Children ran around unsupervised.
Stadium lights made day of night.
Jessica was beginning to agree with Chaucer.
This wasn’t going to work.
Just then, as though honing in on her despair, Dinah appeared in the crowd. Standing on her tiptoes. Decked out in any number of Independence Day paraphernalia, blue glow sticks matching her shirt, matching her eye shadow. She waved, sluicing her way through the thicket. Threw her arms around Jessica in a drunken embrace.
“Happy Fourth of July,” she cooed.
Jessica pulled away, took her aunt by the shoulders. “We have to get out of here.”
“What? Why?”
“Where’s Eli?”
The marching band started up.
Horns and drum line belting out the Rocky theme.
“Lost Eli about an hour ago!” Dinah had to yell over the enthusiastic cry of the crowd. “Went to the bathroom about an hour ago –”
“Can’t talk about it here!” Jessica said, taking hold of her aunt and leading her back through the crowd.
“Baby, what’s going on?”
“Blondie, are you absolutely sure about that night?”
“What night?”
“The night you and Eli….” Jessica was fortunate enough to bump into an enormous, hairy man, knocking the awkward right out of the question. “The night you and Eli went to The Cardinal.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Can you honestly say you were there, or not?”
“I can show you my damn MasterCard statement if you want, just tell me what is going on.”
Jessica couldn’t be bothered with the tale of Disney Owens. Too busy dodging casual strollers and political performers. She caught sight of the man in the wheelchair, surrounded by a group of kids posing for a picture.
Just a dozen or so yards away from her rendezvous point with Chaucer.
Her wingman hadn’t come back empty-handed.
Eli was the first to catch sight of them. He nudged Chaucer, then waved them over, anxiously bobbing up and down on the balls of his feet. Doubtless, Chaucer had told him more about their mission than Jessica had let on with her aunt.
“Where you been, baby?” Dinah asked, throwing her arms around him.
Eli pushed back. “We need to get out of here, right now.”
“You should go with them,” Chaucer insisted.
“Wait, what the hell?” Dinah looked from one set of worried eyes to the next. “Someone want to tell me what’s going on?”
Her answer was a piercing scream from somewhere on the stadium’s east side.
Followed by two more, then multiplied, a vocal tsunami moving with incredible momentum.
“Oh God…” Jessica unconsciously reached out and took a hold of Chaucer’s arm. “It’s him.”
Chaucer didn’t hesitate. He plunged into the milieu.
Dinah wasn’t immune to the bug. “Jessica?”
“Go,” Jessica ordered. “You too, Eli. Just get out of here before the cops come.”
Eli grabbed Dinah’s wrist and pulled. “I’m going with what the lady says, Dinah.”
With no time left to soothe her aunt’s anxious eyes, Jessica dove in after Chaucer.
The crowd’s cantor had become a pair of battling currents. Terrified individuals fled, while the curious and heroic raced towards the scene, practically trampling her from behind. She stumbled, mercifully finding her balance, wondering how long before pandemonium spread to every corner of the stadium.
A membrane of stunned, morbid rubberneckers had formed around the epicenter.
Jessica elbowed her way through, in no way wanting to see what lay beyond that tightly woven tapestry. Got her fair share of bruises from all those shoulders before emerging from the thicket.
Ground zero.
The shock of what awaited her was nothing compared to knowing she had walked past him.
Twice.
A man bound to a wheelchair. Head slumped. Red painted face covered with a ridiculous, oversized hat. Cardboard sign reading HELD HOSTAGE BY BIG GOVERNMENT.
She had even seen a group of children taking pictures with him.
One of them must have accidentally knocked that hat off its perch.
Jessica was faced firsthand with the results of Angry Jonny’s brutal hands.
The man’s empty sockets stared up to the skies, a pair of onyx stones patiently awaiting the fireworks. Lids collapsed inwards, crusted in red. Her stupefied wonder was quickly railroaded by the realization that Angry Jonny had spread the blood all over the face of this nameless, middle aged man; nearly invisible streaks leading outwards from an unhinged mouth, lips like rotting tomatoes.
The cardboard sign had fallen to the ground.
Anti-government screed face down, revealing a second message on the back.
A familiar named joined by a previously unseen, though grimly familiar symbol:
Jessica’s knees reverted to infancy.
Chaucer was there to catch her, set her straight as a pair of security guards cut through the masses. Rattled as anyone else. Barking out frightened orders as they struggled to contain the crowd.
“You best get going,” Chaucer whispered into her ear. He slipped her a twenty and told her to grab a cab back to the apartment.
“What about you?” Jessica asked, unable to take her eyes off those gaping, eternal eye sockets. “What about you?”
“I put in the call, I got to stay.”
In one swift second, Jessica put herself together.
Pulled out her cell as she turned to battle her way past the onlookers.
“I already called the police!” Chaucer called out after her.
“Fuck the police!” Jessica called over her shoulder as the crowd enveloped her. “I’m calling Al Holder!”
She burst through the throng, Al’s phone ringing on the other end.
Down on the field, the band of hapless teens lowered their instruments as the bedlam spread far and wide.
Angry Jonny, unleashed.
Chapter 27: Vigilante.
July Fifth was magnificently uneventful.
Jessica spent the entire day looking over her shoulder, never doubting the ambush would come. House of cards stacked far too high. She awoke expecting to find detectives at her door, demanding her presence downtown. Every time Al Holder called her into his office, her muscles would tense. The original Angry Jonny letter couldn’t possibly stay secret for much longer. Just one set of loose lips, and Jessica’s boss would be forced to go public. Even as the sun set beyond the Prescott-Pantheon, Jessica remained on watch. Waiting for the moment when the police would storm in and drag Dinah away, bound in metal jewelry.
And yet, it remained any given Sunday. Maybe better than most.
At the Observer, she received nothing but praise for the report she had submitted the previous night. Nobody seemed to care that the final story wasn’t filed by her, tagged additional reporting by Jessica Kincaid. Her theory on Angry Jonny’s improvisational MO became an instant favorite. The ensuing scramble had Al calling Jessica into his office every five minutes. The original letter was never mentioned.
Even her dinner shift went down with a spoonful of sugar. The guests were reasonable, tips above average. Chaucer put in an appearance for a light meal, then went to keep Dinah company at the bar. By the time Eli showed to help himself to a couple thousand drinks, the evening was approaching festive..
By the time her shift was over, it was as though July Fourth had never happened.
***
Jessica logged onto Google maps. She plugged in a starting address and destination.
Scrawled down the estimated travel time.
Repeated the process, putting the first destination as her starting address.
She added the second trip to the first, closed her laptop, spun around in her chair. “Total comes to twenty-five minutes.”
Chaucer glanced u
p from Dinah’s credit card statement. He shifted against the futon, wiped the back of his neck. “And here it is, plain as day. A charge for her tab at The Cardinal. June twenty-seventh, two-thirty in the morning, tidy sum of two hundred, forty-seven dollars and eighty cents – that’s a lot of booze.”
“But not a lot of time…” Jessica kicked her legs up on the dormant radiator beneath her bedroom window. “Davenport’s neighbor heard the fire alarm at around three-thirty in the morning. Now I’ve only got personal experience to go on, but let’s subtract fifteen minutes for the coffeemaker to trip the smoke alarm. That would put Angry Jonny at the scene no later than three-fifteen. Do the cops really think she could have paid, driven Eli home, tucked him in, gone to Davenport’s, knocked him out and sliced him up in under forty-five minutes?”
“Twenty-five minutes in the car.”
“Let’s give her five minutes at Eli’s. Let’s give her ten minutes to walk to Davenport’s, because there’s no way she just parked that monster in front of his house and shimmied on up the driveway.”
“That would give her five minutes to take out Davenport.”
“And that’s only if she had the chloroform with her. Just hanging out in her car.”
“There’s no way,” Chaucer concluded, polishing off his Jack on the rocks. “No way in hell.”
“Well, no cops came ‘round today. Could be they came to the same conclusion we did. Or they got turned upside down by this latest victim.”
“You sure you didn’t recognize him?”
“Not sure his own mother would have,” Jessica said. Still kicking herself for not decoding the letter soon enough. All that time wasted at Malik’s when one hour might have been enough to intercept Angry Jonny.
Chaucer lit a cigarette. “Wasn’t your fault, girl.”
“You know I walked right past the guy. Right past him. Just thought he was another one of those freaks from Asheville or Charlotte come to protest the government.”
“Still, you can’t just knock a man out, cut out his eyes and tongue without someone noticing.”
“You think Angry Jonny did it in some other location?”
“Which means some other time… Did you notice the victim’s shirt?”
“Human tongue just gushes blood when it’s cut. Angry Jonny must have been soaking it up. Waiting for it to coagulate before… I don’t know, moving him somehow.”
“Vendors setting up at midday. Protestors streaming in as early as two. He could have wheeled his victim in there at any point and just left. Matter of fact, if somebody hadn’t knocked the guy’s hat off, the body might not have been discovered till everyone else cleared out.”
Jessica looked out the window and into that parallel dimension. A near-empty stadium, littered with trash and miniature American flags. The acrid smell of burnt pyrotechnics. And seated in a wheelchair, flat against the wall, a nameless man slowly regaining consciousness. A moment or two of panic, struggling against his ropes before realizing what’s happened to him.
Opening his mouth to scream through split lips, teeth gleaming bright red.
“What do you think he did?” Jessica asked.
“What who did?”
“The guy. What does Angry Jonny know about him that we don’t?”
Chaucer took the ashtray from the floor and placed it on the futon’s armrest. “What makes you think there’s anything to know?”
“Jason Castle was crooked. Davenport’s been hoarding naked baby photos since God knows when. Seems like Angry Jonny’s taking on the vigilante role. Our own personal Dark Knight.”
“Hmm…” With worried eyes, Chaucer reached for his drink. He weighed it in his hand. Watched slivers of ice swirl around, almost gone. “You read Al Holder’s op-ed in the paper yesterday?”
“Yeah… The Cult of Angry Jonny.”
“Catchy title… Anybody who wasn’t living around here right now would probably read it and think that’s a little premature. But I’ve heard people talking. Low voices at the bars, grocery stores. Standing in line at the bank. There’s a lot of folks wondering out loud, asking themselves if Angry Jonny’s victims would have ever come to justice without him. And in some circles, it ain’t just idle speculation. For some of these people, their mind is already made up… Did you see the comments posted on Al’s piece?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s some scary stuff…” Chaucer took a sip, stood up and leaned against the windowsill. “And I’ve seen some scary shit in my time. Chicago in 1968. The West Side Riots. Thought that whole city was going to burn to the ground that year. Thought the whole country was. But it wasn’t like the world wasn’t warned. Could’ve seen it coming. Could smell it in the air, like the seconds before a thunderstorm.” Chaucer inhaled, breathed in the memories. “Smells a lot like right now, Jessica. People are angry. And they’re frightened. And you know what starts to happen after a while?”
Jessica shook her head.
“People begin to enjoy it.”
From the back stairway came the irregular thump of heavy footsteps.
Chaucer and Jessica waited, ears keen to a couple giggling their way up the stairs. Someone stumbling on the landing. Keys Jingling. Then, the sound of a door slamming shut.
False alarm.
His cigarette down to the filter, Chaucer returned to the futon, snubbed it out. “Everyone’s got something to hide. You take anybody, search their life top to bottom, clean out their closets, and this I guarantee. These attacks could still very well be random. If we’ve decided there’s a vigilante in our midst, it’s for one reason alone. And that’s because we want one.”
“It’s my birthday tomorrow.”
Chaucer didn’t seem the least bit surprised. Welcomed this with a broad smile. “How about that? Eighteen years, right?”
“Can’t believe it myself.”
“Well, look how far you’ve come… Got any plans?”
“Got the day off work.” Jessica victoriously raised her arms. “From the Prescott and the Observer.”
“So let’s do something then. How about it? You, me, Dinah?”
“Dinah’s working a double tomorrow.”
“Then allow me take you out to dinner. Eighteen years, Jessica. We only come this way once.”
“Promise?”
“That’s a yes…” With a hefty grunt, he peeled himself off the futon. Collected his drink, heading for the bathroom. He stopped at the doorway and turned. “Something you might want to do for yourself, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Go onto that Facebook nonsense and make some friends your own damn age.”
“Don’t start.”
“Then don’t hate. You’re turning eighteen, and you deserve every fresh start that comes along with that. Stop being such a little bad-ass, Jessica. Let yourself go.”
“Go where?” she muttered.
But Chaucer was already in the bathroom, door slamming behind him.
Jessica flipped her laptop open and logged onto Facebook. Multiple sets of eyes stared back, snapshot smiles at their very best. She thought back to her fight with Malik’s mother. All things forgiven if she could just see her way clear to giving up a little piece of herself in return.
With a sour face, Jessica moved to the first friend request on the list.
Cursor hovering over the DENY button.
She sighed.
From the bathroom, Jessica heard Chaucer calling out over the sound of the tap.
He returned holding a copy of the What’s What reference guide. “I take it you haven’t read this whole thing.”
“Why?”
“Check out the very last page before the index,” he said, tossing the book across the room.
Jessica caught it, flipped through some five hundred pages of outdated toasters, computer terminals, and military gear. There, on the last page, was a grid of bizarre symbols, meanings etched beneath each one.
A few in particular she was already very
familiar with.
“How about that?” Chaucer asked.
The clock on her computer ticked off one minute past midnight.
“Happy birthday to me,” she replied.
By the time she went to bed, Jessica Kincaid had gone from eight friends to one hundred and forty-two.
Genuinely repulsed by how good it felt.
Chapter 28: Hobo Signs.
The conference room was host to a dozen or so bodies from different divisions, stations and pay grades. Coffee cups and early afternoon snacks rested on the rectangular table as Al Holder took the helm. He held a stack of Xeroxed pages aloft for all to see.
“They are called hobo signs,” he announced, handing Jessica the packets for distribution. “Call them vagabonds, call them transients; these were the symbols left to warn other fellow travelers of what perils or possibilities lay ahead. Four horizontal lines in a row meant housewife feeds for chores. Large triangle, followed by three smaller ones: tell pitiful story. A rectangle with a dot in the middle simply meant danger.”
Jessica handed Ethan Prince his packet, which he gladly snatched from her fingers.
She scratched the bridge of her nose with her middle finger and kept moving.
“As you can see, the sign from the Jason Castle symbol stands for dishonest man. For whatever reason, Clarence Davenport was marked with a sign meaning can sleep in barn. The sign found on our latest victim, one Doctor Frank Lazenby, interestingly enough, signifies doctor, no charge.”
Jessica returned to the head of the class and took her place by Al.
Lloyd, head of layout, raised a fleshy arm. “Why are you telling us this? I mean, particularly us?”
“The fact that you asked is exactly why. Every person in this room has something in common. That something? You are all puzzle people. When you’re not working, it’s a pretty good bet you’ll be found pouring over the London Times crossword or with your nose in a book of cryptoquotes. Or that Sudoku thing. Finding patterns is how you get your kicks. And I’d like to put this to some good use.”