by L V Gaudet
He starts chanting his litany in his head. It usually has a soothing effect.
The walls are papered in tinfoil and papier-mâché made of my own mix and full sheets of newspaper. The shiny metallic foil blocks out the radio signals coming from the radio towers and satellites. The words on the newsprint block in the demons writhing inside my head. I built a papier-mâché wall in front of the window, leaving a gap between it and the glass. If it touches the glass it will shatter and they will get in. I cut a square flap out of the papier-mâché covering the window so I can open it and peak out to watch for them.
They sneak up on the house sometimes.
It’s nerve-wrecking, but I have to reach through the flap to pull the curtain back to look out. I can feel the sunlight burning my flesh when the sun is out. The stars shoot little pinpricks of light through me like little daggers, trying to kill me. I have to keep my body protected when the stars are out. I have a special suit for that. The moon is the worst. The moon talks to me. I don’t like what it has to say.
I’m not sure if they control the sun and moon and stars, or if it’s the extra terrestrials trying to get at my demons from space.
They use the radio signals to try to control me, to try to talk to the demons inside me. The government wants my demons. They want them to escape from inside me so they can control them and do terrible things with them.
The demons do terrible things when they get out and I can’t hear them anymore. I know. They whisper to me about it inside my head when they come back.
It takes all his inner strength to force himself to move, to step forward towards the window.
His arm is trembling so much he can barely move it as he reaches out to flip the flap closed. He flips it quickly and it snaps closed as he yanks his hand back to the relative safety of the corner.
The room falls into darkness and he sinks weakly to the floor against the corner; sobbing woefully and moaning. In the shadows, his face is a mask of fear and absolute despair, his body thin with malnutrition and his clothes that once fit drape off his withered frame.
He starts the litany again, whispering it quickly and breathlessly, repeating it word for word.
Still standing in front of the missing woman’s home, Lawrence and Jim turn back to each other.
“I thought you were checking out McAllister,” Lawrence says.
“I was,” Jim says. “I was just leaving there when I got the call and came here.”
He looks pointedly at Lawrence.
“The last thing that man in there needs right now is a reporter in his face.”
“I need enough to run the headline and summary.”
“I’ll give you enough for the headline, but that’s it. I know I’m going to regret it. There is no story anyway. Not yet. We don’t know anything except that she’s supposed to be here and she isn’t.”
He looks up and down the street.
“It’s not as if anyone is likely to have video surveillance on their house in this neighbourhood. And, anyone who might have seen anyone probably won’t want to talk to us. This area is full of low end rentals and rooming houses, slumlords and bad tenants.”
“Just the nervous guy up the street.”
“Yeah, there is that.”
“I guess I’m off to see about the judge then,” Lawrence says with a small wolfish grin.
He counts mentally in his head. One … two … three …
And there it comes right on cue.
“Judge?” Jim scowls. By Lawrence’s expression, he knows the reporter knows something he should.
“Kkkkddd,” Lawrence makes a sound and a slicing motion across his throat. “Or maybe,” he makes a popping sound and a shooting himself in the head motion.
Jim’s eyes narrow. “What do you know?”
“The judge that let Jason McAllister walk went home and offed himself,” Lawrence says with his best wolfish false innocence look.
Jim’s phone rings. He pulls it out and looks at the number.
Lawrence nods and points at the phone. “There it is.”
Jim eyes him suspiciously as he brings the phone to his ear and presses the button.
“Detective McNelly,” he snaps.
He listens. “Got it. I’m on my way.” He hangs up the call.
“How the hell do you do that?” he glares at Lawrence.
“Race you,” Lawrence says, turning on his heal and walking nonchalantly to his car.
Jim huffs breathlessly as he follows. His car is closer, but with Lawrence’s long legs and better health he can easily make it to his car first.
Lawrence arrives at the judge’s house first.
A sleek vehicle sits parked crookedly in front of the house. Scrapes and dings mar the surface, one in particular gliding down the length of the passenger side with a bright paint transfer from whatever the vehicle scraped its side against. They provide ample evidence of a less than accomplished drive home.
From the inexpensive nature of the second vehicle parked discretely on the other side of the garage, its bumper just poking out into view, Lawrence pegs it as belonging to one of the hired help.
There are a couple of patrol cars sitting quietly, no lights, and no officers in sight.
“They must be inside guarding the scene.”
Parking out of the way, he gets out and jogs around the house past the maid’s car, looking for another entrance. A house this huge will have multiple, some less guarded and reserved for the hired help.
He finds one and slips inside, the door left unlocked as he expected.
Lawrence takes a moment to take in the grandeur of the place, thinking, If I were a judge, where would my office be? Bedrooms would be upstairs. Main floor.
He starts cautiously looking around for the office. It doesn’t take long to find. It’s the only door with an officer standing outside it. He spies another officer through the kitchen windows, guarding the rear entrance.
Lucky I didn’t go that way.
Two more officers are standing inside the front entrance to the house, chatting. Up another hallway, he catches a glimpse of someone hovering in a doorway, trying to be invisible.
The maid. He slips down the hall.
He finds the trembling distraught mess of a too-skinny maid hovering in a doorway where she thinks no one will see her. She is surreptitiously peeking around the doorway towards the officers, looking terrified. She keeps weeping and clutching herself while muttering in a language that is unintelligible to Lawrence.
Probably scared she’ll be deported. Most likely she speaks little or no English and is paid accordingly.
Lawrence moves in for the kill. She backs away fearfully at his advance, putting up her arms as if to block an attack.
“I’m here to help you,” he lies. “I want to help.” He backs her into the room, out of sight of the officers to get whatever information he can from her.
Minutes later with the help of the distraught maid distracting the officer away from the door, Lawrence slips quietly into the heart of the situation, the judge’s home office.
The desk and room are tidy, the only items out of place are an empty bottle of port and a glass still a quarter full of the dark liquor; and the dead man slumped in the luxurious leather chair behind the desk with his head hanging backwards over the chair back and a spray of blood and brains spattering the wall, floor, and chair back behind him. Blood dripped, then oozed, and finally congealed and mostly dried down the back of his ruined head, down the back of the leather chair, and pooled on the hardwood floor beneath him.
It isn’t a large pool, only as much as could drain from the head and what the last few feeble attempts of the heart to keep pumping could push up into the cranium before it stopped beating.
Lawrence is standing there, taking it all in, quickly snapping a few pictures on autopilot and shoving his camera out of sight in his bag, his mind awash in a dizzying rush of possibilities as he plays possible scenarios through his head, when Detective Jim M
cNelly walks into the office and swears.
“Who’s supposed to be guarding this scene?” Jim looks around angrily, seeing no one except one trespassing reporter.
There is a clatter of shoes running towards the room and a couple officers appear in the doorway looking sheepish.
“Get back on guarding this door and get him out of here. Damned scene has been compromised.”
Lawrence steps back from the scene towards the large angry detective. “I didn’t touch anything.”
Jim scowls at him, waving him out of the room.
The two officers grab him roughly by the arms, escorting him towards the front entrance and handing him off to two more officers.
Lawrence grins, his grimace wicked and wolfish on his face as it is with every smile, as he puts his arms up in surrender to the large men who take over escorting him out. He’s not capable of a disarming friendly smile. His features simply will not twist that way.
They give him an unimpressed look and escort him outside to his car, making sure he drives off the property.
The quest for answers at the judge’s house will pit cop against reporter against family with what Lawrence suspects are hired security roughly removing him from the property and barring his attempts to re-enter if he comes back.
Lawrence isn’t concerned. He managed to get a glimpse of the crime scene and that’s enough for now. The office is only the visualization of the story. There is nothing more there for him. The police forensics can have it.
He’s been there for a few days before anyone discovered the body. Either the judge lives alone, his wife is out of town, or the married couple have become so accustomed to not seeing each other that it never occurred to his wife that his absence over the past few days meant anything, or to check his office to see if he’s there.
The real story is the hired help. The maid, gardener, maintenance, cook, pool cleaner; the invisible people no one notices but keep a large home like this running. I’ll come back to talk to them after the police are gone.
For now, I’ll go back to searching for anything I can find that might point to how Jason McAllister may have ended up with two children. Someone was missing those children.
Lawrence returns to his apartment, the adrenaline of chasing the two cases wearing off to leave him feeling like his body is filled with liquid lead.
He is beyond exhausted and hasn’t slept in more than twenty-four hours.
By the time he pulls into his parking spot, Lawrence knows he’s a hazard on the road and should not be driving so sleep deprived. He might have been alarmed for his own safety if he was not too tired even to feel that.
Lawrence leans against the elevator wall as he rides it up, stumbles down the hall when it reaches his floor, and leans on his door as he fumbles with the keys to open the various locks.
Stumbling into the apartment, he falls onto the bed in exhaustion, not so much as taking off his shoes, and is promptly snoring.
In the living room the sounds of life that never totally sleeps in an apartment building echoes down the hall and in through the open door.
Two hours later Lawrence wakes with a start. He blinks and rubs his eyes, obliviously pushing his glasses up to do it, trying to make his eyes come into focus. He feels like he had been drugged, but it’s just the effects of exhaustion.
He fumbles on the night table beside him, looking for his glasses only to discover them on his face when he rubs it again in confusion.
Lawrence tries to focus. He feels off. Something woke him up.
The apartment is still. He sits up, listening.
Lawrence slides off the bed, wincing at the soft rustle of his clothes against the bedspread. Holding his breath, he grabs the only weapon at hand, a lamp. Holding it upside down, the shade wobbling with the movement and ready to swing it like a baseball bat; he creeps to the bedroom door. He stops there and listens before daring to poke his head around the doorframe to peer out.
There is no sound or movement.
Lawrence passes the open bathroom door, tensing and ready to leap back, and looks inside. It’s empty. The bubbled partially frosted glass of the shower doors does not reveal the shape of an intruder hiding in the shower.
He moves on, stepping to the entrance of the living room. Lawrence immediately notices the open door with a dull edge of panic.
Did I leave it open? He thinks, trying to pull the memory into his mind of the moment he came home. It will not come. He can’t remember most of the drive home.
He is filled with a growing sense of presence, that someone else has been there in his apartment, that he is not alone right now.
Lawrence swallows hard and grips the lamp tighter.
There isn’t much left to check, just the kitchen and closet.
Almost losing to the urge to flee, he steps slowly and quietly towards the kitchen. Relief begins to flood him the moment he looks in and sees the kitchen empty of intruders, but then he’s drawn to the closet.
They always hide in the closet, don’t they? In the movies they do.
Strung tight with anxiety, Lawrence turns his back on the kitchen and moves to the closet. He checks the closet quickly in case he has to run. It’s empty.
Stepping past the closet to the still open door, he cautiously pokes his head out, looking up and down the hallway. The sounds of the building echo hollowly in the hallway, but the hallway is otherwise still and silent.
He closes the door and flips just the one deadbolt locked, just in case he has to get out in a hurry. Lawrence backtracks, checking the apartment again, more thoroughly this time.
Finally satisfied he’s alone, Lawrence returns to the living room where he puts the lamp down and locks and sets the rest of his security devices on the door.
He sits on the couch and looks around him, wondering what startled him awake. He can’t shake the feeling that he is not alone.
“Must be the exhaustion,” he mumbles.
Lawrence’s eyes are drawn to the closet.
With no idea why he gets up and walks over. He stops. He looks up at the cardboard boxes on the top shelf. These are the oldest boxes. Their sides sag at the bottom as if too tired to stay firm.
Reaching up for a box on the top shelf, he grabs its bottom corners and pulls it to the edge. Sticking his fingers in the opening cut in the side as a handle, he tips it towards him with one hand, ready to catch its weight with the other. As the box tips, the lid slides off, bouncing off his head and falling to the floor.
He pulls on the box, dragging the front corners over the edge of the shelf, tipping it towards him more, its bottom sliding over the shelf edge so that he can grip the bottom. As he is taking it from the shelf, the aged box’s cardboard gives, pulling apart in the near silent rip of rotten cardboard and the contents tumble, raining down on Lawrence. Pages tumble in clumps and flutter individually, folders spilling out their contents as they fall and plop to the floor with some pages holding fast to their fasteners and some breaking free. Almost the entire contents of the box now lays scattered on the floor around him.
With an unhappy groan, Lawrence pulls what’s left of the box down and lets it fall to the floor with its last remaining contents. He sighs heavily, looking down at the mess.
Stepping carefully to not tear any pages, Lawrence removes himself from the center of the chaos inflicted on him by the ruination of time on cardboard. The papers show the yellowing effects of age, as do many of the other files in these boxes.
These boxes hold a lifetime of dedication to the fruitless search for an answer. One that started decades before Lawrence started on the same path as a reporter.
Finding another box to put the files in, he starts the long and meticulous job of cleaning up the mess. He starts with studying the scattered files and pages, trying to determine how best to bring them back to their original well-ordered files. By their placement and his memory of how they fell, he is able to quickly piece some files and groups of papers together.
The
order of the files in the box is lost, something he tried meticulously to avoid mixing up in the other boxes until he can make some sense of the reasoning behind the order of the files themselves.
Lawrence starts the long slow process of reading the remaining scattered papers and files to determine what belongs in which file.
These files are all missing persons’ reports. This box is so old that he didn’t think there could be anything relevant to his investigation in it, so he had not intended on going through it.
About an hour in, Lawrence picks up a page, glancing at it to quickly find the information that will link it to a particular file.
He slides it into the folder with the matching name. Only half the contents of that folder spilled out, the rest having slid only half out. He slid them back in when he picked the file up.
He pauses, not letting go of the page, drawn to it.
A faint sound tickles his ear. A child’s laughter? It is so faint that it could have been anything.
It’s probably just exhaustion buzzing in my ear.
Lawrence shrugs it off, letting go of the paper and leaving the file in the box.
He turns to pick up another sheet, but is still drawn to that paper. He tries to push it away, to continue cleaning up the mess, and finally gives in.
Turning back to the box, he pulls out the file. Pulling out the report, he skims over it for the most pertinent details and is quickly devouring the details, reading them over and over.
His breath comes faster and his heart races.
“This is it! This is ‘the’ report.” He has no reason to believe this, but he feels it in his gut.
The report itself reveals very little; the name of the victim, date of birth, sex, and residence. It lists the date the report was filed, who filed it, and the name of the officer who took the report. Anything else would be in the investigating officer’s notes, which would not have been given out to a reporter unless he came by it through unconventional means.
Next to relationship to the victim is a single word typed in the same crooked old-style typewriter key-striking-the-page font as the rest of the report; “SPOUSE”.