There was so much blood; it didn't seem like that much blood could have all come from one person, but the trail led to only one body. It was a woman, lying on her stomach with her arms under her chest. She had been sliced up by some kind of bladed weapon - the home's defense field would've rendered most electrical weapons useless - and the assailants had left her to bleed out, apparently.
"Adrien, don't," Smith said. "We need to get out of here. Whoever did this obviously was looking for you and your family."
I didn't hear him. As I got closer to the body I realized the horrible truth - it was my mom.
Jennifer Faulk was dead.
"Mom?!?!" I yelled, totally wrecking any semblance of stealth that Smith had managed to get in his sneaking up to the house. He crouched in the doorway and surveyed the room looking for any sort of hostile figure as I knelt over my mother's body. I turned her face up and frantically felt for a pulse. It was useless, I knew that in my heart, but I couldn't help myself holding on to one last hope that she was somehow still alive.
There was no pulse.
My mom was well and truly dead.
No, that wasn't a strong enough word. My mother had been murdered in her own home. Whoever had done this would pay - I would make sure of it.
"This can't be real, Smith," I said, forcing the words out of my mouth with so much effort I thought I was pushing plaster through a straw. "My mom can't be dead."
My voice was starting to break. The only thing keeping me from collapsing into a sobbing mess was the sense that danger was still around. We had no idea who had done this but they were good enough to pull off a murder in a society that had largely left that crime behind and in a home of one of the richest men in New York. It was a powerful adversary indeed, and Smith sensed this, too.
"We have to get out of here," he said, slowly. "I wanted to case your room, but this place isn't safe. We'll go back to my office and call the authorities and have them meet us over here. Whoever attacked your mother will likely split if they see the cops...if they haven't bailed already."
Before I could respond, I noticed there was a hissing sound coming from somewhere above Smith. A black silhouette seemed to leap out of nowhere and drop-kick him to the ground. He rolled over, dropping his gun and laid motionless just the left of the door.
I sprang forward, meaning to tackle the figure and make whoever it was pay for my mother's death. Fighting has never really been my strong suit. But I was overcome with emotion, so I leaped like a raging tiger toward the mystery man - and I missed him by a mile. I crashed into the wall on the other side of the door, away from Smith's crumpled form.
The shadow man twirled and caught my head up in a chokehold of some kind. He whispered in my ear with a voice made of pure evil.
"Your mother was so much fun to kill, raton" he said. I struggled in vain against arms with muscles like steel cables. "I hope your father is just as much fun."
"Monster!" I choked out. "Why? WHY?!?!"
"Oh, you want answers?" He laughed like a villain in a video game. "I'm the one who is going to ask for information, be silent." He tightened his grip on my throat. "Or, be silenced!"
We stood there for a few minutes as he tightened his hold on me - it became less a standing choke and more a like he had me in a full body vice, somehow using just his massive arms.
As the oxygen making its way to my brain began to dwindle, he finally asked a question.
"Your grandfather was a - friend - of mine," he said. I struggled to breathe, much less comprehend what he was saying. "He left you an heirloom I want very badly. Your sweet mother, sadly, didn't know where it was. But her last act was to tell me you did."
What was he babbling about? Black dots danced around the edges of my field of vision. Surely he wasn't going to ask me for -
"Your grandfather's binoculars," he growled in my ear - both sinister and intimate at the same time. "Where are they?"
I sucked in air as he relaxed his grip the tiniest bit.
"I don't know..." I wheezed out, and waited to embrace eternity as he snapped my neck.
But instead of screams of hell or a choir of angels the next sound I heard was a deafening "BOOM!" as Smith's .44 blew a hole in the wall behind my assailant.
"Let the kid go," Smith said, standing hatless before us in his rumpled coat. "I missed on purpose."
"You were unexpected," the shadow man said. "But you will not derail my quest."
Smith cocked his hand cannon. "I won't ask a second time," he said.
The black-clad figure unwound from me, keeping his hands in the air. My vision cleared and I scrambled to my feet to stand beside Smith. I saw the monster in question was wearing an almost impossibly form fitting latex suit, complete with a horrible mask.
It was a grotesque mockery of tribal tattoos and face paint, applied to what amounted to a latex hood. Blinking lights of some kind on the ears and mouth led me to believe it had electronics in it, probably part of the kit that allowed this man to get into my house and - I stopped short of reminding myself of the horrible things he had done.
His physique was...weird. There's no other way to describe it, he was somehow more torso than he was abdomen or legs even. And his arms and neck were almost 100 percent muscle, like an ox had somehow fused with a man. That certainly explained why he was so easily able to put that incredible amount of pressure on my neck with such tiny movements.
"Why-" I still struggled to breathe. "Why do you want my grandfather's binoculars?"
Sirens wailed in the distance. The home's security system must have finally gotten a signal to the cops.
"Adrien," the assassin said. "Bring me those binoculars or your father is next!"
"Oh no you don't!" Smith yelled as the shadow man planted his feet to jump toward the ceiling again.
Despite Smith's impressive shower of bullets - I counted three shots from the .44 before I lost my hearing and couldn't keep up with the rate of fire any more - the monster was able to bound back up into the ventilation system and escape somehow. We ran out onto the lawn just as the cops rolled up. We stared uselessly at the roof.
There was no sign of him.
Black clouds rolled in from the horizon and thunder clapped over the house.
"A storm's coming," I said absentmindedly as the cops deployed, guns drawn.
Smith looked down and dusted off his fedora.
"Looks like it's going to be a bad one," he said.
CHAPTER THREE:
Down the rabbit hole
The cops took statements from me and Smith. It took hours for them to finally be convinced that Smith was who he said he was and that I had no more knowledge to share about the mystery man. Of course, no security surveillance video had survived whatever electromagnetic trick our murderer had used to overcome the home's system, so we had nothing but mine and Smith's word to confirm our story.
Only after the police were satisfied did they inform me of the unthinkable. My dad was missing as well.
There had been no ransom note or anything like that, which the detective in charge said was rare for cases where people as rich as my dad disappeared under obvious signs of duress. Whoever had taken dad had kidnapped him from his office of all places.
"The place was trashed when the cleaning lady came in last night," the detective said. I waved my smartphone in front of him and his name, badge number and basic record came up.
Lt. Brad Yelton had been a detective with the NYPD for 12 whole months.
"We went over your dad's office with a microscanner and found nothing useful," Lt. Yelton continued.
"If the guy that did this to my mother," I gestured over my shoulder as the cleanup crew continued going over the crime scene. "Threatened my father as his parting words to us, don't you think that makes it doubly - no triply - important for you to find my dad? And doesn't this lend just a little more credence to our story?"
Yelton's brow furrowed.
"It's possible," he said. "Look, son, I'm sorry fo
r your loss. We'll continue investigating and let you know as soon as we have something - or if we need to talk to you or Mr. Smith again."
I started to protest the idiocy of still considering either myself or Smith a suspect, but Smith took me by the arm and led me back to his Mustang. I slid into the passenger seat like a zombie.
We drove back across town to his office with Smith chewing on a toothpick - the kind still made of wood, of course - and me staring out the window in a daze.
Back at Smith's office, I slumped into a couch while he sat in a swivel chair behind a Brobdingnagian desk. It was an ancient looking desk, suitably ornate with metal rivets holding straps of leather in place around its sides. He rocked back and forth in the chair gently, its old iron springs creaking as he leaned back and forth. His fedora lay on the desk in front of him, the trench tossed on the couch beside me draping across a stack of New York Times that might go all the way back to the turn of the century if I dug deep enough.
The rest of Smith's office was just as haphazard. There were barely any signs of technology; it was like stepping back in time. A lone computer hummed on the desk - one of those old ones with the fruit logo on the back. It was processor and screen all in one sleek package back in the day, but now it just looked like a museum piece.
"It is a museum piece," Smith said as he noticed me eyeing the computer. "Go on, I know you're dying to tell me this whole office belongs in a Smithsonian exhibit."
"I don't really have sarcasm in me at the moment," I croaked out. "It's taking all my efforts to make sure consciousness doesn't elude me."
Smith looked down at his computer screen.
"Adrien, for what's worth, I'm sorry," he said, his voice quiet. "I had no idea this was going to get so heavy when I signed up to take your case."
"You're not sorry you took the job, are you?" I asked, bracing myself for his sudden resignation. "Because I need to find those binoc-"
"Don't worry," he cut me off. "We'll find them, and save your dad if it's the last thing I do."
Our eyes met and I saw his gruff, annoyed expression had been replaced with one of pure steel. He was determined, more than any man I'd ever seen.
"Thank you," I said. "It's so weird; I just don't see why that man would want the binoculars that badly. They weren't even that great of a set of binoculars. I mean, they're so low tech, so old school."
Smith pulled up to the desk and slid the computer keyboard in front of him. It was, to his credit, at least a wireless model.
"Tell me about your grandfather," he said without looking up.
"There's not much for me to tell. These binoculars came from my mom's father. He was Jason Bonadventure," I said. "My mom has told me some stories about him; he died before I was born. He was a shipping magnate - whatever that means."
Smith was typing furiously, taking notes and recording observations. He pounded on the keys with hammer-like force. I was surprised the keyboard, old and brittle as it looked, didn't crumble to dust under his ham-fisted technique.
"Should you be abusing that artifact that way?" I asked, a little humor slipping back into my voice. "What will the Smithsonian say?"
"She can take it," Smith said. "I've typed more notes on this old keyboard than most detectives bother to take in a lifetime. Ah, here we are." Smith pointed to the screen and I walked around the side of his desk to read.
"Jason Bonadventure, shipping magnate, industrialist and near the end of his life quite reclusive," Smith read aloud from an online encyclopedia. "This is odd..."
His eyes scanned the screen.
"What?" I said, exasperated. It was more with myself than with Smith. Why had I not thought of the idea of researching my grandfather on the web when I was trying to find more about him for a school project years ago?
"It says here your grandfather died a very rich man," Smith went on.
"That's not that odd," I said. "My family has had plenty of money for as long as I can remember and my mother was pretty well off when she married my dad. Honestly, he's the one who came from more humble beginnings."
Smith shook his head slowly.
"No, no, that's not the odd part," he said. "It's the fact that Mr. Bonadventure's early life is so blank. Look at this section, hardly anything about him is mentioned before he was about 60 or 65 years old."
"It's an online encyclopedia, Smith," I said ruefully. "There aren't all that thorough in their research some times."
A few strokes on the keyboard later and Smith reached for a mouse.
"A computer mouse?" I laughed out loud. "Really? Does it work?"
"Not everything needs to be done with a touchscreen," Smith barked back. "Now, look."
A new website I'd never seen filled Smith's screen - with old green characters on a black background. It was like watching a telegram come rattling across a smartphone.
"This is the best site for researching people," Smith said as my mouth hung open at the sheer anachronism of it all. The bright green banner at the top read, "Peoplefinder.net Since 1997" and I nearly fainted again.
"That can't really be from 1997," I said. "There's just no way."
"Believe it, now look, here's your file," he said.
Incredibly detailed descriptions of my birth, my failing algebra in grammar vidschool and even my first date with April scrolled across Smith's screen.
"What? How?" I asked.
"Those chips in our hands, they record more information than most people realize," Smith said. "And some of the world's more...unscrupulous...folks have decided to intercept and decode the information being transmitted to your benevolent overlords."
"Smith, this is unbelievable," I said. "We have to tell someone, alert the authorities to these hackers and their schemes of stealing people's identities and...and..."
He cut me off again and pushed me into another desk chair he kept beside his main desk.
"Adrien, they already know," Smith said. "They want the information to be flowing freely to their data stores about all of us. They don't care that these guys intercept it as long as the flow of information isn't interrupted. Remember, without the appropriate chip signal - or in your case the right thumbprint tattoo - the hackers can't really steal anyone's identity."
I calmed down a bit.
"Anyway, that isn't the point, look at your grandfather's listing," Smith pulled up Jason Bonadventure on the site. There was a decent amount of info about how he had made his fortune by seemingly having a sixth sense as to when which companies were going to hit it big with a patent on some amazing new technology. But all of this was from when my grandfather was a bona fide senior citizen. There wasn't even any record of where he went to high school or his college degrees or - well, anything really from before he was about 60 years old.
"Did someone wipe my grandfather's information off the web?" I asked out loud.
"No, no, even then there's some trace of the modification," Smith said. "And the guys and gals who contribute to this site would have the skill to notice that kind of cover-up or erasing of information."
We both stared dumbfounded. This was starting to get way more complicated than my lost binoculars.
"Okay," Smith said, rising to his feet and crossing the room to stand in front of the desk. "Let's look at what we've got so far. We know your grandfather was rich and he felt these binoculars were valuable enough that alone amongst all the great things he most likely amassed in his fortune they were the only things he thought to leave to a specific person after his death."
Smith looked back at me expectantly.
I shrugged.
"Yeah, I guess?" I said quizzically.
"Type notes, genius," he said and then turned and started pacing.
Type notes? I was his client not a secretary. Besides, how was I supposed to type on this ancient thing? I tentatively tapped a key. A letter blinked into life on the screen. I started using my other finger. Smith plowed on, leading us on a fact-finding expedition into the deepest, darkest regions of h
is theories while I pecked out my own personal shorthand.
"But yet, we have no information about his motivations in leaving them to you," Smith continued. "Was it a symbol of how he made his fortune? His way of telling you to always look to the horizon? Always look to the future, like he seemed to be able to do, at least near the end of his life? Or was it about keeping a clear vision for where you want your company or your life in general to go? And why are we unable to find out how he got his own motivations and start?"
He looked back at me for a read out.
"I'm still on clear vision," I said, hunting furiously for the right letters. How did he ever get work done on this antiquated thing?
Smith slumped into the couch.
"Don't sweat it, that kind of thinking out loud stuff is rarely important when I go back over my case notes anyway," Smith said. "Still, it is damn peculiar that there's no record of your grandfather from before that certain age."
I leaned back in the chair and felt the wood shift a little. Sitting in these old wooden chairs, noodling out a solution to a case, it was like I was really in one of those old detective stories. Smith walked around to the business side of the desk again and pulled open a drawer I hadn't noticed before. The desk was so ornate that I could hardly tell what was decoration and what was a functioning storage compartment. Perhaps he wanted it that way.
He reached in and pulled out a small wooden pipe and tiny plastic bag of dried leaves.
"My God," I exclaimed. "Is that really tobacco?"
"Calm yourself, young one," Smith said. "I grow it myself and so it is allowed under home farm rules...even in this police state."
"Smith, it causes cancer, it's dangerous it..."
He waved a hand and produced another thing I hadn't seen in real life before - a book of matches.
"Shut it," he said, his teeth clenched around the pipe stem.
He sat back down on the couch and reached into the bag of tobacco. Taking a small pinch between his fingers he started stuffing it into the bowl of the pipe. I watched intently, like I was witnessing someone forge a sword on a blacksmith's anvil - it was certainly historical in nature.
The Dragon Writers Collection Page 122