* * * * *
I woke up and was pleasantly surprised that during the night I hadn’t had my throat slit or had been bound, gagged and thrown in some human sacrifice pit thanks to a few stealthy cultists. Nope. Other than the stiff back courtesy of the lumpy hotel mattress, I was feeling good.
Great even!
I immediately put all of that positive energy into thinking of a way to become untangled from this crazy web of cultists, dead sisters and camera shy office wreckers. You’d think for a conman that would have been an easy feat. I mulled over a hundred ways to back out of this horrible situation but two problems cropped up in every scenario.
Problem one: Guilt.
God only knows why but I still felt obligated…or, dare I admit it, responsible for Fiona Ambrose. It was frustrating. Hell, was infuriating! Never before had I cared for anyone but myself so why should I start now?! How had Fiona conscripted me so thoroughly? Sure she was a beautiful young woman who induced fantasies of me sweeping off her feet and into the nearest bed room but that only went so far. I wasn’t about to risk my neck for some tail! So why did I feel so guilty about ditching her?
Perhaps it was because she genuinely needed help. Fiona wasn’t my usual target when committing a con. She wasn’t some loan shark or financial deviant or even some pompous rich girl who could be fleeced out of her daddy’s money. No. She was the first truly honest and undeniably innocent person who needed help. My help of all things! It was an experience I’d spent an entire lifetime avoiding yet for whatever reason, fate had stuck us together.
Fate was one cruel bitch!
The second problem that kept me from skipping town was one that I was much more familiar with: Greed.
My Paranormal Investigation scheme was nothing short of genius. Sure, the checks came few and far between but they were big enough to support my hedonistic lifestyle. It was every conman’s dream of high payout and low risk! The checks came from crooked property dealers or government grants and even had my name on the damn things! I had found the goose that laid the golden egg and I’d be damned to lose it without a fight! This cult was jeopardizing everything I had built up from scratch! All of my hard (that’s a relative word) work would go up in smoke if I fled now! I had no illusions of what would happen if I gave any ground when it came to this scam. My accomplices at the universities or realtor offices wouldn’t hesitate to replace me so they could continue on milking my genius con for all that its worth.
In short, running would be a mistake. A very, very expensive one.
I wasn’t going to let that happen! These loony zealots had no idea who they were messing with! I was going to put the fear of God into this damned cult! Sure, I might be cowardly, weak of will and a borderline alcoholic but when it came to screwing someone over there was none better than Arthur Broker!
Sleep had reinvigorated me and steeled my nerves. It was time to take action! But that didn’t mean I had to be careless. Using the phone on the nightstand, I called the front desk clerk and asked them to run me some towels. I lied and said the door was open. Sitting down on the bed, I waited for a few minutes, doing a few exercises with the switchblade to limber up my fingers.
About five minutes later, the front desk called me back and informed me the house keeper couldn’t get into the room. I told the clerk it was fine and I was heading out anyway. This might seem a waste of time to you but since the maid hadn’t been able to get into the room that meant the door was still secure. That was a strong indicator that no one had jimmied the lock last night so no crazed cultist would be waiting for me as soon as I exited the bedroom.
After a quick shower before changing back into the same street clothes I wore last night, I headed out and got me some breakfast. During all the excitement of last night, I forgot to have dinner and my body was reminding me it couldn’t run at full capacity on only beer. With a full belly, a foreseeable goal that included making life hell for whoever was in charge of the Daughters of All (while keeping Fiona safe, I guess) my day seemed a lot brighter. Hell, I would go as far to have said I was feeling downright cheerful when I left the hotel.
Sure I didn’t have a definite plan of action and was involved in a migraine-inducing mystery but by the end of the week I was confident I’d be back in the routine of drinking away my days, gambling away my nights and cursing the mornings! Like a balloon being popped, my confidence abandoned me the moment my phone rang.
A call this early in the morning was never good news.
Steeling myself for the worst, I took out the bulky travel phone and looked at the number. It wasn’t Fiona’s and she was the only one who had access to this particular cell phone…my paranoia flared up and with it, so did my cowardice.
“Hello?” I answered the phone, willing my voice to keep even.
“What the hell did you do?! The shit is all over the CB chatter! Oh man, what the fuck?! You’re in it this time!”
It took me a minute to realize it was Buggy on the other line. While I knew he was a genius, I was still confused how he got a hold of me.
“How’d you get this number, Buggy?” I asked, “I didn’t think this phone could be traced?”
“I looked up Fiona’s phone records, dumb ass. The whole untraceable travel phone bit only works if you both have a travel phone! You were the only unregistered number in her call history and I figured it was you,” Buggy spouted off this information in his usual style, but coating each word was a mixture of fear, worry, and suspicion.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, picking up some speed as I hurried down the street.
“You man! You’re what’s wrong! Shit! This is bad! Real bad! I mean, fuck! Every cop in the city is gonna be looking for you!” Buggy wheezed into the phone and I could picture his frantic eyes, “Murder charges are goin’ be thrown at you! Listen, OJ might have been lucky but not you, man! They are going to crucify you!”
It clicked, or at least, I thought it did. I pictured the junkie who attacked me last night, and of his body crumpling up as he fell on his own knife. Apparently the cops had found the body and somehow traced it to me. Had that damn girl with the crazy smile somehow managed to identify me?
“Whoa, slow down.” As I spoke, I glanced over my shoulder, more out of habit then anything to make sure I wasn’t being followed, “No cops are going to war over a junkie, Buggy. Not even a religious junkie. Besides that damn freak attacked me! As far as I’m concerned, he fell on his fuckin’ knife!”
There was a pause on the other line.
I got a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“What junkie?” Buggy asked, his voice tinged with uncharacteristic confusion.
“The junkie who attacked me last night!” I shouted into the phone, startling a businessman walking next to me bad enough that he dropped his newspaper, “Who did you think I was talking about? Who do you think I killed?”
“…The buzz on the police radio says that you killed a fifteen year old girl last night.” Buggy said slowly, trying to sift through this miscommunication “One eye witnessed spoke with the sketch artist and from what I hear, they might as well as put your driver’s license on the wanted poster. Every cop holding you a grudge is hunting you down, intent on seeing you given the chair. Word is they have physical evidence they’re going to process, linking you to the body.”
His words hit me like a sledgehammer. I nearly fell over as they sank in. In fact, if it weren’t for leaning up against a newspaper rack, I would’ve toppled over from shock. Murder? A fifteen year old?! I have done some bad things and crossed some bad people, but this was beyond belief!
This was fucking insanity!
“What the fuck is going on Buggy?” I croaked into the phone, “You know that’s impossible! Give me some details goddamn it! Who is this jackass witness?! How in the flying blue fuck did they find incriminating evidence for a crime I didn’t commit?!”
I told you before that Buggy was a good friend. In fact, if you didn’t count the brother of
my ex-fiancé who seemed to appear every now and again to kick my ass, I’d say Buggy was my oldest friend. And now, more than ever, did I thank God for sending me a friend like him. Conspiracy, intrigue, lies, and a police cover up? For Buggy, Christmas came early and he immediately switched gears from concerned comrade to super sleuth.
“Okay, I just got into the Precinct’s server and started digging around. Apparently at 4am this morning a police officer responding to a noise pollution complaint stumbled across the corpse of fifteen year old Iris Roth. She had been…brutalized before her murder.” Buggy choked out, apparently forensic photos had been included with the report, “A witness claimed to have seen a man who…let’s face it, if it’s not you she was talking about, you have a twin somewhere. Apparently the forensic team found some skin flakes and the assailant’s blood underneath a broken fingernail. They are cross-referencing the national DNA database now…but everyone is betting it‘s your DNA.”
Usually I wasn’t prone to bouts of claustrophobia but at this moment I felt the world closing in. My heart was racing, blood hammering in my ears hard enough to drown out the sounds of the city. Trapped! That what this feeling was! I could almost feel them strapping me to the electric chair…but I was innocent!
Not that the cops would believe that.
“So they’ve got me cold right? I’m going to be hauled off to jail and locked up as the press has a field day!” I sputtered, slinking down and resting my back against the cold steel of the newspaper rack, “Dammit! Dammitdammitdammit! I knew I shouldn’t have taken this case! Fuck! How much time do I have? Should I head to Canada or Mexico?!”
Minutes ago I was determined to keep the life that I had built in this city but now the stakes had been raised too high. It was time to bug out, which was something I was always prepared for. Every professional criminal worthwhile had a silver lined parachute just incase things got bad and even though I was just a conman, I had taken the time to create a Plan B briefcase. Y’know, something that kept me alive and/or out of prison if my various criminal activities or vindictive enemies ever caught up with me.
My parachute was a non-descript briefcase hidden underneath a public mailbox outside a post office (a safe a place as any I figured). Inside the briefcase were various items I might need to flee the country such as five grand in cash, a credit card with no limit, falsified documents and exchangeable plane tickets. Thanks to years on the wrong side of the law I was fairly confident in my ability to dodge the cops until obtaining my parachute. From there I could go underground, popping into Mexico, Canada, Ireland or wherever. Once out of the country I’d have to start from scratch and create a new identity and a new life.
Only once before had I been desperate enough to bug out and use my parachute plan to escape the country. It was a harrowing experience and one that I never wanted to repeat unless it was absolutely necessary for my survival and or freedom. Last time I bugged out, I had been twenty years old and running with a group of fellow ne’er-do-wells. We were young, stupid and our apparent “leader” had decided to take on a job which had us smuggling a corrupt fed out of the country. Not so much ironic as it was sad, we were busted and the result left all of us fleeing the country for harboring a criminal.
Thanks to my foresight and Plan B briefcase, I had ended up in San Salvador Island rather than prison. As a fugitive, there were worse places to wind up than a luxurious hotel/casino which let me rake in a good chunk of change gambling. Come to think of it, I was so good at taking the money from drunken tourists I could have stayed there indefinitely if it hadn’t been for the run-in with Jamaican pirates.
Anyway, my paranoia and allergy to prison sentences was making that parachute look awfully tempting. Sure, moments ago I had been gunning for the Daughters of All but this phone call changed everything! No way could I take down a cult while avoiding the police and try to clear my name. I was just one man! One unbelievably handsome yet ill fated man!
“Relax Broker! Relax!” Buggy tried to calm me over the sound of his fingertips pounding at a keyboard, “Let me work my magic! Have you ever been mouth swabbed or DNA typed by the cops?”
“Yes.” I exhaled, trying to regulate my breathing in a pathetic attempt to calm myself, “I was shot by a gun peddler once. The cops got a hold of my medical records while I was at the hospital. Everything is on file…but that was in New York about…let’s see… five years ago.”
There was pause in our conversation as Buggy played god in cyberspace.
“Ok, now what I’m doing is stopping this precinct’s computers from receiving any files from New York or any other criminal database outside of the state. Odds are they’ll figure this out eventually but there will be at least a two day bicker-fest between tech support and the police force.” Buggy explained, “That means the cops can’t match your DNA with that at the crime scene. You’re now just up against a witness who gave the cops a flawless sketch of your face. Broker…tell me straight…did you do it?”
“Fuck you! What do you think?!”
“Right. I’d have already caught you by tracking you with that retarded cell phone idea of yours.” The hacker chuckled with what sounded like relief, “Okay, so you’re innocent. Or at least, innocent in this matter. Do you have any idea who’d go through such a pain to pin you for murder?”
To be honest there was a list over mile long of people who’d love to have me framed for murder. However none of those folks or organizations would have actually attempted to do so. Most were too incompetent, too scared, or just too bloodthirsty to go through the trouble of setting me up.
“Where was the body found?” I asked, trying to amass a cache of the deadliest weapon in this day and age: information.
“Dias Drive and Pier Street. It’s the Dock District.” Buggy replied, skimming over the police officer’s initial report.
The docks were a regular stomping ground for me. If my mental map of the area wasn’t too badly shaken from the stress of being accused of a murder, then that area was just three blocks from Hell’s Scratch. Not so much as informative as it was terrifying. First being attacked by a junkie, then some mysterious asshole tore up my office and now I’m being set up for murder? I didn’t put much stock in karma but I was a great student when it came to linear cause and affect. The cause of this whole ordeal had been the simple act of asking about the Daughters of All. The effect? Being buried slowly by people I hadn’t even known existed last week!
This was simply insane!
“Broker?” Buggy asked, fearing that any lapse of silence meant I was being hauled off into a police car.
“Yeah I’m here.” I replied, my mind going over all the events of last night; donning my disguise, slipping into the club, talking to that girl, then the attack…
A revelation bloomed inside my head and I nearly choked on the immensity of it.
I swallowed a lump in my throat, trying to keep myself from vomiting in disgust as I asked, “Buggy…do you have a picture of the victim?”
“Yeah, a school photo provided by family and the forensic snapshots.” Buggy replied, “Um…you might not wanna know what she looked like after…”
“Describe the school photo.”
“Why?”
“Just do it!”
“Fine! Um…”
He gave me a brief description and my mind’s eye went to work turning his words into a mental image. Despite already drawing my horrid conclusion, I still had a vain hope that I was wrong.
“Any recent photos? Like, not one they’ll shove in the obituary?” I ask, needing to be sure that my hunch was correct but wishing that it wasn’t.
“Hold up…” The hum of keystrokes increased, “…Yeah, she was on a social network. These pictures were taken from a camera-phone, so they’re not the best quality. She looks like she was into the Goth and punk scene, heavy eyeliner, dyed hair, cut up jeans, that kind of thing. Kinda looks outta place with those big bright eyes.”
“Buggy,” I choked, “That was the
girl I talked to last night! I know it is! I was asking questions about this cult and she was giving me a few answers!”
“…You’re kidding.”
“No…No I’m not. It’s…Buggy, she was killed because she was talking to me about the Daughters of All!”
There was a long pause between us as Buggy tried to digest this new information. It was obvious he was having a difficult time believing me and he made no efforts to hide his disbelief.
“Hey man, I might believe in the Secret Civil War, the 9/11 inside job and the Illuminati…but killing a fifteen year old for talking to some guy at a club? That seems a little much.” The haphazard hacker said, “I think you might be in shock due to the stress. Don’t think-”
“I know how it sounds! It makes me sick thinking about it but I am telling you that’s what happened! It has to be connected! All of it!” I explained as I continued to fend off a panic attack, “I go to a club and ask about this cult and the moment I leave I get jumped! Then my office is trashed and now this?! No way are these all random events! Someone is out to get me!”
Buggy absorbed this info and replied quite appropriately, “Damn.”
“Yeah.” I agreed and we fell into silence for several moments.
Buggy finally broke the silence.
“You didn’t…touch this chick or anything did you?”
“Buggy I swear to God if that’s a serious question…”
“No! Well it is but I mean, how else did they get you’re DNA at the crime scene?”
“I bought her a beer to get her to talk. That’s it. Could they have gotten my DNA from the beer bottle or something?”
“Yes but not enough for this kind of operation.” Buggy replied. Having a chronic fear of cloning, the hacker had massive amounts of genetic extraction information memorized, “To plant some DNA on the body they’d need more than just some spit. This reports claims they have skin cells and blood taken from a few fake nails.”
“Where would they get that?” I asked aloud, rubbing my temple which seemed to do little to relieve the stress in my skull.
Out of the corner of my eye I found my answer and let out a string of creative curses that won’t be added here. Scabs were forming on my skin from where that crazy bitch had grabbed me on the dance floor. Her fake nails had left five thin, almost identical cuts running along each of my wrist. She had also been the one standing over the junkie’s corpse last night…
“I know where they got the DNA.” I finally said into the phone, my headache and confusion intensifying, “I was…cut last night at the club. Plenty of blood and probably some skin. They probably glued some fake nails onto her body with my blood underneath them.”
The keystroke hum died away. The enormity of this situation was sinking into both of us, threatening to crush us under its weight. Finally Buggy spoke, “Hey Broker… You’ve never been in this deep before, have you?”
“No.” I admitted and it felt good to say it aloud. I immediately felt lighter, like some of the pressure had been lifted. Every time I’ve been in deep, I managed to get out of it. This time wouldn’t be any different…right?
“Well whoever is orchestrating this is some sort of twisted, epic-level mastermind.” Buggy concluded, “You need a strategy. Low end figure, you’re looking at a thirty hour window before the cops get wise to my new firewall provisions and get a match on your DNA from New York. Forty-eight hours tops before they have your name and picture on wanted posters all over the city.”
I was glad to have a friend who put everything in perspective so bluntly. It was good to see the obstacle you were going to have to overcome. It allowed you to slap together a game plan or at least figure out a daring escape. At least now I knew that I had a thirty to forty hour window to either try and shut down this damn cult or get out of the country.
“If you need anything man, any help at all, let me know.” Buggy offered a little awkwardly, not used to the level of sincerity he was providing.
“Thanks.” I replied, “And I think I have an idea of how to extend that forty-eight hour window. Buggy, can I borrow some money?”
“How much?”
“Ten grand?”
“Sure,” The hacker laughed, “Cash, cashiers check, or credit card?”
“Cash.”
* * * * *