A Ballad of Wayward Spectres: Day 1

by William B Hill

CHAPTER VI

  Martin took a bite from a chicken parmesan sub as he stared out the window of Vince’s Grill, a narrow eatery in a strip mall a few miles from the station. The myriad scents of garlic, tomatoes, standing water, and scorched pots and pans hung in the air like a fog. The piss-colored paint on the walls was covered up by generic photos of New York streets, circa 1925, and a few framed prints from a variety of classic European painters.

  Rich is taking his damned time, Martin thought.

  A waitress passed, and asked if Martin wanted another Coke, and he accepted. Cars passed outside, but no one parked in view of the paint frosted window. Vince’s was among Martin’s short list of go-to restaurants while on the clock. They were fast, cheap, and charged far too much for beer on tap for Martin to be tempted by the pitchers of cool amber brew that surrounded him while he ate.

  Rich broke Martin’s focus when he sat down in front of him. “Still paranoid as ever, I guess,” Rich said with a sigh. The waitress returned with Martin’s Coke, and Rich added a “scotch, neat” to the Martin’s order.

  “It’s paranoia until you’re right,” Martin said. “Glad you got my message.”

  “I’d much rather you have called, or sent me a text, something.”

  “No records this way. We’re going to have to play this part as close as possible, even though that’ll be damned hard with the USIPA involved.”

  “I don’t know, man. You’re asking a hell of a lot from me given the circumstances. You’ve already pissed off the people at Four Nations, and they’re the only people throwing us any help on this case. Are you sure you’re ready to do this?”

  Martin stroked his chin, contorting his cheeks as he groaned in frustration. “I’m not going to shoot you if that’s what you’re worried about. And since Mr. Rojas is licking his wounds back in his shiny little office, I’m pretty sure I won’t see him in a firefight either.”

  “No. That’s not it, and you know that I wouldn’t bring David’s death into it if I thought that you we’re at fault,” Rich said. “I read your report, and I understand what happened. I want to believe that you’re thinking straight before I let you run around the city like this. I’m fully aware that there are a lot of nasty things being said about you at the station, but I’m not the one judging you.”

  “I’m not blaming myself for David’s death, but I’m sure as hell not going to sit on my ass for another two weeks and do bitch-work for you while you bring me back up to speed,” Martin said.

  “That’s not what I’m doing, and you know it.”

  “Prove it. Trust me when I tell you that I’m fine, that I will take this lead, and get more results than Peters and Wood are getting by grilling bean counters.”

  Rich slid back in his seat. The waitress returned with his scotch. “Okay,” he said. He took a brief sip of his drink, and crossed his arms, glass still in hand. “I’ll admit, I’m a little bit curious, especially after how your friend came back into the office this evening.”

  “What happened?”

  “Mr. Rojas does, in fact, get very angry, and I’m sure he’d introduce me to his right hook if I hadn’t promised him that you’d come by in the morning and apologize,” Rich said. “You will apologize to him in the morning, right? I’ve got a pretty good feeling he could fuck me up pretty swift-like.”

  “That depends on if I make it to the office. You know I’ve been struggling with strep a while.”

  “I think I recall a few old doctors’ notes,” Rich said, as a smile crossed his face. “But if this sounds like bullshit, I’ll send him out to drag you in.”

  “Marina Dekare didn’t kill her husband,” Martin said.

  “That’s old news, Marty, try again.”

  “Someone has Mrs. Dekare flying all over the damned country. Our killer hasn’t even left the city, but they are using the victim’s wife as a cover,” Martin said. He reached into his pocket and retrieved the document that Jacob had printed for him at the airport. “I’ve already put in a call to the USIPA, and requested that they update our access to Marina Dekare’s file to constantly update us.”

  “You did that?”

  “Yeah, who else would have? Four Nations doesn’t have the authority, and I didn’t say word one to Mr. Rojas about my little scheme.”

  “Well, word on the radio when I was on my way over here was that they were already tracking Mrs. Dekare’s whereabouts. Have the USIPA reported anything to you since you made the call?”

  “Not a damned word,” Martin said.

  “We need to go,” Rich said.

  “What’s going on?” Martin asked. He wrapped his sandwich in wax paper.

  “Central 1 issued a SWAT team down to the Broadway Walk to arrest Marina Dekare.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you say something sooner?”

  “Because I thought you might have reported in to them,” Rich said.

  “Dammit,” Martin said. He threw a fifty on the table, and followed Rich back to his car. He kept his sandwich this time, regardless of Rich’s complaints.

  A florid twilight cascaded over the windows of the eighteenth floor suite where Alyson laid on a couch, staring into downtown Houston. A glass top desk was positioned along the wall next to the windows, where she’d already set up her computer.

  The Do-Not-Disturb sign hung on a peg on the other side of the door, and the table with the vase of cheap flowers was beneath the door knob on her side. She’d wanted to move the desk so she could watch the city sleep, but it was bolted to the floor. She wasn’t surprised; she broke one of the lovely tables on a previous visit.

  From above, her real home looked beautiful. Streaks of light sliced through the roads, and neon glow from hundreds of buildings on every street. From here Alyson couldn’t resist romanticizing the city, despite the darkness that artificial sheen tried to hide.

  Alyson stood, stretched, and shed the costume. She peeled away the hundred dollar jacket, and tossed it onto the bed with the blouse. She stuffed the skirt in her bag, and drew out a plastic bag filled with a fresh set of clothes that Marina bought for her. Twenty minutes in the shower washed Marina down the drain, and Alyson returned, refreshed.

  Alyson dressed in tan cargo pants and a black t-shirt, and dropped onto a wavy couch facing the television. She hit the switch, and grabbed her wristbands from the table next to her seat. A news broadcast popped to life. Banners of dark blue and red stretched nervous forecasts of terrorism and economic decline across the top and bottom of the screen.

  “Same show as usual,” Alyson muttered.

  She slid her mobile into one of the wristband compartments, and pulled it back out, fidgeting with the release latch.

  I’m going to have to replace it, she thought as the small device slipped away from the wristband, and fell into her lap.

  The other wristband still kept a tight grip on her multi-tool. She slid the oil and dirt stained mustard colored sleeve up her forearm and twisted it into place, with the storage bracket for the tool braced against her wrist.

  As the television droned advertisements for cleaning sprays and big box retailers, Alyson indulged in her rituals. With her computer already setup, she blocked the hotel’s networks, and plugged in a set of charging cables from her bag, connecting them to her mobile and the old S6 mobile from the bottom of her backpack. She emptied her clothes from her pack, and sent them down the laundry chute in a drawstring bag from a closet in the suite. Long ago she’d decided that if someone was going to pay a thousand dollars a night for her hotel room, she’d better take advantage of as many complementary services as she could.

  Alyson sat down at her computer. The silver streaked home screen greeted her. She opened a command line, and worked her way back into Marina’s records.

  I think that Mrs. Dekare needs to see Ireland, Moscow, maybe Tampa.

  There was no corner that could be left untouched by a well-installed ghost population. The passport logs needed to be modified at the appropriate terminals. Purchases ha
d to be made for delivery. Pick-ups were okay, so long as there was a due date past the time that the ghost was in play. Extended stays, and even return tickets could be a part of the act. Marina’s accounts awarded Alyson with the freedom to summon her ghosts to as many places as she wanted to.

  Either this guy is just that rich, or he really trusts his wife, Alyson thought as she arranged for a five thousand dollar series of flights from Oslo to Austin, all drawn from the one Four Nations debit account.

  Alyson cleaned her tracks, and checked the balance of Marina’s account on her mobile. After the fifteen thousand dollars that Alyson had spent in five different countries, Alyson hadn’t even made a dent.

  Beautiful, she thought as she closed the Four Nations application. If every ghost ran this clean, I could buy a house with the spare change.

  She returned the mobile to its charger, and slumped into the plush couch, and gazed at the television.

  The Broadway Walk wasn’t the first hotel that Alyson had ever stayed in. Her father said that there was one or two before then.

  They’d come to Houston when she was nine. Her mother had taken work with an accounting firm, and assisted with the first of many attempts to restructure city finances in the wake of the first Oct expansion. They stayed at the Broadway Walk for a week while their apartment, a two story condo on the thirty-sixth floor of the Coventry Complex, was finished. Alyson’s father, then out of work from the technical writing trade, stayed with her in the hotel room, where they ordered room service, and ran up the city’s bill while watching fifty year old sci-fi movies until midnight. They’d stare at the city from the deck over the eighteenth floor when the Oct would shut down for the night. Her mother was absent for most of her youth. Her work kept her out late, and if she did make it in before Alyson fell asleep, she found the bedroom before anyone else.

  Alyson picked up the remote, and searched for the channel button, recalling the memory with bittersweet fondness. The channel changed; more news followed. The Four Nations logo filled the top corner of the screen, accompanied by the photo of a man called Tomas Dekare, who died earlier that morning.

  “Fuck,” Alyson whispered. They’ll be looking for her, she thought, hitting the volume button. 

  Investigators have yet to release any details regarding this case…and it trailed on, but Alyson had thrown the remote into the floor. She launched herself out of the couch, and into the desk chair. She hammered the light-board, trying to bring her computer back to life.

  An ounce of hesitation reached her fingertips as Alyson opened a connection to the hotels internal security system. The news delivered no details. This meant no suspects to Alyson’s ears. However, they would be looking for his wife regardless. Next of kin, widow, survivor of the deceased; Alyson was none of them.

  Marina’s account was red flagged, her door key deactivated. Alyson accessed the camera system next.

  In the lobby, six men in light armor passed through the doors carrying assault weapons. A helicopter dropped six more men onto the roof. Two street cops escorted a pair of men in suits to the front desk. The suits shook hands with the clerk. Three of the armored men stepped into the elevator.

  Alyson cut the connection.

  She shut the system down, and shoved everything into her backpack, including her mobiles.

  Alyson left the table and flowers in the floor, spilling water and petals onto the carpet, as she fled into the hotel corridors.

  Marina’s flight landed in Atlanta at eight P.M. She stepped off of the plane, and checked the United Airlines monitors to make sure her departure time hadn’t changed. Satisfied with the ninety minute layover, she made her way to Terminal E.

  Her long trip through the underground corridors was made shorter by the subways that carried her stiff body beneath the airport. She ascended from the underground into the strange blend of shopping mall and mass transit station, and eyed the bookstore with a strange sense of delight. She’d already read over 150 pages of the horror novel she’d selected on the first plane, but it didn’t seem to grab her attention in the way she wanted. Twelve dollars and an old paperback thriller later, she stepped back into the fray, looking for a bite to eat.

  Marina kept checking her watch, aware of how fast time could slip past. Her plane hadn’t even arrived yet, but a paranoid twitch shuffled up and down her spine.

  She grabbed a bag of dried apples and a bottle of water from a vendor, and made her way to a chair near the gate.

  She plugged the charger for her mobile into an outlet, and shifted until she found a comfortable spot in the well-worn blue seats. Stuffing bloomed from a hole in the seat and tickled her leg.

  She opened her new book, and sat her mobile on her leg.

  A few people stopped in the path, and stared at a news broadcast projected on the wall. Marina saw the Four Nations Bank logo in her peripheral. She stood up and saw Tomas’ face in the block beneath the logo, labeled 1997-2030.

  Marina felt her mobile slip from reach, knowing that it fell to the floor. She heard nothing. Several people shrugged as they walked away. Some checked their own mobiles and cursed the price of the Four Nations stock as it trickled down in value. Marina wasn’t sure how to feel about any of them. They didn’t know him, never could have, and never would. As they cleared out, she saw the banner.

  Someone murdered her husband after she left, and there was no suspect.

  Marina retrieved her mobile and luggage from around the seat. She left her snack behind, knowing that the rubbery fruit slices wouldn’t undo the knot in her stomach.

  She approached the United ticket office, and waited in the queue behind a few others. Several minutes passed, and only one person had been taken care of. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat, and moved up another place in the line, feeling the crumpled boarding pass shrink in her hand.

  How long until they know?

  She reached the counter a few minutes later, and laid the crushed boarding pass on the counter with her mobile. She took a moment to straighten it before handing it to the ticket agent.

  “May I see your ID ma’am?” the skinny bald man behind the counter said.

  She dragged her fingers across the screen on her mobile. The screen failed to react. She swatted the icons again, finally raising her ID page, and handed the device to him. He typed for a moment, and scanned her mobile. There was a ring of rejection. He typed again, and then scanned her mobile a second time, sighing; another rejection.

  He typed her ID numbers in this time, and was met with a third ill response.

  The agent stood, and handed the mobile back to Marina. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Dekare. It appears that your identity profile has been compromised.”

  Marina’s breaths became short. She gripped the edge of the black plastic countertop with one hand. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, let’s see…you’re currently signed into six different flights that have left this airport in the past two hours.”

  “But…I’m standing right here. Isn’t there something you can do about this?”

  He mumbled a “let’s see”, and took a sheet of paper from under the countertop. He copied down names and numbers from a list that Marina couldn’t see.

  “You’ll need to contact the United States Identity Protection Agency, and they will start an investigation on your case. They’re nice people, and should be able to get your ID fixed up.”

  “But I need a flight back to Houston tonight. This can’t wait,” she stammered.

  “I understand, but before we can do that we have to confirm that you are who you say you are.”

  “Who else would I be?”

  “Calm down, ma’am.”

  “Sell me a ticket, and I will.”

  “We can’t do that,” he stuttered, his patience about to slip away. He took a breath and rubbed his forehead with a thumb and middle finger. “Look, we will do what we can to help you. We will book you a room at the Hilton, and we can probably have you on a plane by noon tomorr
ow.”

  “I don’t the time for that, my husband is dead” she shouted, her voice cold and stern.

  Marina stormed away with her boarding pass and mobile in hand. As she passed through the terminal concourse, she searched for options. She flipped through various credit accounts on her mobile; all but one of the many accounts had been frozen. The Four Nations debit account glowed on the screen. She tapped the screen, and opened the balance tab.

  When Marina had woken that morning and checked her balance, she had seven thousand dollars set aside for her trip waiting for her. She wasn’t sure how she’d accumulated 12.3 million dollars in a mere twelve hours.