Barker ran his paw over the humming machines. Each had wires upon wires running through them. Barker knew this wasn’t where he needed to make his move. This was all the pretty bits. The bits that showed the power, he needed the controls, not the body.
So, he moved further into the warehouse. Down a small set of stairs and into what looked to be a sitting room. Barker had been here before. This was where he had been placed during his mock interrogation. He had sat here in this chair and been surrounded by dogs in mask. Barker hadn’t seen the room then, but it all felt right. Barker moved passed the room. There was no sentimental value keeping him here to mope about.
Barker came to another door. He stopped, again to listen, he heard nothing moving. He cracked it open slowly and saw three dogs lying on separate couches, each asleep. Two of them had been the thugs from the night before. The third Barker didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. This wasn’t the room he wanted anyhow, so he slowly reclosed the door.
Barker turned down a small pathway that led him to a narrow staircase. The humming of the hardware was muffled here. He took the steps slowly. It would be a shame to get this far and be betrayed by one creaking stair. So one foot at a time he trod up the staircase. At the top, he slid open another door. In this room were three small computers, a desk full of papers, an ashtray with a recently put out smoke. Barker looked around; whoever had left the cigar was gone now.
The pinging on his GPS led him to the desk and into the top drawer. Whoever had stolen the jewel from him had wrapped it nicely in cotton and placed it into a metal box. He would worry over the lock mechanism later, for now, Barker just slipped the box into his pocket. Then he sat down in front of the three monitors.
It took him a few minutes to implant the bug he had brought with him. A bug that would make it seem like the Shock had been upstaged and hacked. A bug that in reality was nothing more than a window. Barker would be able to do the damage he needed from the comfort of his own home.
9.
Barker took another sip of his water and glanced at the Water Lily sitting safely on his table. He leaned forward and made a few more swipes with his paw. The pop-ups closed quickly, but it wasn't about the pop-ups. It is about the fear that Barker had instilled into the brain of The Shock leader. He didn't want to totally destroy the man. He could still use him down the road.
Barker reached up and adjusted his collar. He had played long enough with the man. He wrote in big letters a message: You are mine now.
Then, Barker shut off The Shock’s system. With a simple click, he took down their entire system of networks. He destroyed everything they had worked for. He destroyed their power, their syndicate, and their confidence.
Barker smiled and leaned back. He pulled out the small envelope containing a small list. He looked at it and with his pen, he checked the second step.
Destroy them
The Adventures of Vulpecula
Episode Five
The > 100 Theory
1.
“Aren't a lot of guarantees in this world. Only death, constant irritation, and a glimpse of happiness a single blink can miss,” Vulpecula said, watching his feet stamp down into the snowy plains of white Urgway, “Daddy dearest said that.”
“Bet he told the best bedtime stories,” Lacerta remarked, following him close behind.
In the wintry weather, V's scarf at last served more purpose other than a fashion statement.
The holidays. Snow. The gift that kept on giving. “The Giving” was one more thing about Urgway Vulpecula didn't understand.
Celebrations. Those made sense to him. Though, they were unenjoyable for him. But a celebration commemorating the gift of life and a God of some sort. Celebrating “All this,” Vulpecula said beneath his breath, marveling at the vast arrays of nothingness and ever-immaculate depravity.
“At least the snow hides the streets,” Vulpecula commented, without a sun in the gloomy sky, the tranquil dreariness matched The Fox Detective's disposition.
“A cynical silver lining,” Apus said, his feet traveled on a small way ahead of Vulpecula, who stared down at his owl-friend's footprints.
“The best kind,” Vulpecula replied, then added: “We've been called by the Head Detective of the Homicide division of Urgway’s Marybeth Police Department … to a cemetery. Hardly easy to carry oneself with utmost optimism in such grave settings.”
“You'd think so, but you've been more uppity in the last hour than I've seen you since the Doppelganger incident last week.”
Apus wore a thin jacket, specially made for an owl, the sleeves cut in such a way that freed the feathers of his wings. The color scheme resembled almost a rainbow and looked like something closer and more suited for a professional wrestler than someone's winter clothes. Vulpecula often chose not to comment on such wardrobe decisions.
Instead, he only smiled, and quipped: “I like a challenge, and for the Head Detective to ring me up, they must have something that's suited more for me than their layman's.”
“You've spent the last five days looking nonstop in a math book, solving pointless algebraic equations,” Lacerta jested.
“They're like little mysteries,” Vulpecula mumbled self-consciously as they departed from the sidewalks, crossed the street, and neared the cemetery entrance.
“Oh, look, at last!” Lacerta said, “People with less of a life than you.” He laughed, and in that moment, Vulpecula contemplated making his Lizard Friend a permanent resident in Alo Cemetery, but didn't, because with the barbarism brought from Maharris' ugliest city, they'd all be there soon enough.
“But you'll be around to solve his murder!” Vulpecula's most recent example of psychosis whispered in his mind.
Alo Cemetery was nothing extravagant. A large rusted gate with blood-red, chipped away paint stood before them, with a sign at the top in large-letters titling it.
Between the bars of the gate, Vulpecula could see tombstone upon tombstone, epitaphs of all different sorts marking them. Before that, The Fox Detective looked on at the “Police Line Do Not Cross” yellow police barricade tape in-front of it.
The only one he saw inside the cemetery was a parrot. Right at the beginning of the rather large cemetery. The Head Detective, Psitticus, he presumed. The parrot wore a heavy black jacket, one of those nylon jackets that said “Police” on it in white letters.
In-front of him, Vulpecula saw at least three dead bodies, propped up and positioned in a vertical stance. He sighed.
“Lucky you,” Lacerta said, “I don't know what you'd do with yourself if you didn't have another crime to solve.”
“Lucky me,” Vulpecula said, a small, quiet chuckle, walking in-front of Apus. V climbed beneath the yellow-tape and began to open the gate, “What … indeed.”
2.
“You've become a very loyal customer in a very short time,” the Bartender of One Step Back commented, filling Vulpecula's cup of alcohol for the second time in only minutes.
Since his last visit, he'd since acquired a taste for it. And it was good.
The bartender's name was Red and in the few days they'd been acquainted, The Fox had come to enjoy the lizard's friendship. If you could call it that, “friendship,” that is.
Because, of course, Red only had a friendship with Vulpecula because an unwritten law that dictated bartenders befriend the drunk sad sacks they poured the drinks for.
Vulpecula tried to make note of that in his blank chalkboard, but his blank chalkboard seemed these days more like a notebook scribbled with the paranoid ramblings of a madman lost it.
His hands shook at the thought, his own morality blurred like a blood smeared mirror. Onto happier things, V took another chug of the cold alcohol in his glass.
“You'll end up barfing in the men's room if you keep drinking with that tenacity, slugger,” Red said, a concerned look on his scaly face.
“Long as I am not slicing my hand off in the bathroom,” Vulpecula countered, though, only to himself, as he felt, “
I'll be careful,” was a more civilized comment to say aloud.
Bartender Red soon returned to Vulpecula with an interested smirk. If Red was feigning intrigue, he did it well. “What was on your agenda today, Detective?” Red asked on the opposite side of the counter, sitting atop a bar stool.
“I solved a case,” V answered. “An important one, I think.”
“That sounds like something worth celebrating then,” Red commended, cleaning an area on the counter where a man had spilled his food at an earlier time. “Where are your friends then, are they not feeling festive over your most recent success?”
“They're away with their families,” Vulpecula replied, fidgeting with the fur on his chin as he looked off to the side at one of the customers sitting a few chairs down from him.
“Why aren't you?” Red asked.
“My father's dead, my mother has been unaccounted for since his death,” Vulpecula replied.
Red nodded, and uncomfortably said, “Well, I am happy to spend the holidays with you!”
3.
As Vulpecula walked further into the graveyard, he found himself readjusting his scarf and gawking at the names etched into each tombstone. It was all stalling and attempted obliviousness, a charade that wouldn't be allowed for much longer, and in a way, V didn't want to keep his head buried in the sand.
The Fox Detective wished to look at the bodies. To begin.
“You rang,” Vulpecula said, lifting his head to make contact with the parrot, but as he did, the bodies were what his eyes transfixed themselves on.
Three dead bodies. All of them. All of them, what? Positioned. Positioned with significance, with significance. With significance! Vulpecula felt the sudden need to vomit.
The bodies were propped up and stood like lively beings, but their deteriorated and mangled appearances suggested only the opposite of that. It took Vulpecula only a moment to infer the bodies weren't murdered. Or, at least, not today, or even yesterday, but rather, someone had brought them out of their plots.
This was evidenced by the left one's heavily decomposed disposition, more-or-less, a skeleton.
The remainder had more meat on them than that and had faces intact.
Vulpecula made eye-contact with one of them and felt the same vulnerability and fear he did when he first found sight of Comet Fowley's hand. The Fox Detective looked away for a moment, looking in time to see Lacerta and Apus' reaction to the findings. Terrified as well. This wasn't a stolen sword at an Italinian museum.
“Well,” a seasoned, but sparingly high-pitch voice called out, “That's what we're dealing with.”
Vulpecula looked at Psitticus, who seemed unbothered by the whole ordeal and simply paced about with a mirthless expression. Vulpecula could hear the light footsteps of his boots stamping down on the snow.
“What do you know so far?” Vulpecula asked, his muzzle down south, unable to look back at the corpses.
“Not a whole lot, but what I do know doesn't offer much assistance,” Detective Psitticus began, “A middle-aged woman came, feeling in the holiday season, looking to make amends with her abusive father for all those years of playing black and blue with each eye of hers, comes to find this. God, if that ain't the world sendin' signals…” Psitticus' remarked, a sour-look on his face that never seemed to fade, and never waned, never changed, but always seemed the same curmudgeon-look.
“Go on,” Vulpecula said, not amused by him, but not annoyed either, he was finding it hard to work up the nerve to inspect the bodies.
“Isn't much else, as you can see,” Psitticus stopped for a moment, “Or, as you would see if you stopped hiding in your scarf. Each corpse has been desecrated, for lack of a better term, and the one consistence between them all is they are each pointing toward their respective grave plots.”
“Why did you ask for me? Of all, everyone, with the entire Urgway Police Department at your disposal, why me?” Vulpecula asked. A serious question.
“Marybeth has been thinned down some in recent weeks, and frankly, besides Barks-a-lot, I don't have anyone I really can put up with enough to help me on this,” the Parrot squawked.
“Most detectives usually do their own detective work and don't look for outside assistance.”
“Look, kid, can I call you kid? I'm gonna call you kid. I don't need your help with this, but Vivian Herms called me on the phone the other day and told me to throw a case or two your way and that's what I did,” and at last, the truth was revealed.
“How do you know Vivian Herms?” Vulpecula asked fast.
“You think any of the Urgway higher ups would give someone like me a spot, even in a hole like Marybeth, without a gun to their head? Vivian Herms was the gun.” Detective Psitticus said, “You are Hensley Noel's kid, and that instills name-value and semblance to what you do.”
“I am not interested in working for Urgway's Police Department.”
“We're not interested in having you. But, Vivian had a favor and I fulfilled it.” His voice was stern and matter-of-fact. “But if I knew you were too queasy to even look at the bodies, I might have told her she was asking a little too much.”
Vulpecula chuckled nervously to himself and brought his chin up. Walking forward, in-front of Psitticus. Truth be told, he didn't want the Detective to see how bloodshot his eyes had become.
The comforting hand of Apus over his shoulder did little to reassure him of himself. He knew it was Apus, for Lacerta was never one for empathizing, they were alike in that way, Vulpecula supposed.
The Fox Detective walked nearer to the corpses. This was a deliciously morbid scene, and one that was entirely meant for theatric value. The middle corpse's mouth was exaggerated, pried open somehow, forced into the smile resembling a wonderland cat. The body was that of a fox, and upon closer inspection, Vulpecula unraveled that it wasn't the mouth being pried open to show the deceased fox's teeth, but rather, the perpetrator shoved a set of novelty dentures into the dead animal's mouth.
In a storybook, this same act might have drawn laughter from The Fox Detective but seeing the empty and lifeless stare of his own kind, desecrated and indignant, he only felt a mixed-matched conglomeration of depraved sorrow and nothingness.
Vulpecula walked around him. The Fox wore a finely tailored suit, likely bought specially for his death. It, and his thinning red-fur, coated and caked with dry mud. The body was sat up using wooden stakes, hidden from view under the victims' pant-legs, that stuck down into the dirt. His arms were adjusted with similar technique, and as Psitticus described, the fox was made to gesture toward his grave-site, only feet away from him. His other arm at his stomach. It created the aesthetic of a fox holding his side, pointing and laughing.
“Welcome, welcome to the ride of a lifetime,” Vulpecula mumbled, circling the dead fox, “In the dead center of town, never livelier, … what are you trying to tell me?” He marveled at it, looking for a message to appear in-front of him. “Gesturing hands, go-lucky smiles.” The dead fox's tombstone listed his name as Steven Fosbis, and on his epitaph read:
Useless is it, a time without love, no sense planning or premeditating.
Vulpecula walked off, venturing toward the body on the left.
A decomposed canine skeleton. The dog wore a suit as well, though, it was much more decayed and battered. His body had been six feet under a considerable time longer than the fox. In his hand, a wooden cane with a shiny finish. His body was arched back slightly, and his jaw was open. The visual here was also meant to be perceived as laughter, and once more, the dead pointed at their grave site. This dead animal's tombstone listed his name as Harris Woof, and his epitaph read:
Living life without hesitance is the only worthwhile formula.
“Have you called in for profiles of each of the, uh, cadavers?” Vulpecula asked, finally feeling secure enough to look in Psitticus' general direction. “Someone doesn't dig up three bodies and stage them up like this without a reason.”
“I called it in an hour ago and am
expecting a file for each at any moment.”
“Do you think it is someone exposing himself, saying, I killed these men?” Lacerta suggested, if only because he needed to say something.
“If all three of these deaths were a homicide, perhaps. But the likelihood of three victims of the same killer being buried adjacent to one another isn't likely. Though, that isn't to say the victims were random.” Vulpecula walked toward the fox again, he wore a wedding band on his ring finger. “Grave robbers wouldn't have left a wedding ring, and of course, certainly wouldn't broadcast themselves.”
“Then, why do it? What's the motive?” Lacerta inquired.
Vulpecula smiled for a second, then readjusted to a frown. It wasn't appropriate to smile in such a situation, whether he found himself compelled to or not.
He walked over to the body on the right-hand side. A second dog, his body not completely decomposed, a Great Dane by V’s deduction. The smell is what V found himself taken by first. He didn't know why he hadn't noticed it prior, perhaps because his mind was lent elsewhere. The smell was of rotting flesh. The smell of death went inside Vulpecula's nostrils; his sense of smell never more enhanced.
Once more, the Great Dane was posed theatrically, his name was Benjamin Sexton, and his epitaph read:
Honey, never EVER forget to feed and water the humans.
Vulpecula chuckled, only some. The morbidity of a Great Dane in a suit with a denture smile made it less than a laughing matter.
Behind him, The Fox Detective heard a rustic iron gate coming open. Instincts forcefully jerked his head in that direction. The individual was an officer of the Urgway Police Department, V was easily able to infer such. The Fox looked back at the corpses in all their splendor.
The Canes Files Page 19