by Conell, Zach
Chapter Ten
Professor Erdmann had been right at the beginning of his recording—his narrative really had been “rather much to take in at once.” Indeed, even after hearing it a second time, Cillian had a hard time getting the facts straight. Pacing up and down his motel room late at night with Rose’s tablet computer in his hand, listening to her father’s account through her earphones and occasionally replaying certain parts, or pausing the recording to scribble something in his notebook on the ramshackle desk opposite the bed, he struggled to make sense of it all.
Rose was asleep in the room next to him, at least he hoped so, for the discovery of her father’s message and especially the experience of listening to his long, disturbing tale had been an intense and exhausting emotional rollercoaster ride for her. They had remained at their seat near the bank of the Chicago River for about twenty minutes after listening to the audio file. In that relatively short time Rose had expressed sadness, frustration, disbelief, anger, despair, remorse, fear, confusion, and countless other feelings, while Cillian tried to be there for her, mostly by holding his arm around her and listening.
“I’m sorry,” Rose had said eventually, while drying her tears with her gloves and getting up to go. “I just needed to get that out of my system. If it’s all right with you, I’d prefer to go directly to my hotel. We can hand in the book tomorrow. I am absolutely exhausted, and I feel that I need to sleep on this before I can be of any use to you in sorting through this mess.” She had pointed to the USB drive he was just removing from her tablet. “On top of that, I also have some arrangements I need to make for the funeral, and those can’t wait any longer.”
“Sure, that’s fine with me. But did you mean by ‘sorting through this mess’ that you want me to look into this case further?” Cillian asked to make sure.
“Of course. Some shady people in powerful positions had my father killed because he was a threat to their conspiracy, that much is obvious. Equally clear is that we will track them down and make them pay. That is not up for discussion,” she determined cold-bloodedly.
Cillian had been impressed with her resolve. Somehow she kept on manifesting herself as ever more captivating.
“Whatever it takes,” he confirmed with a confident nod of his head.
“Even staying in a hotel room next to mine for the time being? Because that is no longer optional.” From the resolute look in her eyes, Cillian had been able to tell that Rose was not kidding around; she just wanted to know where he stood.
“Naturally,” he replied. “We have to be extremely careful, because you were right from the beginning—I was being followed.” Rose regarded him questioningly. “Your father mentioned that he was being followed,” Cillian commenced, “and he described the appearance of the man who was shadowing him. I saw a man that exactly matched his description on Thursday evening. At first he was sitting next to me on the subway, and later, on my way home, I noticed him walking across the street from me. He had a fairly frightening, deranged look in his eyes. I didn’t think much of it at first, and I haven’t seen him since, but we can’t take any risks.”
“Exactly,” she affirmed. “So let’s go.”
Okay, so the story consists of three sort of separate parts, Cillian now thought to himself as he went over Professor Erdmann’s “lecture” once more. He took out his earphones and began winding the cord around his index finger, only to unwind it again right after. First we have the tale of Mr. X and his ill-conceived quest to get Erdmann to write him a report about the nonexistent positive effects of Mayor Gullfay’s counterproductive and unlawful zero-tolerance policy on the basis of fabricated interviews. Cillian took up his notebook from the desk and looked over his notes. So basically, this part of the story raises at least three questions: Who is Mr. X? What are his real motives for approaching Dr. Leamington with this obvious scam only to withdraw it after six months? What is the relationship between Dr. Leamington and Mr. X? He turned to a blank page in the notebook and wrote “Part 1” at the top of it, under which he then listed the three questions.
Then there is a second part about Erdmann’s cooperation with Mrs. Tiller of the Chicago Transparent and the corroboration of Erdmann’s research by Mulvaney. He turned the page to jot down “Part 2.” Here one can wonder at least three more things: Why did Dr. Leamington give Erdmann my contact information all of a sudden? Why was the mainstream media so eager to defend Gullfay and attack the CT? Who were Mulvaney’s contacts? After writing this down, Cillian moved on to the next page for “Part 3.”
Finally, this CT reporter, Oliver Duncan, enters the picture with his findings about the glacier/headhunters phenomenon invading the South Side, and Erdmann eventually finds evidence to support this. But it is in this part that everyone starts receiving threats and people begin disappearing. First Duncan, then possibly Tiller and Mulvaney, and finally Erdmann himself. Of course we only know about the death of the professor for sure, so a first step would be to find out what happened to the others. Additional questions about this part are virtually endless, but the most vital ones seem to be: Who is funding the headhunters and their drugs? What is the purpose of this scheme? Is there a connection between the Mr. X/Gullfay/zero-tolerance story on the one hand and the glacier/headhunters developments on the other hand? And of course the two questions that started all of this: Was Reinhart Erdmann murdered? And, supposing that he was, who killed him?
Cillian threw his pencil on the desk and sat down on the bed. Who am I fooling? he thought, feeling hopeless now that he had analyzed the professor’s full narrative only to conclude that the vast conspiracy Rose’s father had stumbled into, only half intentionally from the looks of it, wasn’t any less complex than he had feared at first. A case like this is way out of my league. Spying on cheating or allegedly cheating spouses? No problem. Finding lost pets? Easily done. Tracking down missing relatives? Can be arranged. But this, no way. There were so many unknown players with unknown motives involved, leading to a plethora of open questions, and Cillian hardly knew how he was going to answer any of them. He had never dealt with a case even remotely similar in complexity, and he barely knew where to start, let alone bring it to something resembling a successful conclusion.
At the same time, Cillian knew he couldn’t go back on his pledge to help Rose solve this mystery and bring Erdmann’s murderer(s) to justice. But while her confidence about catching the people behind her father’s death had been contagious, all it had taken to crush the unlicensed PI’s spirit was another listen to the professor’s description of the intricate web of apparent deceit, intrigue, corruption, and murder in which he had gotten entangled. Thinking about Erdmann’s case, he now felt about equally glum as he had whenever he followed a lead to a dead end in his investigation of Amanda’s disappearance. And like in those instances, he currently had no clue how to boost his own morale again.
So now what? Cillian wondered. Something, anything, he tried to encourage himself. He got up from the bed and walked back to the desk to go over his notes once again. What a chaotic mess, he moaned. This characterization of not only his notebook but the entire case reminded him of the way Rose had once described her father, when she said that there was always order to his chaos. Chaos, order. He contemplated the meaning of the words for a moment. Well, it would be a start…
Invigorated by his little epiphany, Cillian picked up his notebook and tore out the pages containing his notes about the “three parts” of Erdmann’s narrative and the related questions. He moved everything from the desk onto the bed, except for those three papers, which he carefully arranged in chronological order from left to right. He then took his notebook and began writing down the names and descriptions of the people mentioned by the professor who seemed relevant to the case, including Erdmann himself, using one page for every individual. When he finished, he put these “profiles” on the desk, organizing them according to the part of the story in which they were first mentioned. So the pages of Reinhart Erdmann, Genevieve Lea
mington, Mr. X, and Pat Gullfay went under “Part 1”; those of Lucy Tiller and Brian Mulvaney under “Part 2”; and that of Oliver Duncan and “the headhunters”—he had made a collective profile for them—under “Part 3.”
Looking at his little arrangement, Cillian was not completely dissatisfied with himself, an opinion which he readily acknowledged as a significant step up from his previous feeling of utter self-contempt. Thus inspired, he took a new piece of paper and once more wrote down the names of the people to look into. At the top he wrote Lucy Tiller, followed by Brian Mulvaney and Oliver Duncan. He took Rose’s tablet to browse the contents of the USB drive until he located the text file Erdmann had mentioned containing the contact information of these three people. He then wrote down their phone numbers next to their names and drew a horizontal line to mark them off from the names that were to follow. Next he entered Genevieve Leamington and another horizontal line, before completing the list with Mr. X, Pat Gullfay, and “the headhunters.”
The three names in the top row comprised the people that had generally cooperated with the professor, while the people at the bottom seemed to have been hostile to Erdmann’s activities, at least insofar as they were aware of those. Genevieve Leamington got her own category because despite ostensibly undermining Erdmann’s efforts for the most part, she might have actually tried to look out for him by warning him and sharing Cillian’s info.
Great, Cillian reflected sarcastically, now all I have left to do is the endless task of going through all data files and videos and learn everything there is to learn about this case. At least this tremendous amount of work wouldn’t leave him with any time to mull over the unpromising options he had for carrying on his investigation into Amanda’s disappearance, or for considering the growing attraction he felt toward Rose. With this more or less consoling thought in his mind, Cillian set to work.
Cillian felt like an Olympic athlete as he ran through the gloomy streets littered with trash, along graffiti-covered walls and rusty parked cars. So this was the South Side. It didn’t seem so bad, now that he was on his way to see her, at long last. As he turned a corner, he entered a wide street, which he instantly knew would lead him to his destination. Driven on by a euphoric feeling, he almost flew along the colorful trail of Pat Gullfay campaign posters that lay scattered across the road, until he reached the end of the street and stopped abruptly in front of a burning apartment with a large glass door. On the other side of the door stood Amanda, radiantly smiling at him.
“Sea!” she said joyfully. “Please come in, I’ve missed you!”
When Cillian went up to the door, he noticed that there was no handle.
“But how do I open it?” he asked disappointedly.
“Just push, silly,” Amanda responded, still sounding cheerful, but with a mild unease mixed into her voice.
Cillian put one hand on the glass and pushed, but the door didn’t yield.
“I can’t open it; it doesn’t move,” he said, as he tried to use two hands to no avail. It was like trying to move a brick wall.
“Try to hurry, please. They are coming,” Amanda said, perceptibly distressed, as she signaled both to the left and right side of Cillian.
He now became aware of surroundings. The burning house in front of him stood at the base of an intersection of the street that passed in front of the house with the road that lay behind Cillian and which he had taken to get here. Still facing the house, he looked into the street on his left and was just able to perceive a large group of people wearing dark blue outfits and black helmets in the distance. They were rapidly moving in his direction. That must be the zero-tolerance unit, he instantly understood. When he moved his head to the other side, he could discern a band of black-clad militants approaching swiftly from the opposite end of the same street. A headhunter squad. He threw his full weight against the door, but it didn’t give way.
“Come on, Cillian, please come in. They will be here soon,” Amanda implored him.
“I’m trying!” he shouted agitatedly. “Can you help me?”
As he heard the footsteps of the combatants coming nearer and nearer from both sides, Amanda stood rooted to the spot behind the door, staring at Cillian, teary-eyed. The room she was in gradually began to fill with smoke. She will burn, my god she will burn! he panicked. He took a few steps back to storm the door at full speed.
“Cillian,” said a kind voice somewhere behind him. He turned around. Rose was standing at the other side of the intersection; she had seemingly come from the same road he had taken earlier. He took a step in her direction. Amanda’s piercing scream made him look back once more. It was as if she had come back to life with a start.
“Don’t, Cillian, they will crush you!” she pleaded, pressing her hands against the glass.
The policemen and vigilantes in tactical gear had begun storming each other at full speed. If he didn’t move within a few seconds, he would be caught in the middle of their confrontation.
“Cillian,” Rose repeated sweetly.
“Cillian, move!” Amanda yelled.
But he couldn’t. He stood frozen, waiting for the belligerents to crash into one another, all around him. He wanted them to. He wanted to become the eye of a hurricane of violence, or be trampled by the raging hordes. Rather that than deciding to walk toward the burning house, or away from it, choosing between Amanda and Rose. He couldn’t—he wouldn’t.
“Cillian, no!” wept Amanda.
“Cillian!” Rose begged.
He fell on his knees and closed his eyes, wishing to be swept away, erased from history. Any moment now… At the final moment, when he fully expected the impending battle to break loose around him in full force, he was surprised to feel two hands grabbing his shoulders and shaking him tenderly.
“Cillian, are you okay?”
He opened his eyes to Rose’s delicate features. She appeared to be worried about something. He had no idea what she was doing here, or where “here” was to begin with.
“Right as rain,” he lied, feeling severely disillusioned.
Rose gave him a doubtful glance and turned her head to address someone behind her.
“He’s fine, thank you very much,” she said cordially.
“No problem, miss. Please let me know if you need anything else,” an unknown female voice replied politely.
Cillian heard a door close at the other side of the room, for he now recalled where he was. The Windy City Waterfalls Hotel. He just didn’t get what Rose was doing in his room. He was pretty sure she hadn’t been here last night.
“So, Sleeping Beauty,” she said with a smile as she got up from the bed. “Care for some coffee?”
Thirty minutes later, Cillian, dressed in a worn-out robe he had found in the bathroom, was having a very basic breakfast of stale toast and artificial jam at his desk, while Rose—who to Cillian’s surprise wore a different dress than the day before—paced the budget hotel room somewhat restlessly. It had taken half a cup of lousy black coffee and a brief cold shower to revitalize his body and refresh his mind. He had worked on analyzing and categorizing Erdmann’s data until dawn, when he had apparently fallen asleep on the bed amid a bunch of pages taken out from his notebook and scribbled with names, dates, places, numbers, incoherent questions, descriptions, and assumptions, all relating to Erdmann’s investigation.
Rose told him that she had gone to bed early last night and, despite a relatively restless night, had woken up early this morning, eager to delve into the numerous files on her late father’s USB drive. She had knocked on Cillian’s door as early as eight o’clock, then again at nine, and finally at ten when she had gotten seriously worried and asked the hotel receptionist if she could let her into Cillian’s room to check on him. Knowing that Rose was paying for him, the hotel employee had been very cooperative. It was her voice which Cillian had heard soon after Rose had finally managed to wake him up. By now, it was a quarter to eleven in the morning.
“I can’t believe you did all
this,” Rose said, sorting through the papers on the bed. “And I saw the pen drive—had my father already added those descriptions of the contents, source, and date of every file, or was that you?”
“I guess that was me,” Cillian replied with his mouth full. He didn’t mind that Rose had gotten the bread from the breakfast room over two hours ago, nor that the strawberry-flavored jam he ate with it didn’t contain a trace of actual fruit. Famished as he was, he relished the cheap, tasteless, and on all accounts nutritionless food as a divine delicacy. And the bitter, lukewarm coffee he drank with his meal made it all the more delicious.
“Thank you, really.” Rose walked up to him to pat him on the shoulder. “My morning was not as successful unfortunately.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I hacked into my father’s university email account, which was the only account he ever used as far as I know,” Rose remarked casually.
“You say that as if it is the simplest thing in the world.”
“Normally it’s quite advanced actually, but it was a lot easier than I had expected, because my father used a ridiculously easy password: my mother’s name followed by the year they met. I guessed it in two minutes.”
Cillian was surprised by how levelheaded Rose sounded. She was not bragging, but merely stating facts.
“Anyway, I didn’t find anything about the investigation. So either he never discussed it via email with Dr. Leamington and later with Mrs. Tiller, or someone got into his account before me and deleted all his emails relating to his research on zero tolerance, but I couldn’t find any traces of the latter. I also went through my father’s phone records again—I mean those that I had already obtained on Thursday and that contained the text message he sent you.”