Jury of Peers

by Troy L Brodsky

  Brown went on reasonably, first taking a bite of, and then gesturing with his bagel, “I find that it helps me deal with anger.” The young man’s face was blank, but Brown had seen enough rage to understand. “Even if that anger is toward myself.”

  Seth looked away. The early sun, warm on his hands, was gone. It was going to be overcast grey once again. There was more snow coming. He watched the flag in the lot stand out against the clouds. “When all of this is over I think I'll go to Africa.”

  A placating smile through coffee stained teeth. “I’m always here to talk son. I can’t claim to understand what you’re going through, but I can tell you that I’ll always be here to listen.”

  Seth worked his socks over his toes and then set to lacing his shoes. "Thank you. For the offer and the coffee. I’m going to go back to where I met my wife. I just need the time.”

  “I understand. You really do mean Africa?”

  Seth rose and extended his hand to shake, “How much do you make a year Father?”

  This caught the man off guard as planned. "Make?”

  “Like a salary, I don’t know how they pay you. What do you make a year?”

  “Son, I don’t….”

  “Just round it up.”

  Brown studied the younger man, his purple and yellow bruises, the ugly black sutures, the blobs of blood in the whites of his eyes. “About thirty thousand.”

  Seth nodded, considered it, and didn’t let go of the man’s hand. “If you’ll take care of my family’s burial and service, you’ll make fifty today.”

  “Mr. Meek, I’d be honored to… to perform the services, but there’s no need.…”

  “Yes, there is. I won't go. You’ll treat them right. And if you have any questions you can ask Emily’s folks.” He shook the man’s hand once more and let it fall. Then he wrote a check.

  * * *

  “What’d he say Kev?” Finn asked from the Chaplin’s couch.

  Brown entered his office, closed the door and handed Tonic the check. “I’m not sure.”

  “Uh oh,” Finn said. "He didn’t set himself on fire did he?”

  “No, he's still up there under guard. He's just fine. He talked about going to Africa when this was over.”

  “What?” Tonic asked. The man explained, reciting the conversation as quickly as he could. "He said he was going back to where he met his wife.”

  Finn rubbed his eyes with his palms as he thought it through, then fished out his cell phone. One eye stayed covered as he dialed.

  “Hey, Sir Ramsalot, where’d our boy meet his wife?”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s Finn. Where’d Meek meet his wife Ray?”

  “Hell if I know."

  “Find out right quick. I thought you knew weird shit.”

  “I'll find out for sure.”

  “Call me back here, you see the number right?”

  “Soon as I can,” Ray said.

  “Google the fuck out of it, okay?” he closed the telephone. “Let’s go talk to him, pick his brain a little, eh? We don't want him dancing off quite yet."

  The two left their longtime friend and advocate staring at the check. It was his after all, but ominous all the same. They walked up the corridor, hit the elevator, and were waiting when the phone rang.

  “Finn.”

  “Durban.”

  “Where the fuck is that?”'

  “South Africa,” Ray said.

  “You’re shitting me. Really?”

  “I just called his office. Talked to a gal named Brenda. She was all broken up, but said that he talked about it all of the time. Scuba diving in South Africa. Hey listen, Meek isn’t answering his phone. I’ve pretty much been calling since you left."

  “Working on that," Finn hung up. He looked at Tonic. “Is he gonna off himself or does he seriously have the balls to just up and vanish to South Africa?”

  “South where?”

  “Africa.”

  “I ‘spose. He’s got lots of cash, fifty grand less, but still, damn.”

  Finn rolled his shoulders and relaxed as the elevator doors closed. “Africa’d still be better than gagging on a shotgun.”

  “Fo' shore.”

  * * *

  Seth remained on his bed, hunched over his phone. It was casual and innocuous, and just about what the nurses and security types had seen of him up to this point. On the phone's screen, the count–down timer dwindled toward zero. He showed no emotion. No movement. Nothing at all outwardly. He just sat.

  Inside, he was much the same. In the absence of a specific riddle, his mind became quietly efficient, mulling over potential issues in the background as the timer ticked. He could see the little staff cubicle just outside of his room reflected in the convex safety mirror hung in the hallway. The nurse had finally gone off to her meeting twenty seconds ago with several other quietly speculating coworkers in tow. It was close, but effective enough. On the opposite side of the door stood the cop, irritatingly diligent about standing like one of the Queen's Guard at his station. Occasionally, he too glanced at the convenient mirror in order to keep track of his charge.

  When the counter closed on three minutes, he rose, stretched and pocketed his phone. The toilet was utilitarian at best, and missing the lock that he suspected so many of the previous tenants on suicide watch might have craved, but it wouldn't matter now. He washed, combed his hair straight back instead of to the side, and flushed the toilet–opening the door so that the sound could be heard. It was five steps to his bed, moving right through, and then effectively out of the cop's easy view. He glanced at his phone. Sixty–two seconds, and took a deep breath.

  The heavy IV stand would either act as a ram, going right through the window, or a comic javelin if it rebounded into his guts, but one way or the other, it was time to find out.

  He hefted the thing without a sound, steeled himself, and waited.

  Inside of his pocket, the counter hit zero and the phone pulsed twice.

  He hurled the stand with all of his might.

  * * *

  Finn pushed past a couple kids with food carts when the elevator doors opened. “Christ, a guy starts dropping money here and there and you start to wonder,” he said.

  "Yeah, but…."

  The crash seemed to come from both left and right and the cops froze in place, each looking past the other.

  Tonic moved first, and Finn trusted his instinct, matching his partner's rapid pace. At the T intersection ahead, a doctor meandered past glancing at a chart, evidently unfazed by the commotion. The cops slowed a step at this nonchalance, their worst fears tucked away for the moment… until they turned the corner. The cop was nowhere to be seen… nor were the nurses.

  “Fuuuck,” Tonic said. They sprinted to the door, sliding to a stop. Finn had to grab for the door's frame to keep from simply sliding past.

  The officer stood at the room's shattered window, peering out into the abyss. The cold wind flooded the room and made his shirt sleeves flap at his arms.

  "What the fuck?" Finn said as he too approached the window. Carefully this time.

  "Guy jumped right through it. There… in the snow, is that him? Fuck me, man…" the cop yelled into the wind. "Just wham. He was in the toilet. He must have just taken a run at it… is that him?" he repeated.

  Tonic joined the fray, peering down at the shadowed snowdrift three stories below. He squinted and then looked past the cop at Finn.

  Without a pause the detectives turned back to the door.

  Two men in suits stood in their path, peering inside as if they were afraid of catching city cop germs. "We were told that Mr. Meek might be here.”

  “Who?” Tonic asked.

  The other man asked, “Who are you?”

  “I’m Spencer, how ya doin’?”

  “Has Mr. Meek been discharged from the facility?” one of them asked the approaching nurse, bypassing the detectives as if they were figments of a bad dream. This earned an incredulous snort and sha
ke of the head from Finn.

  “We would very much like to speak with Mr. Meek. Do you know where he is?”

  “No idea, do you?” Tonic asked. In Arabic.

  Suit number two replied in kind, his accent more refined than Spencer's. Battlefield versus textbook. “We would very much like to speak with him.”

  “Well if you see the guy let him know that we would, too."

  They walked down the hall, turned the corner and then broke into a run. Spencer punched the elevator down as Finny bounced on the balls of his feet. “Those guys were creepy,” he said.

  “Na'am,” Tonic agreed. “That was him wasn't it? The white coat doctor type."

  "I guess. You're the one with the good eyeballs." The doors opened and they slid inside. "Unless you think that he's buried in that snow bank."

  "Nope. He chucked somethin' through the window, sucked that cop in, and while he had his head out the window, he just walked out."

  "Slowest elevator ever. Christ. Well, we know two things," Finn said. "One, he's not going out the front, right? Reporters abound."

  "What's two?" Tonic asked as the elevator settled.

  "He's looking more and more guilty."

  Chapter Fourteen

  Invoke

  "Leaving?"

  Seth didn't turn at the voice, choosing to ignore the nurse in exchange for reaching the stairwell and throwing off her pursuit. He pushed open the door and quickstepped down three levels while he reset the countdown timer on his phone. He had just stopped at the magnetically locked fire door to the parking garage when the voice returned, "Wait."

  He whirled in surprise.

  Marley Adams bounced down the last step and walked right up to him, "No soap? Right?"

  "No soap," he said. "And really, thanks. You're right."

  "Probably, but about what?"

  He looked past her at the doors, and then said, "About having a purpose."

  "Did you figure it out?"

  "Getting there."

  "Call me if you need anything. I do twice weekly sessions for noobs, you still have my cards right." She glanced past him, "Those doors are way locked by the way."

  "Maybe," he looked away and then back. "I'm not afraid. So thank you."

  Marley narrowed her eyes. "Why?"

  He turned his phone to her as the timer ticked down from twelve seconds. "Because I'm good at this…."

  Her gaze came away from the phone just in time to hear the metallic click of the fire door locks, followed in an instant by the wail of the hospital fire klaxons. The alarm in the stairwell flashed a brilliant strobe in addition to the bleating assault upon their ears. She smiled, cocking her head in admiration.

  Seth waved as he pushed backward out through the heavy doors and trotted down the ramp to the waiting cab. They swung shut with a thunk, sealing out the sudden cold blast of air. She didn't hear the two detectives in all of the noise, but they all made eye contact as they too hit the doors running. This time she held the door and braved the cold.

  The cab was gone.

  * * *

  Whit's Gulfstream 650 was beyond opulent, but he didn’t indulge himself in anything more than a bottle of water and CNN. He waited in a leather chair until he saw the now familiar segment with his father begin. Whit certainly wasn’t jumping up and down for attention. It wasn’t like him to do so anyway, but when the cameras were outside every morning it was hard for many people not to crave their fifteen minutes of fame. Whit wasn’t one of them. He’d made an initial statement on the first day, from the window of the Jaguar, to the effect that he himself didn’t know much yet, and to please back the fuck up. It would have been funny. No one quoted him, that was for certain.

  Had Seth been a fry cook, the already sizable gap between his father and himself would have been insurmountable. He knew it and so did Whit. His dad would have distanced himself even more in the press–going so far as to dispute the fact that Seth was in fact even his colt, but as it was, his son was a wealthy up and comer in the world of computer security and for a Wall Street guy, that was respectable.

  It also garnered a little sympathy for the old man Seth was sure, and while distantly irritating, that was life. People used what advantage they could secure. That was the game.

  As they climbed out through the D.C. overcast and into the sunlight that had briefly warmed him earlier that morning, Seth was beginning to see just what it would take to reconnect some of the dots in his life, and part of the framework that kept forming in his mind included Whit. So many other points of light had just been blotted out; he needed at least one that he could trust. He turned up the television and stared out over the expanse of sunlit clouds.

  The CNN anchor explained that while there were no new leads, the police were confident about their ability to apprehend the killers. A man named Hopkins stood behind a bank of microphones under lights that made him shield his eyes, and explained that the department had their best people on the case and that already they’d made some substantial headway in tracking these people down. He concluded by saying that this appeared to be a random act, not one aimed at this particular family. Seth closed his eyes before the segment ended and drifted into an exhausted sleep. The beautiful clouds stretched forever in his mind's eye, brilliant and eternal... heavenly. It was all so wrong. The jet began a smooth descent along the southern end of the Chesapeake Bay, just a few miles outside of Whit’s estate, but Seth knew none of it. He was lost inside of a nightmare from which he could not wake; one that filled in the gaps in his memory with a malicious omniscience. And as was his way, Seth dreamed like a man staring into a beautifully cut diamond. With perfect clarity he would see the facets, each holding their own razor sharp image, each telling its own simultaneous tale. Still, the terrors of his sleep did not begin with his daughter's shrill cries, but rather with memories of good times not so distant, tantalizingly–maddeningly–close… but wholly out of reach. Forever.

  And when the Gulfstream touched the pavement an hour later, the impact caught Seth in the gap between dream and reality. The sheer terror of the moment spanned his consciousness. He could literally feel the dull thud as the gun crushed his teeth–and he was forced into the realization that there was absolutely no difference between the nightmare from which he woke, and the reality from which he could not.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Impede

  “Let’s have it,” Hack said. He hadn’t left his computer in several hours and had the gallon milk jug of piss to prove it. His head spun, churning up endless possibilities. Access to the inexhaustible Internet further sustained his ability to conjure and so long as his pencil supply held out, Hack would be high for as long as the story lasted.

  “It’s looking like a gang thing.”

  “Shit.”

  Silence.

  “Well go on,” Hack said. He had little patience for silence.

  “There’s pretty good evidence that it’s a random gang initiation. It sounds like Meek wasn’t involved at all.”

  “Fuck. How’s the computer coming?”

  “I’m working on it. Meek hasn’t been answering his telephone.”

  “You have his direct number?” Hack sat forward so quickly that his chair nearly rolled out from under him.

  “Yeah.”

  “You dumb shit, what is it?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Improvidence

  Seth drove up to the gates at around seven that evening.

  He’d opted for a rental at the airport rather than the big town car that Whit had sent for him, telling the driver that he needed to run some errands on the way to the estate. The driver had given him detailed directions and then vanished.

  Now, as he pulled up, he found himself wishing for the dark windows and privacy of the town car once again. There were two news vans parked just across the road from the front gate. They’d seen him coming–there wasn’t much out here in the evening, but it wasn’t until he turned in to the estate that they pounced. Two brigh
t lights came on, illuminating the dash of the car as if it were daylight. Several faces were already asking questions before he rolled the window down and pushed the button on the gate's intercom. Seth tried to identify himself, he could hear a voice from the speaker, but it was of little use. The questions went on, the lights glared, and he felt trapped.

  Less than fifteen seconds later a half dozen well dressed young men appeared out of the twilight and reminded the camera crews that the driveway was in fact private property. The crews fell back, filming in retreat, and the gates swung open.

  Seth was nervous. It had been a long time.

  It was almost half a mile down a well–lit woodland drive before he could see the lights from the guesthouse, and another minute or two until the main estate came into view. A sprawling Frank Lloyd Wright sort of affair, Whit’s place was understated from the outside. Kind of like Whit himself, Seth thought. The guy was a thousand times bigger on the inside than he was on the outside. Whit’s life was concealed within the convoluted 1400cc calculator that rested between his ears, whirring and ticking out figures unbidden in a ceaseless effort to turn a profit. Whit could not help but be rich, and Seth didn’t doubt for a minute that if his father lost everything today, he’d be back on his feet tomorrow, washing windshields. The next week he’d own a carwash, then a chain of them. It was how he was, fearless, with the catlike ability to turn his charm on and off at will. Mostly it was off, but mostly he didn’t care, either.

  Seth parked his rental on the wide turnabout in front of the main house and left the engine running. A man in a long coat dashed over and asked if he’d like the vehicle ‘put up’ for the night.

  Everything about Whit seemed somehow linked to the horses that he’d never owned. Seth wondered if now, with plenty of cash to burn, more than enough land for them to prance around on, and people to scratch their ears, Whit might have finally broken down and bought himself a pony.