Fifth fell back onto the bed. “It’s going to be boring.”
He gave her what he thought was a grin. “Not all super spy tech stuff is exciting.”
---
The next morning, the taxi dropped them off in front a small civic center. From the utilitarian design of the library and the two other adjoining buildings, Dent assumed that if this was one of the renovated buildings Lynn Wilkens spoke about, the money and design had definitely come from some government funds and cookie-cutter architects.
More brick and concrete than windows, there was no exterior indication of the building’s purpose. Just two stories and the unadorned walls containing them. The green carpet and eggshell-white walls inside only added to the probability that this was indeed government money put to use.
A quick stop at the front desk — manned by two boys barely out of high school — to get directions to the periodical’s section and their search was on. Dent gave Fifth instructions on what to look for, what was relevant, and how to go about finding it.
Within an hour they had four separate piles of newspapers and local magazines, and Dent was able to put together a better picture of Herristown’s hidden history.
“So what’ve we got?” Fifth asked. “And it better be good,” she added under her breath.
Dent surmised she was not happy about this mundane task.
He patted one stack, the largest of the four. “These are reports on crime and police presence. These, here, are about the city infrastructure before the change. This stack is magazine articles about the beginnings of the change. And this here,” he patted the smallest stack, “is miscellaneous.”
“So, like I said, what’ve we got?”
He ignored her tone, one he recognized as her expressing boredom. He said, “Wilkens was correct about the crime being fairly high in the city. Up until 2002.”
“So, fourteen years ago.”
He didn’t acknowledge her point of obviousness or mathematical skills. “Around 2002, the crime rate began to drop.”
“From?”
“That’s what I can’t determine. The police force wasn’t increased, and I don’t see reports on them doing anything different. No task forces, no joint effort with fire or park departments. It seems that one day they just decided to become more efficient at their jobs. Tickets and arrest rates increased that year, steadily increasing until plateauing two years later. That’s when we see the crime rate start to rapidly drop.”
“So maybe they got tired of the bad guys taking over.”
“But I can’t see why.”
“Does there need to be a reason?”
He looked over. “There’s a reason if we’re here.”
She bit the inside of her upper lip. “True,” she conceded.
He looked at one of the stacks on table. “The infrastructure shows heavy money being drawn from taxes, and from the then-recent fees acquired from the increase in fines being levied, and the town began restoring and improving the oldest buildings in the city, eventually reclaiming parks and tracts of land that would one day bring in money from tourism.”
“How is that important?”
“It wouldn’t be, expect that some of the buildings that were renovated with tax money were private buildings. I’ve worked in our military, been around enough officials to know that government money would never be spent on private land. Especially this.” He picked up a newspaper he’d kept near the top of that pile and handed it to Fifth. “At least not without very vocal complaints.”
She grabbed the newspaper, ran her eyes over it, handed it back. Her eyes were blank.
He was forced to point out, “That is a church. Saint Nicholas Parish, to be exact.”
“So?”
“Separation of church and state.” When she stared dully at him, he elaborated. “It’s something that goes far back in American history. All you need to know is that for every one person who thinks giving state money to rebuild a church is a proper allocation of the funds, three more will disagree, and those three will disagree on why they each disagree in the first place.”
“So city money equals new church equals something fishy.”
He opened his mouth, thinking of a proper response, and not be able to find one, tapped the third stack before them. She looked where he indicated.
“This talks of how, once the new renovations were completed, the citizens began taking on an active role in keeping their new city clean. This article here calls it ‘Project Elevation,’ which is mentioned in a few other articles afterwards. Neighborhood watches, bi-weekly open-air meetings, new business licenses for places to fill up streets that had been emptied.”
“Kind of like they decided they’d had enough,” she said. “I can see that happening.”
Dent didn’t see the logic in it. Then again, that’s where Fifth was more practiced than he. Still, he voiced his doubts to her.
She waved him off, saying, “Sometimes people just see a time for change is needed and they go for it.”
“I don’t see it.”
“Says the man who was paid to kidnap me from my mother to deliver me to an asshole here in the States.”
He raised a finger to call her on her language but quickly lowered it, because she did have a valid point. He had seen a time for change was needed. He had taken it. And, at the time, he wasn’t plagued by emotions when he had acted the way he did.
At least, he thought he hadn’t been. But with Fifth involved, he could never be sure.
When the wide grin fell from her face, she pointed at the last stack. The stack he found oddest of all. He gathered the few magazines and newspapers in that stack and slid them over to her.
“What am I looking at?” She apparently didn’t want to put in any effort here.
“I found something incongruous with all the other reports.”
“So … Miscellaneous.”
“For lack of a better word, yes. First, with the allocation of funds to renovate the parish came a clause that the parish had to set aside money and space for an orphanage.”
“How is that weird?”
“It’s odd in that at the time it seemed an unnecessary bit of legalese. It wasn’t until five years later that children started to find their way to the orphanage.”
“Found their way?”
“Yes. It ties in to the second incongruity in this. The rise in children in need of the parish’s help coincided with a rise in what residents described as a downfall for a small number of people and businesses.”
“Downfall, meaning ….”
“People losing their houses, shops suddenly closing down. Defaulting on loans, for some unknown reason driving themselves to poverty. After the quick boon on the economy, there came a sudden backlash, a downturn in progress. A downturn which saw some citizens forfeiting everything they’d owned. In some extreme cases, young children fell in that category.”
Fifth brought her hands up to her lips, her eyes moistening. “So, if the orphanage hadn’t been built, all those abandoned kids would be living on the streets?” Her voice was soft and barely carried past her hands.
“Yes,” he said evenly.
She dropped her hands and snapped her teary gaze his way. “How can you be so cold about it? I mean even you have to realize how horrible it is for parents to abandon their children, how terrible it would have been if that orphanage ….” She trailed off, stopping herself. Her eyes slowly widened and her lips scrunched up.
Dent felt that peculiar sense he knew was pride come over him because he knew Fifth was seeing what he’d seen. It just took her a while longer than it had for him.
She said, “You think someone knew the orphanage would be needed?”
He nodded. “Five years before there was a need.”
“And … what about the people who lost everything? I haven’t seen any homeless people in town. Where did they go?”
He slid over a map and pointed to the northern part of Herristown. “They began to live o
n the streets, here. In the industrial section.”
She shook her head, looking at all the information they’d gathered over the last hour. Her lips moved, like she was talking to herself, while her fingers traced the outline of the photo of Saint Nicholas Parish. Then she did something that even took Dent by surprise.
She scooted her chair closer to the table, leaned forward, and said, “Explain this all to me the way you see it, Dent. Let’s go over it all again. We need to find out what’s going on.”
He did as asked.
For the next thirty minutes, Fifth had been the quietest he could remember her ever being.
XVI
“Ingram. Any news?” Suzime Takeda’s voice was hard to make out over the noise.
A sharp twist of his ankle quieted the place down to a more pleasant level. “Yes. I’ve tracked them to a city in Colorado.”
“What’s their status?”
“No clue. They seemed to have set up shop here temporarily.”
“Here?”
“Yep. I’m about twenty minutes away.”
“And they have stopped there? Purposefully?”
“It’s Dent. I don’t think he does anything not-purposefully.”
“True.” A pause. “But what is that purpose?”
He made a general ‘I-don’t-know’ sound.
“What is the name of this city?”
“Herristown.”
“Herristown.” The way she repeated the name slowly told him she was writing it down. Or maybe tasting the name like a fine wine. “The name sounds familiar. I’ll do some research on my end. Meanwhile, you find what you can from the locals.”
He glanced down. “Already on it,” he replied, nearly laughing at his inside joke. Too bad Takeda couldn’t see him that very moment.
“And that’s why I pay you so well.”
“Yep.” He hung up, a grin on his face. Yeah, the money was good, but there were some perks about his job. Perks that sometimes eclipsed the bank accounts and the insane per diem.
He looked down and lifted up his foot from where he’d pinned a man on the ground by the neck. The man — George, going by his gas station name tag — tried squirming away. Ingram wasn’t lying when he told Takeda he was already on the locals. Literally on one in particular.
Ingram bent at the knees, putting himself closer to the man. Oh, the recognition in George’s eyes as he looked up at Ingram with fear … It was so exhilarating!
Five minutes ago, George hadn’t looked at Ingram with anything in his eyes. Five minutes ago, when Ingram had walked in to grab a slushee and a pack of cigarettes, George hadn’t given him the time of day. The slushee Ingram could have walked out with, oblivious George none the wiser. But the pack of cigarettes he’d wanted had been behind the counter, where the man, George, had been standing, ignoring Ingram.
Ingram had grown up being ignored, people’s attentions unable to focus on him directly. When he was younger, back when Takeda had taken him in, she had once described his “talent” as trying to see the wind. You could see the trees sway, watch the leaves be tossed about, but you couldn’t really determine why. That was Ingram, for better or worse.
Sometimes that was a good thing. How many times had he gotten away with things simply because people somehow were unable to register his presence? Especially when he was much younger.
He grinned. Not all of his childhood was that bad. At least, the times he hadn’t managed to get caught.
Whatever was wrong with him, whatever his “talent” was, as much as it made some things in life easier, it still rankled him deep down that unless he did something to make his presence known, he was nothing to the people around him.
A nobody.
How heart-throbbingly angry a person could get when others ignored them! How positively infuriating it could be when all you really wanted was just one iota of genuine acknowledgement. And if he couldn’t get that, well, he’d make the best of his situation and release some of that pent up steam.
Ingram could have walked around the counter, gotten his cigarettes and then left quietly, but where would the fun be in that? George’s eyes, which at the time had been glued to the screen of his EB, had gone incredibly wide, hilariously huge even, when Ingram had reached over and yanked the attendant across the counter to slam him down to the floor.
“What the he—” George had screamed until Ingram planted his boot on his windpipe.
He’d started to lean down, to engage the squealing man, when Takeda had called.
And now, his hands free again, Ingram reached down and yanked George up by the shirt.
“Take whatever you want!” George stammered, his voice harsh and raspy, probably on account of Ingram’s boot earlier.
“George, George, George. I could easily have anything I wanted in your store. I could have walked out with you ever noticing me.” He tried, unsuccessfully, to keep his voice calm, but the last few words had come out as a hiss.
“What … What …?”
Ingram raised his brows and finished George’s question. “What do I want?”
George bobbed his head up and down.
“Two things. First, some information.”
George flicked his eyes around, searching for a way out. But Ingram held him tightly by the shirt, their faces now mere inches apart.
George relented and said, “Okay, okay, man.”
“That resort city a few miles east of here, Herristown? Anything special about it?”
“What? No. Just … just a city. Nothing special. Real friendly place, man.”
“Ingram.”
“What?”
He gouged his thumb into George’s shoulder, just below his scapula, drawing a sweet, pained reaction from the man.
“My name is Ingram.”
George gave a pathetic attempt at a nod but kept his mouth shut tight. Ingram pressed harder, angling his thumb upwards this time.
“God! Okay! Ingram!”
Ingram smiled. Finally, he was getting the attention he deserved. As a reward, he pulled his thumb from the man’s shoulder, dropping that hand back to his side.
Relief flooded George’s face, his watery gaze dead set on Ingram’s dry eyes.
There they stood, frozen in that moment. Until Ingram’s hand came back up, breaking the intimate contact with the point of his knife.
Oh, how George squirmed. Delightfully squirmed. Ingram had his full attention now. No chance of being ignored from this point on.
Ingram began to chuckle. Not at George’s panicked expression, but at an old saying that popped into his mind: What you don’t know can’t hurt you. He was about to, once again, prove that old adage painfully wrong.
“Now, onto the second purpose of our interaction, George.” He twisted and yanked George around, pushing him backwards until he slammed into a wall. Before the breath left George’s lungs, Ingram had his knife up and drew a precise line of red down the man’s cheek.
George screamed, though Ingram doubted it had hurt that much. If the man screamed like this now, what would he do five minutes from now? He held the knife an inch from George’s nose, the stainless steel edged in a light sheen of the man’s blood.
“Now, George, let’s see just how long I can hold your attention. Please, and I mean this dearly, try to stay with me ….”
When Takeda called ten minutes later, Ingram unfortunately missed the call.
It had been hard to make out the ring over all the noise.
XVII
Dent wanted to do more research, gather more intel on Herristown at the library, to which Kasumi had flatly told him no. She’d had enough of that boring stuff yesterday. Besides, it was depressing to read how children were left at Saint Nicholas Parish and their parents were left to live in abandoned buildings and gutters. Today, she’d decided, she was going to do some research of her own.
It took her a good twenty minutes of arguing, but Dent had to bend to her logic when she said that visiting Saint Nicholas would be
as safe as any mission could ever be. He gave her money for a taxi and a lecture on safety before letting her leave, though she pointed out that she wouldn’t come across men with guns in the church. Hell, the worst she’d probably have to deal with was another round of people being nice to her.
Stepping inside the big, gothic cathedral, she figured she might do well to keep words like “hell” from her thoughts. No point in tempting fate.
Unlike the library, the church was a huge, architecturally stunning place. Whitewashed stone on the outside, marble on the inside. Wood trim, multi-colored light streaming in from the dozens of stained glass windows, and soft lighting made the place a welcome respite.
And judging by the twenty or so people sitting on the pews or standing around and whispering to each other, she wasn’t the only one to find the place welcoming. She was here to find out about the orphanage, to help Dent out on that angle. They didn’t know what, if anything, the orphanage had to do with why they were here, but it was best to cover all their bases. They still hadn’t figured what form of eTech was in use — mechanical or human— though the excessively happy people she’d come across pointed to perhaps what type of eTech it was.
She walked down the wide center aisle, her steps swishing on the red carpet. Men and women looked over, smiled and waved. She waved back. She neared the raised dais, unsure of where to begin. She didn’t have the deductive reasoning of Dent yet, and hoped she could just wing it through her mission, playing it as it came.
Stopping just before four-foot high edge of the dais, Kasumi looked up at the life-size statue staring back down at her. She didn’t know what it was carved from, obviously it was some type of stone, but it had been painted and highly glossed, to the point that it caught the low lights and the flickering flames from the stands of candles to either side. The effect it had seemed to make the statue want to move, to step down from up there and join the common people congregating around the church.
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