by Erik Carter
This gave Dale a moment to catch up, and for a second, he closed the gap as he reached the fire escape, wrapped his fingers around the rough, rusted metal rung, and pulled himself up. As he scrambled to the second floor, he looked up and saw the soles of Fair’s shoes frantically ascending the escape. Fair’s steps clanged against the metal and reverberated through Dale’s hands. Then the noises stopped. On the third floor, Fair yanked open a window and pulled himself into the building.
“Dammit,” Dale said.
It was bad enough that innocent people had been endangered on the street, but now Fair was going into a residential building. Where people lived. Bad things could happen.
Dale reached the third floor, stuck a leg through the open window, and paused momentarily to look down, searching for Yorke. She’d made it to the building, but she continued past the fire escape.
Closing a trap, Dale thought. Nice.
Yorke was smart.
Dale found himself in a typical big-city apartment hallway. It wasn’t a rat’s nest, but it wasn’t luxurious by any means. Worn carpeting on the floor. A slight musty odor. Doors lined the walls. Fair sprinted away from him, feet pounding on the floor, and as he pulled to the right, toward one of the apartment doors, Dale anticipated what the guy was going to do.
Dale had been in this situation before. Fair was going to run through some innocent person’s home, trying to find a way out of the building via another fire escape. Just like in the movies. And aside from the fact that when Dale followed him, the two of them would be invading someone’s home—which angered Dale deeply—he also knew that the residents might very well defend themselves.
This was a bad situation.
Fair tried the doorknob. Locked. Then he kicked the door hard. Once, twice. A cracking noise on the third kick as the doorframe splintered. Fair darted inside and slammed the door behind him.
Dale reached behind his back and took out his Smith & Wesson. He slowed down as he reached the door, took a deep breath, and positioned himself outside the doorframe. Things had moved at a frantic pace to this point, but now he needed to come to an abrupt stop and take a moment for method and strategy.
He had to clear the apartment.
He kept the gun in his left hand, and with his right he carefully reached around and pushed the broken door open. It squeaked on its hinges. Fair could be all the way through the apartment by now. But he could also be waiting, hidden behind a couch or table. And Dale didn’t know if he was armed. Or, alternatively, the person living in the apartment might be armed.
Oh, boy...
Dale took a breath and cleared the corner.
All Dale’s planning and predictions came right back in his face. Literally. As he crossed the threshold, the door came flying back at him. Fair had been hiding behind it, waiting for him.
The wood smashed into Dale’s nose, pain tearing through his face. His eyes instantly watered. He stumbled back a few feet, his motorcycle boots clomping on the floor.
He heard Fair slip past him and take off down the hallway again.
Dale shook his head, cleared his vision, and saw Fair pushing through a metal door and into a stairwell exit.
Dale bounded after him.
Into the stairwell. Cool, dark, slightly dusty. Their footsteps echoed around Dale as the two men descended the steps. Fair was making his escape from the building. But Dale was catching up with him. He was on his heels.
There was a burst of light below as Fair opened a door and exited the stairwell. Moments later, Dale rushed through the door, into the light, and was hit with the smell of detergents, fabric softener, and the sounds of washers and dryers. It was a laundromat on the building’s ground floor—a long, shotgun-style room with machines on either side. A woman with a laundry basket was near the entrance, and she screamed when she saw them, moved to the side.
Fair was only a few feet in front of Dale now, and Dale swiped at him, missing. Fair reached out to a basket sitting on a table as he dashed past and grabbed a handful of whites. Threw them back.
The clothes hit Dale in the face. They were warm from the dryer, and they smelled springtime fresh. He brushed them off.
Fair had gotten a few feet farther away from Dale. He was going straight for the glass door leading out to the street. It was propped open, letting in fresh air and bright sunlight. Traffic flowed on Lombard Street beyond. Fair looked back at Dale, made eye contact with him through his square glasses, grinned a victorious grin.
Dale reached desperately but missed. Fair was almost to the doorway.
And then something appeared from outside the building.
An arm. Held straight across the doorway. Rigid. Like a metal rod.
Fair hadn’t turned back around before he ran right into it.
The arm caught Fair in the throat, and his legs flew forward while his head snapped back. For a moment, Dale saw Fair suspended horizontally, floating in the air, lost in time and space.
And then he landed with a painful thud on the ground.
The arm retracted, and its bearer walked through the doorway.
Yorke.
Dale sprinted up and looked to the ground. Fair was squirming in agony, but there was still that smile on his face. He laughed. A crazy laugh.
And his hair was askew. Completely out of line with his head.
Dale reached down, grabbed a handful of the hair, and gave it a tug. It came off. A wig. Underneath, the man had a short, blond buzz cut. He continued to laugh, maniacally, twisting on the ground.
Dale looked at Yorke. “It’s not him.”
“Ya think?” she said, clearly annoyed with Dale for pointing out the obvious.
She stared at the man, enraged, her teeth bared and grinding.
A small crowd began to form around them on the sidewalk.
Dale took the square-framed glasses off the man. They weren’t traditional square-frames with rounded corners. The lenses were perfect squares, sharp corners with ninety-degree angles. The famous Jonathan Fair glasses. Dale lowered his sunglasses and looked through the man’s lenses.
“They’re not even prescription.”
“Shit,” Yorke said. “Shit, shit, shit!”
Dale pushed his sunglasses back up. “Another whack-job.”
As Dale bent over to help the man up, the man screamed out to the onlookers, laughing as he did it. “I am Jonathan Fair! I’m Jonathan Fair!”
Chapter Two
They were in the darkness. A void.
Felix and John were the same height. But that’s where the similarities ended.
Felix had curly, sandy-colored hair. Blue eyes, precise and contemplative. His face was lean, and he wore a smart mustache. John had a fuller face that was encapsulated by a mass of thick, shaggy, reddish-brown hair with long bangs. He wore glasses with square lenses.
“I’m taking control again, Jonathan. And this time you cannot join me. I am truly sorry.”
John’s voice wavered with uncertainty as he replied. “Why are you doing this, Felix? I helped you.”
“And I thank you for that. But I anticipate that you will interfere with what I must do.”
There was a pause as John examined their surroundings. “Where are the others?”
Felix didn’t reply.
“Where are they?” John said, panic in his tone.
“The others are fine. See for yourself.”
There was an indication from Felix, and then John sensed them, in the distance. They were unresponsive.
John yelled out to them. “Walter! Rebecca! Andy!”
No reply. They were lifeless. Three ambiguous, still forms.
“What have you done, Felix?”
“I assure you, they are perfectly fine. They are asleep.” He paused. “And so are you.”
John yelled out, tried to stop it.
But then he was asleep.
Chapter Three
Dale loved San Francisco’s weather.
Perfect temperatures. Perfect humid
ity. Just the right amount of sunshine.
He and Yorke were walking to the San Francisco Hall of Justice. They were a block away, and as they rounded a corner, there was a park on the opposite side of the road. Near the fence, some girls were skipping rope. They shouted out a rhyme, and their skipping matched the cadence of the words. It was the same rhyme that Dale had been reading in the newspaper article just before the car crash.
Where, oh where is Jonathan Fair?
Everybody’s looking. Vanished into thin air.
Someone’s gonna kill him, maybe even on a dare.
Where, oh where is Jonathan Fair?
The whole country and much of the world had become engrossed in the escape and disappearance of Jonathan Fair, a member of San Francisco’s infamous Irish crime family. The city had developed a task force, and the Federal Marshals were called in to track down Jonathan Fair and the other missing individuals.
While Dale’s work at the Bureau of Esoteric Investigation kept him in the shadows, a high-profile case like this meant that he was directly in the spotlight, which further meant that he had to be disguised, both in name and appearance. The thick, fake beard on his face was itchy, and in the afternoon sun, it was starting to get hot. He scratched at the edge of it, where it blended into his face.
Yorke smacked his hand. “Stop picking at it. You’re going to knock it loose again.”
She had a point. Though Dale’s BEI associate who had crafted the disguise—Marty Rhodes, or Arty Marty, as Dale liked to call him—had improved his adhesive quality as of late, the beard hadn’t held up to Dale’s constant scratching and had come loose twice already in the two days he’d been working with Yorke.
Dale looked at the hand that Yorke had smacked and opened his mouth wide with theatrical shock.
“You know, Yorke, that was unrequested touch. I would turn you in for sexual-harassment, but then I’d just be a hypocrite … given what we have together.”
He pumped his eyebrows a couple times.
Yorke rolled her eyes.
It was an ongoing gag between them. Shortly after meeting her, Dale had pulled out the charm and given her a dinner offer, but Yorke quickly returned with a resounding No. But whereas many women, Dale had found, seemed to somehow take personal offense when a man they weren’t interested in expressed interest in them, Yorke had turned it into a game—a game of teasing Dale and trying to knock down his masculinity a notch or two.
It was fun.
“Are you kidding me, Conley?” she said. “I could break you across my knee and toss your two halves over that fence, skinny man.”
Dale wasn’t at all sure where she was getting “skinny” from. He was muscular and proportioned. He supposed one could possibly describe him as “lean,” but he certainly wasn’t skinny. Yorke knew that Dale was a fitness nut, so her blatantly labeling him as small was another playful jab in this game they’d been playing. In that way, she was one of the guys—disparaging something another guy held sacred, taunting him, teasing him to let him know you liked him.
But she was right that she could probably break him in two. In addition to her robust yet curvaceous legs—which a half hour prior Dale couldn’t help but admire, even in the midst of the foot chase—she had toned arms and slightly wide shoulders. She was powerfully built. Not huge; just powerful. She had freckles on her arms and a few on her face. Her eyes were blue. Her hair was blonde and as short as she could keep it while still being able to tie it back in a short tail.
Today she wore a white polo shirt and gray slacks. Dale was in a T-shirt and 501s, the latter of which seemed more than appropriate in San Francisco, the home of Levi’s jeans.
Yorke groaned suddenly. “I can’t believe I screwed up again.”
Dale glanced at the sidewalk behind them. “Did you step in dog poop?”
“It was my lead we followed. My false lead. We chased down the wrong guy.”
“It happens, Yorke.”
She shook her head. “This assignment is my chance to prove myself again. After what happened last year, everyone thinks I’m a screwup. They even brought you in to babysit me.”
“I was brought in for my expertise in history, not to babysit. Though, if you need some moral support, I give really good, really long hugs. I won’t be pervy about it at all. Scout’s honor.”
Yorke shot him a look.
Dale decided he should be a little less irreverent. “The whole world’s trying to catch Jonathan Fair. I can’t imagine a better way for you to rebuild your name than by capturing him. Do you think he did it?”
“His original crime? Robbing the bank?”
Dale nodded.
“Of course I do. They caught him on camera.”
“What I mean is, what do you think really happened? Do you think Jonathan did it? Or do you think Felix did it? The man has multiple personality disorder.”
“I don’t give a damn what really happened. I’ve been tasked as a deputy U.S. marshal to catch him. That’s all I need to know. Reality isn’t always the most important thing.”
Dale’s reaction to her statement was so flabbergasted that the words sputtered out of his mouth. “How… I… Reality isn’t the most important thing? How can you say that? I’m a historian. History is about finding the truth. The reality. Reality is always most important.”
“Not to my job. All I need to know is that he broke out, and I gotta bring him back. That’s my reality.”
The Hall of Justice was ahead of them, a massive, gray building. Squared-off, blocky. Seven floors in height, consuming an entire block with a line of trees along its boundary. Flags hung above the rectangular, glass-filled openings of the building’s entrance, and a set of steps led up to the doors. The complex housed the San Francisco County Jail, the police, the Sheriff’s department, and the DA’s office. Cops liked to call it “850 Bryant”—from its street address—or simply “the Hall.”
Though it was a large building, its gray color, monolithic construction, and out-of-the-way location might make it easy to overlook on a normal day, Dale figured. But this hadn’t been the case since Dale had arrived in San Francisco a couple days earlier—not with the circus surrounding Jonathan Fair.
There was a crowd gathered outside, on the steps. Members of the media and fanatics who had latched onto the hysteria. People wearing Beatles wigs and square glasses. The catchphrase Where, Oh Where Is Jonathan Fair? was written on cardboard signs and printed on T-shirts. There were other messages too. Fair Lives, a play on the Frodo Lives phenomenon from the ’60s. And The Second Alcatraz, the name the newspapers had given to Jonathan Fair’s escape.
As Dale and Yorke got closer, the media recognized them and rushed over. A woman with a microphone in her hand stepped up to Yorke.
“Deputy Marshal Yorke, we understand that you just had a Jonathan Fair sighting. Is that correct?”
Yorke shouldered past her as she and Dale made their way through the crowd and up the cement steps toward the doors.
“False alarm,” Yorke said.
A man, also clenching a microphone, turned to Dale. “And Mr. Melbourne, did you have any part in the chase?”
Yorke tried to cut Dale off before he could answer. “Tim Melbourne wasn’t able to—”
“Timmy done good,” Dale said in a dull and slightly quick voice. “Timmy done real good.”
Yorke scowled at Dale as they pushed through the doors and left the crowd behind.
Dale and Yorke hurried to keep up with U.S. Marshal Eliseo Delacruz as they rushed down the hallway toward the Marshal’s latest meeting. They dodged cops and lawyers left and right. There was a busy sense of frenetic energy surging through the whole building.
“And yet you still chased after him,” Delacruz said.
He was in his fifties, decent shape, just a hint of a middle-aged paunch hanging over his belt. His hair was starting to reach a salt-and-pepper state, and his mustache had already gotten there. His eyes were dark and keen, and his skin was bronze with d
istinguished lines and some scarring—acne, maybe, or chickenpox—that somehow looked quite dignified on him.
He was the Federal Marshal for the Northern District of California, and while his attitude toward Yorke had been slightly exasperated, Dale had noticed, it wasn’t out of resentment. It seemed to Dale that Delacruz was trying to shield Yorke. From what, Dale wasn’t sure.
Yorke replied quickly, defensively as she sidestepped a uniformed officer coming at her from the opposite direction. “We had no clue it wasn’t Fair until we apprehended him. He had on the glasses. And a wig.”
“A wig,” Delacruz said and shook his head. He looked away.
Dale spoke up. “Sir, Yorke’s right. The guy was a dead ringer. Same height, same build.”
They stopped at the office where Delacruz was to have his meeting. Other people in business suits were entering the room.
Delacruz looked at Yorke. “This is your first fugitive assignment since your incident, Yorke. I don’t think you’re ready. But there’s not much I can say since the DA personally requested you. When Beau Lawton speaks, San Francisco listens.” He took in a long breath. “Be sure to link up with SFPD. They have some more questions for you about the crazy.”
He turned and entered the office.
Dale felt awkward standing there with Yorke. It was that same awkwardness you feel when you’ve seen a child scolded by her parents. He glanced over at her. She avoided eye contact.
There was a coffee machine on a table a couple feet away. Dale inched toward it, thankful for a distraction.
“Well,” Yorke said. “At least Beau Lawton still has faith in me.”
Chapter Four
Felix Lyons stepped off the sidewalk and quickly jumped back, almost getting sideswiped by a speeding carriage. There had been so many carriages hurtling through town at breakneck speeds lately. And, worse yet, the new horseless carriages. Death on wheels, as Felix called them.