I lit a match, dropped it in. Lit another. The twin flames started small then reached outward to eat up the stained fabric, meeting in the middle. Smoke rose from the trash can and spread through the room. I moved the dowel and opened the window again. Wafted the fumes toward the outside with an old tech magazine. The fire consumed the clothing, burning the fabric down to nothing then burning itself out. I looked into the can. The hoodie zipper survived. I plucked it out and squeezed the melted hunk of cheap metal between my forefinger and thumb. It seared my skin. I squeezed harder. When my prints on those two fingers were bright red and no longer visible, I placed the zipper on the top of my computer monitor.
In the bathroom, I turned the water in the shower on as hot as it would go. The building’s plumbing sucked. In five minutes, the scalding temperature would turn to ice. I stepped in, leaving the shower curtain open. Water cascaded over the lip of the freestanding tub and splashed across the moldy linoleum. It was a small price to pay for visibility of the entire apartment. I preferred mopping the floor to cornering myself behind a transparent piece of plastic.
The water ran red. I soaped up my body. Washed my hair. The water was pink now. I washed my hair again. Scrubbed my skin until it was sensitive and raw. Clear water. Just in time for the sputtering shower head to spit an icy stream at the back of my neck. I rushed to turn it off. It squeaked in protest but gave up save for the ever-persistent drip. Drip, drip, drip. I shook my head like a wet dog, spraying the bathroom, then flipped over and worked a fresh towel through my short hair.
In a robe, I opened the tiny fridge in the kitchen. Wilted spinach, a nearly empty package of prepared chicken, and a single apple. It was time to order groceries again. I took the apple and sat down at my desk, propping myself up with a fat pillow from the head of the bed. I shook the computer mouse, waking the machine from its slumber. The computer was the one thing I owned that mattered. I did everything from my computer. I practically lived in it. I logged into my administrator account, navigated to the order page for a grocery delivery service, and placed an order to tide me over for a couple weeks. Li Hui—the little Chinese woman with an age-defying face who owned the building—let me use her address. Later, a random delivery boy would drop my order off at her door, and Li Hui would walk it up the five flights of stairs to me. It was our tradition.
I closed out of the grocery page and navigated to an online message board. It was a private board—black background, green font—the type of online communications forum that you had to earn a place in. Everything was anonymous. It was improbable, albeit not impossible, to trace the roots of the other users. It also happened to be my main source of finding work. Like my father, I developed a prodigal understanding of technology. That included IT. I put it to good use. People sought me out online and paid me good money to do things that came easily to me. I’d poached usernames and passwords, stolen Social Security numbers, rearranged identities, and managed bank accounts that didn’t belong to me. I was good at it too, so good that my customers started referring to me as the poltergeist. I’d turned it into a new username, P0lt3r6315t, and offered my services to a wider demographic. I was virtually untraceable. After all, the police couldn’t trace cybercrime, or vigilantism depending on your outlook, back to a dead person.
The last message I received, from a user named P3n173nc3, blinked on the screen. It was a file, a tiny document that contained a grand total of two words when I decrypted it. Phillip Beatnik. I looked at my nails. Dried blood caked along the cuticles. I scratched it away. I wondered how long it would be before they found Phillip Beatnik's body in the alleyway alongside Penthouse Gentlemen’s Club. What would the police make of it?
The computer chimed. I had a new message.
P3n173nc3: Is it done?
I typed back. It’s done.
How do you feel?
My fingers lingered over the keyboard, unsure what letters to press. I considered the question. How did I feel about my first murder? I typed four letters. Good.
P3n173nc3 replied with another encrypted file. I downloaded it and ran it through my decryption software. It was another name. James Honey. The man it belonged to was not as sweet as his surname implied. I crawled across the bed to the bookshelf, where several external hard drives sat stacked next to my humble collection of books and tech magazines. I picked one with a peeling yellow label with “Mom” written on it in faded permanent marker and plugged it into the USB drive. The drive was full of old newspaper articles that I scanned in years ago. The headlines, bold and blatant, screamed inside my head. Tech Genius Wallace Bauer Gets Life Sentence in Prison for Wife’s Murder. Veronica Bauer Officially Declared Dead After Months of Searching for Body. Bauer Tech CFO, John Halco, Takes Over Company.
Not all of the articles were about the end of my parents’ legacy. I’d made a point to gather as much information on my family and Bauer Technology as possible. I had an entire terabyte of data dedicated to the Bauers, too much information to skim through visually, but I knew a good place to start. I pulled up a number of articles that covered the Bauer Technology Charity Gala from twelve years ago. Many of them included photos and interviews of the various businessmen who donated significant amounts of money to the cause. I chewed on my apple, scrolling through the pages until I located James Honey’s name in the caption beneath a black and white picture. The picture had been taken between two massive gold lion statues that flanked the entrance to the ballroom at Bauer Tech’s main building. A group of men, my father at the center, posed for the camera. It must have been taken later in the evening. My father’s bowtie was crooked, and many of the men sported glazed expressions from over-imbibing in the evening’s spirits. The men were people that my father either employed or dealt with. James Honey was three to the left of my father. He didn’t look at the lens. The camera caught him mid-laugh. The arms of his suit jacket rode up to his wrists. I remembered Honey. He was tall and thin, younger than the more experienced men in my father’s business. He’d bought himself a way into the technology business then piggybacked off of the success of others. Then, he was known as a serial bachelor, the pretty playboy who dipped his toes in the big boys’ pool. Women loved him. It was his laugh.
I looked into what James Honey was up to now. His company was doing well. I expected no less. Honey was married. The woman was taller and blonder than Barbie, but she’d bagged the most notorious bachelor in Simone City, so there had to be something substantial to her. I hoped she was in it for the money. Honey didn’t deserve a loving, attentive wife. I found the Honeys’ address without issue. They lived in one of the most expensive high-rise apartment buildings in downtown Juno. I hacked into the building’s files, found the exact floor and room, and committed it to memory. Then I returned to the message board.
P0lt3r6315t: Two weeks.
P3n173nc3: Why so long?
The rapid click of the keys was always a comfort to me. Need time to prepare. Want it to be cleaner than tonight’s.
You know the deal. Finish one name, you get the next. Until they’re all gone.
P3n173nc3 logged off without a goodbye, vanishing into the depths of the Internet. I tossed my apple core into the metal trash can. It vibrated against the twangy aluminum. I lay back on bed and followed the blades of the fan round and round. Then I sat up and consulted a new forum on the message board site.
Need knife recommendations for self-defense. Please advise.
Chapter Four - Sheila
There was a sprinkled donut on my desk when I got to the precinct the next morning. No napkin or anything. The pastry sat right on the laminate wood, sprinkles and sugary flecks of glaze scattered across the keyboard of my computer. I pulled out the desk chair and dusted crumbs off the seat, then sat down, tipped my head back, and heaved a sigh.
“Aren’t you going to eat your donut?”
I groaned and opened one eye. “Five seconds, Payne. You couldn’t give me five seconds of peace.”
He sat on the corner of m
y desk, the one unoccupied by dessert. “I was trying to be nice. Got you coffee too. Well, it’s the free stuff from the break room, but Kev made it this morning, so it doesn’t taste like dirty water.” He scooched the donut toward me. “So?”
“You know who was sitting on my desk yesterday?” I asked him. “Mickey Miller.”
“Who’s Mickey Miller?”
“A drunk that I picked up in Venus,” I said. “He was sitting on a street corner in a pile of his own vomit. So, you see, even if I did eat processed sugar, I wouldn’t eat that donut.”
Payne immediately dropped the donut, hastily stood up, and wiped his hands on his pants. “Oh.”
I tossed the pastry into a nearby wastebasket. “But it’s the thought that counts and you don’t think of these things unless you want something from me, so what’s up?”
“Hey, there’s no ulterior motive here,” he said, adjusting the collar of his uniform. “Can’t a guy do something nice for his partner?”
I crossed my arms and leaned back in the rolling chair, making it squeak in protest. “Mm-hmm. What do you know that I don’t?”
The police captain, Victor Dumas, clapped Payne on the shoulder. “Eavesdropping again, are you, Payne?”
Payne snapped to attention, hands clasped behind his back. “No, sir. Not me, sir.”
“At ease, son. This ain’t the military.”
Victor Dumas was a formidable man. In his mid-fifties, he looked more like an ex-convict than a man in charge of protecting the streets of Simone City. He had a shaved head, a grizzled and pockmarked face, and a permanent five o’clock shadow from his cheeks to his neck that professionalism, or a razor, couldn’t contain. His lips were always pursed. Didn’t matter the situation or time of day, Captain Dumas’s lips always came back to the same bitchy resting place. It gave him a perpetual look of disapproval. The officers under Dumas’s command constantly sought verbal praise, as if they needed audio confirmation that he wasn’t upset with them. To add to his just-got-out-of-prison look, he had a tattoo of all four suits of Ace cards on his right forearm. Most days, it was hidden beneath the sleeve of his captain’s uniform, but when the station was working a particular difficult case, he shed the jacket and cuffed the sleeves for everyone to judge the tattoo. No one asked him about it. No one dared. Dumas, despite his gruff demeanor, wanted his team to be competent and safe, and he worked to ensure those two traits daily.
“What’s up, Captain?” I kicked my feet up on the desk and lounged. Dumas’s lips deepened their pout. “Got something for us?”
“A question actually,” Dumas said. “You two were down in Venus last night, right? Around Angel Street?”
“Yeah, we were outside Penthouse,” Payne said. He puffed his chest out as Dumas turned to look at him. “Booked a guy for solicitation.”
“Super,” Dumas said. “While you were down there, did you notice anything else? Anyone shifty or out of place?”
Something was up. Something had happened in Venus while Payne and I were on patrol. I could tell by Dumas’s casual presentation of the question. He wanted a quick, honest answer out of us. If we had information, it was best extracted before our memories made a mess of it. I stood up to close in the triangle of our party, but my height, or lack thereof, didn’t afford us quite the privacy I hoped for.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Answer the question, Officer Arden.”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t see anything. Payne?”
Payne shook his head. “No, sir. I—wait a second.” He pointed at me. “Weren’t you talking about some guy taking off out of Penthouse right before we made that arrest?”
I’d forgotten about the non-incident, the drunk man staggering out of the strip club and down the alley, followed shortly by the mysterious woman in the black hoodie.
“What’d the guy look like?” Dumas said.
“Short,” I recalled.
Dumas combed me from head to toe. “How short?”
I pursed my lips to rival his own expression. “Five-three, I’d guess.”
“So your height?”
“I’m five-four.”
“Congratulations, Stuart Little. Was the guy wearing a blue suit?”
“Yeah.”
Dumas squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Aw, fuck.”
“What is it?” Payne said. Inch by inch, he moved in front of me, slowly edging me out of Dumas’s line of sight. “You got a case?”
“Yeah,” Dumas said. “The short guy’s Phillip Beatnik. He’s dead. Murdered in the alleyway next to Penthouse. You sure you two didn’t see anything else? I’m guessing it happened after you made your arrest, maybe during it.”
Payne opened his mouth, but I jabbed my first two knuckles into the back of his rib cage, the only part of him that I could reach, and he shut up. “No, sir,” I said. “Just the ladies outside Penthouse.”
Dumas sighed. “All right, then. If anything jogs your memory, let me know.”
“Will do, sir,” Payne said. As Dumas walked away across the station, Payne added to me, “I thought you saw some girl follow Beatnik down the alley. That’s withholding information, Sheila.”
“I said I saw a girl,” I replied. “I never said I saw her follow him.”
“She could be a suspect.”
“Or she was just another Venus lowlife looking for love.” I whacked him across the shoulder and sat down at my desk. “Shut up. Dumas is coming back.”
“Something else, Captain?” Payne asked Dumas.
“Yeah.” The captain sidestepped Payne to reach my desk and tossed a shiny gold shield on top of my pile of paperwork. “I almost forgot. Congratulations, Arden. You’ve been promoted.”
I picked up the detective’s shield and ran my fingers across its surface. It was mine. Not Payne’s. Not some other officer’s. At twenty-nine, I was officially the youngest detective in Simone City.
“Usually, we would have some kind of promotion ceremony for this kind of thing,” Dumas said, “but we’ve got a lot on our plates today. Go see HR to update your information. And get out of that uniform. You’ve got a suit or something, right?”
I didn’t. “Yeah. I mean, yes, sir.”
“Good. Oh, and Arden?”
“Yes, sir?”
He planted a hand on my desk and leaned over, his face too close to mine. “Don’t fuck this up.”
“I won’t, sir.”
“Good.”
He walked away. I sank lower in my chair, staring at the detective’s shield. It was a minute or two before I realized that Payne was still standing beside my desk. He, too, made eyes at my new badge, and he wore a similar expression of utter shock.
“I don’t fucking believe this,” he said.
I clenched the shield tightly between my fingers and slid it into my pants pocket, as if Payne might steal it and claim it for himself. “I thought you said no hard feelings.”
“Yeah, that was when I thought that Dumas was going to promote me!”
He towered over me, so I stood, which didn’t improve the situation by much. “Are you seriously mad about this?”
“I’ve been after this promotion for years,” Payne said, not bothering to keep his voice low. We had the entire station’s attention. It wasn’t the first time. Payne and I argued so much on the job we were practically a reality show. “My father—”
“You won’t always be able to rely on your daddy to do your work for you.”
Payne stepped away like I’d smacked him across the face. “Wow, Sheila. You know, I always knew you were selfish, but I honestly thought you cared about this community. I thought you’d want what’s best for Simone City. You know I’m more cut out for this job than you are.”
“Why? Because you’re a man?”
“Well—”
“Don’t answer that.” I pushed past him, making sure to lock my shoulder against his so he had to adjust his footing in order to stay upright. The other officers watched as I marched out
of the bullpen and down the hallway toward the HR office, but I stopped halfway there to duck into the breakroom. I slammed the door, huffing for breath.
“Bad day, Arden?”
I turned around to find four other detectives—Kaminsky, Sutton, Clooney, and Gadsden—clustered around the water cooler. All men. All wearing nice, professional suits. All cool and composed. In contrast, my hair had escaped from my ponytail and cascaded in messy waves over the shoulders of my uniform, I hadn’t ironed my shirt that day, and my face was red and warm from my confrontation with Payne.
“It shouldn’t be,” Kaminsky, one of the older guys on the force, answered for me as he dunked a tea bag into a mug of hot water. “Arden here just got promoted. She’s one of us now.”
Gadsden laughed outright. Clooney muttered something under his breath that made Gadsden laugh harder. Sutton gave me a sheepish grin, like a half-hearted apology for the other two’s reactions. Kaminsky elbowed Gadsden in the ribs, who coughed into his coffee before excusing himself from the room. Clooney followed him, and both of them cracked up in the hallway.
“Congratulations, Arden,” Sutton said with what I hoped was sincerity. He shook my hand. “Sorry about the guys. We’re used to this being a boys’ club, but I guess we’re going to have to clean up our act a bit now, huh?” He chuckled, but I didn’t laugh. Sutton cleared his throat. “I’ll see you around then.”
Kaminsky ripped the top off four packets of artificial sweetener all at once and dumped the contents into his tea. “The wife made me give up coffee. This stuff’s unbearable.” He took a sip and shuddered. Then he noticed that my shoulders hadn’t relinquished my ears since the moment I’d walked in the room. “Listen, Arden. Dumas wouldn’t have given you that badge if he didn’t think that you could get the job done. Ignore these idiots. It’s like Sutton said. It’s a fucking sausage fest in here, but I think we could use a fresh perspective.” He tossed the entire cup full of tea into the garbage bin and filled another one with coffee. As he passed by, he gave me a gentle bump on the shoulder. “Hang in there, Detective.”
Missed Connections: Book 0 Page 3