The Easytown Box Set

by Brian Parker

  “Yeah. I would feel terrible.”

  “You would feel terrible…for yourself, because something bad happened. That’s some self-centered bullshit right there, Zach.”

  “Huh? No, Teagan, I mean—”

  “Never mind, man. You go do your sneaky cop stuff and leave the rest of us little people alone.”

  She hung up the phone before I could try to explain myself. “Another fine mess you’ve gotten yourself in, Zach,” I muttered aloud.

  A companion droid body for Andi looked better with every conversation I had with a woman.

  After wolfing down a greasy kelp burger and large order of sweet potato fries, I went to the address where the Bobby droid was located during the satellite changeover a few days ago. It was in a suburban neighborhood outside of the city to the west. The car’s nav system estimated that we’d arrive in an hour and ten minutes.

  With the Thursday afternoon traffic, it took an hour and a half.

  I wasn’t expecting to find a house that looked like it came out of a home and garden magazine. Normally, I dealt with warehouses, ghetto apartments, and gutter sewage. The house that the Tortuga pulled up in front of was a white, wooden two-story, with a wraparound porch that boasted a hanging porch swing and a small sitting area for the homeowner and guests to sit out and listen to the rain. Narrow flowerbeds lined the walkway leading up to the house, separating the cobblestone from the manicured lawn. Tasteful, trimmed flowering shrubs near the house added just the right amount of softness and color to the home with their red, pink, white, and yellow flowers.

  I double-checked the address given to me. It was the same one that I’d written down, so I got out of the Ford and walked down the pathway toward the front door. The home belonged to a Mr. Harold Wilson, a network systems analyst, and oddly enough, a Southern Baptist minister. He lived there with his wife and two children.

  On the surface, it seemed like I’d been duped once again by the hacker, but a little deeper digging found that Wilson was an anti-droid activist. He’d been arrested on multiple occasions when he was younger, including assault, theft, electronic manipulation of public records and had even done a stint on Sabatier Island for short-circuiting an entire droid manufacturing facility. Once I’d read his rap sheet, I was certain that he was our man.

  As I neared the porch, I saw a small square sign in the mulch stating that the plants were poisonous. The bushes gave off a sweet scent, like bubble gum, mixed with the normal flowery smell. All of the bushes had the same, long, symmetrical green leaf and the flowers were the same, just different colors.

  I pulled out my phone and snapped a few pictures. “Andi, tell me what these are.”

  “The plants in question are oleander, a popular flowering shrubbery used in landscaping. Oleander is grown worldwide in climates that do not experience extreme heat or cold. It is known—”

  “Stop,” I ordered. “I wanted to know what kind of bush it is, not a whole horticultural briefing.”

  “Sorry,” Andi replied. “You’re looking at the oleander bush, the cause of death in the first pleasure club victim.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured.”

  “Interestingly, the third bush from the porch is the yellow oleander, native to southern India. Ingestion of seeds from the yellow oleander has been a popular form of suicide for as long as written records have been kept.”

  “Is the yellow oleander easy to get in the States?”

  “No. You must have permits for research to legally have the plant.” She paused for a moment and I knew she was checking to see if Wilson had a permit. “Harold Wilson is not authorized to legally own a yellow oleander in the state of Louisiana.”

  “Thanks. I’m leaving you connected; monitor the situation.”

  “Got it, boss.”

  I slipped the phone back into the pocket of my duster without disconnecting the line. I wanted her to listen for noises that I might not hear when I talked to Wilson.

  The doorbell played Amazing Grace instead of a normal chime when I pressed the button underneath a sign stating that the occupants of the home would follow the Lord’s bidding at all times. From what I could see through the door’s glass side panels, pictures of Jesus and crosses were as prevalent as those of the guy’s family. Either the Wilsons were an over-the-top religious family, or they were trying hard to appear so.

  I wished I’d worn a suit.

  A teenage girl’s voice came from the intercom, “Yes, can I help you?”

  “Hi, I’m Detective Forrest with the NOPD. Is Mr. Wilson home?” Probably the girl in the family picture next to the painting of a bleeding Jesus, I thought.

  “You don’t look like a cop. Why are you all beat up?”

  Dammit. “I got in a car accident. That’s why I’m not in uniform, it hurts too much to put that uncomfortable suit on.”

  I held up my badge to the small button camera for her to examine.

  “Okay. My daddy’s gone on a men’s spiritual retreat weekend for fellowship with other Christians over in Hahnville. You can record a message for him and he’ll get it Sunday night when he returns.”

  “Oh. There’s no way to communicate with him before then?”

  “Technology is strictly forbidden.”

  “How does he do it? I know I’d be lost without communication with the outside world for four days.”

  “Daddy welcomes the chance to get away from the distractions of this world and commune with the Lord.”

  “Heh… Has he done many of these retreats before?”

  “He’s been going for as long as I can remember. Probably three or four a year.”

  “Does he go alone or is he part of a group from your church?”

  “He usually goes with Brother Cordova and Brother Hendricks, but dad’s one of the organizers and wanted to set the camp up, so he went early with Mr. Robert this time.”

  “Mr. Robert—Bobby? Is he a family friend?”

  “He’s been staying with us for a couple of days. My dad says he’s a lost soul in need of guidance and a purpose in life, but we’re not really allowed to talk to him.” She whispered into the intercom, “In case the Deceiver tries to corrupt us through him.”

  “Well, you’ve been very helpful, Kristy. Thank you.”

  “I didn’t tell you my name,” she accused. “How do you know who I am?”

  Shit…think! “I’m a police officer. It’s my job to know things. You know, to help keep you safe.”

  “Okay… Hey, did you want to leave a message for my dad?”

  “No, thank you. I’m sure I’ll be speaking to him soon.”

  The intercom disconnected and I walked back to the car.

  “Go around the block and park at the convenience store,” I told the Ford as I pulled out my notebook and wrote down the info the daughter had given me.

  There was a new person hanging around the Wilson household with the same name as the missing droid and her father had deviated from his normal routine of taking two friends with him to the men’s retreat, opting to take the new fellow with him instead. Added to the fact that the droid’s transponder had indicated it was here a few days ago, I was confident the “lost soul” was the droid in question.

  Wilson was a network engineer, so he certainly had the foundation in computer skills to learn how to hack into the pleasure droids. I also added a note that he had oleander growing right there at his house, although as common as the plant was, that wasn’t damning evidence. The inclusion of the illegal yellow oleander was interesting, but wouldn’t hold up in court since the lawyer would claim his client was unaware that one color flower was different from the others.

  “Call Chief Brubaker.”

  The phone rang twice and then he answered. “Bored already, Forrest?”

  “Kind of, sir,” I admitted. “We need to get a search warrant for the residence of Harold Wilson, out in Metairie. He’s the hacker.”

  “Jesus H. Christ, Forrest! What part of administrative suspension
do you not understand?”

  “He’s going to attack the Pope on Sunday.”

  “The Pope? As in the funny hat, pajama-wearing Catholic guy with his own private army who will be here this weekend and has about half the police force assigned to protecting him; that Pope?”

  “Er…yeah, that one.”

  “Fuck me running. Okay, give me all of the details.”

  I gave him everything I knew. When I was finished, he whistled. “That’s some mighty fine detective work, Forrest…if it pans out. If not, we’ll look like the biggest conspiracy theorists in the police department.”

  “It makes sense, Chief. This guy is an anti-droid religious nut who wants to stop the Pope from calling for the legalization of robotic sex companions to help end human trafficking.”

  “I’ll talk to Judge Carlson and coordinate everything through the Metairie Police Department. If we find anything, I’ll have to give Cruz credit for the case; you’re suspended.”

  “I don’t care. I just want this guy stopped. He’s killed eight people that we know of, and tried to kill me twice. He has to be stopped.”

  TWENTY: SATURDAY

  I hung up the line with Alfonso Cruz and scratched at the three-day growth of a beard on my neck. It was really starting to bother me and I needed to shave it off before I went crazy.

  I had no desire to endanger the Khalils or Teagan further, so I’d sat around my apartment for the past day and a half after I’d visited Harold Wilson’s home and spoken to his daughter. The sense of helplessness and lack of fresh air were starting to get to me. I wanted to be out on the case so I could nail the killer, but Chief Brubaker had specifically ordered me not to interfere with the investigation or to visit any of the places where I thought Wilson or the droid, Bobby, might show up.

  My lifeline to the outside world was the updates that Cruz and Sergeant Drake gave me. Wilson’s home had been packed with computer equipment and a quick field-search of the files showed that he was potentially capable of hacking into both Cybertronic Solutions and Cooper-Smith Personal Services robots. There were multiple systems with several layers of security and it would likely take our tech guys a while to break into it.

  What made Wilson the number one suspect—the only suspect—in the case was a transfer of fifty thousand dollars from his ministry account to an unknown source the same day of the deposit to Jacqueline Wolfe’s account and then it was transferred back into the ministry account from another unknown source within hours of her murder. We had a significant clue, but as of yet, no way to follow the money due to the encryption he’d used. The tech guys assured Cruz that it was only a matter of time. Time that we didn’t have.

  When combined with the temporary presence of a missing droid that may or may not have murdered Jacqueline Wolfe at his home and Wilson’s sudden disappearance, I felt we had enough evidence against the guy to justify issuing a warrant for his arrest… The problem was that we couldn’t find him.

  Despite what he’d told his family, the men’s retreat wasn’t occurring this weekend. There was one scheduled for next month, not this one. When presented with that information, Wilson’s wife defended him, saying that he must be away on a planning committee then, but was unable to contact him due to the ranch’s isolation. The state police were supposed to send out a patrol car to the ranch yesterday. Cruz hadn’t heard the results of that visit yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t bother to send anyone out to Hahnville; the Louisiana State Police were notorious for slacking on investigations where they weren’t the lead agency.

  So that left me sitting around my apartment going stir crazy. Andi told me to go for a walk or to the gym to get out some of my frustration, but I couldn’t bring myself to do so. I wanted to be ready to go out to the place of arrest the moment it occurred.

  After an unsatisfying meal of Chinese delivery, I took a shower and put on the most nondescript clothing I owned to help me blend into the crowd for the parade. The Pope was expected to travel through the French Quarter, following the same route as the Mardi Gras parade for the past forty years, and then follow St. Charles Avenue all the way over to the Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church in Uptown.

  The parade wasn’t scheduled to be broadcast live, so I didn’t think Wilson would attempt the assassination today. I decided to attend the parade and then stop by the cathedral afterwards to get a feel for the Pope’s security. The NOPD’s resources would be spread incredibly thin tomorrow with both the Pope and the Secretary of Energy at different local venues, as well as canvassing Easytown to stop the murder that was scheduled down there. If there were any weaknesses in the security plan, I’d pass them along to the department.

  “I’m heading out, Andi.”

  “Alright. I’ll monitor all police frequencies, television and radio broadcasts, and attempt to intercept any network traffic regarding the Pope’s visit. If Wilson is talking or if anyone notices anything out of the ordinary, then I’ll know.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “The hallway is clear, boss.”

  The Ford took me to the corner of St. Charles and Martin Luther King Jr., dropping me off like a ten-dollar hooker on the curb. I was three hours early for the parade, but the crowd was already beginning to swell. I wanted to be in the area, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to sit around with nothing to do, so I went to the National World War Two Museum, which displayed ancient tanks, planes, and boats from a particularly heinous war in the twentieth century. The US teamed up with several other nations, including Russia, to attack Germany and Japan. It took four years of heavy fighting, but we were eventually victorious.

  Interestingly, WWII was the first time a nuclear weapon was used in combat. The Russians, Chinese and Indians blew that little statistic out of the water in World War Three. They’d let so many nukes fly that whole swaths of the three countries would be uninhabitable for centuries. In the end, all three nations achieved their goal of population reduction.

  The museum helped me waste two hours and concreted my belief that good people could overcome consummate evil, such as the Axis Powers. When I walked back outside, the crowds made it hard to move. I pushed my way through several knots of onlookers and eventually found myself about four arm lengths’ away from the barrier to the street.

  It was the perfect vantage point to keep an eye on both the crowd and the Pope when he came by in the so-called “Pope Mobile.”

  Above us, police and news network drones floated, scanning the crowds lining the avenue. The facial recognition software was likely running overtime with the sheer number of people waiting to see the Pope.

  After another ten or fifteen minutes of getting jostled by the press of bodies, several dark hoverskiffs appeared overhead, advancing slowly in line with one another. A member of the famed Swiss Guard drove each skiff and an NOPD sniper rode in the crowd control seat behind the driver. They weren’t taking any chances.

  More hoverskiffs appeared, flying in a loose oval above an enclosed white skiff, hovering less than ten feet off the avenue. Garish golden crosses adorned the corners of the Pope Mobile and a small trail of white smoke jetted in front of the vehicle. From a block away, I could see that a man in white robes stood on the skiff waving to the crowd.

  As they neared, I could clearly see that it was Pope John Paul. He looked older and more hunched over than he did on television and I wondered if they doctored all of the footage of him before it went public. The Pope waved and the crowd surged around me, jumping into the air to be seen by him. Small, handheld cameras appeared everywhere at once, as people recorded their encounter with the head of Earth’s second largest religion. Some of the scented smoke drifted over me as they passed and a woman beside me screamed as if she were at a concert. I guess this was a concert-like event for the devout.

  It seemed like a lot of work to see a man in a floating glass box to me.

  Then, just like that, he was past my point of view on route to the church. Several more of the Swiss Guard hoverskif
fs glided soundlessly overhead as the papal rear guard. Men and women craned their necks to see the last remnants of the Pope on his skiff.

  Once he was gone, people began to talk to one another excitedly and I moved through the crowd toward the rear. I’d seen the Pope and his high-tech security, but I wondered if any of it would do him any good tomorrow.

  I scouted the St. Louis Cathedral before going home for the night. A sign out front said that the cathedral was open to the public until 7 p.m. so I slipped through the massive front doors.

  The inside was huge. I wasn’t expecting it to be so large and open; I’d thought the inside would be more compartmentalized. If Wilson made his move inside the cathedral, the size and crowd of people would make things much more difficult.

  The main room had row upon row of heavy wooden pews. I walked down the checkerboard marble floor between two angel statues, each holding a bucket with what looked like water inside. When I got to the nearest bench, I let my hand trail down to the wood. It was thick and sturdy; the pews would stop anything up to a 9-millimeter bullet.

  I sat heavily near the aisle and thought about what I’d do if I were in Wilson’s shoes. He obviously wanted this to be as public as possible, so it wouldn’t be anything mundane like a simple gunshot assassination. No, if I were planning this, I’d make it a publicly viewed hostage situation and take advantage of the television cameras that were sure to blanket this place tomorrow. I’d bring my agenda into the home of every person with a television screen.

  But, that didn’t quite fit with the little bit that I knew of Harold Wilson. He seemed to be a devout man, in his own way. What I knew of religious extremists came primarily from the department’s classes on antiterrorism. Someone who was a fundamentalist couldn’t be convinced of the error of their ways. They believed more in a higher calling than anything on this earth—and they typically liked to be flashy about the things they did. My blood froze as I stared vacantly across the open sanctuary.

  Wilson was going to use explosives to kill as many people as possible. I was sure of it.