Everybody Dies - A Thriller (Phineas Troutt Mysteries Book 3)

by J. A. Konrath

  McGlade blew the dog whistle, his cheeks puffing out with effort.

  It was dark, so we didn’t see the canines coming. But after counting the seconds in my head, they both ran in through the open front door, and I yanked on the rope and closed the door behind them, and Harry tore ass into the library with me as the dogs jumped on the fox, and then I dropped the rope and closed the door and we were safe and it all actually worked out. And for some insane reason, it made me feel pretty good. The best I’d actually felt in days.

  To get back outside, we had to climb through a window. Then we went back around to the front door, untied the rope from the outside knob, and I opened the door just a crack while McGlade wound it around an old book he held in his robot hand.

  The dogs didn’t even seem to notice we were there.

  When we exited the grounds, I spent a minute bending the wrought iron fence bar back into place.

  “You want to drive? Hardly got any sleep last night, and I’m exhausted.”

  “Sure.” Then I yawned.

  “You just yawned. I don’t want you wrecking my Vette. We could get a room in town.”

  “We need to find Pasha, Harry.”

  “Okay, I’ll drive, you try out the thumb drive.”

  When we got back to his car, I booted up his laptop.

  “What’s your password?” I asked.

  “Harry McGlade is the coolest guy of all time and his dick is huge. No caps, no spaces.”

  It took me three times—and about three minutes—to type all of that in correctly, only to find out that the thumb drive was also password protected.

  I yawned again.

  “Stop yawning,” Harry said, and yawned.

  That made me yawn again, and him yawn again, and even Little Elvis, who was laying on Harry’s dashboard, opened his little pink mouth and yawned.

  “I gotta stop for coffee.”

  McGlade, in a masterstroke of genius, stopped at an oasis and bought a box of Turbo-A-Lert; a caffeine supplement used by truckers and speed freaks who had gotten bored with meth because it was too mellow. After he downed the fifth tablet with a can of cold espresso, we got back on the road.

  I closed my eyes and sleep took me.

  An undetermined time later, McGlade screamed and slammed on the brakes, pitching me forward and waking me from my nap.

  “What the hell, Harry?”

  The private eye was covered in a glossy sheen of sweat, his head shaking side to side like he’d developed Parkinson’s,

  “Elves,” he whispered.

  “Elves.”

  “In the middle of the road.”

  “You just stopped for elves.” I wanted to be sure I was clear.

  “Dozens of elves. They were having a party. An elf party.”

  I said, “I’ll drive.”

  “I think I hit a few. Check if there are any elves caught in the driveshaft.”

  “You took too many uppers, Harry. You’re hallucinating.”

  McGlade looked at me, horrified.

  “I’m screwed.”

  “It’ll be okay. The pills just need to get through your system.”

  “I’m screwed by the elves. Will they come after me, Phin? Will the elves plot vengeance?”

  “Let’s change seats, amigo. I’ll take it from here.”

  “I wet my pants.” He felt around, then sniffed his hand. “No. It’s just sweat. I think.”

  I leaned over to open McGlade’s door, then unsnapped his belt and gently shoved him out of the car, all the time talking soothingly and trying to avoid any quick movements. Harry, for his part, shook like the shock-therapy poster boy and jerked his head side-to-side with undisguised paranoia. I hopped over the partition, into the driver’s seat, and he leaned under his chassis to check for elf parts.

  “Get in the car, McGlade.”

  “They could try to cut the brakes.”

  I honked. He screamed, then quickly got in the car.

  “What happened to Little Elvis?”

  The hamster, who’d been content on the dashboard, was no longer there.

  “Did the Elves grab Little Elvis?”

  “I’m sure he’s around. You hit the brakes pretty hard.”

  “They took him, Phin. The elves love hamsters. They ride hamsters into battle, like horses.” Harry clutched my shirt. “Don’t let the elves take little Elvis.”

  I spotted the rodent near Harry’s feet. “He’s on the floormat. Stop acting crazy.”

  Harry grabbed Little Elvis and hugged him close. “The elves are jealous of me. Of my height, and my big penis. Elves have tiny little doinkers, Phin.”

  “You better let me hold your gun, too.”

  I took his Magnum from his shoulder holster, putting it under the front seat.

  “Like a grape with a foreskin, Phin. Real small.”

  Having been asleep, I had no idea where we were, but I assumed we were going in the right direction. I put the car into gear and eased back onto the highway. A few miles up the road I saw a sign indicating we were in Iowa. Still a long way from home.

  “They hide. In elf holes.”

  “Just close your eyes, Harry.”

  “They get you when you close your eyes. We need anti-elf spray.”

  “There are no such thing as elves, McGlade.”

  He gaped at me, bug-eyed and horrified. “Sweet Jesus! They got to you!”

  And so it went.

  Three hours later, we still weren’t back in Chicago, and Harry still hadn’t crashed. His elf hallucinations eventually stopped, being replaced by strange clicking and sucking noises, and a worrisome facial tic.

  I actually preferred him singing.

  An hour later, we were back in his office. Harry locked himself in his computer lab—probably to keep out the elves—and I stretched out on his waiting room couch.

  I’d been homeless before. But this was different. Previous times, I’d chosen to hit the streets. I’d been proactive, rather than reactive. My initiative, my decision.

  Now, I was just reeling from punches, trying to stay on my feet. And I wasn’t sure I could recover. This might be more than just another low point. It might actually be the end.

  Does it matter? Earl asked.

  Probably not.

  You think Hugo is a parasite. A burden on humanity. You’re no better. You’re selfish in the same way. You hurt people, take what you want, contribute nothing to the world. What have you ever done for anybody?

  I thought about Kenny Jen Bang Ko. I never knew much about him. I never bothered to learn. Did he have a wife? Children? Friends?

  He’d been killed for the crime of knowing me.

  The same thing was going to happen to Pasha. Unless I saved her.

  You won’t be able to save her. You can’t even save yourself.

  I thought about Harry, tripping balls on over-the-counter stimulants, busting his ass to help me without any kind of compensation.

  You’re putting him in danger, too. That’s what happens to people around you.

  I thought about Jack. I hadn’t left that situation on a good note. I wondered if I could fix it.

  She’s a good person. You’re a homeless, drug addicted bum. You’re not the kind of person Jack is friends with. You’re the kind she puts behind bars.

  I thought about the future.

  Dumb ass, you have no future. When I finally kill you, I’ll be doing the world a favor.

  As with many things, Earl was probably right.

  When I opened my eyes, McGlade was squatting next to me, staring, like some sort of rumpled, unshaven zombie.

  “Morning,” he said. “I was watching you sleep. Is that creepy?”

  “Very.”

  “Actually, I was trying to see if your chest was moving or not.”

  “You thought I was dead.”

  “Only a little.”

  “What time is it?”

  “A little after nine. I got donuts. There aren’t any left. Probably no reaso
n to even tell you that.”

  I sat up, and Earl awoke and began clawing at me. “Did you sleep?”

  “No. But I stopped hallucinating. So that’s good. I still can’t get into Packer’s laptop, but I cracked the pen drive.”

  “What’s on it?”

  “Don’t you want to hear how I did it?”

  I did not want to hear how he did it. But I was going to hear it regardless, so I relented. “Yeah.”

  “I used a brute-force dictionary attack,” Harry beamed.

  “Clever.” I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Took six hours. Still isn’t working on his laptop. I think I’ll try LM hashes through rainbow tables. It’s Windows, so maybe I can dump directly from the SAM files.”

  “Genius.”

  “I actually have no idea what I’m talking about. I got the programs from a hacker.”

  I stood up, stretched. So many parts of me hurt it all blended together in a full-body throb. “What was on the pen drive?”

  “Three folders, each with a text file of names and addresses. I’ve been Googling them for the last few hours, trying to figure out who they are. The first list has over ten thousand people. A lot of the addresses are for prisons. I think it’s a Caucasian Nation membership list. Packer and Hugo are both on it.”

  “The second list?”

  “Politicians. Journalists. Bloggers. Newscasters. CEOs. All of them right-wing. Influencers. Allies, maybe. Powerful folks, probably sympathetic to the cause.”

  “And the third?”

  “Left-wing politicians. Liberal journalists. High profile people of color. Activists. Heads of prominent minority organizations.”

  “Enemies,” I said.

  “That’s my guess.”

  “Are there six thousand of them? Last time I talked to Pasha, she said that six thousand would die.”

  “Let’s check.”

  Harry waddled off, and I followed him. His computer lab had four desktops, two of them switched on and running programs, one of them tethered to Milton’s laptop. Little Elvis was in a cage next to it, sucking on his water drip bottle. There was also a couch, and the cushions had been taken off and stacked to the side, propping up a blanket that made sort of a tent.

  “I built a fort,” he said, noticing my gaze. “It’s elf-proof.”

  I nodded. “How very clever of you.”

  “That Turbo-A-Lert is hardcore. Our country makes weed illegal, which is a billion times safer than tobacco and alcohol, but you can go into any store and buy over-the-counter pills strong enough to give a rhino a heart attack. Why ban a naturally growing plant with countless health benefits, and then sell addictive, dangerous chemicals?”

  I shrugged. McGlade apparently hadn’t fully gotten the amphetamines out of his system. “Money. Big business.”

  “It’s more than that. Half of all drug busts are for pot. Over ten million arrests in the last decade. The war on drugs is a war on common sense.”

  “It’s not about logic,” I said. “It’s about feeling superior. Everyone needs an enemy.”

  McGlade nodded, vigorously. “Exactly. You can’t attain any kind of power without an us vs. them cause. Everyone wants to believe they’re a good person, and the easiest way to do that is to point to others who are different. Minorities. Drug users. Other religions, or countries, or genders. We don’t understand them so we fear them, and when we fear them, we hate them. Hate brings people together. Bigotry is universal. Anyone who has ever gained a position of power knows this, and uses this. And don’t get me started on the corruption inherent in a bipartisan political system. We’re not even an actual democracy. The people don’t choose a President, the Electoral College does. George W. Bush lost the popular vote, and still got elected. It’s only a matter of time until that happens again.”

  “You’re ranting,” I said. “No one likes being lectured.”

  “Sorry. My resting pulse is a hundred and fifty beats per minute.”

  “Drink some water.”

  “I had a gallon already. What were we doing, again?”

  “Checking the lists.”

  “Right.” McGlade leaned over one of his keyboards. “Caucasian Nation membership is ten thousand six hundred and fifty. Friends of CN is six thousand, two hundred and nine. Enemies of CN…” He frowned. “Only eleven hundred and forty.”

  I considered our next move. “You said you were looking up names?”

  “Yeah. Lots of famous people on lists two and three.”

  “Any way to check if they’ll be in the same place at the same time?”

  “You mean, like a rally or something?”

  “Hugo’s planning something big. Something that will kill a lot of people at once. If there’s some sort of big charity event today, or a concert, or something where a bunch of activists can gather—”

  “Then that’s where Hugo is. No problem. The Google-fu is strong in me. I got this. And it’s still morning. We can find her in time to catch the matinee.”

  “The matinee?”

  “Remember? Suzanne Somers? Tickets were impossible to get. First preview and all.”

  “I thought I was your fourth choice.”

  “Fifth. But, apparently, in some case of mass-oversight, no one else called me back.”

  McGlade actually looked a little hurt by that. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who had serious issues connecting with people.

  “So do your thing, Harry. We don’t want to miss the show.”

  “Seriously? You’d go with me?”

  “If you find her, I’ll not only go with you. I’ll kiss you.”

  “Deal. Fair warning, I like a lot of tongue.”

  Harry began to type. One-handed. Hunting and pecking. So slow that I wondered if he’d ever seen a keyboard before.

  I checked the clock on the wall. It was 9:21.

  “Shit. Typo. This guy has a really long last name.”

  I checked the clock again.

  9:23.

  I hoped Pasha was okay.

  Time passed with the speed of an inch worm climbing uphill.

  “Nothing,” McGlade said, pushing away from the desk. “None of these activist jackasses are in the same place. Why couldn’t it be obvious? Like some big march to end racism?”

  My frustration level was so high I wanted to punch something.

  “Maybe we’re taking the wrong approach.”

  “They’re Nazis, Phin. This is their enemies list. These are the people they want to kill. It’s not like they’d be trying to kill their friends.”

  We looked at each other, and I knew we both had the same thought.

  “No way,” Harry said, sitting up straighter.

  “It makes sense. If you’re a fringe ideology and want to get sympathy and support for your cause…”

  “You kill your own people,” Harry finished my sentence. “False Flag 101. Attack your friends, then blame your enemies for your own crimes. We’ve been searching the enemy list. We need to search the friend list, see if any of them will be in the same place.”

  I stood up, hovering behind him as Harry opened up the document. “Let’s see who the most famous guy here is. Maybe this assbag. Right-wing podcast windbag with forty million followers. Let’s Google him in News and see if anything comes up.” He typed in the man’s name, laboriously slow, and then snorted.

  “Heh. He’s going to the Aliens: The Musical premiere. That’s where we were supposed to be, two hours ago. Sorry you don’t get to French kiss me.”

  Oh… shit.

  “Aliens?” I said. “Pasha said aliens in an earlier call.”

  “You didn’t mention that before.”

  “I thought I did.”

  Harry typed something. “The Roscoe Theater has… six thousand, three hundred seats.”

  It was all coming together so fast my thoughts were a blur. “Milton’s dying words. He said, so many on the right… thousands of tickets.”

  “I had to get balcony s
eats, because the main floor was sold out. Not even the scalpers had any. I bet Milton bought tickets for all of his cronies.”

  “To kill them,” I said. “That’s got to be where Hugo is. How far is the Roscoe Theater from here?”

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  “Let’s make it in ten.”

  “You got it. We’ll call Jack on the way.”

  PASHA

  She woke up shivering.

  After some brief disorientation, Pasha remembered where she was and who had her, and she became wracked by terror and despair.

  She sat up and hugged her knees, unable to stop shaking.

  It wasn’t too cold; Pasha guessed it to be around sixty-five degrees. But she’d slept on the floor, no blankets, and body temperature dropped at night. That, coupled with the fear, made hypothermia a possibility.

  Pasha turned over, took a deep breath, smelling dust, damp, and urine. She’d dumped her bucket last night, throwing the contents into the darkness to get rid of her waste and the fast food Hugo had brought and pissed on, worried that if the situation became desperate enough, she might actually consider eating it.

  The impetuous act had been short-sighted. Last night, Pasha had been kept awake by the sounds of rats, scurrying, chattering, and fighting over the soiled food.

  Stiff, cold, and anxious, Pasha tried to focus on yoga. She began with an easy pose, Chaturanga Dandasana, which was sort of like doing a push-up, but with the arms tucked in closer to the body, and palms on the floor directly beneath the chest. Painful, with two broken fingers. But Pasha held it, letting her body feel the stretch and pull, tensing her muscles and paradoxically relaxing at the same time.

  She transitioned from that into Down Dog, her rear in the air, feet flat on the ground, legs and back straight. Holding it. Giving in to it. Becoming it. Then she stretched into Up Dog, bringing down her body, elongating her spine, letting the energy flow through her, surround her.

  Pasha imagined she heard music. Faint, tuneless, orchestra music.

  And then, strangely, applause.

  Warm now, with a slight sweat on her forehead, Pasha kept her palms on the floor, shifted her weight, and balanced on her hands, extending her leg sideways in an Eka Pada Koundinyasana, pose 1. The pain in her hand seemed to dissolve, replaced by a growing awareness of her arms, her legs, her back and neck. It required so much focus that she didn’t even flinch when the lights came on in the room.