquake and its ensuing tsunami hampered any further investigation: hundreds had died.
Ritard scowled.
“We'd been working on the case months before you arrived,” Boumdier said, “but after that, we were assigned elsewhere.”
Ritard couldn't understand why he'd been transferred and then given no functioning team.
“We know intelligence indicated Cable had somehow located software, a kind of Artificial Creativity program able to compose its own music.”
“The question is,” Ritard asked, “how did Lucifer Darke, seizing control of SHMRG in Steele's absence, get his hands on it? It's their marketing of it in the build-up to Christmas that's under investigation.”
“That's true,” Ghabatti said. “It seems Cable found it first and whatever Steele's plans were, Darke's tech minions found it independently.”
“Isn't this the same software someone named Thomas Purdue had developed in Philadelphia?”
“It is.”
“But hadn't he been abducted by the Aficionati?”
“He was rescued by Richard Kerr – he's one of our consultants.”
“Richard Kerr...? Why does that name sound familiar?”
“I've worked with him in the past,” Ghabatti mentioned. “They say he's brilliant.”
Ritard wondered, racking his usually photographic memory, if that's the same Richard Kerr who blitheringly wandered into the Melot von Telramund murder outside Paris, his first case with the IMP, and nearly wrecked everything.
“Clearly, the man's an idiot,” Ritard countered. “Anyway, I've received 'chit-chat' Steele and Ms. Burton have relocated somewhere in the States. We assume this means he's planning a come-back – so we must be vigilant.”
Ritard looked up to see an impatient Agent Streicher at his door, frantically pointing to the doorknob while mouthing something incomprehensible. Ritard frowned, then shrugged his shoulders, mouthing some silent gibberish back to him.
He went to the door, unobtrusively flipping the lock mechanism. It opened effortlessly.
“What's wrong, Nebenstimme? Cat got your upper-body oomph?”
Streicher reported where the dispatch center was supposed to be was actually a lounge complete with a bar and a piano.
“Why on earth or any other planet would we need a piano bar?”
“It's not just any ordinary piano, sir, but one the Gadget Guy tells me is a specially designed instrument of surveillance.”
“Immaterial.” Ritard sounded dismissive. “What about the telephones? When will they be operational?”
“When I found I.T. – they're on the 10th floor, now – they said the installers left hours ago. They'll be back tonight.”
“Perfection!” Ritard's anger was quickly accelerating. “What was their excuse about my computer?”
“I.T. is still 'securitizing' the hard drive, but if you wanted, sir, the rest of it could be delivered tomorrow afternoon.”
Ritard erupted with a string of uncharacteristic profanity. “I'm sorry – pardon my Anglo-Saxon... Perhaps we should retire to the piano bar?”
They walked toward the large windows looking out over buildings next door, mostly down onto rooftop air-conditioning units and elevator motors. Suddenly, Capt. Ritard was no longer so upset with his lack of technology.
“What's that awful hum,” Boumdier wondered, “white noise?”
“Irritating – like a distant lawnmower.”
“Or a radio that's not tuned in properly.”
Three of them looked around, brows furrowed, trying to identify the annoying source that completely surrounded them but was otherwise invisible.
“What are you talking about,” Ghabatti said, “what noise? I don't hear anything.”
Since the bar had not been stocked, the small refrigerator hadn't even been plugged in yet. Since Agent Melzel the Gadget Man, still fussing with the piano pedals, put a damper on their conversation, Capt. Ritard did an about-face and led his small troop back to the confines of his office without benefit of coffee.
Ritard found his office door locked again and turned it over to Streicher. With a sharp twist from his bow arm, he easily broke the seal. “Nice to know something gives one job security.”
“A piano bar aside, what,” Ritard wondered, “does a police station need a 'surveillance piano' for? What exactly is it surveilling?”
Streicher assumed it's a “secret instrument” I.T. is trying out for future deployment.
“And to test it, they're going to be spying on us? These Americans are beyond me,” Ritard said, shaking his head.
Shutting the door behind them, Ritard sat on the edge of his desk. “If H.R.'s not eavesdropping on us, then who? What if there's a SHMRG infiltrator in our midst who's spying on us?”
Streicher scratched his chin. “And you are speculating that's really a Trojan Piano?”
Ghabatti wondered if Agent Melzel's a double agent.
“Haven't you wondered how exactly Steele, for one, has always been one step ahead of us? A philodendron in our midst?”
Boumdier wondered how to correct him. “You think there's a SHMRG plant, then?”
The other reason they needed to be vigilant, Ritard continued, regarded SHMRG's latest caper that's just been assigned to them, this Artificial Creativity software program released late last year which composes its own music. “It ties in, as I mentioned earlier (while you, Agent Streicher, were out foraging for practical information), with Steele's latest escape.”
If Steele's agent had downloaded Thomas Purdue's “Clara” Software and someone at Darke's SHMRG headquarters here in New York downloaded it, how did they both find it and who else may have the program?
“There's still a nagging question in my mind,” Ritard said, “if Lucifer Darke had public plans for the software, do Steele and anyone else have private plans to use it – and if so, how?
“But if the Aficionati kidnapped Purdue, and his computer was inadvertently destroyed, do we know if they still have the software?”
“A valid question, Agent Ghabatti,” Ritard said, scratching the back of his neck. “After being assigned this case, I called Chief Inspector Sarah Bond who'd been involved in tracking down Purdue after his abduction. Since Purdue had a stroke shortly after his rescue and has no memory of the Aficionati's intent, the answer remains inconclusive.”
Whatever led the Aficionati to kidnap Purdue and his software implied they needed him to re-purpose it to their intended needs; therefore, one assumes without access to the programmer, the program was basically worthless.
A glance at the potted pothos on an empty shelf behind his desk, the only plant in his office, interrupted him. “This poor philodendron couldn't possibly survive in this sunless room. Agent Streicher, if you please, would you take it down to grace the piano? They may have more in common, meeting the nudist's eye.”
Ritard looked pensive, sitting back in his chair, his fingers steepled in front of pursed lips, and waited for Streicher's return, then resumed the briefing only after the door had been shut behind him.
“As I almost said, Chief Inspector Bond will handle the Aficionati side of this question. We are to focus on SHMRG's.”
However, he warned them to be especially vigilant because, Agent Michael Melzel aside, SHMRG must have some informant inside the IMP, not to talk about it at their desks nor anywhere near that piano.
Whenever Darke's agents obtained the program which could not have been much earlier than late-October, given Purdue's abduction by the Aficionati, their push to roll out the software before the holidays was clearly misguided. “Everything,” Ritard said, “was rushed, even calling it 'z'Art the Mini-Mo' screamed desperation: who cared about checking code for hidden malware?”
Not long after, the London office began looking into reports of unexplained deaths, people electrocuted by their computers while using z'Art. “Something caused z'Art to malfunction, creating a power surge that killed would-be composers.”
The IMP began investigating this after twenty-one suspicious electrocutions were reported. Soon there were thirty-four and a week later, another fifty-five. Critics began calling it “t'Ony the Mini-Salieri,” re-purposed to bump off potential rivals.
Then Bond recalled how Dr. Purdue's assistant, Amanda Wences, had also been electrocuted, so perhaps the original software was at fault.
“We need to find where this technical glitch originated to prove or disprove malicious intent on SHMRG's part: did it already exist in the original or did it happen Athena-like, like some Mini-Bang Theory?”
Streicher argued if it existed before SHMRG obtained the program, wasn't it still their responsibility to protect their customers from bugs?
“On the other hand,” Boumdier countered, “corporations' only concerns are themselves and their bottom lines: apologize afterward, then offer a patch.”
Ghabatti figured, in most cases, it's even easier to settle such claims out-of-court.
“True, the old adage 'The Customer Is Always Right' has long been replaced by 'Buyer Beware' whether in commerce or politics.” Ritard's gaze occasionally swept the office ceiling, looking for hidden microphones or cameras. “We can argue SHMRG had an obligation to assure their customers they'd bought a safe product, having uninstalled any malicious code.”
Streicher muttered in a not very convincing stage whisper, “Like that argument would ever hold up in a courtroom these days.”
“As it is, the software's marketing was amended with a warning, like cigarettes.”
Boumdier chuckled. “'Possible side-effects could include being hailed a genius or dying suddenly'?”
Ritard's smile was almost unnoticeable. “Basically, adding 'though it hasn't been scientifically proven.' To date, the death toll is over 610.”
“So if we need Purdue's original software for a comparison, where is it?”
“According to Bond, it's 'in the wind' – literally.”
Someone holding up a sheaf of papers was banging on the door, though largely inaudible, and miming something about the doorknob. Ghabatti turned the knob and the door popped open with an exhaled breath. Veteran Sergeant Sforzato, another transfer from London last year, burst into the room. “Oi, Cap'n. Ritard, yer gotta look at these!”
Ritard took the papers Sforzato shoved in his face and, holding them back another foot, asked where these had come from.
“I found them on the Fax machine, sir.”
“We still use Fax machines?”
“Several mentioned calling us but the phone lines were down and the e-mail account has been blocked as a Spam Bot.”
Ritard paged through several reports, passing them on to Streicher, Boumdier, and Ghabatti.
“Magnificent,” he said, “now every hacker from the 6th Grade on up knows what's going on at the IMP's American office!”
Ritard counted thirty-four separate reports, mostly regarding suspicious activity concerning something called the Allegro Conservatory with wild claims of instant success in fast-track programs for various music degrees, offering everything from performance to composition.
“Wait,” he said, “this one's from a Thai take-out place in the building next door. This could prove useful – see? Coupons!”
His smile quickly faded as he thumbed through various reports from agents around the country, each complaining about preposterous advertising claims, mostly from the St. Louis area but also places like Philadelphia and Seattle.
Most of those who'd sent complaints to the IMP mentioned the utter outlandishness of several of their advertising slogans, like the one promising to unlock unexplored talent with “let us teach you the keys.” It was one thing to turn someone without training into a concert artist, and another to “tap into one's Inner Prodigy.”
Several would-be composers, paying admission fees to “Be the Next Mozart,” felt sadly cheated when, at the end of three weeks, they exhibited no more talent than before, their music still sounding like crap.
“Here's one: 'discover what you can do even if your teacher's already told you you have no talent' – hardly a claim. What if they discover they can't do anything because their teachers were right?
“But nowhere,” Ritard pointed out, “does it actually say – does it? – 'we will turn you into the Next Mozart or Heifetz'?”
Since all the reports referenced the website, Ritard automatically turned to where his computer ought to be if he'd had one, then, slamming his fist on the desk, grunted in frustration. “Sacre du printemps!” If Avery Powell-Jones, the Director of IMP's American Headquarters, his immediate supervisor, were an actual policeman who understood actual police work, not a former corporate executive hired to run the place like a business, Ritard would march into his office, wherever it was, to complain how this was no way to run a police station.
But he'd been transferred from the London office to head the SHMRG Investigation, not to evaluate the efficiency of American Headquarters with well-intentioned suggestions to improve its performance: “Just do your bloody job, Ritard...” He reached for the coffee cup that should've been there, but you couldn't even get a cup of coffee around here.
“Here's another one, sir,” Streicher started, hoping to slow down Ritard's mounting anger. “How do people fall for stuff like this? 'Composers, give us eight months of your time' – eight months? Why, that's ludicrous! – 'After studying with Allegro's faculty, success could soon be yours, even if right now you can't read a note of music!'”
“But it did say 'success could soon be yours,' not 'will soon be yours.' They're right, there, they're not guaranteeing success.”
Ghabatti agreed with Boumdier. “This many complaints indicates not everyone's falling for it.”
“Do we have any intelligence on whether this is a SHMRG scheme, or someone else cashing in on the gullibility of American consumers, their desire for instant gratification, and the rage for on-line education?”
Ghabatti didn't think this was an on-line institution. “It's one thing to teach a lecture course on-line, but an orchestra rehearsal?”
“Even a lesson,” Streicher wondered, “how could you possibly do that without direct face-to-face contact? Not to mention the audio quality?”
“On-line education's the next step. Everybody'll be doing it in another ten years!”
“Here's one, sir,” Ghabatti continued. “They've got a 'revolutionary production' of Mozart's Cosà fan tutte, set to open May 1st, directed by 'the inestimable Lauren Mostovsky.' Who's that? Never heard of him – or her.”
“Well, then, it must be a real-life, brick-and-mortar school,” Ritard said, “so go and find out where they're performing it!”
“How?”
Boumdier wasn't so sure. “If the whole thing was a scam, what if these singers were merely part of it, hired to draw in potential students, promoted as the 'after' to an untalented 'before'?”
“A video up-loaded to some on-line platform where you could view it instead of sitting in a theater, watching it live?”
Streicher looked skeptical. “I suppose next you'll be telling me that's also the wave of the future, replacing the real-time experience?”
“They once said movies and television would fail, poor substitutes for traditional theater.”
Ritard's mind wandered as he looked out across what Americans called the “Cube Farm” and realizes the only portion of it he can see are the desks of those agents assigned to his team. All of them, as it happens, were recent additions from various European branches, most of them by way of London Headquarters.
“Why can't I see any other part of the floor?” His eyes scanned the horizon. “No other departments or meeting rooms? It's like working with blinders on, no idea what else is going on.”
With no idea what Streicher and the other agents were talking about, Ritard shook off thoughts he ascribed to “Newcomer's Paranoia.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” he began in his trademark “I-don't-give-a-fuck” tone, “but shall we...?”
Ritard strode over to his lone window, side views blocked by solid walls adorned with art work suitable for hotel hallways.
First, he suggested Streicher take these complaints to the General Investigative Unit to determine if indeed this is a SHMRG project. “If so, then I'll assign it to members of our SHMRG Task Force. The GIU should examine these to find out who's behind the school's organization. They may even have functioning computers and phones.”
“And if it's not SHMRG...? Who'll have jurisdiction?”
“Then it goes to Generic Unassigned Inquiries – the GUI looks into non-specific complaints.”
“Or should it first go to the Universal Intelligence Group to search databases?”
Ritard turned around to face his team, annoyed not to know the answer and was working hard not to show it. If American acronyms weren't bad enough, they wreaked havoc with his native French.
“Once the GIU determines it's not SHMRG, they'll assign it to the UIG or the GUI. Regardless, it's not our concern.”
Of course, he could also mention the United Global Information branch, the IMP's centralized unit for specifically international music crimes, but so far there's no indication the Allegro Conservatory has reached beyond American borders, unlike SHMRG's z'Art Mini-Mo software which has gone global with dozens of deaths in multiple countries across America, Europe and Asia.
But since SHMRG is based in New York, it was deemed best to centralize Ritard's task force in New York City. The question remains, relocated to Outer Brooklyn, are they in the same city?
“Secondly,” Ritard resumed, settling back behind his otherwise empty desk, “let's distribute the investigations we've already been assigned: first, finding N. Ron Steele, and more urgently, that software mess killing composers around the globe.”
“Can we also find out who's responsible for naming it 'z'Art the Mini-Mo'?” Boumdier wondered how one's supposed to pronounce it. “They need to be punished severely for that.”
When Ritard looked at her inquisitively, Boumdier replied, “What? That's horrible product branding!”
Streicher wondered if you had to say, “Z'Art, write me a piano sonata.”
Ignoring these distractions, Ritard assigned the Steele Investigation to Streicher and Ghabatti, along with agents Kaye Gélida Manina and Milton Leise. He and Boumdier would take the z'Art case, with agents Fermata and Sforzato.
“Sir,” Boumdier asked, “is it pronounced 'zuh-ART' or 'Zart'? Or in German, 'Tsart'?”
“Why don't you start by looking into that...?”
With nothing else to do until their equipment could be installed, however long that might take, he sent them off to the Thai place next door, handing the fax with the coupons to Streicher. “Don't forget, don't use your phones for research on the restaurant's wifi, okay?” Should he add, “And don't talk to strangers”?
Before attacking some of the boxes in his office, he decided he'd walk around to see how others were settling in, maybe find a men's room (“they did include rest rooms in the renovation?”).
Just beyond the wall blocking his view, the backs of other offices and meeting rooms, he found cubicles for the GUI and the GIU, every one with working computers, busy on their working phones.
Ritard stopped short as if slapped in the face. “Why,” he wondered, “do we not have any equipment and they do?”
Under the annoying hum of White Noise, he began to wonder if there was some xenophobic plot aimed at his staff, all of them recent European transfers, and wondering where it might have originated.
Naturally, whoever he'd ask would dismiss it as a shortage of tech support, hoping they'd get everybody's installed, eventually – a coincidence?
Ritard wondered “was it too late to move back to the old offices? Or,” looking across the room, “back to Paris?”
He had many good memories from back then. “Not all change is good...”
* * ** *** ***** ******** ***** *** ** * *
Two boys were headed for a big change with no idea what could possibly happen or when: adventures always began inconspicuously.
And as Mondays went, this wasn't a particularly auspicious start to the week. Their sister had to leave early for work, their dad was working nights at the factory, and Mom had another migraine.
So, since Jack Moffet and his twin brother Joel missed the school bus and couldn't get a ride, now they'd have to walk forty miles into town and explain why they were late. Again.
The road from home, their grandparents' old farm, a mile outside town, was a desolate back road through an impenetrable desert: that's what their imaginations agreed on this morning, just to make it interesting. Tons of bodies lay across a steaming landscape, but what had caused it? Joel choked, whispering, “be careful what you breathe!”
The boys were 10 and, despite being twins, very different. Jack wanted to be a musician; Joel wanted to be a superhero which, to their father, meant a football player with a college scholarship.
“Studying what?” Jack asked.
“Football, of course!”
But their father didn't approve of Jack's choice, calling it “un-lady-like,” whatever that meant.
While he didn't mind being around his brother – taller, more muscular and self-assured – Jack hoped he could get into a different college and study music in peace, but that, he knew, was eons away.
It was just another Monday morning with a math test that afternoon which Joel was trying not to think about (it was an easy subject for Jack; nothing was easy for Joel beyond recess). Inventing ever more outlandish excuses for why they're late, Joel suggested a game of Transformers and Demons to break the boredom.
Jack wasn't terribly interested in transforming into some steely giant formerly a monster truck with huge tires and fire-engine-red flames painted on the side like Joel did almost every time – so predictable, so boring.
He'd rather transform into a composer like Mozart, his favorite. Nana used to play these old things called “records” and he loved that music, sometimes calm and soothing, sometimes so exciting and even powerful.
After she died, Dad threw her records away, “sissy music” – but Mozart must've had awesome superpowers to write music like that.
“Iowa,” Joel started spluttering, “it's known for corn – what're we growing around here? What is Orient 'famous' for? Not corn. Sunflowers!” To Joel's mind, to their dad's mind, there was nothing manly about sunflowers. Indignant, they'd found this to be embarrassing. “I mean, how stupid is that! Dad's factory has nothing to do with sunflowers.”
“What's wrong with being different? It makes us...” Jack hesitated – “original?” Come summertime, these fields would be full of nodding sunflowers. He always found it exhilarating. Like Mozart's “Jupiter,” something bright in C Major.
Joel's favorite demon was invisible, inaudible, unsmellable, only sensed in the air around you, its soul-devouring secretions seeping into the soil. Created by liberals, it's imprisoned in the once-abandoned factory where their father worked.
“That's why he works nights, Jack, because it's his job to protect us. It lives on sissy boys, Jack – watch out!”
The stream was running higher than usual this time of year, especially after that last gully-washer of a downpour last night. Jack hoped the bridge wasn't washed out again, like it was last year.
Joel, whose imagination proved more violent than Jack's, sighted a pack of zombies getting ready to charge them. “Jack, they're coming!”
Pushing Jack into the gulley, Joel carefully stepped over several bodies. Jack imagined class bullies among the dead. Joel discovered the class slut wasn't wearing panties under her skirt.
That's when Jack saw it.
“What's that up ahead,” he asked. “Is that a boot? By the opening...”
It was indeed a boot, covered in mud.
“Probably just another body,” Joel said. “There are hundreds of 'em, here! See?”
He pointed to a six-foot stretch of tree trunk stuck against the embankment. “Isn't that Old Baum?” Joel pumped his fist.
(Mr. Baum, their English teacher, was Joel's favorite nemesis, “Ol' Baum the Bomber.”)
“No, it looks like a boot – a real boot.” Jack slowed down, ending the Game Mode, and walked toward it cautiously.
They were only a few yards from the remote dirt road which, at this point, crossed Ohlsson's Crick over one of those corrugated aluminum pipe-things his mom called a “culvert” or something like that. Years ago, they replaced the concrete pipe which had crumbled and collapsed. Joel was surprised he could remember back that far.
“Damn,” Joel said, swearing involuntarily. Usually he swore with planned malevolence, intent on gauging the immediate impact. Jack usually ignored him. “Looks like a cowboy boot, maybe, not just some old rubber farmer's boot.”
Jack wondered what a “rubber farmer” was. There were specific terms for specific things but he often found them confusing, illogical.
“Somebody probably lost it out working in the fields.”
“How do you lose one boot?” Joel sounded skeptical.
“Got his foot stuck in the mud? Happened to me once, when I was a kid.”
Jack picked up a stick that a moment ago was somebody's arm and began scraping some of the mud off the boot to get a better look. Some of it was caked on hard. What he could see was pretty fancy, with a pointed toe, long and narrow, not practical like a pair of galoshes.
The more he scraped, he wondered if you'd call one boot a galosha. He figured Mr. Baum would probably know, but he couldn't imagine Mr. Baum wearing a boot like this, even on weekends.
Joel lost his patience and reached over to pick up the boot but it was caught on something, maybe another branch.
Once yanked free, turned out the boot still had a leg in it.
Jack knew the interval their screams formed was called a tritone: the “devil-in-music!”
Grinning up from the mud was a skull.
They were out of breath long before reaching Buck Harris' shop by the motel, chests heaving, their lungs close to bursting. Their clothes mud-spattered, their hair and eyes both wild, they looked a fright. They looked like they wanted to scream – maybe they were, just couldn't get any sound out beyond fish-like gulps of air.
“Buck's Place” was a sort of convenience store, the first shop they'd reach after running in from that end of town, and while it was often busy, at that hour the store was empty.
“Slow down, take deep breaths,” Buck said. “You boys look like you've seen a ghost – maybe a whole slew of ghosts!” He went behind the counter and got them each a glass of water.
“Drink it slow, boys, drink it slow, then tell me what's got you so darned riled up? You runnin' from somethin'?”
For the past twenty years, Buck had also been owner of the Express Motel next door, marking the very western edge of Orient as far as the main part of the town was concerned. Not much went on in a town like this, but what there was, Buck had been there for most of it.
“Rodge,” he said into his phone, “you better get over here. I got two scared kids, like they shat themselves silly. Don't know, but as scared as they look, must be something damn serious.”
By the time Roger Dett, Orient's deputy sheriff, got down to Buck's store, the boys were beginning to catch their breath.
“Boot,” Jack was able to get out, “just stickin' up from the mud.”
“Fuckin' leg still in it,” Joel blustered, before making loud retching noises.
Buck tossed him a towel but not in time.
Fortunately he missed the counter and the magazine rack with the tabloids; there probably wasn't much barf left in his system. After that, Joel squatted on the floor, groaning, his back against the counter.
Deputy Dett cobbled together enough from what Jack managed to squeak out to know he should definitely check the place over. Too scared to be imagining this, few kids could fake that much barf.
“Feel up to showing me where this was, where you found the boot?”
Nodding enthusiastically, neither was likely to say no.
The boys had recovered sufficiently to require being kept in the car, becoming Buck's unwelcome responsibility while Deputy Sheriff Dett explored the immediate vicinity once they'd pointed out the boot and its attached leg. Leaving it where Joel had dropped it, Dett made some calls, careful not to step in the copious piles of vomit.
Ten minutes later, the coroner arrived. An irascible old Swede, Dr. Ulnar Femorsen recently added the letters “STR” to his signature – it meant, he explained even if you'd heard it before, “Soon To Retire.”
Sheriff Betty Diddon, still in Adair, the county seat, dealing with “business,” her tone of voice indicating it probably wasn't, really, told Dett she would get there as soon as possible, maybe fifteen minutes.
The principal, meanwhile, was not pleased to be receiving a call from the Deputy Sheriff but curiosity soon displaced her annoyance.
On a lonely stretch of road half a mile past the Express Motel, three parked cars created an eerie scene, flashing strobe lights visible from Highway 25 bringing commuters' speeds within the legal limit. Some even took a detour down Debenham Road for a slow drive along a back road many locals didn't know existed.
The lights were also visible from the front gate at the old Ratchett Factory about a mile further up Highway 25. An old man arriving in his limousine glanced at them with mild concern.
Until the forensics team could exhume the remains, Dr. Femorsen was reluctant to speculate beyond its being male and assuming “at first blush” it'd been buried “between five and fifty years, give or take.” As for the likely cause of death, he wouldn't know anything until the body's on the slab for a thorough examination.
“It could simply have been washed out from a local cemetery,” Femorsen considered, “given the intensity of these recent spring rains. But there aren't any between here and the railroad tracks to the north.”
Sheriff Diddon was an imposing woman, standing over six feet tall with a broadly athletic build, her long black hair pulled back in a tight bun making her face look even more appropriately severe.
As she strode over to Dett's patrol car, two small boys ducked below the window, trying desperately not to be seen.
Once she convinced them they were not in trouble, they stepped out of the car, Buck leaning against the door reassuringly, while she knelt on the ground, bringing her down closer to their level.
“Will there be a reward?” Jack asked her.
When she wasn't sure, he asked if they could maybe keep the boot.
“What good's one boot, you moron,” Joel said.
“It'd make a rad souvenir, troglodyte,” Jack said, “hanging up on our wall.”
Diddon said she had to keep it as evidence.
“What about the foot?”
Flipping through a small note pad until she found a blank page, Diddon asked the boys how they'd found the boot and smiled as Joel recounted the gruesome details of the imminent zombie attack. Jack, impatient to get to the facts, cut his brother off in midstream. “I just looked over and there it was.”
“But I was the one who went over and picked it up, dipshit,” Joel said, standing as tall as he could.
“Yeah, but you're the one who screamed the loudest when it broke free.”
Once they finished bickering and Deputy Dett nodded that was basically what he'd been able to piece together from them earlier, Diddon warned them not to tell anyone what they'd found – “our little secret.”
She'd no sooner turned around when Joel jabbed his brother in the ribs, whispering, “wait'll everybody gets a load o' this!”
Diddon took the deputy aside, mentioning some, as she put it, “Hollywood Types” nosing around town a couple weeks ago who'd stayed at the Express Motel, working on that TV documentary about cold cases. Dett remembered they asked about anyone who might remember somebody who'd disappeared over thirty years ago in the Blizzard of '83.
“Wasn't much of a case with no body to build a case around. People seemed pretty convinced there'd been a murder.”
They looked at the creek where Doc Femorsen watched his crime guys digging.
“Sheriff, are you thinking what I'm thinking?” Dett spoke in a conspiratorial whisper.
“I think that is a fairly obvious observation.”
“What, that there'd been a murder?”
“No, Roger – that that's what I'm thinking...”
She reminded him until they prove this was the guy who'd disappeared in 1983 and he had been murdered, everything's conjecture.
But her mind continued to speculate under a whole waterfall of “What Ifs.” What if those Hollywood Types had come here knowing something she did not? What if this gruesome discovery brings them back? What if the timing of their visit and the discovery of this dead body was the Universe's attempt at a joke?
One thing this sleepy little town didn't need was a sudden influx of news-starved reporters looking for blood and gore to distract them from the plague already devouring the state, this damned Pestilential Election.
This was a small gathering, Sheriff Diddon and her deputy standing on the bank looking down into the creek bed, with Buck and the two boys by the squad car just off the road. Dr. Femorsen stood near the agents who were unearthing numerous bones and laying them out in order on a blue tarp.
For the boys, it was way beyond interminable. Buck stood there, withdrawn and solemn to honor the dead, whoever it was.
Diddon was turning over the implications of what re-opening this case would mean.
She kept her thoughts, especially her doubts, to herself, not wanting to influence Deputy Dett who hadn't been born yet when this guy, if it were him, had disappeared – she'd been a child, herself. But she knew Rodge's uncle had been sheriff then and originally investigated it as a Missing Persons Case with no conclusion.
She and Dett walked slowly back toward the squad cars and the others, talking in low voices to maintain some of the necessary respect they knew a crime scene, no matter how old, deserved, mentioning how she found the producers of “Great American Cold Cases” and their like “reprehensible,” turning tragedy into mindless home entertainment.
The boys, longing to get to school to tell their friends, caught bits of Diddon's conversation, not knowing what “reprehensible” meant; Jack figured it had something to do with tails wrapping around tree branches.
Diddon thanked Buck for looking after the boys, and reminded them, since she wanted everyone to keep this a secret for a while, they can't tell anyone what they'd found, not even their friends. Joel's enthusiastic nodding less than inspiring, she suggested Dett take them home instead. “They'll need a break after all this excitement.”
Ordinarily, a day off from school would've sent Joel into a happy dance, but not being the center of attention with his news was a huge disappointment. Jack nodded philosophically, disappointed for other reasons.
As Dett drove away, Diddon reached into her squad car and retrieved an old case file and paged through it carefully. What will it be like, she wondered, going back over this material again?
First, she'd better check which of these witnesses may still be alive and contact anyone who might now become a suspect.
= = = = = = =
©2022 by Dick Strawser for Thoughts on a Train
No comments:
Post a Comment