Punishment

by Scott J. Holliday

  Martinez had blackjacked him with the stainless-steel railing she’d been unscrewing.

  “You’ll get fired for that,” Barnes said.

  “I guess so,” Martinez said. She hopped down from the bed and picked up Flaherty’s feet, nodded for Barnes to help out. Barnes took Flaherty’s front half, scooping him up by the armpits. They carried him to the second hospital bed across the room. They laid Flaherty down and threw a sheet over him. Barnes locked the tech lab door.

  “You hear Franklin’s all right?” Martinez said.

  Barnes nodded. “That nurse warned me about going over there today. Sounded like she’d have my hide.”

  “You don’t look good. How’d it go with Watkins?”

  Barnes poured himself a coffee. “He’s fine.”

  She clucked her tongue. “Right.”

  Barnes smiled.

  “You sure you want to do this?” Martinez said. “We didn’t get much from the first go-round.”

  “Something Watkins said is sticking with me. He figured out there was a riddle. Solved some of it.”

  “Great. What’s the answer?”

  “Solved some, not all. He knew where it was going.” Barnes sipped from a Styrofoam cup. “Who’s up?”

  “Fred Jones.”

  “Who’s his loved one?”

  Martinez consulted the logbook. “Jennifer. Stillborn daughter.”

  “Our daughter.” Amanda Jones.

  Barnes heard the echo of Amanda Jones’s bathroom faucet, felt her bare feet squelching the carpet, felt the stomach drop of her forward fall when the pickax drove her down. He lay back on the bed while Martinez prepped the machine.

  A click and a hiss. The bit. The surge. The Vitruvian Man. “Prepare for transmission.”

  Fred Jones dreamed of flying. Barnes felt as though he’d risen off the hospital bed as Jones soared over the city, looking down at the streets, the cars, the people. He felt the wind rippling against his clothes as he swerved up and down and side to side. He called out happily, “Woo-hoo!”

  Fred woke up when his wife shoved him. “You were squealing again.”

  “I was?”

  She got up and padded across the room, out into the hallway. Light came from the bathroom, spilled into the bedroom, and then tapered away when she closed the bathroom door.

  “What was that?” Fred Jones said aloud. He’d seen something in the hall. Barnes saw it, too. An arm? It’d been sleeved in black and flat against the wall, like someone was hiding there. Fred heard a hiss, something sliding. He threw back the covers and got out of bed. He went to the hallway and turned on the light. No one there. He came down the hall, past the bathroom, and into the guest room. He flicked on the light.

  Empty.

  A sense of loss struck Barnes. Jones saw a guest bedroom—the double bed, a chest of drawers, and a generic print framed and hung on each wall. He closed his eyes and imagined the room differently, the way he wished it would be—littered with children’s things, a twin bed, posters of pink cartoon ponies, “Jennifer” in sticky letters on the wall. He inhaled the imagined scents of Play-Doh and glue, of plastic dolls.

  He stepped farther into the guest room, pushing the door more widely open, but it would only go so far. There was something behind it, blocking it. He pushed again, but the door bounced back at him. He shouldered it angrily. It flew wide open as the man in the skull mask stepped out from the space between the door and the wall. Jones fell to his knees and looked up. The man stood above him, clad in all black, leaning on a pickax like it was a horse-head cane. The mask was unemotional, but the eyes deep in the holes were curious, and to Fred Jones, maybe a little sad.

  I’m glad you never made it to us, my sweet girl. I’m glad you never suffered like the rest of us trapped in this world.

  The pickax came up to the side and down like a pendulum. It pierced Fred Jones’s ribs and tracked across to the opposite side, bulging the skin. Barnes fell back into the hallway, felt himself yanked sideways as the weapon was removed. Fred Jones closed his eyes and tried to imagine what heaven might be like for Jennifer, tried to imagine what her face might look like. It felt good to know he’d be with her soon.

  A toilet flushed as the pickax chopped through his throat. The watery sound masked the thock the ax made on the floor beneath. Jones opened his eyes to see Calavera reaching over to turn out the hallway light.

  Darkness and silence.

  “End of transmission.”

  The Vitruvian Man test pattern.

  Please Stand By.

  Barnes clutched one hand around the pain in his throat, another at the pain in his ribs. He swallowed and it felt like fire.

  “You’re okay,” Martinez said.

  Barnes scanned Fred Jones’s final moments. He’d found nothing before and hadn’t held out much hope for this time around, but . . . the shoes. Jones had seen them. They were black and generic, as always, but along the lowest part of the dark pants there had been something brown.

  Mud?

  No.

  Barnes sat up, spat out the bit, caught it. His throat burned when he said, “The day Fred and Amanda Jones died, what season?”

  Martinez checked the logbook. “It was early this March. Wintertime.”

  “There was a burr.”

  “Huh?”

  “On his pants. A burr. Where did they live?”

  “Apartment building downtown,” Martinez said. “The Wickerton.”

  “That’s a high-rise,” Barnes said. “No yards nearby, no trees. Park’s a mile away, but he had a burr on his pants.” A burr on his pants and a cedar leaf stuck to his shoe. “Write it down and load Amanda.”

  27

  A toilet flushed. Barnes washed his hands in the bathroom sink at Fred and Amanda Jones’s apartment. Amanda stepped out of the bathroom and into the hallway, where she felt warm, wet carpet beneath her feet. She flicked on a light and looked down.

  What the—

  The blow took her wind and knocked her down. The long handle of the pickax banged against the drywall and stopped her from turning over.

  The skull mask lowered itself into Amanda Jones’s sight line. Calavera said, “Hello, Barnes.”

  Barnes?

  “I’m so disappointed in Detective Watkins,” Calavera said. He tugged at the edges of his black gloves, securing them more tightly. “I wanted him to visit me, but he had to go and kill poor Dawson. I hear they’re sending the good detective up to Bracken. Gonna study him, no doubt. Gonna put him on the machine. All piggies receive their punishment.”

  Darkness crept into Amanda Jones’s vision, closing like a camera’s aperture. Calavera slapped her cheek, brought her to attention. Barnes cringed at the sting. Calavera pointed a gloved index finger into Amanda’s face. He said, “You have to read the clues,” and he moved his finger in what Barnes thought was the same triangle Tom Watkins made, except that Calavera stopped short.

  Not a triangle, but an L shape.

  “Ten-three, good buddy.”

  Darkness and silence.

  “End of transmission.”

  The Vitruvian Man test pattern.

  Please Stand By.

  Barnes sat up. He cried out from the accumulated pain in his body. Tears burst from his eyes. It was like he’d been hit by one car and run over by the next. He shuddered with the cold of blood loss, struggled to breathe.

  “Enough,” Martinez said. She stood and pulled the suction cups from Barnes’s temples. Yanked the bit from his mouth.

  “It’s okay,” Barnes said. He reached out and gripped Martinez’s wrist. He envisioned the L shape Calavera had made with this finger. “I got it. I found it.”

  Martinez sat back down.

  “Ten-three, good buddy,” Barnes said. He laughed. It brought him agony. Electrified shards stung him at every joint. “Read the Jones poem.”

  “Come on,” Martinez said. “You said you’ve got it. What is it?”

  “Bear with me,” Barnes said. “Read
the poem.”

  Your child was taken

  Your insides left barren,

  Both man and woman

  Suffered the pain;

  But admit the relief

  You felt when you knew,

  No changing of diapers

  No going insane;

  While you sleep easy and dream

  Not quite three calaveras.

  Barnes smiled, nodded his head. He said, “Now the Jensen poem. Only the last line.”

  Martinez flipped a page and read.

  A day for calaveras.

  “Now the Dunham poem, only the last line.”

  That leads to calaveras.

  “And the Wilson poem,” Barnes said. He had opened up his phone and was looking at the picture he’d taken at the Wilson home.

  To dust seven calaveras.

  “How many lines in each poem?”

  Martinez checked. “Ten.”

  Barnes made the downward part of an L shape with his index finger.

  “And what’s the third word in the last line of each?” Barnes finished the L shape. “Ten-three. Tenth line, third word. Say those words aloud—see, pea, five, ate, three, for, to, seven.”

  “See, pea, five, ate, three, for, to, seven.”

  “What’s that sound like to you?”

  She shrugged. “Just a bunch of words.”

  “Say them fast.”

  “See-pea-five-ate-three-for-to-seven.”

  “What’s that sound like?”

  “Like an account number.”

  “Right,” Barnes said. “CP583427.”

  Martinez wrote the number down. She looked up. “What is it?”

  Flaherty stirred from underneath his sheet across the room.

  “Go,” Barnes said. “Get out of here. Take that number to Darrow and have him run it—plates and serial numbers, account numbers, whatever—see what comes out.”

  She left the room as Flaherty was peeling back the sheet over his face. Barnes pulled out the needle and applied a cotton ball and Band-Aid. He stood up unsteadily and began removing Eddie’s tubes.

  “Wha?” Flaherty said. “What happened?”

  Barnes stuffed the tubing and the needle into the hazmat box on Eddie’s cart. “Slip and fall. You better get some new shoes, buddy.”

  Flaherty sat up slowly. He touched the back of his head where there was a bloody lump. “I slipped?”

  “Sure did,” Barnes said. He put on his holster. “Only after you knocked me for a good one.”

  “You’re not supposed to be on that machine,” Flaherty said. His eyes were dazed. He cringed and sucked through his teeth as he tapped at the sore on the back of his head.

  Bolts of blue lightning shot through Barnes as he put on his jacket. He gritted his teeth as he pushed his hands and arms down through the sleeves. He limped toward the door.

  28

  Barnes stood outside Jackie Helms’s holding cell in the precinct basement. She was sleeping on a thin mattress, one hand beneath her head, the other tucked between the knees of her stonewashed jeans. Her hair had fallen over her face. The fluorescent lights made her skin look like processed cheese. She might have been passably confident in the darkness of Shootz—running the bar, pouring drinks, smiling, and snickering with the regulars—but in a jail cell she was a scared kid.

  Barnes knocked on the bars.

  No response.

  “Jackie. Wake up.”

  “I’m not asleep, jerk. I’m just ignoring you.”

  Barnes crooned, “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.”

  Jackie turned over on the bed to face away from him, flipped him off.

  “Your lawyer didn’t show up yet, huh?”

  No response.

  “You know, Jackie, you pointed that weapon at me.”

  “So?”

  “So, I’m the one who pressed charges.”

  Her head picked up from the mattress.

  “That’s right. It means I can just as easily drop the charges and you can go home.”

  Jackie sat up. She spun on the bed to face him, brushed the hair back away from her eyes. Her cheeks were sunken and smeared with dried mascara. She clasped her hands together. “Please. I have a little pup at home.”

  “What breed?” Kerri Wilson.

  “Boston Terrier.”

  “Black and white? Cute little bugged-out eyes?”

  Jackie nodded, looked quizzically at Barnes. “Your voice keeps cracking. You all right?”

  Barnes cleared his throat. “You scratch my back?”

  “Mister,” Jackie said, “I’ll give you a full-on back massage with oils and candles and all that shit if you get me out of here.”

  “Happy ending?” Chunk Philips.

  Jackie rolled her eyes.

  Barnes blinked, focused on Jackie. “Here’s the deal, first you tell me if you know what this code means: CP583427.”

  “I don’t know. A license plate?”

  “No. Think hard. Something Beckett might have mentioned? Maybe something to do with security systems?”

  Jackie closed her eyes and bit her lip. After a moment new tears fell from between her closed eyelids. Her chin started quivering.

  “Don’t start that shit.”

  She opened her eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what it means. Please let me out of here.”

  “Maybe Beckett knows?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Okay, I need to talk to Beckett. We’ve had eyes on his place since last night. We know he’s not there, and we know he’s not at Shootz. You tell me where I might find him, and I’ll drop the charges against you. Understand? No snipe-hunt bullshit.”

  “I don’t know,” Jackie said. “I don’t know him as well as you think. We were just . . . you know, friends with benefits.” She wiped snot from her nose and looked off.

  “Think, Jackie. The conversations before and after sex.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “He had to have said something.”

  “All he ever did was get drunk at the bar and sleep it off. Occasionally we’d fuck, and in the morning he’d head off to the church.”

  “For MA meetings?”

  “That was only on Thursdays. He went there all the time.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know, something about needing sanctuary.” She threw up air quotes around sanctuary. “Always figured he was bullshitting, just looking for a way to get me out of the house. Figured he just hid around some corner and came back after I left, but one time I stayed all afternoon and he never came back.” She crossed her arms. “Ain’t shit to eat at his place. I practically starved.”

  Sanctuary. A tingle washed over Barnes’s skin. He knew where Beckett was hiding out. “Thank you, Jackie. I’ll get you processed and out of here as soon as possible.” He headed down the hall.

  From behind, Jackie said, “What the hell’s a snipe hunt?”

  Barnes stood outside the wooded lot behind Saint Thomas of Assisi. The land was church owned, fenced in, and posted with NO TRESPASSING signs every eight feet—cordial invitations to kids and vagrants. He dropped down and shimmied beneath the fence at a low spot in the ground. The same low spot he and Ricky used so many Sundays ago.

  Leaves spun as they fell on a bed of brown needles. The scent of sap in the air. Barnes came to the large oak and found the old hatch, SANCTUARY carved into the panels. Ricky would always say Heave ho! before they pulled the doors open. Barnes squatted down and pulled open the hatch. The hinges barked with rust as the doors rose up and then banged down on the forest floor. From the dark depths of the tunnel came a scent Barnes recognized all too well.

  Death.

  Barnes climbed down the three wooden steps to the tunnel’s earthen floor. He shined his flashlight the length of the darkness. Damon Beckett’s corpse was near the end of the tunnel, up against the wall. He’d no doubt retreated deeper into the darkness when his murderer entered the shaft and found him. Barnes moved along the
tunnel toward the body, kicking through a sea of empty liquor bottles and dirty hypodermic needles. He hadn’t pegged Beckett as a heroin addict, but neither did he believe Beckett was the only lowlife to hide out in the sanctuary. The stench grew stronger as he drew closer. Barnes kept his light down until he was nearly there, and then he put the beam on the body. Beckett’s face was mashed in, and there were two holes in him. One a small point, just above the right shoulder. It’d clipped away the humerus bone and left his arm hanging from skin. The second hole was in his chest—a flat, vertical entry wound through the heart. The pickax had missed his cigarette pack by half an inch. Barnes shined the flashlight up above Beckett’s head. There were words written in Magic Marker on the concrete wall that sealed the tunnel off from the church.

  BRING THE MACHINE.

  Barnes went back to the tunnel opening, climbed out, and called dispatch. He left before the cruisers arrived.

  29

  “What happened?” Jessica said. She gingerly peeled Barnes’s jacket off his shoulders and down. They were standing in her small kitchen.

  “Can I use your computer?”

  “Tell me what’s wrong.” She stood before him holding his jacket with two hands, concern on her face.

  “Whopper headache.”

  “Aspirin?”

  He shook his head.

  She threw his jacket over a chair and went to a cupboard above the stove. She pulled out a bottle, blew off some dust, and showed it to him. Wild Turkey Single Barrel. “Will this help?”

  “Yes.”

  They sat down on her couch, him with her computer on his lap, each of them with a tumbler. Barnes drank his first pour quickly and then poured another. He brought up Google and typed in CP583427. Before he pressed “Enter,” he said, “Talk to me.”

  “About what?”

  He pressed the key. “You.”

  “Not much to tell, I guess.”

  The search came back with two results. One was a page of Chinese lettering. The other seemed to be a system dump of some meaningless computer language.

  “My dad traveled for his job,” Jessica said, “which meant he was never around. My mom was overprotective, so when I got around to my rebellious teenage years, I started acting out—drinking, smoking, boys, and every other damn thing.”