The Conviction: Enacting Vigilante Justice

by John Mathews

  “Well we need to figure out something, I mean he didn’t just DISAPPEAR. Something bad happened to that dude and someone must have taken him out of this room.”

  Nancy dug her fingers into her temples, trying to alleviate some of the tension in her head. “Right – or he was able to escape somehow. But there doesn’t appear to be any other way out of this room. Unless you think he could have climbed out that small window up there in the corner. We sure didn’t miss him coming back into the hallway.”

  “That window is sealed with steel bars, like all the others. And he wouldn’t even be able to climb up that high in the first place. Look at all the dude’s blood on the floor, man! He didn’t escape nowhere. Nobody could survive that kind of blood loss.”

  Nancy looked at the pool of blood that had oozed under the doorway and breathed in deeply. Something wasn’t right, she thought. The blood seemed to be kind of runny. And the smell – it wasn’t metallic as one would expect, but a little sour.

  Someone is playing games with us. This is nothing more than a scare tactic. “I’m not a forensic expert, but this doesn’t actually seem like blood. It is too runny, more like water, and it smells funny. I probably shouldn’t do this but…”

  She dipped her finger into the red liquid and put some onto the tip of her tongue. Her lips puckered with the strange taste. “That’s not like any blood that I’ve ever known before.”

  Jeffrey gazed at her with a look of disbelief. “So what are you telling me – that this blood ain’t real and he didn’t die?”

  “Well I don’t know, but it seems that someone wanted to make it look like he died, that’s for sure. I think the bigger question is – where did John go? If someone captured him then where would they have taken him?”

  Jeffrey walked around the outside of the room to examine the walls. They were all made of solid concrete. He pounded his fists against them. His hands stung from the blows and there was little sound. “All these walls are rock solid. There are no other exits from the room.”

  “Well I guess that leaves the floor and ceiling.” Nancy looked up. The ceiling was made of old painted brick, with paint chips with traces of mold on them starting to fall to the floor. There was no visible opening. The floors were made of more solid concrete.

  Nancy shrugged. “These rooms are like little prison cells. There is just that one small, barred window. It seems that John just vanished.”

  Jeffrey started to laugh. “It’s a fucking miracle. The dude just VANISHED. He came into the room alone and POOF he’s gone. All that is here is a fucking cage with some snakes in it and a stone bench.” He kicked the cage and the two krait snakes writhed.

  Nancy waved her finger at him. “Would you please maintain a calmer disposition. Those are dangerous reptiles that don’t need to be messed with. Getting angry doesn’t help anything.”

  “Oh shit, I’m so sorry. I know that you like being locked up like this, but for me, it’s a real problem! I won’t mess with the poor snakes anymore.”

  Jeffrey kicked the slab of stone in frustration before taking a seat on it. Then he jerked his head back in dismay. The sound resonated with a full echo.

  “This stone is hollow. I think that John might be locked inside this thing like a coffin. We need to get the top off of it.”

  Nancy looked at the slab of stone. “Well that thing must weigh twice as much as I do. I don’t think I would be much help in…”

  “I’ll take care of it. Stand back.” Jeffrey bent down, gripping the edge of the slab of stone, and propping his feet against the side wall. Then, with all his strength, he pushed. The stone felt like an immovable object. Then it started to budge ever so slightly. Jeffrey scowled and grunted, his veins popping out of his arms like little worms. He heaved and thrust his weight against the stone again. It slid slowly along the top of the bench.

  After a couple more minutes of a grueling display of strength and determination, the slab of stone slid off the rest of the base so that Jeffrey could see easily inside. Nancy came closer and peered with him into the opening, expecting the worst. Both of their jaws dropped in astonishment. The hollowed out opening went right through the floor. A narrow stairway led down into the darkness below.

  EIGHT

  Jeffrey stepped back a bit and looked at Nancy. “Let’s do this. I’ll go first and you can stay close behind me.”

  Nancy gazed at him incredulously. I can’t stand people who act on pure impulse. The typical mind of a habitual criminal. “Do you ever think before you act? We have no idea what’s down there. All we know is that John must have been taken down that stairway by someone. And we wouldn’t even be able to SEE anything in the darkness.”

  Jeffrey leapt at the chance to refute her argument. “I told you already, I’m here to find out exactly what’s going on! I’m gonna locate the puppet master and pull back the curtain. That video tape, the gas, and threats made against us don’t scare me one fucking bit. Someone is playing us like a fiddle and we need to find out who and why, before it gets worse.”

  “So what’s the plan then, sport? We just go down into the dark tunnel and hope for the best?”

  “Do you have a better idea?” he replied dryly. “If it was up to you, we would be heading into the other two rooms for the latest death traps.”

  If it was up to me, I would watch the snakes take a few bites out of you. “Is your phone charged? We can at least use them as a light source.”

  Jeffrey took his phone out of his pocket. “Sure, they’re better than nothing. I’ll lead the way.”

  He started to go slowly down the narrow stairway. The steps were old and rickety, so Jeffrey stepped carefully. Nancy stayed right behind him, holding onto the back of his shirt with one hand. Her heart was pounding and she held her cell phone in the other hand, lighting up the stairwell curve to the left as they went.

  After about twenty paces, they reached the bottom of the stairs. In front of them was a narrow tunnel that wound around to the left. The walls were made of concrete and the ceiling was made of an unfinished, hardened clay. As Nancy moved slowly along, she noticed a trail of what appeared to be blood on the ground. She wondered if it was the same consistency as the “blood” that they had seen upstairs or something else.

  A couple of minutes later they came to three steps going upwards and passing through an arch-shaped opening. Jeffrey went through the opening first and then stopped dead in his tracks. Nancy stopped right behind him, curious about the pause. “What’s up ahead of us?”

  Jeffrey held a hand behind him to motion her to stay back. He had entered a long narrow room that was dark except for a series of green laser beams that went from wall to wall. There were around 20 beams, some crossing each other, cutting through much of the space inside the room.

  “Stay right where you are,” Jeffrey cautioned. “The room is secured with military laser beams. I’m gonna have to find a way to bypass them.”

  Nancy gasped. “But how can you do that? And what happens if you touch one of the lasers?”

  “Temporary paralysis with a feeling like your skin is melting off your flesh. Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “Let’s go back. I think that it’s too…”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Jeffrey scoffed. “I’ll get myself through the damn lasers. There should be a switch on the other side of the room to turn them off.”

  Exasperated with his impulsiveness, Nancy stayed in the archway watching Jeffrey.

  He surveyed the layout of the laser beams. There were two rows of them, one about a foot above the floor, and the other a few feet higher. They went in a zigzag pattern with most of the beams crossing somewhere in the middle. Trying to move through the center of the room would be impossible, Jeffrey concluded, so he needed to start near one of the walls.

  He stood alongside the left wall close to the door and carefully examined the maze-like laser beam pattern. The laser beams on the top row cut across different parts of the room from those on the bottom row. His
plan was to stay low, beneath the top row at all times. Bending down at the waist, Jeffrey stepped over the first laser beam, while keeping his head and body low to avoid touching the other ones above him. The next several laser beams on the bottom row crossed each other, forming some diamond shaped spaces in between them.

  Jeffrey kicked his leg up as high as he could while staying bent over at the waist. His training in martial arts was proving beneficial. Then he began to step into the diamond-shaped areas between the laser beams. After a couple more steps in between the laser beams, he saw that they were starting to run closer together. Navigating in between them was becoming more difficult, but there was no turning back. Jeffrey took a deep breath and stepped fearlessly into another diamond-shaped space. With little room to maneuver and not daring to change position, he turned his head to his right to see if there was more room for him to move.

  The glare from one of the lasers caught him right in the eyes. His eyes burned as if his retinas were on fire. Temporarily unable to see, Jeffrey bent down, covering his face with the palms of his hands. He let out a deafening roar that made Nancy’s heart leap into her throat.

  “Jeffrey! Are you all right? Come back!” she shouted.

  He remained motionless. After another minute, he opened his eyes, and was relieved to discover that he could see, although his vision was blurry. Keeping his face forward and looking only with his peripheral vision, Jeffrey stepped over another laser beam and into a larger diamond-shaped space to his right. At this point he discovered that the bottom row of laser beams throughout the rest of the room increased in height another foot above the floor. Guessing that stepping over the lower row would be impossible now, he laid down flat on his stomach.

  Keeping his legs spread apart, knees bent, and chest flat to the floor, Jeffrey slowly crawled forward, inch by inch, like a giant land tortoise. He couldn’t see more than a foot in front of him. After moving a few feet beneath the bottom row of laser beams, he passed by a small, plastic motion detector attached to the right wall. The laser beams nearest to the far end of the room started moving, back and forth, one at a time, covering every inch of space around them. Then the next farthest laser beams started moving. It looked like a wave of lights coming at Jeffrey and he knew that he had just a few seconds to do something drastic.

  He gazed upwards. Relieved to see that there were no laser beams crossing right above his head, he sprang to his feet and got a better look at the ceiling. Long, flat, concrete support beams ran horizontally between the walls about two feet apart with three round metal beams running vertically across them. If he could jump up and grab the vertical beam closest to him, Jeffrey thought that he could move along it to the other end of the room.

  He crouched down again. Then with all his strength, he launched himself several feet into the air with his arms stretching up. He grabbed onto one of the metal support beams. Just as several moving laser beams were about to hit him, he pulled his entire body up with his massive arms and curled into a ball. The laser beams narrowly missed him. A steel door was now visible in the back of the room. He inched his way forward along the metal beam, keeping his knees bent and legs tucked in so as to stay out of the field of the laser beams below.

  Nancy was terrified. Her state of panic made her want to shout out to Jeffrey to be careful, but she did not want to cause him to fall and stayed quiet.

  He came to the first concrete support beam which he had to get past in some way. Keeping an unyielding grip with his right hand, Jeffrey let go for an instant with his left hand to move it around the beam. Then gripping hard with his left hand, he brought the right hand around the support beam. Even with his remarkable brute strength, he felt a violent pain shoot through his arms. Breathing heavily, he knew that he couldn’t make it past the last couple rows of concrete support beams without falling.

  Almost to the point of losing his grip, Jeffrey let his legs down just a tad but still with his knees bent. Then he swung his legs back and forth a couple of times. Finally, he swung them out in front and launched himself through the air towards the back of the room. He just cleared the rest of the moving laser beams, and crashed against the back wall. Nancy heard the loud thud that his body made hitting the wall and was certain that he must be injured. But incredibly unfazed, Jeffrey stood up, and went over to examine the thick, steel door blocking the exit. The heavy sliding door was kept shut by a locking mechanism, and Jeffrey knew that he couldn’t open it with his bare hands. On the front of the door was a large, gold circular combination lock. The dial on the lock had the numbers 0 through 90 on it in increments of ten with marks in between for the single digits.

  Jeffrey turned the dial several times clockwise. Then he pressed his ear up against the lock and turned the dial slowly counterclockwise, listening carefully. He reset the dial and repeated the process again. After doing this several times, he took a wrinkled piece of paper from his pocket and a worn down pencil. He scribbled down some numbers and kept turning the dial, as he eagerly made calculations. After ten more minutes, with numbers written all over the piece of paper, Jeffrey entered what he was sure was the right combination to the lock. All of the laser beams shut off and the steel door slid open.

  He cupped his hands over his mouth. “It’s safe, you can come now – let’s go.”

  Nancy ran through the room towards Jeffrey. “My God, I could hardly see anything. Are you okay?”

  “I’ve been better, but don’t worry about a thing.”

  They continued on through the doorway and into another tunnel that wound around to the left. The narrow concrete walls gave Nancy a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. A minute later they reached the end of the walkway where there was a steel security door. Jeffrey found a metal handle and tried to turn it but it was locked. The handle was part of a larger device which had a few buttons on it and a small glass scanner. He looked puzzled.

  “What’s this and how does it open?”

  Nancy placed her finger in front of her lips. “Shhh – we need to whisper. We don’t know who is inside there or what they might do.”

  Jeffrey nodded.

  Nancy continued quietly. “That’s a fingerprint scanning device. It’s connected to a computer system which recognizes the fingerprint of anyone who puts their finger on that piece of glass. Only those registered with this system can gain access to the room.”

  “So then how the hell are we gonna open it?”

  “You tell me, chief. I don’t think there’s any way that we can. And that door is made of steel so don’t think about trying to knock it down like an ape.”

  “Do I look that stupid?” Jeffrey snapped. “We need to figure out if John came down here alone or with someone else. Does EACH person need to have their fingerprint scanned to enter the room or only one person?”

  Nancy held her cell phone up to see the scanner more clearly. “Keep your voice down! I’m not exactly sure. I just know that it takes a fingerprint to open that door.”

  “So if John came in through that door then maybe he had to scan his fingerprint. Right?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then I think we have a way to get his fingerprint. There should be one on his wine glass that he left out in the hallway upstairs.”

  “And what do you think we’re going to do with a fingerprint that we can’t even see on a piece of glass?”

  “Think about it. We need to find a way to get the print from the glass onto a piece of tape or a glove or something. I saw it done in a movie once. They used a powder to capture the image of the print. If we look around maybe we can find…”

  Is he joking? He suddenly goes from a barbarian who breaks into houses with an iron bar to a calculated high-tech burglar? “You better stop watching movies, sport. We are not getting inside that room without the right finger.”

  “So then what the fuck do you suggest that we do?”

  “Come over here, further away from that door.” Nancy motioned to Jeffrey as she walked several
paces back down the walkway. “Let’s think about who’s inside there and what their intentions are. I think you’re going to have to do something to get their attention.”

  Jeffrey nodded. “Whoever’s in there is blackmailing us, obviously. They’re threatening to bust us and want us to be scared.”

  Nancy raised her eyebrows. “Exactly. So do you really think that someone wants to hurt us? What good would that do? They just want us to THINK that we’re in physical danger. The real motive is obviously just more money. We need to know why they would want us to think that John was killed. What could’ve really happened to him?”

  “I dunno. Maybe he did what he was supposed to do and was set free. The rest was just to scare us.”

  “Good thinking. This could all just be a ploy to frighten us. So there are two possibilities for whoever is in that room. One would be that the person who is behind all of this is in there – alone or with someone else. Two would be that someone has John in there, keeping him captive in some way.”

  “Ya, I agree. So what’s your idea?”

  Nancy leaned closer to Jeffrey with her mouth near his ear. “Can you put on an acting performance? You’ll need to change your voice a little. This is a very daring move, but I think if you present yourself as a law enforcement officer and speak loudly to whoever is on the other side of that door, that you’ll get a response.”

  “Ya, I can act – I’ve been bullshitting people my whole life. But law enforcement? You mean you want me to act like I am a fucking cop?”

  “Basically. If we don’t really think that these people are hostile and just say that we want to talk to them…”

  “Not hostile?” Jeffrey sounded irritated. “We don’t even KNOW what happened to John, or Kevin for that matter. Nor do we have any idea what lengths these freaks will go to. I don’t wanna be no damn cop, that’s for sure.”

  Nancy chuckled. “Do you have any better ideas?”

  “Ya – I do. Why don’t I just be myself? Jeffrey. I can convince them that I contacted the police. That I’m on to the blackmail plot and want to chat and reason with them. I can present myself however I need to until I get inside. Then I’ll do what I think is best based on what I find.”