She hadn’t run like this since high school track, but it felt good, invigorating, and as her heart raced it seemed she might overcome her prey. But it picked up its pace and crossed the street. Entered a small car too shrouded in darkness to reveal its color, and started off just as Lexi reached it. She managed to smash the rear driver’s side taillight as the car revved off.
A distinctive manifold leak ticked as it raced away.
She ambled back to the house, shrinking from shadows and jumping once when a cat scurried out from a bush. The lights flicked on as she approached. Simon was moving around.
A scuttlebutt ruffle inside.
“There you are. Were you just outside?”
Silence as she scanned him and the rest of the room. “What was that sound?”
He looked around and shrugged. “What sound? What were you doing out there?”
“Someone . . . I chased him.” Lexi plopped down on the couch, bankrupt of energy.
Simon ran his hands along her body. “You’re freezing. Why didn’t you wake me, you lunatic? It’s the man’s job to scare away burglars.”
“Let’s just go to bed, all right?”
He was gone by the time she awoke at 7:30. It was their “deal” that they had agreed upon for mutually beneficial reasons. It had the bonus of making each time seem naughty, exciting.
Working on the book at home that morning, she clicked up the Yahoo home page to see if there were any more developments on the Wormwood meteoroid. There wasn’t, and she sighed. Satan jumped up on her lap while Plato 5 remained aloof, lethargic. At least someone is mourning Gramps’ loss, she thought.
“Why am I so interested in some flying rocks in outer space, huh kitty-boy?”
Satan licked her hand and waited for her to reciprocate.
Hours later when a headache had developed from staring at the screen too long, Lexi went out to Tim Hortons. Feeling whimsical and recalling Gramps’ words of her aversion to the news, she bought a paper, cringing at the coffee-shop rabble. She read a little faster than a normal, holding the pages out to avoid the sight of people. Just as a group of teen-aged girls succumbed to a paroxysm of laughter, Lexi flipped to the obits.
She was ready to set it down and leave when one of the pictures caught her eye. She peered closer and for a moment forgot to breathe. “Oh my God.” It was Mr. Boetie’s obituary. Seemed so sudden, so random, and yet there was a line in it that made her think that perhaps it had not been sudden: Etienne suffered from scintillating scotoma for years.
Her gaze traveled over the café, landed on a pair of eyes that were peering over a paper. Wide, blank eyes under the soft rim of a black leather fedora latched on to her.
Lexi got up and left without looking at the creepy man under the fedora.
Back in her truck, listening to the slowly rising scales of the Fourth Movement, her mind wandered over the events of the past few weeks. Mr. Boetie had seemed a little off, even eccentric, but could someone really have wanted him dead?
“Too many coincidences,” she said aloud.
Linnux failed to answer his cell, so she flipped the turn signal and headed out to his dorm. A compulsion to beat her leg bubbled up from the dungeon. Fighting the urge would only make it worse.
She lifted her fist and brought it down against her thigh.
It wasn’t good enough. She struck again, harder this time. Again and again she slammed her fist until at last the effort was sufficient. But the quantity was still lacking and so she continued beating while driving. The truck raced down Stephen Hawley Road to GCC, Beethoven’s Choral Finale screaming in exalted tones as Lexi submitted to her compulsion.
She was stroking her bruising thigh when she arrived at the Willow House lot three minutes later. Head clear, she limped to room #33. The halls were strangely vacant for a Tuesday afternoon, with only the stray duo of guys mocking each other’s drinking techniques or lack of sexual escapades. The door to 33 was cracked and Lexi saw with a glance that the keyhole was scratched beyond normal wear.
“It’s a dorm, quit being so paranoid.”
She knocked. “Linnux? It’s me. I’m coming in.” Under her breath she added, “You better have clothes on.”
The blinds were still down. Somber darkness. She kicked aside strewn sweatshirts and put one hand to her face as the stench of body wafted up. Linnux was not here.
His computer and the various components—some of which Lexi could not even name—overpowered a flimsy Wal-Mart desk. She tried to access it but this proved fruitless. Turning to leave, she ran smack into a barrel of a chest too large to have been naturally created by God.
“Whoa, little miss,” a surprisingly effeminate voice said from a foot above her head. “What are you doing here? You another one of those reporters?”
“Reporters?” She backed up far enough to behold the behemoth. “Why would reporters come here?”
“Who are you?” Despite the situation, Lexi had to stifle a laugh when she heard the girly alto proceeding from the behemoth.
“I’m Linnux’s friend.”
“Oh,” the behemoth put his giant hands together and twiddled them. “Wait, if you’re his friend, how come you don’t know what happened?”
Lexi put her hand to her chest as the room swayed. Please not him.
“He was attacked. I found him yesterday. He was alive but unconscious.”
“Who hurt him? Where is he?” she stepped closer.
“St. Jerome’s Hospital,” he said as Lexi ran out.
Traffic seemed to be conspiring against her as she headed for St. Jeromes. “Come on you old fart, move your slow ass!”
Fifteen minutes later (so pissed off by this point that the pain in her thigh wasn’t even a blip on her concern-o-meter) she cursed the elevators. “Why are there so many floors to a hospital anyway?”
At the desk she learned Linnux had been moved from the ICU to the black hole reserved for those who rudely decide to survive—otherwise known as the recovery ward.
He was awake and sitting up, thumbing a blackberry. She might’ve smiled had it not been for the sight of his leg hanging in a steel elevated rest and the bruises discoloring his face like mucked-up make-up. “Who did this?”
A shrug. A flinch. His eyes slowly scrolled over to the corner where a man dressed all in black save for brilliant azure patches on his right shoulder stood up and buttoned his suit coat. The two patches were devoid of the bold-type initials typical of federal employees, displaying instead an ankh lying broken under the foot of an American eagle simultaneously munching on a bolt of lightning. The absurdity of it was comical, but the man’s face most certainly was not.
He stood in the shadows but Lexi could still perceive the needle-sized antennae of his wireless ear bud. As he approached his suit coat shifted, and she noticed the bulge of a piece strapped mid-chest under his shoulder. Gramps had taught her how to spot these.
She looked at Linnux.
In his eyes: Run!
But leaving Linnux alone with this creature did not seem like something designed to please Emily Post. So as the man’s shadow covered her and siphoned the last cool air out of the room, Lexi remained where she was, attempting to control her breathing.
“Miss Montaigne,” the man said. It could have been a question or an accusation for all the inflection and timbre in his voice. He removed his white trilby. “John Jeffries, SCIA.”
Chapter 10
1941-1942
Two days later the news stopped printing stories about Dorl and Batavia Primary. What was really disconcerting was that it had stopped the night after those government and military vehicles had rolled into town, pillaged City Hall, and scooped up the surviving vials from the factory wreckage. All within ten hours.
The last article contained a picture of Dorl’s back as he was entering a building. The structure was not familiar to Virgil, nor was the background, and the article didn’t mention where the picture had been taken. He was clipping it out when a knock on hi
s door interrupted.
“Reese,” Virgil said on opening the door. “How are you today?”
Reese the postman nodded. Handed Virgil a ten-by-ten-by-six inch box.
“What is this?”
“Don’t know,” Reese said, scratching behind his ear as usual. “A bunch of ‘em came in. All the former employees of BP got one, far as I can tell.”
Virgil looked it over. “There’s no return address.”
“No, none of the others had one either. Welp, have a nice one, Virge.”
He sank into his wing back chair and opened the box. Yanking the straw stuffing aside, he pulled out a very fine oak case. Gleaming high gloss finish brought out the grain and showed off the craftsmanship of perfectly mitered corners flowing into each other. Inside the oak box was one-thousand dollars in ten crisp Benjamin’s.
Under these lay a single note: ‘A parting gift for a former employee’.
He set the box down and wound his VV-XI floor model Victrola before gently setting the needle on Beethoven’s Fifth. Ponderings on Mr. Dorl chugged along with racing violins and tumultuous trumpets. By the end of the piece, he’d made a decision.
“He is trying to placate us, Plato. He thinks he can throw us off by making himself appear philanthropic.”
Over the next few weeks he discovered that he was alone in his beliefs; the other former employees all seemed utterly bamboozled by Dorl’s fake generosity. ‘Why would he try to kill us and then turn around and give us retirement packages?’ they all asked him—verbatim.
He had no proof or even a clear explanation why he refused to believe the collective theory, only suppositions and empty accusations. He couldn’t even explain his beliefs to himself, but only knew he must be right.
The $1,000 proved useful when he entered the Batavia Sheriffs training program. Within eight months he passed the entrance exam and the field test.
Entering the Sheriff’s file room one day in the autumn of ’42, Virgil closed the door and opened his manila envelope. Sweat stained the pits of his uniform. The package was from his contact in the government, an operative named Silas Godspeed who he had encountered during his trip to New York City for the Detectives in Training Conference. Silas had developed his own personal interest in Mr. Dorl almost five years earlier.
Only Silas mysteriously referred to him as Mr. Rold.
A radio somewhere among the towers of papers spat out the details of the first game of the World Series between the Yankees and Cardinals. The tinny, excited voice of Red Barber matched Virgil’s racing thoughts. On completing Godspeeds peculiar cipher, Virgil exhaled.
“Finally.”
Silas had written about a supposed sighting of a business man in London matching Dorl’s (or Rold’s) description.
As Red announced a Cardinals rally Virgil read: “It seems that this Mr. Rold has set up a steel mill and hired workers faster than Howard Hughes can fly. He has already become the third largest contractor for the Ministry of Defense. My sources in London say that Mr. Rold is never seen in the factory, but that the building receives shipments of ore and other, more precious resources every Tuesday and Friday. I haven’t been able to attain any samples yet but I have heard a few reports of soldiers claiming their Lee-Enfield rifles from his mill are the finest they’ve ever used. His intentions seem noble, but at every turn I find mysterious deaths. On August Second, one of the drivers making a delivery at the Rold plant disappeared. Apparently this man had been asking employees about Mr. Rold and when asked to stop he refused, I know this because I interviewed one of the employees. The man was very reluctant, but I told him if he was scared of something that the government could help him. I have enclosed the reel. P.S. Don’t trust anyone, I have a sneaking suspicion that this shit climbs to the Greater London Authority.”
Virgil folded the letter, pocketed it, and then stood to leave. He ran into Captain Colson.
“Heading out, Montaigne?”
“Yes sir, it has come round again,” Virgil said as he always did at the end of his shift. He noticed that Chuck’s eyes were following the manila envelope under his arm. “My application to enter the Bureau,” Virgil explained.
Red Barber announced the Yankees’ victory.
“Would you listen to that, of course they won, the Yankees own the Series.” He moved to leave but Chuck filled the doorway.
“Looks like more than an application,” Chuck accused. He removed his blue cap and ran fingers through chestnut curls, all while staring at the envelope. “It is insulting to lie, you know. I mean, it’s probably none of my business, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t consider me a fool.”
Virgil nodded. “I don’t. Good day, sir.”
That was the first time he felt the ‘eyes’ on his back, that feeling of being watched.
After placing Silas’ letter in the oak box at home, Virgil pulled out the little German Magnetophone Silas’s agency had confiscated during an early reconnaissance mission. He inserted the reel, fed the line and connected it to the empty reel. Switch flipped, the cacophony began.
He had his vodka cocktail at hand while listening to the interview for the fourth time later that evening. The British worker claimed he had never met Mr. Rold, and that none of the others had either. “We received the post one day and there was a job offer. That was it.” The man’s voice was muffled, but Virgil could hear the apprehension, the hesitation to reveal something marring the voice. “He pays us well, Inspector Godspeed. We don’t ask questions.”
“Did you hear about what happened in Batavia New York?” Silas asked.
“Never heard of Batavia. Please, his men will come, you have to leave.”
The reel reached the end and Virgil let it flap. “Philanthropy and advanced alloys,” Virgil said to Plato. “He sets up factories quicker than should be possible and with money that remains unexplained.” He quaffed the cocktail. “Where did he come from? What’s he planning?”
The next day he commissioned Staout Safe Inc. for four steel reinforced ash chests.
He’d need someplace safe to store the answers once he found them.
Chapter 11
“Did you order Mr. Hansen to hack into government archives?” Mr. Jeffries SCIA said.
A rush of blood through the ears seemed to siphon the appurtenant sounds of the room. Lexi tried to think of a convincing lie. Failed miserably.
“Yes, it was my idea. Linnux was only doing what I told him to do.” She stood erect, chest out, head back, trying to display a fearlessness she didn’t feel. How did Gramps and daddy deal with these federal types? What happened to the air conditioning?
The African American SCIA agent leaned down to her and, with a face that betrayed no emotion, said, “Do you have any idea the shit you two have dug up?”
Something in Jeffries’ tone ignited the last memory she had of her father, that of the day he went to work and never came home. She had asked a question, some silly six year old question which she couldn’t now recall; but she remembered his answer: If you are ever frightened of a grown up, just remember, Alexis, in the grand scheme of things, no one is more important than anyone else.
And just like that, Mr. Jeffries was no more intimidating than Linnux.
“What are going to do, arrest us for playing on the computer, for busting through your crumbling firewalls?” She held her arms out as though ready to be cuffed.
This seemed to amuse Jeffries as his stoic face morphed like a Salvador Dali clock. “The SCIA doesn’t arrest people, Miss Montaigne. I was sent here to offer you a job. Would you care for some crappy coffee?”
Lexi looked back at Linnux for an explanation, but for once he seemed as baffled as she. She turned back to Jeffries and nodded. “That didn’t exactly sound like a question.”
He put his arm out, gesturing for her to leave first, and she exited the room. He shadowed her to the cafeteria. There he placed his white trilby on the linoleum table.
Surrounded by the sick and the mournful, they co
nversed. Jeffries displayed the remarkable ability to speak at length without revealing anything about himself. It wasn’t until Lexi grew tired of the contrived palaver that she said, “I’d appreciate it if you stopped playing games with me. It’s insulting.”
Jeffries quaffed the last of his coffee—a professional drinker indeed; its bitterness rivaled that of Pete Rose’s with the Hall of Fame. He continued staring.
“I’m not telling you anything until you explain this job.”
“Stubborn and inexplicably bold, just like Virgil,” Jeffries said. “And like your father.”
He’s looking to get a rise out of me. She did think it odd though that the agent wasn’t looking around nervously, but instead kept his eyes burning into hers. Not to her chest or to the young nurses scattered about, nor to the exits as Gramps had said agents tend to do. “You don’t usually go into the field, do you?”
“I have been authorized to invite you to accompany us during an interview with Mr. Dorl on the thirtieth.”
She nearly dropped her cup, sat up straight. “You guys know where he is?”
“We know where he will be on the thirtieth.”
“How did you get him to agree to an interview after all these years?” Lower your voice, silly little girl. She leaned across the table, waited.
“That is what bothers us, Miss Montaigne. Mr. Dorl contacted us, with a clause stipulating that the interview would not happen without you.”
“Excuse me? That doesn’t make any sense.” The events of the last few weeks coursed through her mind, the word ‘machination’ asserting itself in the forefront. “Why would he want me there? Who am I to him?”
“That’s what we were wondering,” Jeffries said, finally scanning the cafeteria.
It took a few long minutes of working it out amid chaotic chatter. “You think Linnux and I are working with Mr. Dorl, don’t you?”
The Fifth Descent of Lexi Montaigne Page 6