Fragmented

by George Fong

  Picking up speed, Homer made his way to the front door of his apartment, the porch light flickering from a failing bulb. He stabbed his key into the door, twisted the handle and kicked the strike plate with his boot. The door creaked open as the porch light popped, leaving Homer in total darkness. He slid his hand across the interior wall, feeling for the switch plate. That’s when he felt a hard thump across the back of his head.

  Homer stumbled forward, glasses flying off, unable to keep his balance. Another hard thud against his head, the pain now ringing in his ears, then a strangle hold around his neck. He couldn’t move or breathe, couldn’t see, the pressure becoming tighter. His fight or flight instinct kicked in. He chose flight. He grabbed at the arm knotted around his neck and pulled to get away but he wasn’t strong enough. The grip around his neck tightened, restricting blood and air, his head starting to feel light, tingly. He needed a weapon. A gun or a knife, two things he had never carried or ever wanted to. He grabbed at his front pocket and felt something, a pen. He tore the ballpoint from his shirt pocket, held it like a dagger and in a swift motion, swung it hard, down and behind. The pen slammed into his attacker but didn’t penetrate. He felt the steel tip stop against clothing. Homer cocked his arm and swung again, farther and harder. This time the tip pierced skin. His attacker let out a loud growl, then bent forward at the waist, a gap now between their bodies, giving Homer his opportunity.

  Homer broke free and dropped to the floor, arms and legs flailing, trying to gain traction on the slick wooden entryway. He grabbed a fistful of carpet, and his left leg found the corner of a wall. He made a break for the back room, bumping in the darkness, body slamming into the kitchen table that blocked his path in the unlit room, knocking over several chairs. His hand swiped a framed picture off the wall and it shattered at his feet. He dove into the bedroom and kicked the door closed, locked it, and scrambled behind the bed. He listened for movement. Nothing but his own labored breathing. He tried to force himself steady but couldn’t stop shaking.

  “I’ve got a gun!” Homer screamed.

  Silence.

  “Look, you son-of-a-bitch, I got a gun and I’m not afraid to use it! You hear me?!”

  Homer’s head twisted left to right, listening for the sound of footsteps, crunching glass, the twist of the doorknob. He reached down and patted the floor under the bed, feeling the end of a baseball bat, an Easton Thunder Club. He choked up in his most aggressive stance. Then he remembered his cell. He groped at his jacket pocket. It wasn’t there. Must’ve fallen out during the scuffle. But his assailant didn’t know that.

  “I’m calling 911!” Homer shouted.

  The only other phone was the cordless he’d left in the living room, next to the computer, as usual. He made a pact with himself that if he survived this he’d stock a phone in every room.

  Creeping forward with the Thunder Club held tightly in his hands, Homer pressed an ear to the door. Silence. As he started to pull away, Homer heard footsteps. His heart raced. He drew the bat back, ready to swing. Live or die, he was going to get in at least one good whack. Then he realized the sounds were becoming fainter, more distant. His attacker was leaving.

  Homer bent down to his knees, peering at the space between the floor and bottom edge of the door. Moonlight blue filtered through the crack. Homer stared at the gap, waiting to spy a shadow, movement of any kind. Everything was still. He gently cracked the door, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. He could faintly make out furniture tipped over, the front door wide open. No curious neighbors were roaming, trying to find out what all the commotion was about. So much for Neighborhood Watch.

  Making his way into the living room, he found his computer monitor on the floor, the screen cracked like a San Andreas Fault. He pushed the screen aside with his left foot and spotted the cordless, covered in shards.

  “Where the hell are my glasses?” Homer mumbled as he dropped to his knees and swept his hand over the carpet. He caught the corner of something unfamiliar. A small notebook. Homer was ready to toss it aside but then hesitated. It wasn’t his. He flicked on a lamp and held it close to his face. And then he realized what he’d found.

  He stumbled his way to the kitchen table, paused for a second, took the notebook and slid it under the table rug. He crawled back into the living room and leaned the bat against the wall, and dropped to his knees, hunting for his glasses, feeling toward the front door, where they’d been struck from his face. There, near the entrance, Homer spotted a fuzzy black blob glittering in the moonlight. He pushed them onto his face. The world became clear. So did the figure standing in front of him.

  Before he could react a hand shot forward and clamped hard around his throat. He was forced into a spin, an arm squeezing around his neck for the second time that night. This time, Homer had no pen in his pocket and no other weapon at his disposal. His Thunder Club rested against the wall just out of his reach. The pressure around his neck increased until he felt like his head would explode. His vision blurred, funneling to a pinpoint view. His attacker leaned heavily on his back, dragging him down to the apartment floor. He fell to his knees, bone striking hard onto wood. Then he felt a sharp prick in his lower back. He winced once before a rush of warmth engulfed him. His body went numb.

  “Take my money,” Homer slurred. “Just don’t . . . hurt me.” His head fell, cheek pressed against the cold floor.

  “I don’t want your money, Homer.” The man leaned close to his ear and whispered, “I want you to stop poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

  Homer’s eyes widened briefly.

  Then they closed and his mind faded into darkness forever.

  31

  Wednesday – 11:28 p.m.

  The 7-11 was at the corner of Auburn-Folsom and Racetrack Street, not too far from the County Fairgrounds. The interior glowed with florescent lights, standing out in the rural area like a UFO in the middle of a forest. Jack nosed his vehicle into the parking lot. Marquez sat in the passenger seat, scrolling through her notes. Sizemore had taken his rental back to the office to catch up on what Hoskin had learned.

  A single Chevy coupe was parked directly in front of the doorway, a haggard female passenger leaning her head out the side window, blowing slow smoke rings into the night sky.

  Inside, the clerk was ringing up a large fountain drink, Twinkies and smokes stacked on the counter. The customer never took his eyes off the clerk, even when Jack and Marquez pushed through the front glass doors.

  Marquez maneuvered around the news rack where the ATM stood, gazing back at Jack, who pointed above the beer cooler, at a surveillance camera aimed directly at her.

  “Good coverage,” Marquez said.

  They walked to the counter. Jack threw down a pack of gum along with a five-dollar bill, and Marquez flashed her credentials at the clerk, who peered up at Jack.

  Jack nodded. “Yeah, me too.”

  After explaining the reason for the visit, the clerk took them to a back room the size of a closet, where a beat-up VCR sat perched on top of a metal and wood shelving unit.

  “It records for twenty-four hours,” the clerk said as he thumbed through a catalogue of tapes.

  Jack reached up and hit the stop button. The screen went black. “You change the tape in the past couple of hours?”

  The clerk shook his head. “Shift’s not over.”

  “Were you working yesterday?”

  “Every day, all day.”

  “You remember seeing this guy come in here?” Jack flipped out a photo of Cooper.

  The clerk squinted at the photo and his bushy brows furrowed.

  “Can’t say for sure.”

  Jack looked around the store, seeing no one. The Chevy out front had departed and the street looked empty.

  “Doesn’t look all that busy. You sure you don’t remember anything?”

  “You can go through the video. Maybe that will help.” His tone was less than concerned.

  Marquez pulled up a dirty chair from
the back office, and Jack settled onto a couple of plastic crates. They rewound the video, starting around 9:55 p.m. the previous day, when Monroe’s ATM card was used. The grainy video showed a handful of customers scanning magazines, purchasing smokes, blurry and unfocused. Jack could barely determine if a customer was male or female, let alone their suspect. Marquez leaned in toward the screen every time a figure entered the frame only to be disappointed. The clerk grew bored and excused himself to the front counter.

  “Are we close?” Marquez tapped the screen next to the time clock.

  “Inside a minute.”

  On screen, a figure entered. Presumably a man, he was slight, wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, hands shoved into his pockets. The clerk at the counter straightened the beef sticks. He glanced at the customer, nodded and went back to his duties. The figure moved closer to the ATM, but because of the angle and quality, it was near impossible to see his face.

  Marquez muttered, “Come on, look up.”

  Next to the ATM, the suspect dragged a card from his back pocket, shoving it into the machine. A few seconds passed before he glanced nervously around the store, then briefly toward the camera. Jack punched the pause button, catching most of the suspect’s face. The two stood in silence as they studied the blurry image.

  “What do you think, Jack?”

  “Hard to say. But I know one thing.” He tapped a finger on the screen. “That ain’t Cooper. That’s Youngblood.”

  32

  Wednesday – 11:32 p.m.

  Marquez studied the grainy blend of black, white, and gray. “What makes you say that?”

  “Similarities.” Jack touched the screen next to the suspect’s arm. “Look at his wrist.”

  The snapshot showed an exposed right wrist with a steel banded watch. Jack pointed at it. “Left handed. Cooper’s right.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “We usually wear watches on the opposite wrist.” Jack lifted his right, which sported a black-faced Tag Hauer Chorograph Carrera SLR.

  Marquez grabbed his wrist and studied the watch. “Nice. Buy that on a Bureau salary?”

  Jack shook his hand free. “It was a gift.”

  “Uh-huh.” Marquez replied through pursed lips. “Okay, so if this is Youngblood, we’ve got two suspects involved in the kidnapping of the Baker girl.”

  “Looks that way,” Jack said. “But why isn’t he hiding his identity like Cooper? Maybe there’s another reason why Youngblood is here in the mix. Let see what else our boy does.”

  Jack pressed the play button and the video advanced. The man pushed numbers, withdrawing cash from the machine. He counted the bills, holding them in his right while sifting with his left, another sign of a left-hander. He shoved the money in his pants and started toward the door.

  “Look,” Marquez said.

  As he exited the store, Youngblood turned right and walked along the open glass, still in view of the camera. Youngblood stopped, half his body now out of sight.

  “What the hell is he doing?” Marquez said.

  Jack stepped out of the room and stared into the open area. He turned around, smiling. “He’s using the pay phone.”

  Both hurried out the back door toward the telephone. A man sifting change walked toward them. Jack put up a hand, gently touching the man on his chest as they met in front of the payphone. The man peered up, startled at first, then looking insulted.

  “Sorry,” Jack said, pointing to the phone. “Police business.”

  Jack returned his attention to the payphone, inspecting the black plastic and weathered chrome phone box and receiver. He pulled a pair of latex gloves from his jacket pocket and slid them on. He lifted the handset and eyeballed it at an angle.

  “You see any latents?” Marquez asked.

  “Looks like there’s a couple of smudge marks, maybe a print or two.” He paused for a second, then added, “I think we can do better than a couple of prints.”

  He rushed to the trunk of his car where he retrieved a pair of wire cutters and a plastic bag. Back at the payphone, he snipped the stainless steel cord.

  Marquez asked, “What do you think you’re doing? That’s private property.”

  “Arrest me, Agent Marquez.”

  “I know you’ve got a print kit in the trunk of your car.”

  “This is more fun.”

  “It’s not necessary.”

  “It’s the phone company. Of course it’s necessary.”

  Marquez shook her head.

  “Everyone spits into a phone.” Jack lifted the receiver and cord, which swayed in the breeze like a dead snake, and dropped it into the plastic bag. Jack looked up at Marquez. “DNA.”

  “What now?”

  “We’ll send it to the lab to see if we can confirm Youngblood was here.”

  “That could take some time. Will it help us find the Baker girl?”

  “At least it will let us know if Youngblood’s involved. If so, it tells me he’s in the area so we can hunt him down and find out what he knows. And fast.”

  They knew the players; they just needed to confirm who did what.

  “Let’s get out an A.P.B. with Youngblood’s picture transmitted to every agency in the western states.” Jack sealed the plastic bag with evidence tape. “Make sure Washington Mutual doesn’t put a freeze on Monroe’s ATM card. Maybe we’ll get lucky and Youngblood will get greedy and take another shot at using it.”

  Marquez nodded. “I’ll get Hoskin to subpoena the telephone company to find out who Youngblood called. Might get lucky and get a hit on where the Baker girl is being held.” She looked at Jack’s face. “You look tired.”

  Jack exhaled, turned and stared at the empty parking lot. “She’s around here, Lucy. I can feel it.”

  They took the road back down Auburn-Folsom, a windy, tree-shrouded route with million dollar homes sprinkled along the trail, looming steel and brick walls secluding them from the regular folk. Jack listened to Marquez talking to dispatch at the FBI field office, giving out the description of Youngblood for the A.P.B. Marquez wasn’t one to waste time on nonsensical jargon. She rattled off straight-up, need-to-know information for the bulletin. After her request to transmit to all western state law enforcement agencies, she had dispatch transfer her to Chris Hoskin’s phone. She waited for the call to connect, all the while biting down on the glossy red fingernail of her right pinky.

  “You keep chewing like that and you’ll end up taking off a finger.”

  She pulled her hand away. “Nervous habit.”

  “It’ll be all right, Lucy. We’ll find her.”

  She nodded grudgingly, then popped up in her seat, rubbed her right eye with the palm of her hand and spoke into the phone. “Chris. We got something for you to dust for latents and possible DNA.” Pause. “The receiver from a payphone.” Another pause. “No, you don’t need to get to the phone. It’ll be coming to you. The suspect used it less than twenty-four hours ago.” Pause and a grin. She turned to Jack. “Chris wants to know if you thought about taking the coins in the box?”

  Jack snapped his fingers. “Should have thought of that. Prints on the coins.”

  Marquez smiled. “I’ll call the telephone company to see if they will pull the coin box for us. No one’s going to be using that phone tonight anyway.”

  As they headed back to the office, Jack thought about the notes he read in Cooper’s journals, still troubled by the words “starting over.” Starting over from what? This was before he’d killed his family.

  “What are you thinking about?” Marquez stared at Jack.

  “Cooper’s journals and letters home. Strange things I just can’t put a finger on.”

  “Maybe they need another set of eyes”

  “I think you’re right. I’ll ask Sizemore or Colfax to give them a look over.”

  Marquez punched Jack, hard enough to cause him to jerk. “I meant me.”

  Jack smiled. “I know.”

  Marquez picked up her cell phone and p
laced a call. A few seconds later she blew an exasperated breath and shut the phone.

  “He’s not home,” she said.

  “Who’s not home?”

  “Homer.”

  “You need to let him know his time belongs to you.”

  “He’s pretty good about that. Probably on the computer with the ringer off.”

  “Now that’s dedication.”

  It took thirty minutes to get back to the office and hook up with Sizemore and Hoskin. Marquez carried the box of journals and Jack handed the plastic bag with the payphone receiver to Hoskin, who disappeared to the ERT room to begin processing for DNA, which would involve gassing the entire receiver with a boiling container of cyanoacrylate and ninhydrate inside a closed box for about two hours. The process was simple. The hard part would be finding a useable print to confirm Jack’s suspicion.

  Marquez pored through Cooper’s notebooks and letters at the undercover off-site, taking notes as she read. Jack pulled a stack of papers off his desk. The Meridian PCS records had come in over the fax machine on the phone number from Officer Cambridge, which showed the phone hadn’t been used shortly after Monroe was cited. The cell phone was subscribed to Klaud Morrow. With Meridian PCS, anyone can subscribe to a phone in any name without verification. In the past, Jack had pulled phone records under the name of Mickey Mouse and Adolph Hitler. Tracking and identifying criminals using Meridan’s system was nearly impossible. A crook’s go-to service. It was obvious that Klaud was actually Klaus Monroe. The billing address was also bogus. Jack noted the numbers called most frequently, then fired out another salvo of subpoenas to the phone companies, and either begged, threatened or guilted the late night representative into getting him the information immediately.