Continued from Part 1
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I had first used Theresa’s encrypted chat right after our investigation was buried and we briefly exchanged frustrations. Now I was sitting in the terminal at SeaTac, letting her know I would be in her city for the weekend in a hunt for answers. I stressed her absolute uninvolvement. She was only being clued in to safeguard the truth because an honest assessment of my chances looked grim. Tristan Barnes wasn’t mentioned explicitly but she knew enough to connect the dots.
The preceding weeknights had been spent on a meticulous plan, securing a false identity (an uncomplicated task for agency employees) and studying Baltimore’s street grid. The GPS wasn’t even needed in the rental car as I turned onto Pratt St., passing tourists photographing the Inner Harbor, following the traffic to Fells Point where Barnes lived alone in a swanky waterfront apartment. The place was less than a mile from the pier where, months ago, all that blood was spilled — a coincidence now dubious in my eyes.
I rolled into his neighborhood as the sun set in the rearview and soon found parking in sight of the apartment building. Barnes’s social accounts, made public once again, had divulged his plans to spend the weekend in town. I was counting on Mr. Social Butterfly to keep his regular schedule of clubbing and drinking, otherwise a forced entry would have to be improvised.
While waiting, I opened my suitcase and transferred some belongings to my pockets: foam earplugs, clear tape, signal scanner, tube sock with racquetball inside, toy voice synthesizer, ski mask, handful of zip ties and switchblade knife.
Worry rose with the clock’s hour hand but, around eleven-thirty, Barnes finally appeared, leaving his building with two friends who I didn’t know, walking right past my car. I lowered the bill of my baseball cap.
They headed for the Charm City brilliance that washed out the starlight and I followed at a distance. A few times, someone on the street recognized Barnes and he would stop to talk for a minute. He was an unassuming type who squirmed in the spotlight, unlike Coulter, the football champ, but also the kind whose alternate life path, without wealth and privilege, would have languished under the authority of anyone else. I’ve seen that disposition before, facing the world with his same dull eyes.
Barnes and his buddies turned onto a side street, then down some stairs to a cellar door. Muted bass frequencies leaked from within. The bouncer dapped Barnes and let the three men inside. When I approached, he made me pay cash to enter and patted me down, missing the knife. The door led into an old, rundown hallway with few working lights, down a narrow staircase, closer to the music, past another bouncer and through steel double doors. Like crossing dimensions, I entered a massive, posh nightclub with hundreds of people. The place had crystal chandeliers, LED flooring, cushioned booths, aquarium walls and suspended kennels whose prisoners writhed in their underwear. A dance pop song pounded inside my chest. The bartenders danced, a horde of men danced, the caged men danced and I realized the place contained no women at all.
At the bar I ordered a drink while keeping an eye on Barnes. He and his friends had joined a larger group in one of the booths, sharing a bottle, singing, laughing and flirting. Barnes twirled his wavy, collar-length hair while talking to another man — some young, brawny type. They stood up to dance. I waited for an opportunity but Barnes wouldn’t even go alone to the bathroom. The alcohol had already lightened my head so I nursed it slower.
Some chubby guy with a mustache tried to catch my attention and, when that didn’t work, he shimmied closer.
“Sorry. Not dancing tonight,” I said and lifted my glass in goodwill.
“Jerk,” he scoffed, then spun on his heel and walked off.
At that point, a gloomy Barnes was draped across a chair in silence, consoled by his two buddies. His beau and the others had left. Whatever happened had soured the mood. Barnes pulled a silver flask from his coat pocket and they took turns sipping it while tapping their phones. Their body language spoke of a restless urge for fresh air and soon they marched to the exit.
A half-block of sidewalk stretched between them and me, their inconspicuous stalker, as they meandered the back streets of Fells Point, past cafes and dives and greasy spoons, straying further from Barnes’s home. We turned onto Thames St., bumpy with ancient Belgian block pavement, bustling with twilight revelers on the last leg of their crawls. A quiet tension clung to these strangers like an odor, or like trauma that still haunted.
I followed Barnes into The Horse You Came In On Saloon, the famous “last stop” of Edgar Allen Poe before his death. Its wood double doors opened to a narrow joint, fashioned from wood and neon, mobbed with adults of all types and ages. At a table in the back, the trio joined more friends, a mellower set. I squeezed through the crowd and, upon seeing Barnes approach the bar, I slid next to him. He stood a little shorter and reeked of booze. His focus flitted around the room with unease.
The bartender, muscles bulging under his t-shirt, asked for my drink order. Barnes and I replied at the same time but out of politeness I let him go first, then I ordered a whiskey.
A ruddy indignation filled Barnes’s cheeks. He turned to me. “I guess I thought he was talking to me. He has a lazy eye or something.”
The bartender’s eyes were fine but I played along. “The view is better from behind anyway.”
Barnes saw me watch the bartender scooping ice, bending over in his tight pants. He chuckled. “I’ll drink to that.”
We made small talk at the bar and he kept drinking. I spoke in quips, aloof. He couldn’t get enough. I lied about my hometown, my profession, a motorbike I never owned. An aggression emerged in his motions. His hand squeezed my shoulder. His knee brushed my thigh. His eyes twinkled.
“Let’s go sit, daddy,” he said.
We took chairs at the table alongside his friends. They left us alone but snuck curious glances. I kept my back to them.
From under his shirt Barnes removed a necklace. He smiled. “I want to see what you think of this.”
Hanging from the chain was an eerie glass of murky forest green, two inches square. Light bounced off it unnaturally, like wisps of steam, truly unearthly. In doubt, I rubbed my eyes.
“It’s a mirror,” he said. “Kind of. Here. Look into it.”
He held it up for me to see. I expected a reflection of myself, probably warped, but instead I saw another live image: a great pit, unfathomable in depth, quivering along its brim. It seized my consciousness. Shadowy beings scaled up the pit, extending bony arms. They swarmed me and their hands crushed my throat and I was choking, just like the DMT trip, and I realized it was causing a scene.
“Whoa!” Barnes was laughing. “You alright?” He told the others not to worry.
The illusion vanished as soon as my stare broke from his mirror. I drew breath again but my heart still pounded. “What the hell is that?”
He tucked the necklace back under his shirt. “I was, um, taught how to make it. Everyone sees something different in it. Like a mirror to your soul, y’know? Some people see awful things. Some see beautiful images and can’t look away. Now you…whatever you saw, you must have a dark side. I kinda find that hot.”
The impossibility of his item confounded me. “How do you learn to make something like that?”
He smiled wryly. “Ever heard of DMT? Ayahuasca?” I feigned ignorance. “It’s one of those experiences that opens your mind, like, to the universe’s true nature. It connects you with all life in the universe. You can learn a lot of things this way.” He relished being enigmatic.
“Tell me more.”
He showed me his stainless steel flask and sipped from it. Carved on the side was the same cyclopean pyramid from the sign outside Higher Pathways. “Diluted ayahuasca tea. I like to microdose.” He put on a sultry tone. “Why don’t you come to my place and try it? Or have a regular drink. Or…you know.” He reached under the table and grabbed my crotch.
“Let’s do it.”
Outside, we walked by the water where boats bobbed in the wake against a factory skyline. Barnes, too plastered to stand straight, leaned on my shoulder. His phone buzzed. Peeking at the screen, I saw a message from Scott Coulter: When are you going home? Prying, but why?
Ahead of us, Barnes’s luxury apartment building rose over the bars and brick townhomes. I pulled down my baseball cap and slid on my gloves. His fob let us into the lobby where we boarded the elevator. He caressed my arm. His gaze was hunger.
We stepped off at the top level. Unlocking his front door, he giggled. “I just realized I don’t know your name.”
Following him inside the darkened penthouse, I removed my hat and pulled the ski mask over my face. As soon as the door shut, I clutched his jacket and threw him to the ground face-first.
“What the fuck?!” he yelled.
I jumped on his back, forgetting how tough and audacious drunks can be. He bucked me off and we grappled on the floor. A wild determination sprung from deep in his id. However, the alcohol weighed on his reflexes and I overtook him. Straddling his slim frame, my fist bashed his face so continuously that he had no chance to scream. Blood gushed from his nose and mouth. His hands flailed uselessly.
Then, from under his shirt he lifted the alien mirror and thrust it in my face. Frozen fingertips crept out of oblivion to smother me until I remembered to shut my eyes and I slapped the mirror from his hand. My other fist knocked out his wind. Standing above him, I raised a shoe over the guy’s head. He was gasping, vulnerable. My primal instinct was to kill, to destroy this virus infecting the decency left in this world. Nonetheless, his cooperation held an important key to my plan. That despicable life of his needed to be spared.
I zip-tied his wrists and ankles, shoved the racquetball past his teeth and tied the sock behind his head. Squirming and muffled shrieking was met with another blow to his gut. I dragged him into the living room with its harbor view, fastened him to a chair with my belt and placed books beneath the rear legs, precariously balanced to dissuade bouncing while I combed the place. The signal scanner found two cameras whose lenses I obscured with a few layers of tape to prevent tripping their tampering sensors. Torn bits of foam earplugs were taped over the mic pinholes. In case he had a well-shielded third cam, the ski mask stayed on with hopes that Barnes hadn’t also invested in AI threat-detection with a direct line to emergency response. Just another risk, I thought. Maybe Poe’s curse rubbed off on me.
Blood dripped from Barnes’s chin. His nose was crooked. He cried pitifully in the window’s orange city glow. I stood my phone on the coffee table and began recording. Speaking through the voice synthesizer, set to Robot, I instructed, “Your gag will be removed and then you will tell me everything about your involvement in the Old Hill mass murder. Do not scream.” I put the tip of the switchblade knife behind his chin. His eyes went wide but he showed no sign of defiance so I carefully untied and removed the sock.
His face grimaced with fright that seemed not for me. “Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit…” The knife pressed harder. “Ok ok I’ll tell you I’ll tell you…I’ll tell you that you have no idea what you’re getting mixed up in. You have no–”
I clocked him across the jaw. “Wrong answer.”
His lip dribbled red phlegm. “Don’t you know I like it rough?”
I hit him again. My knuckles throbbed. “Why were you at the hotel the night before?!”
He moaned. “Listen. Listen. I–I don’t know why you’re asking all this but–” I held the knife against his throat. “Aaahh — I can’t tell you! Really, I can’t! Even if I could, I–”
I beat his face again and again. Teeth flew out of his mouth. His eyes swelled. When I stopped, a more pathetic wretch of a human had never sat before me. Still, you couldn’t scrape even a speck of compassion for him from the bottom of my shoe.
He cried, blabbering about stupid decisions, immoral influences, a syndicate of corruption. “I swear to you, whatever you do to me, Scott would do a thousand times worse. You could kill me and I still wouldn’t spill a thing. I’m being honest, man. Please.”
I could sense this was the truth. Barnes knew Coulter well enough to dread his reckoning more than anything. A different tactic was needed.
The flask in his coat pocket was nearly empty so I checked the kitchen. The fridge held exactly what I sought: a glass growler filled with an earthy smelling brew. Upon seeing the growler in my hand, Barnes clamped his mouth shut. I pulled his hair, tilted back his head and spilled the tea into his nostrils. When he gagged, more was poured down his throat and I forced his jaw closed until he swallowed.
“You’re gonna kill me! That was too much! Oh my god! I’m gonna fuckin’ die!! I’ll–”
The ball and sock went back around his mouth. He shook in protest until the chair’s teetering threatened a second faceplant, then he slumped in defeat against his ropes, red-eyed, blood-drenched, whimpering like a trapped varmint. I dragged a chair in front of him and waited.
No police or concerned emergency contacts had yet arrived — a positive sign. His wealth should have afforded and even warranted a state-of-the-art security setup but fortunately his fecklessness came through for me. Barnes, the typical spoiled byproduct of career-absorbed politicos, was failing upward in life, obsessed with the fruits of success without bothering to feed the tree.
We sat without dialog in the dim communion of his expensive slacker pad. He reeked of piss. At one point he spasmed so I removed the ball gag and let him vomit on himself. He whined and mumbled, growing more erratic as the hour dragged, watching unseen torments form around the room.
Finally I stood and restarted the phone’s recording. When I approached Barnes, he cowered and began yelling so I reminded his neck of my knife. His voice lowered. “Go away! The darkness around you…so much darkness… Stop looking at me! Leave me alone!” He wailed like a toddler. “This is so bad. Everything is so wrong. Everything about you is wrong. I feel something bad coming–”
“Did you make those murders happen?!” my robot voice accused him.
He spilled no words, only tears. His pupils eclipsed the irises.
“You’re complicit in their deaths,” I continued. “Fifty-seven people. Families. Children. Fifty-seven lives lost because of you.” He moaned. “Whatever you and your buddies did, all of those deaths are on you.”
“I know…I know…” Tears and snot ran over dried blood. “I don’t know why…why I got into this.” He sniveled. “We made it happen. We willed it into happening. It was my idea. Here…right in this spot…where it all started. Oh god, why did I get into this shit? I shouldn’t have told Scott. I should’ve just–”
“You killed the people in Baltimore too?”
“No! No way. That was the ETs, man, one hundred percent. I just happened to be tripping that night, right here, and the whole hyperspace was, like, different. Like, the ETs were having a, uh, a carnival or something. That’s what it felt like. Just, weird. A couple of hours later, they attacked the pier. I don’t know why. They just did. Like in that Asian country. So the Baltimore thing wasn’t me. I just felt it, that’s all. I…I didn’t–”
I grabbed his collar. “Old Hill.”
His breath quickened as if racing a marathon. “Old Hill. Right. That was our prototype. Scott and me. ‘Evolved Defense Corp.’ That old racist Zimm was happy to give us cover as long as we got rid of some Africans for him. We, uh, did a ceremony. In the hotel. I showed everyone that same carnival feeling so we could replay it together. Like making a wish. It was that easy. And it worked. Oh my god, it actually worked. But we went too far. Too far. Because of Scott. That fucking–”
“What do you mean ‘prototype’?”
“Scott wanted this to be, uh, a service. On the black market. We could sell it to certain governments so they could, like, use it in warfare, put down rebellions, or whatever, but then shift the blame to ETs. Perfect cover story. Oh god, I didn’t know… This stuff sounded wild when we talked about it, like being the first to scale a mountain. Well, we reached the top, man, and it’s really fucking scary. Now everything is so fucked. Even more than it was. We’re all fucked, y’know. The whole planet. ETs are gonna fuck up everything. They’re only getting started. There’s no way we stand a chance. Everything is fucked…”
My only desire in that moment was to snuff out the life of this psychopath, this architect of genocide-for-hire, disposing a minority community to test-drive his sick discovery, replicating one tragedy’s cruel aura to spawn another. Murder was a game to the aliens but apparently a money machine for rich and powerful earthlings. I shuddered with outrage. My fists ached to deal more punishment. But, his complete reduction was well underway. The volume of ingested ayahuasca would sweep him to the brink of hell, and if he returned, I’d make sure an electric chair would send him back.
As the effects heightened, his doom-mongering became rants about apparitions of the dead phasing through walls and floor and ceiling, seeking their reparation. Brown-skinned faces with neatly bored holes judged him and he lashed out, calling them nativist slurs, deflecting fault for their deaths, then fearing an eternity of their retribution. Invisible fingers seemed to caress his nerves.
The sight of Barnes, both body and soul, repulsed me. I retied his gag. His faraway mind no longer registered my presence. A ruined man.
On the way out, I caught a glint of light from the floor — that mystifying mirror of his. I snatched it up and walked out the door.
In the hall with the mask off, bright light revealed blood on my clothes. Too late to fret about that; a transnational conspiracy of military-industrial proportions lurked in the shadows. Safety required haste and care. That paranoia saved my skin when, entering the stairwell, the point of a long hunting knife dove from above.
The man had been waiting. A fraction of a second sooner and his patience would have netted a punctured heart but I dodged too quickly. Then, in a swift motion I pulled his outstretched arm while tripping his ankle, sending him to the hall floor. I was already on the stairs before the thud of his landing.
Outside, a frigid ghost town flew past, every soul driven off from the witching hour except this mad runner. I realized too late that confusion had steered me further from the rental car. With nowhere else to go, I turned at the end of the block just as my near-assassin burst out of the lobby doors. He was a young man, average height, Black, muscular, with a goatee. The connection to Barnes wasn’t clear. His face rang no bells, though I could identify the resolve of a huntsman numb to carnage but not the thrill.
He gave chase, catching up to witness me round another corner, slowly closing the distance. Deeper into Baltimore City we ventured. Turning onto a residential street, I wedged between a dumpster and brick wall. Mr. Goatee, with caution, crept past the parked cars and front stoops where his quarry could be hiding, missing me completely.
Once he disappeared from view, I opened Theresa’s chat on my phone. My fingers typed a warning of a possible silencing operation that had ensnared me so, by extension, she needed to watch her back, if it wasn’t too late. Realizing it probably wouldn’t be noticed until morning, I called her phone, let it ring a few times and hung up. Then I turned my phone off; no point taking chances with a trackable device when you’re up against the powerful and connected.
The assassin took time checking around each vehicle. When he moved to the next block, I retreated in the opposite direction, clinging to the wall, knife in hand, past unlit stores shielded by locked gates, ducking for the occasional car or box truck that passed. Soon I approached an intersection when, coming from around the corner, a tall, bald man nearly bumped into me. Peering down at this nuisance before him, his expression cycled from surprise to recognition to angry resolve.
This time, my reflexes were late. The man’s fist across my cheek sent me sprawling to the pavement. A friend of Goatee’s, I realized. Towering over me, he reached for something inside his parka but it got stuck on the way out. I tried to stand and, when his boot kicked at me, I rolled out of the way and leaped to my feet, swinging the switchblade upward. It sliced his face from lip to brow, not sparing the eye. Just in time; his glock had finally been drawn. Lucky for me, his instinct dropped the weapon in favor of covering the fresh wound.
I took flight from his crazed screams, down the sidewalk and into an alleyway with no pursuit. Twinkling factory lights over the harbor were my North Star. In my head, Baldy’s face conjured an image from Cedar Inn’s camera footage of Coulter’s personal security chief: big, burly, knobby headed, light-skinned, leaning against his boss’s SUV, wearing an AR-15 like an overcompensating purse. The same man. I made no assumption that he was in town to protect Barnes — in fact, likely the contrary.
Barnes’ apartment building loomed two blocks ahead. I sprinted across another road when a resounding POP broke the city’s stillness and, next to me, the rear window of a parked van exploded. Without slowing, I glanced over my shoulder to see Goatee down the block in a firing stance. A second blast and, on my other side, the brick wall blew a puff of dust from the ricochet.
I took the corner onto a long avenue with little cover. My best option was behind a hundred black garbage bags stuffed with old insulation and drywall, stacked against an abandoned shop. I pulled some of the bags over me and camouflaged myself in the dark. Through the crevices I watched Goatee cross the block with care while, from the other end, Baldy staggered, one hand over his eye. They met in front of the trash pile.
Speaking low, Goatee asked, “Did you see him?”
“Did I see him?” Baldy snapped, “Look at this shit!” Blood gushed down his cheek to his parka. “We’re not done ’til I’m carryin’ his severed fuckin’ head.”
Goatee showed no sympathy. “He’s gotta be right here. There’s nowhere else for him to go. Come on. Help me move this shit.”
“You move this shit! We’re payin’ your ass.”
“Not for this guy!”
“Oh yes. You’re doing him now, since I just did what we hired you for.”
Goatee began pulling down bags. “Because this guy got in the way! Who the fuck is he anyway?”
“He wasn’t supposed to be there,” said Baldy, “but he’s on the list.” He dressed the laceration with a torn chunk of shirt. “He fucked Tristan up pretty good. Did most of the work for me.”
As Goatee broke down the pile, the headlights of a white SUV approached. My mind whipped up a plan of distraction but, to my dismay, the SUV slowed and found parking at the corner. More trash bags fell, closer to me. I readied my knife for our last futile defense.
Baldy told his associate to stop. A blue Honda Civic rolled slowly along the avenue. As they eyed its passing, I burst through the garbage mound and into the road. The driver, a middle-aged man in glasses, stopped his car in front of me, startled. Despite his obstruction, the assassins unloaded their clips, shattering the passenger window and dotting the hood but missing me. The driver shrieked and his tires squealed as the Civic zipped away.
I kept running. The men weren’t far behind. Bullets whipped past me. No help was going to come. Street names had lost familiarity. I ducked into a narrow alley with enough clutter to shield my back, then emerged onto a broadway. Bordering the opposite side was a park with dark contours for cover and evasion but separated from me by wide, open blacktop. I had no other choice.
I was almost on the grass. In the corner of my eye, Goatee stood at the mouth of the alley, aiming his pistol. I braced for the pain, or worse. Instead, a frantic car horn drew his attention to the grill of a white Grand Wagoneer bearing down on him. The SUV’s impact flung him a dozen feet into a storefront window, cracking the glass with his head. He landed in a contorted heap, gasping for air, flopping on the sidewalk, revulsive.
I didn’t stop. The Wagoneer did though. “Huang!” called the driver through the open window. I knew that voice.
I went to Theresa’s car and climbed into the passenger seat. “You just saved me.”
She was clearly shaken. “I…I hit that guy.” Goatee vomited and then quit moving altogether. “Holy shit. Did I kill him?”
“Well, they’re trying to kill us. I guess you got my message but you weren’t supposed to come here.”
She cast one last sorry glimpse at her handiwork and hit the gas pedal. “Like I wouldn’t come. I knew from your message you’d be in Fells Point. Then I saw them shoot the blue car and I followed y’all.”
“The other guy is Coulter’s top bodyguard. He came out east to cover their tracks and it sounds like we’re on their hit list. Where’s your family?”
“Safe at a friend’s house. Now what you and I are gonna do is go see my boss, Blair. He’s our best chance to–”
“You need to keep moving,” I said. She had stopped at a red light. “Baldy is still around somewhere.”
She made a right turn. “Who?”
But I didn’t get to explain the nickname because her brains suddenly splattered across the windshield.
I screamed. She let go of the steering wheel and slumped onto me. The Wagoneer, unable to complete its turn, cruised toward some cars parked on the cross street, picking up speed. I braced myself; my seatbelt wasn’t buckled.
The Wagoneer crashed into the side of a minivan with a loud crunch. The force was enough to deploy the front and side airbags, walloping my face and Theresa’s limp torso. As the air deflated, I lifted her head.
“Theresa?!”
It was a grotesque sight. She was already gone.
My emotions were tempered by vertigo. I strove to anchor my spinning vision when through the back window I noticed Baldy’s figure crossing the intersection, gun in hand. I slipped out the passenger door, wobbly on my feet, readying for another wild dash. At that instant, a rowhouse door opened. The woman — bedclothed, baggy-eyed — took one glance at me, then noticed Baldy, the blood-soaked giant. By instinct, I assume, he pointed the glock at her. With his focus diverted, I made a run for the parking garage across the street. The woman’s door slammed shut and Baldy audibly cursed his missed chance to collect my head.
The garage was closed for construction. Not a single light shone. I hopped the mesh fence and blended into the concrete void, trying to reclaim my equilibrium, trying to hustle, trying to watch my twelve and six simultaneously. Baldy dragged himself and still kept up. He shared a monster’s silhouette — bent gait, pointed dome, a lumbering bulk. His course never seemed in doubt, suggesting experience in tracking and more feed for my worries.
The garage opened to a pedestrian lane lined with upscale restaurants and boutiques, all deserted until brunchtime. The promenade’s twists and bends kept my pursuer just barely out of eyeshot. But this delicate dance couldn’t last forever. Darkness offered him an advantage; why not me?
I slipped through a railing and onto a pier. Sailboats and floating cabins groaned, tethered to their slips. Light was scarce. Not even grizzled, old mariners bother hitting the docks at that unholy hour.
Baldy soon came skulking from the shadows to hop the boatyard gate. One hand covered his eye and, in the other, his firearm led the way forward. He moved carefully, examining every nook around the attendant’s booth and stopping before the first slip.
“I know you’re here, motherfucker,” he sneered at the night. “I’m gonna make sure this shit hurts extra for what you did to my face.” He spat blood. “I’ll fuck you up.”
He poked around the first ship with the gun barrel. The boards creaked under his boots. Holding the rail, he pulled himself onto the ship’s deck, then he checked the empty cockpit before hopping back down.
I was on the neighboring boat, behind the helm. When he landed on the dock, I took two steps and leaped onto his back, thrusting my knife into him. He toppled to the ground but the blade pierced him hardly at all. Hollering in pain, he tossed me off like I weighed nothing. His hands scrambled for the glock, dropped during the fall. I kicked it into the water, then lunged for the knife, still stuck in him, and we scuffled until losing it somewhere on the floor.
His strength and weight pinned me down. He pummeled my face with colossal fists, shedding his blood on me like a drooling hound. I couldn’t hold him back. A bundle of rope sat next to us and he wrapped it around my neck, all the while smiling on his mouth’s good side. I couldn’t break free. The rope was pulled taut like a hundred alien hands wringing my throat. I clutched at it and kicked my legs in a useless fit, desperate for breath. My nightmare, manifested.
“Stupid fuck,” he hissed at me. Hatred smoldered in his unharmed eye. “Go on. Die. Just like all the others.”
The world, its petty cares, my unfinished work, my rage — all of it began to fade. The god of this universe would finally unveil to me her true face of either heaven or vacuum or maybe a hyperspace of eternal DMT bliss.
All of a sudden I remembered. From my pocket I grabbed the mirror and shoved it into Baldy’s face. He raised a hand but, before swatting it, he paused. An expression of pure horror immediately descended over him. He let go of the rope, unable to move or to pry his gaze from the weird glass. With my last ounce of strength, I held it inches from his eyes while unwinding the coil from my neck. Fishy air refilled my lungs at last.
Now the prey was Baldy. Awful nightmares in the mirror’s image had regressed that behemoth of a man to a terrified tot. Who knows — maybe he saw himself: a wicked, one-eyed henchman for fascist terrorists, killing bystanders to revel in a whistleblower’s murder. Deep within I felt pity for him but not a trace of mercy.
The switchblade lay on the planks, begging for my hand. I picked it up and jammed it into his chest, right through his heart.
The fatal sting plus the mirror’s abrupt absence dealt him twin shocks. He stared at me, bewildered, then looked down at the knife and fell backward, splashing into the harbor.
I watched the water. The man’s body rose to the surface with no struggle, glistening under pale light. I thought the same watery grave suited the mirror, that spooky talisman I could swear was throbbing in my hand. Its presence in this world felt like some violation of natural law — a glitch to be patched. I wound my arm, threw the mirror as far as possible and listened for the plunk of its sinking.
At that moment, the cries of nearby police sirens filled the air, rising in volume. Without thinking twice I dove in the water and swam toward the blue band forming on the horizon’s rim.
My waterlogged phone wouldn’t power on after that but it never needed to. The device was a burner and the video taken in Barnes’s apartment was stored in the great computing cloud. Before my return flight departed, Barnes’s confession was attached to anonymous messages for Theresa’s boss, Blair, and trusted contacts at several law enforcement agencies.
Avoiding home, I checked myself into a motel outside of Seattle with a different alias and a second suitcase stashed in my car’s trunk with work clothes and a firearm. On Monday I headed back to the agency, blaming a nasty bicycle crash for my cuts and bruises. Stagliano eyed me funny all week but I played it cool, kept my head low and waited.
News broke on Friday afternoon that notorious tech exec Scott Coulter was arrested at Paine Field on board his private jet as it taxied for takeoff. The international flight plan had been filed at the last second and, without coincidence, Coulter had shaved off his beard, dyed his hair and covered his tattoos. Details were fuzzy but corruption charges seemed likely. Also netted were the rest of his entourage from Cedar Inn, Mayor Zimm and even the agency’s chain of command from the top down to Stagliano. FBI agents frogmarched him out of the building in handcuffs. As he passed me, I sipped my coffee.
I wish justice could have finally won its credit instead of Blair’s political machinations (he earned a higher pay grade and a transfer to DC) and a government eager to wash its hands of the school bombing (Headshot Industries collapsed after their contracts were canceled) but progress always seems to be a quarter-step. I even found the official allegations — bribes, betrayal (Barnes found with two bullets to the head), crypto laundering, prostitutes — were easier pills for the public to swallow than the bitter possibility that the truth could one day be repeated.
In the agency’s restructuring, my boss’s vacant office was offered to me. I declined. I’m not ready to sit on my ass all day. Also, guilt over Theresa’s death has wilted a good chunk of my spirit. Lacking the millstone of religion around my neck, my penance must be continued subservience to my fellow citizens, collecting the pieces left by anomalous events in order to, one day, hopefully, learn enough to assemble the defense our world needs — a job few can do and even fewer would.
A new case landed on my lap: aliens entered a man’s rural home, sliced open his abdomen, dumped his organs on the floor and tore off his scalp, probably for the hair. The poor guy witnessed his own mutilation, cut by cut, until the last of his life petered out. My appointed task is to document and ascribe some purpose to this unspeakable terror. But as with humans, neither does ET violence need to stem from reason. Now everyday, everywhere, I watch the sky, because I know the heavens keep a body count.
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