Chapter 3 – Happy Birthday
The transport drifted to an imperceptible landing in the courtyard of the top shelf home. Ashley and Geoff trudged up the rain-slicked front walk, followed by the officers.
Geoff raised his hand to the access panel and it recognized him as a resident. The front door slid back, revealing an inappropriately decorated house. Ash, Geoff and the officers, stood shocked.
A Happy Birthday banner stretched across the main room, attached to the ceiling and far wall. A nearby table sat covered with presents. The balloons and streamers felt wrong, perfectly cruel. The empty house magnified the awkwardness of the moment. The decorations anchored them, threatening to leave the four of them on the step for eternity.
"Are you surprised?" Geoff asked his sister.
"I thought they forgot," she answered.
"They made me promise not to say anything."
"This better not be somebody's idea of a joke," the corporal said.
"You are such an asshole," the sergeant replied.
Ash looked at the ground. Geoff looked up to his sister as tears welled in his eyes. He turned and ran inside, past the presents and up the stairs. The streamers and strings on the inflated balloons swayed in his wake. Ash followed after him, but the sergeant interrupted her flight.
"Excuse me, miss," the sergeant said, stepping forward. "I'm sorry, but we aren't permitted to leave you guys here on your own. We're just here so you can pack some personal items. You know, a change of clothes, socks, underwear, and toothbrush. We still need to bring you back to the station.”
Ashley stared at him.
"It would be criminal negligence for us to just leave you here."
"I'm going to just go up then." Ash gestured to the stairs.
The officer nodded for her to go ahead.
Ash left them to the lower level of the house. She stopped outside her brother's room. He sat on the bed, blankly staring into space.
"Geoff," Ash sat next to him on the bed and put her arm around him.
He stared at the floor.
Downstairs, the officers milled about.
"Nice place," the corporal commented.
"Yeah, not bad," the sergeant agreed.
In the backyard, Mono lay sleeping just outside the sliding glass doors. The domesticated lion heard the sounds from inside and raised his head. Somehow, he'd slept through their entry and only now heard the strange voices. He stood and stretched.
The animal saw the strangers standing inside the house. He looked at them, blinked once, then again, and yawned. Created in a laboratory, Mono had been part of a recombinant DNA experiment. The project's stated goal had been to develop a feline counterpart for law enforcement operations: a cat that could be trained and employed like a police dog, only better. Too docile to be properly considered, the defense department classified Mono as an unsupportable line of inquiry.
The king of the urban jungle poked his head through the over-sized doggie-door. His body followed and soon the entire cat stood inside the house.
The officers froze with shock. Mono ignored them and cleaned a paw.
"What the fuck is that?" the corporal exclaimed.
"It looks like a giant cat to me." The sergeant kept his voice low.
"It's a fucking lion."
Ashley appeared at the top of the stairs and called him. Mono looked away from the cops, trotted past them, and up the stairs.
"He's just a cat," she said, calmly.
"He's not just anything," the corporal replied.
Ash smiled, left the officers and walked Mono to Geoffrey's room.
Mono walked over to Geoff and pushed his face up against the boy's. Geoff made room for the massive animal to curl up next to him on the bed. He did. "What about Mono? Who's gonna take care of him?" Geoff asked, hugging the cat.
Without answering, Ashley stepped away.
Down the hall, she entered her own room. Despite the open door, the room remained dark. She walked over to the windows and ripped the heavy curtains from their frames.
Light flooded the room.
She stood breathing, unsure of what to do next. On a low table, across from the window sat a large, dust-covered dollhouse. Her father had built if for her years ago; before the prototype, before Dunkirk.
Downstairs the officers waited, much less at ease after the appearance of the over-sized house cat. They heard a loud crash from upstairs, the sound of breaking glass and snapping wood, something big crashing through a window.
A moment later, the object exploded into the front lawn, amid a hail of glass and window dressing. The officers stared out at the ruins of a dollhouse. They looked up to the ceiling overhead and then back down to the girl's shattered childhood.
"Maybe we should let them take their time," the sergeant suggested, drawing silent affirmation from his partner.
An hour or so later, Ash and Geoff appeared with their bags. Ashley also had her hoverboard tucked under her arm.
"I'm sorry, but you can't bring that," the sergeant said.
"It would just get stolen anyhow," the corporal added.
Ash took the board back up to her room.
They silently followed the officers out of the house and back aboard the department transport. The children looked utterly exhausted and somehow, older.
The transport lifted off, turning from the Fox home toward the gradually swelling traffic of the late afternoon.
Geoff stared out the window, watching other vehicles give the police cruiser a wide berth in their climb toward the nearby freeway cable. The prowler moved into lanes on the right side of the massive electro-magnetic strand of braided steel, flowing with the close-cable traffic.
The electro-magnetic cable generated current used by the vehicles that ran alongside. Smaller guidelines ran with the freeway cable, delineating lanes and travel direction. Beacons mounted on the guidelines provided visual and aural alerts. In the center, closer to the cable, the beacons were brighter. In the outer lanes, where the current was weaker, they glowed faintly.
The transport landed in the huge parking dock of the Angel City Police Department. The officers led Ash and Geoff through the bustling main hall to an opaque-walled holding cell.
The sergeant addressed them from the door. "Stay here. We'll send down a placement officer." He triggered the panel and the otherwise indistinguishable section of the wall slid shut.
Ash and Geoff took seats on the plastic bench. The various layers of frosted plastic muffled the noise of the crowded central hall outside. The blurred shapes on the other side of the frosted walls seemed little more than fuzzy silhouettes. The volume of activity, as the officers put their clients through the processes of the department, illustrated confusion in sharp contrast to the relative peace of the holding cell.
Watching the hazy silhouettes, Ashley and Geoff discerned a scuffle. Blows were thrown; an officer went down. A gun was waved through the air and people hit the ground.
In a single moment, everyone on the other side seemed to vanish and go silent. Only the criminal's shadow and that of his newly acquired hostage remained standing. Five officers stood slowly, their weapons trained on the young man. He looked toward the door, a good twenty meters away.
The hostage made her move and dropped. The standing officers fired, splattering pieces of the boy against the frosted wall. The bullets embedded themselves in the soft, trap-plastic walls. The blood splattered and ran.
Ash and Geoff stared in horror at the pink splashed wall. The black rounds lodged in the otherwise pure white-frosted plastic like blackheads in the otherwise pure skin of the police station.
Ashley and Geoff moved across the plastic cell, to sit on the floor, away from the wounded walls. They watched the hazy aftermath and observed that it wasn't so different from a reality cop vid, where all the participants were blurred out to comply with privacy regulations.
Geoffrey leaned up against his sister and she put her arm around him. He pulled her hand up and looke
d at the black-metal rectangle nestled in her palm; the sight calmed him and he slept.
Ash watched the blood stain several layers of plastic. It turned entire panels pink and darkened the seams.
Time passed slowly, if at all.
Ash woke, startled to discover she'd been asleep. A suited detective stood at the open door. He was a big man, even for a cop. Thick sideburns offset his shaven head and gave his face an ominous appearance. He held a clipboard.
"Come on. Let's get moving. Chop, chop." He gestured for Ash and Geoffrey to come out of the cell and stepped out of sight, deeper into the hallway.
Ash didn't hear him walk away. She reasoned that he must have been patiently waiting in the hall. The door remained open. Fresh air made its way over to the siblings. Geoffrey stirred and sat up. He saw the open door and looked at his sister.
Ash said nothing, but with a tilt of the head, narrowing of her eyes, and a subtle movement of her mouth, she communicated the situation to her brother.
Together they stood and picked up their bags. She gestured for him to stay behind her. She counted the detective's patience as points in his favor, but the black rectangle remained in her palm.
Geoff watched her. Her thumb rested on the knife's trigger. He breathed easier knowing his deadly sister led the way, secretly armed. His trusting calm helped her remain cool.
To the young boy, she was everything. Ashley was Ninja. He knew why she needed to sleep late all those early summer mornings. After he discovered her secret he tried hard to catch her in the act, but never could.
A couple months earlier, something woke him. Geoff had thought the hooded hoverboarder fleeing their house had been a burglar, but when he went into her room, Ashley was gone. It was almost four in the morning.
Geoff had tried to stay awake. When he woke again, it was after eight. He opened her door and his sister was curled up in bed. She mumbled and pulled the blankets over her head. He hadn't seen her return, but he had seen her leave. Geoff surmised she could only be attending sunrise classes at the academy. He never asked her about it, but after that, he tried to stay quiet in the morning.
In the hallway, the detective waited. As the siblings exited the holding cell, she watched the way he appraised her. He seemed to acknowledge her posture and the item hidden in her hand. He took a polite step back.
"I'm sorry for your loss. I’m Detective Cole."
Looking to Ash, he asked, "Do you remember me?" Cole had shaved his head and the sideburns were new, but his face came back to her. Now that he spoke, she remembered him and nodded.
"Sorry about your partner," she said. Detective Urich had been recently wounded in a headline making case, and later succumbed to his injuries.
Cole nodded. "Thank you. Of course we're still looking for Dunkirk. The feds interfere whenever they can. We can catch up more later, but for now, I need you guys to come with me." Detective Cole led them down the hall.
Ash noticed that he watched them in his peripheral vision and at no time did he seem unprepared. Ash kept her brother in the lee of her movements, shielding him from any possible attack as they passed random people in the halls. The detective subtly tried to reinforce her maneuvers, positioning himself between the children and other officers or citizens.
About halfway to their destination, they encountered a crowded hall, packed tight with humanity. Cole caught Ashley's attention and gestured for Geoffrey to walk between them. The detective moved them through the crowd and when they reached an empty hallway, Ashley relaxed a little.
After wandering for what seemed like a mile, they arrived at the witness stacks. Cole punched a code into the access panel and the bay door opened. The large interior warehouse was lined with tracks and cables running off into the stacks, room-sized safes, locked and maneuverable like so many robotically-parked single-unit motel rooms.
A room detached itself from the grid and approached the dock. Once secured, the hatch opened and revealed the interior. The unit was really just a large living room; two couches faced a dual-terminaled coffee table. Mini-fridges served as end tables for the vid-steam remotes. The couches were of the extra long variety, doubling as a perfectly comfortable bed.
Cole gave Ash some money. "Get some food." He gestured to the battered menu, tethered to the phone, itself bolted to the top of one of the refrigerators. "I need to figure out where you two are spending the night. Don't break anything."
Ash thanked him as Cole vanished behind the sliding doors. The room kicked off from the platform, instantly losing itself among the thousand other such cubes.
Geoffrey looked at the armored terminal and sturdily constructed couches.
"Don't break anything. Who is he kidding?" Geoff jumped for the couch. Suddenly the box changed direction and slammed him deep into the well of a cushioned seat. He screamed in exhilaration. Ashley crashed onto the other couch, her bag forgotten on the floor.
Detective Cole maneuvered through a maze of halls and stairwells, toward his office. Beside him, a tall man appeared, walking with him.
"Something I can do for you, Nancy, I mean Leonard?"
"Detective. How are you?" Leonard Waltman, Mayor Westbury's secretary, asked.
"I'm feeling a little nauseous."
Leonard smiled. "I've been asked to discuss a rather urgent matter with you."
Detective Cole remained silent.
"A couple children were orphaned today."
"We usually get about a dozen," Cole answered.
Leonard glanced at his watch. "It's still early."
"What are you doing up? Thought your kind couldn't handle sunlight."
"I'm sensing some anxiety in your tone, Detective."
"I'd have gone with hostility, myself."
"Is that a veiled threat?"
"No, it's a direct threat, shit-for-brains."
Leonard smiled, "Is that what you want me to tell him?"
Cole stepped forward. "Tell his highness, that I told you to fuck off."
"I'm just here to ensure that your orders are received and understood, detective."
"Thanks, Mr. Secretary."
As quickly as he'd arrived, Leonard turned and walked away. He made the corner at the far end of the hall and was gone.
Detective Cole waited for a moment and then continued through the maze of the department, one identical intersection after another. Finally he reached an unmarked room. He unlocked the door and entered.
The large room, wide with a low ceiling, stood spotted with support pillars. The detective made his way trough the jumble of filing cabinets, overflowing bookshelves and stuffed study carols. The wall at the far side of the room was split lengthwise by a band of closed windows on horizontal hinges, tinted against the brash California sun.
Cole opened a tall filing cabinet and pulled out a new pack of cigarettes, a bottle of whiskey and a glass. He peeled the plastic from the sweet-smelling tobacco pack and from the top of the whiskey bottle. He tapped out a cigarette and set it between his lips.
Cole swung the window open and set the glass on the low, wide ledge. He slowly opened the bottle and filled the glass. Cole set the bottle beside it on the ledge. He removed the cigarette from his mouth and balanced it across the mouth of the glass. Cole sat facing the window, watching the Angel City afternoon slowly fade into evening.
Across the department, Ash and Geoff picked at cheap heat-packet food, utterly uninterested.
Later they sat before the blaring monitors, the vid-streams as unappealing as the super-heated foodstuff.
Just after six Cole stood, lifted the unlit cigarette and set it adrift on the Angel City wind. He tossed the whiskey after it and shook the glass out.
He returned the bottle and tumbler to their drawer, closed the window and dragged his chair over to a nearby phone.
The detective lifted the receiver and dialed a number from memory. He’d set the call to audio only, displaying the Angle City Youth Facilities logo in place of his head and shoulders.
&
nbsp; Across the city, in the lobby of a large building, the phone rang. Outside the office, out of earshot from the ringing phone, the secretary, Ms. Misty Mifton, crossed to a set of stairs leading to the parking garage.
The dialed connection continued to ring until someone answered it, elsewhere in the facility. The machine didn't get it; the light went from flashing to solid.
Detective Cole fidgeted with some paper. He straightened his tie and pretended to be busy, hoping the ruse carried over into his voice.
A female voice came on the line. "Angel City Juvenile Facility, District Thirteen. How may I help you?"
This was it; direct contact with the target. District Thirteen Governor Agatha Dorchester Maime, cousin of Angel City Mayor Howard Westbury, suspected cannibalistic serial killer, murderer, and conspiratorial confidant of one Martin Evander Dunkirk.
Detective Cole had several reasons to believe that District Thirteen was a festering cancer of heinous evil, eating, sweating and excreting the children of Angel City. He had been ordered to turn Ashley and her brother Geoffrey over to them. Whereby they might entrap the monsters, or help them, by eliminating the threat posed to Mr. Martin Dunkirk, by his only witness, Miss Ashley Fox.
Cole was aware of how deep the conspiracy ran, implicating the Mayor and his aide, Mr. Leonard Waltman, whom he'd visited with only just moments ago. He was also aware of the other lunatics in Governor Maime's psychotic administration aboard the most-unlucky district.
The recently deceased Dr. Fox was a genius. The fact that his daughter defeated a world-class serial killer astonished the detective. He did not believe in coincidence.
Cole smiled to the phone. "Ma'am, this is ACPD Juvenile Placement. We've got two kids here and no beds. I know it's late, but can we send them your way?"
"That's no trouble, we have lots of beds. We'll run the paperwork in the morning," she answered.
"Can you give us, say, ninety minutes?" Cole asked.
"Of course. Names and ages?" she asked.
"A brother and sister: Fox, Ashley, fifteen. Geoffrey, eleven."
"We'll take good care of them," she answered.
"Thanks so much. Again, sorry about it being so late."
"Not a problem. Good evening, Detective." She hung up.
Cole set the handset down. A cold sweat broke out across his brow. He hadn't told her he was a detective.
The mayor’s office had tipped her off.
He felt nauseous, but it was too late, the point of no return, no going back now, or so he told himself.