Black Swan Rising

by Lisa Brackmann

  14

  His name was Lucas Derry.

  Tony, the clerk, gave them what they needed. “Don’t worry, he won’t know,” Casey told him. “With his last name, we could get that information on our own. It just would take more time.” Which was generally true, when it came to addresses. Finding a renter could be a pain though. And cell phone numbers were even harder.

  “Jesus,” Rose said, as she started up the station Prius. “You flat-out lied to that guy.”

  Casey shrugged. “I only half lied. And if Lucas is dangerous? Then it was the right thing to do.” She punched the number into her phone. It went to voicemail: “Leave a message. I’ll call you back.”

  “He’s not picking up.”

  “Listen, we can’t just go knock on his door.”

  “We can’t? Then why’d we bother to get that guy to tell us where Lucas lives?”

  “Because … ” Rose slumped back against the car seat. “Casey, this is insane. The fact that that guy was willing to hand over Lucas’s personal information? That was a real risk. He’s scared of him. You should be too.”

  “Who said I’m not?”

  “Let’s at least call the station and see if we can get a photographer, Diego, or—”

  “Why, so he can get shot instead? It doesn’t make a difference who knocks on the door if somebody has a gun and wants to use it. Unless the station’s invested in body armor.” She smiled as she said that. Though it wasn’t a bad idea, really.

  “So you want to be the one to get shot?”

  Casey let out a long sigh. A part of her really did want to knock on that door. Confront the Big Empty. Show it she wasn’t giving up. And get a fucking story that would blow everyone away.

  “No.”

  “So, what are you suggesting?”

  “We do a drive-by. See if it looks like anybody’s home. Look for a helpful neighbor. At least get some footage of his place so we’ll be first, in case … ” Casey shuddered. “In case he does go off.”

  Lucas Derry lived in one of the many apartment blocks that lined stretches of Clairemont Drive and several blocks behind it. Impossible to tell from Google Streetview where his apartment actually was.

  An intern back at the station had run a quick public records search that turned up nothing. Which didn’t mean much. Lucas was a young guy. If he’d had problems as a juvenile, they’d have no way of knowing.

  “Well, this isn’t going to cut it,” Casey said. She’d gotten in the back seat and aimed her GoPro out the window to get the front of the horseshoe-shaped complex. Old stucco and wood-trimmed buildings from the early sixties with crosshatched, peeling beams, like someone had tried to overlay a European cottage on a cement box. Old-style lettering labeled it The Claire-View.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “See if they have assigned parking and if there’s a car there. Get a shot of his door.”

  After that, she wasn’t sure.

  Rose drove the Prius around the corner of the long block and parked, putting another apartment complex between them and where Lucas lived. “Give me the GoPro,” she said.

  “What? No. This was my idea. I’ll do it.”

  Rose held up her palms. “No fucking way. We shouldn’t even be here. There’s no way I am letting you anywhere near him.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t argue with me about this. If he’s there, if he’s watching, he won’t recognize me. But you? He knows exactly who you are. Besides, I can run away. You can’t.” Rose stretched out her hand. “Give me the GoPro.”

  Casey handed it over. “I’m backing you up, then,” she said.

  There was a driveway between the two apartment complexes that led to a small parking lot bordering the canyon. A low cinderblock fence separated it from another parking lot and the open end of the horseshoe of the Claire-View. From there, Casey had a pretty good view of the courtyard. It looked like most if not all of the apartments were accessible from there.

  “Text me when you figure out where his unit is,” she said.

  Rose nodded. “Will do.”

  Casey watched Rose slip through the gap in the cinderblock fence and cross the second parking lot.

  This was stupid, Casey thought. She’s going to get hurt and it will be my fault for being stupid. I shouldn’t have pushed this. We should have called the police.

  But, but, but. Calling the police in a situation like this? When they didn’t really know if Lucas was a threat? That wasn’t right either. They had no proof. Just an uncomfortable encounter, a clerk who didn’t like the guy, a comic book, and a tattoo.

  If you didn’t think you had enough to report the story, then you couldn’t go to the police with it.

  That’s what we’re trying to do, Casey told herself. Get enough to report the story.

  She leaned against the cinderblock wall and watched Rose talk to an old man sitting in a lounge chair in the courtyard. He pointed toward a second-story unit. Rose started to walk across the courtyard.

  A text came through.

  Got it. #204, back building, upstairs. Mr. Avakian here says Lucas is a dick. Paraphrasing.

  Hahah, Casey typed. Be careful or I will hurt you.

  Don’t worry. Avakian doesn’t think he’s home.

  Casey could see Rose enter a stairwell. Then she couldn’t see her anymore.

  Please be right, Mr. Avakian, Casey thought.

  Behind her, she heard shrieks of laughter. Little kids, she was almost positive. She turned, and there they were: six years old, maybe, two Latina girls, one wearing a stained Supergirl T-shirt, the other in a pink dress, running down a path that led deeper into the complex.

  Looks like nobody here, Rose texted.

  Good.

  You will laugh when I show you the door. OMG this guy is a tool.

  Can’t wait.

  One of the girls screamed.

  Casey flinched, like someone touched her with a cattle prod. She squeezed her eyes shut and clutched her phone. It’s playing, she thought. They are just playing. Nothing is wrong.

  She opened her eyes. She couldn’t see the girls. She took a few stumbling steps across the parking lot, toward the other complex. Regained her balance and walked as quickly as she could.

  Nothing is wrong.

  As soon as she reached the paved path, she saw them. The one in the pink dress had a tiny Nerf football that she aimed at Supergirl’s head. They screamed some more, laughing like little banshees.

  Relief flooded her like a warm narcotic.

  Something caught her eye to the right. A heap of color—flowers?—at the base of a light post near a barbecue ring and a Weber grill. Other objects she couldn’t make out. A bottle, maybe.

  She slowly made her way toward it.

  Flowers. Teddy bears. Candles. A couple of tall beer bottles—Stone Ruination and Ballast Point Sculpin—and an empty bottle of tequila. Two photos in plastic slipcovers, a young white guy and a young black guy.

  It was a memorial, the kind of thing you saw on street corners where someone was hit by a car. Or shot down by a gang. It was always weird when you saw ones that had been up for a while, how the flowers browned and objects faded in the sun, got windblown, grayed by dirt or smeared by rain.

  This one was new, the photos crisp, the flowers fresh.

  Casey felt cold prickles gather on the back of her neck, a swarm of tiny spiders’ legs dipped in ice.

  Am at yard of other complex by barbecue area in back near canyon. Get over here ASAP.

  Ben wasn’t happy about it. She could tell by the way his head pushed back, the tightening of his jaw and lips. “Okay,” he said. “If that’s what Matt wants. I can handle things here.”

  “We could both go,” she found herself saying. She felt sorry for Ben, she realized. More than that: she didn’t wan
t him to be mad at her. Even if Matt liked her, having Ben mad wouldn’t help her position in the campaign.

  Ben shrugged. “Not sure there’s anything for me to do there. Unless you think we need two people on Social.”

  She didn’t, really. It was a community fair at a local park, a belated Fourth of July celebration. It featured food trucks, a few booths for service organizations including the police and the fire departments, an on-site electronics recycling vendor, a booth for urban trees and tips on xeriscaping, solar panel vendors, rec center sports teams taking sign-ups for youth baseball and dodgeball for grownups, and a bouncy castle and pony rides for the kids. There would be a band or two, a couple of massage chairs, and a tai chi demonstration. A lot of red, white, and blue bunting. Face painting and balloon animals, probably.

  Matt’s part in all this was to give a brief speech and hand out a commendation to the local fire station and EMS for their part in aiding the victims of the Morena shootings. The district home office would have a booth as well, with a few junior staffers giving out information about the district, who was who in Matt’s office and how to find help, government and private resources available to residents, volunteer opportunities in the community, times when Matt was in San Diego and holding open house events for interested constituents. The booth staffers could not hand out campaign literature or do any obvious electioneering.

  “If somebody asks about volunteering on the campaign, by all means get their information,” Ben told Sarah. “Hand them a button, even. We just can’t actively solicit that at a noncampaign event.”

  Matt would also take time for a meet and greet at the fire department booth. It was always fire season in Southern California, and the SDFD liked to take advantage of any opportunity to reinforce good fire prevention practices. Matt would listen to people’s complaints and tell them the best way to protect their homes from wildfires.

  “They do a demonstration showing people how to use fire extinguishers, have these big old gas flames shooting up you get to extinguish,” Ben said. “We just need to make sure we get shots and maybe footage of Matt doing that. Great GIF material. Representative Cason dousing the flames of whatever.”

  “Maybe you should come, then. So we can get it from a couple different angles.”

  Ben shrugged again. “I’ll see how things are going here.”

  He was still mad at her, she could tell. It’s not my fault, she thought. She hadn’t been the one to make the decision. But that didn’t seem to matter. It never did.

  “Well, fuck me.”

  Rose stared at the memorial to the two dead men, Riley James and Elray Harrison. “I thought this address sounded familiar, but I didn’t connect why.”

  “Do you think … ?” Casey began. She couldn’t complete the sentence.

  “I mean, how do we know? We’ve got this string of coincidences and no way to prove any of it’s tied together. And … why? What’s the motive? It’s just senseless.”

  It was as though Rose was talking to herself, trying to work the puzzle, the conundrum of what to do about any of this.

  “So was what Alan Chastain did up on the roof,” Casey said. “He killed people he didn’t know. He didn’t have any connection to them. Or no one’s found it yet, anyway. He just went up there and killed people. He tried to kill me. Because I was there. No other reason. Or maybe he thought it would be fun to bag a TV reporter.”

  “You think Lucas Derry is killing people for fun?”

  Casey thought about it. “I don’t know. I just think if he is, I mean, if he is killing people … we don’t know what the reasons are. Like Chastain. We think he’s one of those guys who just goes off and starts shooting. Maybe there’s some other motivation, and we don’t know what it is yet.”

  Let there be a reason, she thought. If there was a reason, you might be able to fix things somehow.

  A breeze from the shadowed canyon came up, fluttering the photos and the flowers.

  “What do we do now?” Rose asked.

  He knew he shouldn’t have called in sick. You were supposed to stick to your routine as much as you could, not give anyone any clues. But after the high from last night and the thought of what lay ahead tomorrow …

  Lucas just couldn’t face going back into that shithole of a store and doing that stupid, worthless job for one more minute. Fuck that place. The pay was shit. The job was boring. The other workers, most of them were useless trash, a bunch of fucking mud people. On his last full day of freedom? Maybe his last day on earth? Why should he have to spend any of it with them?

  Instead, he decided to have some fun. Finally got his second tattoo. Went to the range and practiced shooting. Treated himself to an excellent steak and lobster dinner, something he couldn’t really afford, but what the fuck difference did that make now? Saw a movie he’d been wanting to catch, in a theater instead of waiting for it to come online. Went to a massage parlor and got a hand job from a cute little Thai masseuse. It was too bad that he couldn’t fuck her too, but on the other hand, would you really want to put your dick in that? Who knew what else had been in there?

  It bothered him that he hadn’t been able to fuck many women in his life. He should have been able to, but most of the girls he’d met were such bitches. Always wanting someone “better,” some alpha asshole who’d treat them like shit but they’d still cream over. It wasn’t fair.

  Fucking sluts.

  After tomorrow, everything would be different. If he lived, he’d be worshipped by the ones who understood what was at stake, who understood what he’d done for them. He’d have all kinds of ladies sucking up to him too, he’d bet, all those dumb bitches who fell in love with convicted murderers and even married the assholes.

  Maybe there would be a few who’d finally see who he really was.

  If he didn’t make it, he’d die knowing he’d done the right thing. Something big. Something important that everyone would remember.

  He wasn’t sure if he believed there was a better world waiting for him on the other side, but when it came down to it, there was no fucking point in continuing to live the way he was living.

  Lucas pulled the Saran wrap off the new tattoo on his left forearm, still red around the black Gothic letters, dots of scabbing here and there where the artist had gone a little deep.

  “Those who will not fight in this world of strife do not deserve to live,” he said, lightly running his fingertips over the inked words.

  15

  Unfuckingbelievable.

  Lindsey grasped the back of the couch and squeezed the cushion as hard as she could. It was either that or break something.

  Sometimes Matt was such an ungrateful SOB that she wanted to claw his face. She’d put her life on hold for him, and this was how he responded.

  She’d resigned from the law firm. It had just gotten too complicated with Matt in Congress. Yes, a lot of people wanted access to her, thinking that meant access to him. But with the potential for conflicts of interest, the attacks made on her during his first campaign because of her work, it just wasn’t worth it anymore.

  They’d miss the money she brought in. Neither of them came from money, unlike the majority of Matt’s colleagues in Congress.

  But they were doing all right. She’d paid off her student loans. Matt’s military benefits had covered his. They’d bought a modest house in a middle-class Clairemont neighborhood before Matt’s election. Refinanced and remodeled it. Not her dream house, not by any stretch, but they could afford it without her income now, and the remodel looked good, taking what had been a stucco box and turning it into a two-story Craftsman-style home with a rooftop deck and views of the bay and canyon. They had some money saved. And she would go back to work, after this election was over. She just wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. What made sense to do under the circumstances.

  So she’d taken on the fundraising role. She hate
d it. An endless, thankless task, and she didn’t think she was very good at it. She lacked Matt’s easy charisma, she knew. But she’d raised a lot of money regardless.

  And Matt? He acted like it was an imposition on his time. Like a sullen teenager asked to do homework he didn’t care about and she was the teacher insisting that he do it. Or worse, his mother.

  And he wondered why she didn’t want kids.

  “Look, I’ve got to go, Linds,” he’d said. “I don’t want to show up late to the fair and have to run out of there soon as I’ve finished speaking.”

  “Five calls, Matt. That’s all I’m asking. We sit down and do it now, and you won’t be late.”

  “You know what, I would actually like to take a little extra time to talk to the people I represent, okay? If that means my priorities are fucked up, then fine.” He’d left with a stomp and a slammed door.

  Fine back at you, she thought. If he didn’t care, why should she?

  Still, she made a couple of the calls herself—people she knew somewhat and didn’t feel too terrible calling. Sharon asked again about nailing Matt down on a date for her fundraiser, and Lindsey didn’t have an answer for her yet, but that couldn’t be helped. “I’ll get Matt to commit,” she’d said. “Soon, I promise. His schedule is just a little complicated right now. But I know he really wants to do this.” She’d rolled her eyes as she said it.

  Liar.

  After that, she changed for the event. Casual, she’d been told. Bright green capris and an embroidered Mexican blouse, she decided. A relief not to get dressed up in political wife drag, for once.

  The park was a quick seven-minute drive from their house. She had to circle around a few times to find street parking. The lot was full, a chunk of it taken up by three food trucks. Good attendance, it looked like. Booths were set up in a rough quadrangle between the trees. Kids waited in line at a bouncy castle, several fencing with balloon swords. There was a small stage at the far end where Matt would speak. Right now a group of mariachis played, except the song was by Nirvana. Lindsey smiled.