Suddenly the communicator rang and the two looked at each other as they had not done all evening. «Who the hell is that?», roared William. The caller was anonymous.
«Deveux William?», a voice from the other side inquired.
«Who's talking?»
The voice paused; he heard someone typing on a keyboard in the background and a classical music played at low volume.
«I'm calling from the Road Crimes Office. We wanted to inform you that you can come and collect the remains of Deveux Dominic.»
William, puzzled, looked at Caroline again.
«But... so you mean you found the hit-and-run?»
«What's that got to do with it, Deveux?», the interlocutor answered him, annoyed. «This is the coroner's office, not the investigative division. If you want updates, you have to contact the patrolling officers. Although - frankly speaking - I don't understand the purpose, since your father won't obviously come back to life.»
William bit his lower lip, struggling to control himself. His face became a burning ember and so Caroline - who meanwhile had guessed who William was talking to - approached her boyfriend to try to calm him and, at the same time, hear something.
«Deveux you still there? Hello?»
«Yes, I'm here, I'm here», William said, after a deep breath. «Can I come over now and get my father back?»
«Well, yes, but there's no need for such haste. You could come more calmly tomorrow morning. Come on, it's almost night.»
«I want to come now», said William shortly. «I've already waited all these days...»
A lump in his throat forced William to stop. He wiped his tears with his other hand.
«All right, all right, no need to get upset! You can come right away if you insists. We are at number 3 of Liberation Square, I don't know if you know the place. It's the only dark building...», the employee informed him, concluding his speech with a chuckle.
«I'm coming.»
William broke off the communication and threw himself into Caroline's arms, crying.
Along the social carrier's path, Caroline pointed out to William that they had to contact a funeral home as soon as possible. They did not have a private car, and even if they owned one, they certainly could not take Dominic's body and carry him home. It would be necessary to inform all their relatives and friends immediately afterwards. Caroline was almost certain that William, during those days of agony, had not made anyone aware of his father's death, except perhaps a couple of work colleagues. It was not clear to her why he had poor relations with relatives or why he wanted to grieve in private. At that point, however, it mattered little. It was William's duty to inform everyone.
William listened quietly to his girlfriend's suggestions. All those procedural matters didn't interest him very much, he just wanted to hug his father one last time.
It was hot outside, yet inside the carrier it was cold as hell and William could not keep himself from shaking, huddling his arms to his chest. Caroline put her arm around his waist and hugged him. The wagon was empty, no one who could help cushion the artificial cold. Caroline looked at his boyfriend and considered that even an air conditioner could play tricks on those with a heavy heart.
The coroner's office clerk had not lied when he talked about a dark building. William had already walked by Liberation Square at night, yet he had never noticed that gloomy building before. Completely dark, except for a dim light that filtered through the opaque glass of the door. It almost seemed to William that he was in front of the witch's den, in a black fairy tale, complete with a torch hanging from a wall.
They knocked and, after moments of complete silence, footsteps were heard, then other lights were turned on and finally a very sleepy-looking guy appeared. William and Caroline introduced themselves and clarified the reason for the visit, but the employee proved completely disinterested and simply told them to follow him. After a long corridor shrouded in darkness, the guy - perhaps the night watchman - pushed strongly upwards what seemed a generator lever and dozens of spotlights came to life and lit up the scene, forcing the two young men to cover their eyes to protect them from such brightness.
«Dr. Thomson informed me of your visit...», the clerk murmured, opening the room where the bodies were kept after the autopsy. An expanse of bodies, covered with sheets smeared with blood and other fluids, was the horrific scene William and Caroline found inside. The two youngsters exchanged looks of perplexity and disgust and vehemently asked the guardian what that macabre show meant. The clerk shrugged and explained that the chiller plant had failed and they had been forced to pull the bodies out of the cells. Unfortunately the room was little and even warm, the guardian agreed with a smile, without showing the slightest bit of sensitivity. While moving away, he told the young couple not to be shy about lifting the sheets to look for their relative and then asked them to let him know once they had enough and wanted to leave. William and Caroline spread their arms, stunned; immediately afterwards they turned towards the display of corpses and, as shocking as it was, they decided with unexpected determination to divide the room in two to find Dominic's body more quickly. William took care of the left side and Caroline the right. In the eyes of the two young guys a demeaning collection of wasted lives presented itself; something they too often tended to underestimate, caught by the rhythm of everyday life and wrapped in the soft embrace of their own microcosm. Laser pistol burns, stabbings, crushed skulls, bruises from blunt objects, perhaps even simple heart attacks. No one had been spared: old people, young people, unfortunately even children. Caroline had a retching and ended up exasperating William's sense of disgust until he even retched his guts out. The girl made a gesture to ask him if he felt good enough to continue and he replied with another gesture, of assent. The most disgusting thing for Caroline was the bodily fluids poured out of some guests and dripped to the ground; guests who had evidently arrived recently and had not been cleaned up with meticulousness.
Dominic Deveux had been placed on the right side of the mortuary. He was near some tools left on a work table, perhaps forgotten by the on-duty pathologist. Caroline - who had begun to accelerate the cruel practice of the lifting of the sheet - jumped when William's father's turn came. She burst into tears and had the impulse to touch him, but managed to stop herself. William ran to her, rudely pushing aside some stretchers and letting the sheet he had just raised slip to the ground. He ended up uncovering the body of a young girl with a broken rib cage, unfortunate victim of a terrible collision.
William examined his father's body in search of cuts, bruises, wounds. He surprised himself with the lucidity with which he pursued his search for clues, or anything else that could help him shed light on the crime. He didn't cry when he noticed a deep cut on his left temple, not accurately sutured. He didn't cry when, lowering himself to better look at his profile, he realized that the impact had caused him fractures to his spine. He didn't even cry for the evident bruising and for the Y-shaped incision practiced by the doctor, which he gently touched with his fingers as a last caress. However, after the inspection was completed, he let his senses free and he bitterly realized that the many days spent in the heat and humidity of the mortuary, without ventilation and air exchange, had been merciless with his beloved parent's mortal remains: he distinctly smelled the stench that emanated from the decaying wounds, mixed with the chemical aroma of some cheap deodorant they had sprayed in large amount to try to cover the bad smell. He collapsed on his knees and gave a desperate cry, cursing everything and everyone; and finally, he left room for tears, coarsely rejecting Caroline's attempts to bring him comfort. His father was gone. Only then did he really realize it.
Chapter XVII
After a second coffee, laced with a bit of bourbon, Kate Ramos got more chatty and the chief secretary listed the episodes that represented, in her view, the unmistakable evidence of a plot against the employees of Leigh Madison Enterprise and perhaps even the entire community. First of all, the exchange of encrypted messages be
tween Leigh Madison Enterprise, Minneman Company and Evendorf. Kate explained to William that Evendorf was in the construction industry and, among other things, had built Numbered District, his house. The fact of not being able to access the contents of those messages immediately made her suspicious. Her level of authorization allowed her to access any information circulating in the company, so it had to be issues that had to remain confidential and ended up in her mailbox by mistake, perhaps due to some technical anomaly. When William asked her if she could extract the contents of those letters, Kate had to answer negatively. It surely had to be something big since Malcolm Dietrich, upon specific request, had clouded up and even taken the trouble to knock her out with that rubbish, 'Triple S'. Kate added that, a few days after fainting, she had tried with appropriate discretion to trace that mysterious correspondence, but it seemed to have disappeared. Speaking of Dietrich, the colleague confessed that his behavior had become as friendly as ever. He claimed he felt responsible for the illness occurred to the chief secretary - he said he had made her work too hard - and promised to loosen his grip a little. At the time that new approach did not seem so strange to Kate, but, once her memory came back, she put two and two together: Dietrich was clearly still afraid she might find out something, so he basically gave her the excuse to be less scrupulous and let unusual events slide.
After a much needed toilet break, Kate ordered the third coffee and William invited her to go easy. The colleague joked, justifying herself that she needed more caffeine to get to the bottom of that story. She got a smile out of William when she admitted that two or three times she had played the role of a secret agent to shed light on that intrigue. Once she had also broken the heel of her shoe for the fear of getting caught while poking around.
Besides the question of encrypted messages, the other element that whetted her desire to investigate was the numerous absences among the staff of Leigh Madison. Even if she simply wandered around the corridors it was easy to notice how the atmosphere was too quiet, silent. The absence of James Dufour was the one that made her most suspicious. James was an extrovert guy who loved to showcase, whatever it was. If he had gone on vacation - another vacation, Kate specified, since summer had long since ended - he would have at least created a new site on the net and invited everyone to celebrate the event with him. There was no trace of their colleague, instead, and no one had information about his disappearance. He did not even answer the communicator. Same thing for Malik Renard, but in that case Kate admitted that she knew too little about him to make any assumption.
William Deveux confirmed Kate's appraisals: he also knew little about Renard, except that he had been part of the work group William coordinated, when they were contracted by Minneman to update their security systems; but for what about James Dufour, that was a whole different situation. There were undoubtedly a lot of reasons to be concerned.
Kate Ramos went on and clarified that, after that initial intuition, she had an impulse to wander around the building to feel the pulse of the company and, interviewing some colleagues, she became aware of other unusual absences. «You were missing too», she said to William, pointing at him with her finger, «but fortunately I solved the mystery in your case. You're alive and well.» «Touch wood!», replied William and Kate warned him that there was little to joke about; then, with the index finger, she drew a virtual circle on the bar table, to summarize the whole speech. «In my opinion they are using us as guinea pigs for some experiments and this would explain the ever closer collaboration between Leigh Madison Enterprise and Minneman Company. Do you want to know how much they paid us for your team's work? Three times the normal fare.» William's eyes widened. «At the time I thought they were fools, that we had screwed them; but, on balance, maybe we're the ones who got screwed.» Kate shook her head with great regret, then remembered one last detail that was still not clear to her. «I don't understand what this... Evendorf has to do with the whole thing and who's Clive Hebert. When I spoke that name, Dietrich almost fainted.»
William thought about it for a few seconds, with his gaze lost in the void, then he began to drum with his fingers and came up with an interesting intuition.
«Maybe I have the missing link, Kate», William stated. Before providing his part of the conspiracy theory, he checked the time and asked his colleague if she could stay a little longer. «Are you joking? I want to get to the bottom of this story», Kate said, «and, by the way, Dietrich told me to rest... and I'm going to do it.»
«Fine», William agreed, drawing the attention of the waiter of the X Café, «so this it is the time to order something strong.»
William Deveux barely managed to contain his disdain and not to be noticed by the other customers of the café, who meanwhile began to arrive more and more numerous for the lunch. He explained to the colleague that the obstinacy shown by Minneman in wanting to see him behind bars at all costs had ended up causing him to react, to get tougher and try to respond appropriately. He had asked for help from a friend, Charlie DeClerk, an experienced hacker, and together they had tried to breach Minneman's computer systems. After a few failed attempts, they had found a kind of archive containing the list of Numbered District inhabitants. Each subject was identified by an alphabetic string of six letters, so it took a while to get to the precise identity of each. Charlie and him could not tell for sure that the list was exhaustive, it would have taken too long to verify and, in any case, they did not have access to the civil registry; however, the checks carried out by matching the strings with the telephone directory had given positive results. It was undoubtedly a file containing information on each inhabitant of Numbered District and the shocking thing – which William stressed to the colleague, after making sure that no one looked in their direction - was that, likely, all the inhabitants had some disease. He was familiar with many of the people on that list and could unfortunately confirm their health problems. He himself was sick, after all. They could not be just coincidences. William concluded, therefore, that it was reasonable to assume that the experiments went well beyond Leigh Madison Enterprise.
Kate Ramos dropped onto the back of the chair with her mouth open. Knowing that she had been a potential guinea pig upset her, but nothing compared to the fact that an entire neighborhood might be the object of shady machinations and play the perverted games of sick and unscrupulous minds. Too much to swallow. «Unbelievable», Kate said, and that was the only comment the chief secretary was able to make before realizing that it would be better to remain silent and think. They calmly sipped the two scotches they had ordered and neither of them knew what else to add. They came to the conclusion they were both spectators and victims of a science fiction movie of the worst kind, of those in which life seems to flow normally, but in the end the protagonists find out that it's all a conspiracy against humanity. In their case, maybe the entire human race wasn't involved, but certainly not less than hundreds or thousands of unsuspecting citizens.
She waved the glass of Scotch around two or three times just to keep herself busy, then Kate found the strength to ask: «What do we do now?», but got no answer from her colleague. William reminded her that he had been framed and had to defend himself at the trial. He already had a lot on his mind at that moment and had no intention of playing the risky role of the rebel leader and incite people to rise up against the arrogance. The prospects were not reassuring if - following the reasoning - they had him indicted not only for the alleged sabotage, but also because they feared he had found out what was really hidden behind their business. William confessed, in fact, that he had the feeling that things had got worse recently, perhaps because both Minneman and Leigh Madison had come to know about his attempts at investigating the matter. At that point, William suggested, it was necessary to move cautiously and also limit visits and conversations between them until it was clearer how to proceed. It would also be preferable to leave the café one at a time, so as not to attract attention. Better not trust anyone and take all possible precautions. Kate n
odded mournfully, with an expression painted on her face that dejectedly asked: how the hell did we come to this?
William asked the waiter, who continued to buzz around the table, to bring them the bill, then urged Kate to go back to the office, while he would stay a little longer with the excuse of going to the bathroom. William emphatically said goodbye to the colleague to let whoever was looking at them know that nothing worried them. «I'll be in touch», he said, then, with a flickering smile. He wasn't able to pull off a better one, after coming to such frightening conclusions.
The excuse of the bathroom was not a real excuse. He really needed to cool off and rinse his face. He spent a few moments thinking, with his hands leaned on the sink. He briefly questioned the mirror, open to any suggestion, but immediately looked away when he noticed that the man on the other side was a wreck. He also forgot to shave regularly and, moreover, he had the impression that his beard had begun to grow more quickly and was becoming more and more prickly and whitish.
Once left the toilet, William returned to the table to collect his belongings and noticed Kate had left a tissue with the imprint of a kiss on it. Her way of telling him she loved him and would help him get through those moments. William smiled, this time without hypocrisy, and put the handkerchief in his pocket. He slowly walked towards the exit, avoiding looking at the other people, reasoning on the next moves. Going home, calling Charlie, resting a little, looking for news on the net. No work at the moment. He could afford a salary cut, at least for a few months. In any case, with a legal proceeding against him - and without knowing exactly when they would summon him again - it was useless to make long-term plans.
The Ruling Impulses Page 27