Beyond the Spectrum

by G. W. BOILEAU

  “I’m here to see your boss,” I told them, calling through the rain.

  “Turn around. Hands behind your back, thumbs in the air,” Baldy called in a high voice. He was the man I spoke to on the weasel’s cell.

  I did as he said. His boots stomped on the wet gravel behind me, then he snapped the cuffs on quick and easy, clicked them tight.

  “You’ve done that before,” I said, grimacing.

  “Once or twice.”

  He turned me around. Then he hit me hard in the stomach.

  I coughed out and went to a knee.

  “That’s for Vinnie,” he said.

  Then he pulled me up as I still coughed.

  I glared at him. “That was cheap.”

  “Come on,” Blondy called through the rain. “Boss is waiting.”

  We passed beneath the overarching driveway entrance, and into the front cobblestone courtyard. A fountain of a naked stone women held center stage, LEDs igniting the water in an electric blue glow. Three cars were parked behind the fountain, in front of the main entrance: a maroon Bentley, a silver Lincoln and a big black Cadillac Escalade.

  The solid wooden arched door opened as we approached, and another man welcomed us in. He wore a shark-gray suit and a maroon turtleneck. He was taller and heavier than Baldy and Blondy, but not because of muscle. He was bald, with a neat auburn beard, and he watched me with steely pale green eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses.

  “Welcome, Detective Gamble,” said Malcolm Bach, smiling his teeth at me. “Please, come in out of the rain.”

  I stepped into the house, into a vast entrance where a center stairwell with carved railings ran up to the next floor. Parquetry floors and artworks matched the photos I’d seen in the ad, elaborate, over the top, and oozing with wealth.

  “Nice castle,” I said.

  “Thank you,” said Bach. “You will have to excuse my rudeness but I can’t talk right now, Detective. I’m in the middle of something, but it shouldn’t take long.”

  “I’m here to negotiate Stuart Arnold’s release,” I said. “The compound is surrounded.”

  Malcolm eyed me with an intense stare. It was cold and long. “You’re lying to me, Detective Gamble.”

  “No. There’s a SWAT team ready to go. If I don’t come out with Arnold in ten minutes, they’re coming in.”

  Malcolm took his glasses off and pulled a handkerchief from his slacks, then began rubbing the lenses. “I’m not sure what you’re trying to do here, Blake, but I’m afraid it isn’t going to work. I know you don’t have a SWAT team out there. And frankly, it offends me you think I would be so gullible.”

  I swallowed. Why wasn’t he buying it? Why was he so damn confident? What did he know that I didn’t?

  Malcolm looked in turn at the men over my shoulder. “Tomlinson, back to your duties. West, take Detective Gamble to the guest room.” Then he looked at me pointedly. “As I said, Detective, I’m in the middle of something. When I’m done, we’ll have a drink and discuss . . . your future.” Then he turned and left, his shoes echoing against the parquetry floors down the hall.

  The suppressor muzzle stabbed hard into my back and forced me forward into a stumbling walk.

  “Up the stairs,” ordered West.

  I did as I was told and was led down one of the high hallways I’d seen with overarching beams, lit along the way by hanging chandeliers. West pulled me up at a heavy arched door. Unlike the other doors along the hallway, this one had a modern deadbolt and glowing digital keypad.

  “Look away, asshole,” he said, and I felt the cold steel of the muzzle press up against the back of my neck.

  There were five beeps and the lock clicked. The door opened.

  “Go on,” he ordered.

  He shoved me in, and a moment later the door slammed shut behind me.

  The room was small and dark and cold. The only window was covered in bars. A holding cell. It was empty, no furniture, nothing. All except for a big guy lying on his side in the corner of the room. Motionless.

  It was Stuart Arnold.

  “Stuart?” I said, moving over to him.

  He didn’t respond. He was curled up in the fetal position, his back to me. He wasn’t wearing his poncho anymore. Just an enormous gray hoodie, brown corduroy pants and no shoes. His clothes were stained in blood.

  “Stuart?” I asked again.

  I knelt down but couldn’t touch him. My hands were still cuffed behind my back.

  “You alive?”

  “Who are you?” he mumbled softly.

  “Detective Blake Gamble. A friend of Elise Daniels.”

  He rolled, and I saw then what they’d done to his face. His left eye was a black ball, swollen shut, his nose was bloody and his bottom lip was split. He’d had a serious beating.

  “Shit,” I said. Then I saw his hand. It was wrapped up in a blood-soaked cloth. “What did they do to you? What did they do to your hand?”

  “Fingers,” he said, and his bottom lip quivered, opening the wound and causing a fresh stream of blood to topple down his chin.

  “You give Malcolm the USB key?”

  He nodded, almost imperceptibly.

  “And the password?”

  He nodded again. “Are the police coming?” He sat himself up against the wall.

  “No. It’s . . . it’s just me.”

  Then he realized the situation and he lowered his head.

  “Dammit, what were you thinking, Stuart?” I asked, looking around the cell.

  “What do you mean? I didn’t do anything. They kidnapped me. Cut my fingers off. Why you blame me?”

  “Come on, man. You’re not innocent in this. You’re the reason why we’re here.” I slumped down beside him.

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  The answer infuriated me. It was an answer I’d heard a million times before. From petty thieves to murderers and every shit bag in between. It was as good as saying, “I’m guilty. Lock me up now.”

  “You stole the fucking egg,” I snapped. “And now Daddy or Mommy or whatever the fuck it is wants its baby back.”

  His left eye was swollen shut, but his right glanced up at me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You know what I’m talking about. You suspected something came after your little hatchling. That’s why you ran, wasn’t it?”

  “I—I thought maybe something . . .” he said, and his s sounded like a th ’cause Malcolm or one of the goons had hit the guy so hard in the mouth it screwed with his speech.

  “Yeah, well, it did. And it’s terrifying and it wants its baby back, but it can’t have it, can it? ’Cause you fucking killed it.”

  “I didn’t mean to kill it,” he said.

  “Whaddya mean, you didn’t mean to? The thing was split down the center. You’d pulled out its guts. You telling me that was some kind of accident?”

  “It was.” He looked at me again, blood still running down his chin and adding to the stain on his chest. “I didn’t want to kill it. I was learning what I could from it, then I was going to take it back.”

  “You can’t just take something from another world and study it, Stuart. Then return it and hope everything’s going to be okay. What did you think would happen?”

  He looked down and spoke quietly. “It was worth the risk.”

  “Worth the risk?" I flashed with rage. “People have died today because of your little gamble.”

  He glanced at me again.

  “That’s right. Lots of people. Including three cops. And it’s your fucking fault.” I wanted to add to his injury list. “How could you be so goddamn selfish?”

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “The biology of the creature . . . it’s incredible. The shell armor is stronger than any natural organic matter I’ve read about. Its saliva has elements I’ve never seen before, filled with symbiotic bacteria. You don’t know what the creature could mean for science.”

  “I know what it can mean for us as a human race. They want to go to war with
us, Stuart. They want to exterminate us.”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “The fucking people who live in the world you invaded. We need to give them everything you made. They want your head on a platter. And you know that baby you took? Its parent is coming here. Right now.”

  Stuart dropped his head. “I—I just wanted to do something . . . make a name for myself. Like—”

  “Let me guess. Like da Vinci and Einstein.”

  “I didn’t mean for it to die,” he said earnestly.

  “So how did it?”

  “Chinese.”

  “What?”

  “I fed it noodles. It looked hungry. So I gave it noodles and it burned through its stomach and died.”

  “What? Noodles killed it?”

  “No. I ran tests. Sodium. The salt in the soy sauce. It reacts with their DNA. Destroys it entirely. It causes a violent reaction. I couldn’t foresee . . .”

  “Salt?” I asked.

  There were five beeps and the lock clicked. The door opened, and West was standing in the doorway, black fatigues, SMG at the ready, an apparition of a modern-day warrior. All except his voice. “Get up. The boss wants to see you. Both of you.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  West ordered us into a high-ceilinged sitting room, the walls covered in an overpowering crimson wallpaper. The only relief from the saturation of red was the dark wood paneling along the lower half of the walls, and the golden-framed artworks. Above the fireplace sat a portrait of Malcolm Bach with a tumbler of whiskey in one hand and a cigar in the other, legs crossed.

  A high-back chair stood in the center of the room, completely out of place. The chair was big. Solid. I recalled a dining room photograph from the realty posting. I remembered seeing the chair at the end of an enormous table.

  In front of the crackling fire sat two overstuffed armchairs, only instead of facing the fireplace, they were turned toward the room. Both were upholstered in crimson fabric with golden wood frames and clawed feet.

  In one of the armchairs, Malcolm Bach replicated his portrait above, tumbler in hand, only instead of a cigar in the other, he held a Ruger Redhawk revolver.

  He stood, placing his tumbler on the side table between the two chairs. “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said.

  We said nothing.

  “Take a seat, Stuart.” He indicated the high-back chair, using the Ruger to do the pointing.

  Stuart paused, and West shoved him from behind. The big guy flinched and moved to the seat in small timid steps.

  West cuffed his hands to the back, the chain linking through the slats so Stuart couldn’t go anywhere.

  “West, please uncuff Detective Gamble so we may talk like civilized men.”

  West did so and I rubbed at my wrists. I looked at the bald guy. Wondered where Blondy was hiding. Was he just around the corner, listening in. How many men did Bach have in this damn castle?

  “Detective, please,” said Bach, indicating the chair beside him.

  I looked at Stuart, at West, then at Bach.

  “Please, Detective. Take a seat,” he asked again.

  I moved to the chair. There was a knife on the side table. A big hunting knife with a nine-inch blade. I looked at it. Thought about making a grab for it. Realized what a bad idea it was. Malcolm would shoot me before I got the blade into him, and if he didn’t, West would.

  I sat down and Malcolm took the seat beside mine and crossed his legs. Then he grabbed up his tumbler and took a sip. Sighed and smacked his lips a couple of times.

  “You stole the tech, didn’t you, Bach?” I asked.

  He didn’t reply.

  “You killed Nicholas and you stole it out of the garage.”

  “An unfortunate mishap. I sent Vinnie to take the technology from the garage, only Nicholas returned unexpectedly. Vinnie did what he was paid to do.”

  “Nicholas came back because he wanted to hand the tech over to the military. It’s dangerous, Malcolm.”

  He stared at me with flat eyes. “Enough lies, Detective.”

  I looked around again, thinking. What could I possibly say to convince him? I shook my head.

  “So you killed Nicholas Hartmann, stole the tech, and then realized you couldn’t use it without the USB key?”

  “Something like that,” he said.

  “So you sent the big guy looking for it at Stuart’s townhouse?”

  “Yes. Anton, my Russian bull. I sent him not only to search for the USB encryption key, but to bring Stuart back to me, so I could retrieve the password from that enormous brain of his.”

  “But he wasn’t home, was he? Instead Anton found me.”

  “Yes. And a receipt for a safety deposit box. I told him to check it out. Only somehow he ended up dead.”

  “The silver Lincoln,” I said. “I suppose that was the Russian’s ride to the pawnshop. Except Anton never came back out. So, what, you tell the man in the Lincoln to trail me?”

  “Yes. Wolf. I figured you might lead him to Stuart Arnold. Except the idiot got himself spotted within the first ten minutes.” He glanced at the bald man, who looked like a dog who’d just pooped in the wrong spot. “So I sent him up to Elise Daniels’s place. I figured if I couldn’t find Stuart Arnold, I’d try the girl. I figured she might be able to tell me where the fat man was hiding.”

  “The cop car. They scare him off?”

  “Something like that. Then I received a call from your boss, a Lieutenant Schultz. Told me you wanted to come see me. I was half-expecting it, I suppose. As it turns out, it was a stroke of luck.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “I bugged your cell phone. It’s amazing how easy it is these days. Cell phones have their own GPS inside. So I could track your movements. But more than that, I could track your phone calls.”

  Shit. How could I be so stupid? “How?” I asked, like it didn’t bother me.

  “It’s called Bluebugging. We looked into the technology years ago and developed this tool.” He pulled a small device out of his jacket pocket. “Connects with the cell, uploads a Trojan that tracks it and sends information to a designated recipient. In this case, me.

  “Of course during the late nineties, companies were playing around with Stingray cell site simulators. They became all the rage among the CIA and FBI, making this device primitive by comparison. But it still works effectively. I just had to accept the Bluetooth connection request on your cell.

  “When I picked your cell up from the table, I activated the device in my pocket and accepted the invitation. I’ve been able to track your movements ever since. All the way up until this point. So you see, I knew you hadn’t stopped by the department. And I knew you hadn’t called for backup, because I would have seen it on your cell.” He smiled at me like he was playing chess and had just said checkmate.

  I looked away, clenching my jaw. Elise, I thought.

  “I also know,” he continued, “you parked your car a mile down the road. I’m guessing the girl is with you, waiting there.”

  “You son of a bitch,” I said, starting toward him.

  Wolf took a step, the SMG raised. It was redundant. Bach’s Ruger was aimed right on my chest.

  “Portland will be back any moment with her, I’m sure.”

  “You’re a dead man, Bach,” I spat.

  “I figured you’d eventually find Stuart Arnold,” he said, ignoring my threat. “And I must say, it took some patience on my behalf, but I waited, and like a good detective, you found him. It only took a little torture to get the password out of that fat brain of his.”

  I looked over at Stuart. His one good eye was looking over at us as he listened.

  “I must say, though,” Bach continued, “when Vinnie failed to kill you, I thought you’d go to your lieutenant for sure. But then, to my surprise, you headed home. I was watching, waiting, wondering what your next move would be. And then, to my utter disbelief, you came straight to me. Tell me, Detective, what did you hope to gain by coming h
ere so unprepared?”

  “I need that tech, Bach. It’s dangerous. You have no fucking idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

  “Go on, then. Tell me what is so dangerous about it.”

  What was I supposed to say? “It’s a gateway to another world, asshole”? This was it. The moment I had to convince him to put down all his guns and hand everything over. And I had nothing.

  “Anton, your bull, what do you think killed him?” I asked, glaring.

  He didn’t have an answer.

  “Believe me when I say it will kill us all, Bach. Give me the tech me, along with Stuart Arnold, and I’ll leave. I’ll keep the law out of it. I go my way, you go yours.”

  He stared in an expression of curiosity, trying to make sense of what I was saying. Then he shook his head. “Nonsense. The X-ray vision works and is perfectly safe. I tried it just now. And now my company is going to be the sole provider of X-ray technology to the military and law enforcement.”

  “It’s dangerous, goddammit,” I yelled.

  “It’s power, that’s what it is, Detective Gamble. Power and money. The only two things that matter in this world.”

  “You’ll kill us all, you greedy bastard.”

  “Enough, Detective. Now, I know you don’t have any help coming. I know you haven’t told anybody where you are. I am free to do with you as I wish. But I don’t want to kill you. No. Instead I have a proposition for you.”

  “What sort of proposition?”

  “A job offer. Work for me, on the quiet. You continue to do your job as a detective for the San Jose PD, and from time to time, I’ll call on you for information and assistance in sensitive matters.”

  “I don’t think so, Bach. I’m no crook.”

  “The way I see it, you don’t have a choice. You work for me, or you disappear.”

  “If I agreed, you wouldn’t trust me anyway.”

  “No. Which is why I have an insurance plan. Everyone should have a good insurance plan.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, nervous.

  He looked at the man sitting in the center of the room. “Kill Stuart Arnold.”