Executioner's Lament

by Justin Rishel

  Most people would not recognize Desmond Varela in person, but his name in print would have caught their attention. The winner of several awards for investigative journalism, Varela had made a name for himself over the last several years for exposing dirt on corrupt politicians and other prominent citizens.

  “You’re late,” Malina said as Varela lifted her red canvas shoulder bag off the stool next to her and sat down.

  “I’m always late,” Varela replied, placing her bag on the bar in front of her. “And you always wait. Why do we have to have this discussion every time?”

  “Well, this is the last time I’m telling you. Maybe you’ll be more polite to your next gopher.”

  “We’ll see,” Varela said, unconvinced. He pulled his leather jacket off and laid it across his lap, smiling at Malina. “I don’t know why you act so put out. This is a good thing we’re doing.”

  She reached inside the bag and pulled out a small clear plastic case the size and shape of a business card but a quarter of an inch thick. Varela laid an open hand on the bar, palm up.

  “Payment,” Malina said. It was clearly a statement and not a question. Varela did not move his hand nor take his eyes off Malina.

  “This too? We have to do this every time too?” Varela shook his head, feigning disappointment. “Check the account.”

  Malina pulled her phone out of a jacket pocket to check her bank account, one of many under an alias. A quick glance told her the money was there—several months’ work in one shot. She couldn’t help but feel satisfied with herself.

  “I’m serious, you know.” Varela still had his hand out. “You really should feel good about this. We’re going to take down some bad people who are doing bad things.”

  “Bad people that do bad things usually don’t take it very well when the world finds out about it. They’re sort of known for being unforgiving.” Malina opened the small case; it was full of tiny memory cards, some sticks of gum, and a scrap of paper.

  “My name is going to be on this article,” he said. “I wouldn’t write it if I thought it was going to get me killed. And you’re safe because I don’t even know who you are.”

  She pulled out the scrap of paper and placed it in his hand. Varela looked at the paper and read it several times, committing its contents to memory, and handed it back to her.

  “Everything in there? Everything we talked about?”

  Malina shot him a look in response to his question.

  “Just asking. Take it easy.” Varela held up his hands in supplication.

  Transaction complete, she hopped down from the high stool and was reaching for her bag when Varela grabbed her arm.

  “Listen, you do great work. It’d be a shame if you … went into retirement.”

  Malina said nothing but tossed the scrap of paper into her cold coffee; within seconds, the paper dissolved.

  She turned away from Varela and pushed through the small crowd queueing near the coffee shop’s door and stepped onto the sidewalk. Her five-foot-six-inch frame melted into the throng.

  7

  Strangers

  Aubrey returned home to his empty apartment, happy to see that it was exactly as he’d left it seven days ago. The air was cool but reeked of rotten food. The austere furnishings added to the chill; everything was made of wood and metal, the floor bare concrete.

  From pure habit after a week in the hospital, he walked to the living room and turned on the TV. Something about the background noise made him feel more comfortable. He turned on the news on the off-chance that they may discuss the OFP or BSS cases.

  Moving toward the bedroom, he stopped when he heard the voice coming from the speakers of the sound system. He turned back to the TV to see the CEO of Ventana, Inc., James Sarazin with his arm resting on the handle of a shovel jammed into the ground.

  ” … here at the site of the Charlie Lattimore Convalescent Home for Childhood Diseases.” Sarazin was speaking to a group of reporters. The sleeves of his white oxford were rolled back, his tie hung loose, and his black hair was tussled. The man was only a head taller than the shovel. The text at the bottom of the screen read Ventana CEO Donates Land and Personal Capital for Hospital. “There will be room here for 1,500 kids with diseases or disorders that require round the clock care. There will also be space enough for families to stay with their children long term. The idea is to make this place as much like home as possible.”

  “When do you expect the facility to be complete?” a reporter called out from the crowd.

  “We fully expect for it to be operational and welcoming new patients by next spring,” Sarazin replied.

  “Charlie Lattimore was a victim of Boarding School Syndrome. Are you doing this in honor of the other victims as well?” another reporter asked.

  Sarazin looked at his feet for a moment before replying. “The Lattimores are close friends of mine and it devastated me when I heard the news about Charlie. The,” he cleared his throat, “terrorists who I won’t name, targeted them specifically because of his affiliation with me and my company. I felt the least I could do was give Charlie and the other victims a place to convalesce that provided not just top-notch care but also some peace. But this facility is not limited to BSS cases, only inspired by them.”

  A reporter in the front of the crowd over-shouted the others with her question. “Is Ventana still contributing to the bombing victims support fund?”

  Sarazin nodded and stuck a hand in his pocket. “We are one of many contributors, but yes we are providing a substantial amount to the fund. We’re also one of several contributors to the first-responders support fund. We mustn’t forget about the police, fireman, and medical workers affected by the recent terror attacks.”

  The news stations cut away to an anchor in studio and Aubrey resumed his walk to the bedroom to get cleaned up. After a long, hot shower, he put on fresh clothes and packed a small bag with a spare laptop and several other tools of his trade. He was hungry, so he grabbed a quick snack from the fridge. Feeling properly sated, he went to his bathroom and removed a small pill bottle from beneath the sink. He opened it. Inside was his spare stash of Zentransa; it was only a few days’ worth, but it bought him time enough to get a new supply.

  Aubrey was reaching inside the bottle to extract a Z pill, his first in eight days, when his phone vibrated. He twisted the cap back on the bottle and exchanged it for the phone in his pocket. A message from Aaron Lewis appeared on the screen.

  Okay. I have it.

  Aubrey was about to reply when another message came through.

  Don’t you dare tell her you got it from me.

  A final buzz on his phone indicated the contact information had been sent.

  I owe you a beer, replied Aubrey.

  Many beers, Marty. Many, many beers.

  Aubrey rushed out of the apartment and summoned his car from the elevator. Before he stepped out onto the lobby floor, he mapped the address Lewis had just sent. Confused, he stared at the pin on the map.

  “Who the hell would live there?”

  * * *

  The ride to Malina Maddox’s residence took longer than he expected, nearly half an hour, which was a long time for a traffic system that was by all measures perfect in its execution of delivering people to their destinations. The fact that she lived in an industrial area not known for habitation and its location on the very outskirts of the city contributed to the travel time.

  The car traveled east, toward the Chesapeake. On the way, Aubrey contemplated sending a message to his employer, OWG Insurance, to tell them he was out of the hospital but decided against it. Technically, he was only discharged from the hospital that day and the doctors had told him to take it easy for a while. In addition, he felt that winning his company a good deal of fame through its assistance with the bombing investigation had also won him some time off.

  Thirty minutes after setting out, his car parked itself in front of a tall, gray windowless building. Its façade held one distinction: a set
of large silver doors resembling a freight elevator.

  Stepping out of the car and craning to see the building in its entirety, Aubrey thought there must be some sort of mistake. He looked at his phone at the address Lewis sent him—315 East Third Street—double checking it against the navigation system in his car. It checked out. In the lower right corner of the building’s front were large numbers—315.

  He was in the right place.

  Aubrey looked at the rest of the address—unit 542. Looking back to the building, he thought it must be the strangest apartment building he’d ever seen.

  Shrugging, he walked to the elevator.

  Searching the wide bezel around the doors, he could find no buttons, only a small oval thumb pad to the right about waist high. Glancing around the nearly deserted sidewalk and deciding he was in no great danger of being observed, he reached into the bag hanging from his shoulder. From it he pulled a small aerosol can and a flat plastic case, both courtesy of his employer OWG Insurance.

  Two wires extended from the sides of the case with a purple sphere at one end and a clear flexible pad at the end of the other. Pressing the rubber pad firmly onto the elevator’s thumb reader, he the then released a cloud of clear mist from the aerosol can. As the mist cleared, its residue clung to the wall revealing dozens of fingerprints.

  Finding a print that he thought looked good, he held the wire with the purple sphere up to it and pressed a button on the plastic box in his other hand. A beam of violet light lit the fingerprint in a phosphorescent glow. At the same time the rubber pad at the other end of the wire flashed blue and began replicating the fingerprint on its surface.

  The swirly, broken lines materialized onto the pad. Once the print was complete, the thumbprint reader scanned it.

  The reader flashed red. The doors did not open. He repeated the process several more times until he found a print that was both complete enough and belonged to a person with access to this building.

  On his fourth try, the reader flashed green and the doors slid open. As he stepped in and pressed the number five on the keypad, Aubrey wondered what someone who lived here would do if they had visitors. There was no intercom system that he could see.

  Aubrey stepped off the elevator into a long hallway stretching laterally across the width of the building. Lights above him came to life as he moved. Looking left and right, he counted a dozen halls branching off this main one running the length of the building. Much like the outside, everything was gray.

  At the end of each block of rooms were sets of numbers. He found one that read 525-555. He walked down this hallway, passing a series of corrugated metal doors—the style that rolled up into the ceiling.

  The hallways weren’t hallways at all, they were aisles. The blocks didn’t hold rooms, they held units. Storage units. That explained the absence of an intercom system. People were not supposed to live in storage units.

  Proceeding down the aisle, he found 542 to be rather longer than the others; the distance to the next door down was two to three times that of the ones previous.

  Not knowing what else to do, he knocked. The metal door clanged loudly against its cradle, echoing up and down the aisle. No response from inside. He scanned the door and the frame around it. The only security he could see was a locking mechanism at the bottom with a thumb reader like the one outside. Using the same device and the same technique as before, he quickly had it flashing green.

  Aubrey bent to roll the door up and stopped himself. Reaching into his bag once more, he pulled out a long, thin device made of a pliable segmented material. On one end was a handle with a small red button; on the other was a glass sphere similar to the one on the fingerprint replicator.

  Raising the door slightly, he gripped the handle on the scrambling device and slid the end under the door. He pressed the button on the handle and slowly maneuvered the device so it pointed in every possible angle. By doing so, Aubrey made any biometrics sensors, motion sensors, and all video cameras inoperable. The device sent out powerful ultraviolet flashes that fried electronic sensors and video equipment. Anyone watching on the other end would see nothing but a white screen when he was finished. The technology was bleeding edge, courtesy of his employer OWG Insurance, and virtually unknown to the public, so he felt comfortable that even someone like Malina wouldn’t expect it.

  Sabotaging Malina Maddox’s security system could backfire. He didn’t want to scare her when she arrived home, but he also felt sure she wouldn’t come home at all if she saw a stranger sitting on her couch. He hoped that he could at least make his case to her in the brief span before she either attacked him or ran away.

  Aubrey gripped the handle at the base of the door and slid it up along its greasy track. The metal clattered lightly as it rolled into itself above the door frame. He clicked on his flashlight and shone it around the space in front of him.

  What he saw was not what he expected. This was, in fact, a living space. Several rugs softened the concrete floor. A sofa ran half the length of the far wall. String lights hung from the ceiling, stretching crisscrossed from corner to corner of the long rectangular space.

  Pulling out the slim scrambling device once more, he activated it and pointed it into all the blind spots he thought he’d missed from a moment ago. He leaned forward beyond the door frame and looked around. A single cabinet, large silver bowl, and a hotplate dominated the corner to his right. A makeshift kitchen, he thought. To his left was what looked like the command center: a large desk stretched from corner to corner topped with enormous monitors, several keyboards and many other devices whose purpose he could only guess at.

  He yawned, a normal occurrence since he entered the hospital over a week ago, and stepped into the storage unit turned living quarters. Closing the door behind him, it was then he noticed the wall opposite the sofa. Against the wall was a large stack of books, actual books. The stack was higher than his waist and formed a rough triangle over ten feet wide at its base.

  With the print industry virtually extinct, it was a rare sight to see so many paper books outside of a collection house. He scanned the titles—Brave New World, 1984, A Brief History of Time, Pale Blue Dot. Impressed by the size and variety of her collection of books he decided to sit down.

  His body was tired. His head was tired.

  He fell into the couch like it was the arms of an old friend. He would wait for her. His only hope was to convince her he meant no harm and make his case before she reacted.

  He yawned again and looked around the one room home taking it in, trying to figure out who she was by what she owned. This was difficult as the room was sparsely appointed. The most revealing objects were the books, though he imagined her life existed on the computers to his right. Imagining the complex security she must have built into accessing the system, he yawned again, longer and deeper than before.

  One thing Martin Aubrey had forgotten was how long it takes to discipline oneself against the brain’s demand for sleep after abstaining from it for so long on Zentransa. The demand came on him like a storm, raging against every cell of his body.

  The sofa was soft; it enveloped him. His eyes were heavy. Didn’t he take his Z before he left his apartment?

  Exhausted, he didn’t care to think too hard about it.

  Just a little tired, he thought. He decided he would rest his eyes for just a few minutes.

  * * *

  Malina Maddox walked home from her meeting with Varela. It took much longer to walk than to hire a car, but something about the exchange she just had made her feel like walking.

  The exchange of information for money always made her feel dirty. Working on her own to expose the corrupt was one thing, her payoff was the satisfaction of knowing the bad guys were going down by her hand. Her work for the police never felt wrong either. The pay was next to nothing and the evidence she uncovered went to actually prosecute and imprison wrongdoers.

  On the other hand, the transaction with Varela was simply to expose assholes f
or being assholes. They were criminals, but in the end the whole story was about embarrassing rich people—exposing extramarital affairs, stealing from partners, defrauding stakeholders. It was a case of wealthy assholes hurting other wealthy assholes.

  But those assholes had means and motive to come after her if they found out about her.

  The money she’d been paid would afford her the luxury of working on projects from which she derived real satisfaction. She equated it to stealing bread to feed the poor. She’d put the money to good use.

  Having grown up in small conservative town part of a wealthy family, she’d always been the black sheep. For their part, her puritanical parents only briefly tried to force her to be anything other than she wanted to be. In Malina’s middle school years, they tried and failed to get her to wear more paisley colors, grow her hair long and adorn it with bows and glittery clips, and to join organizations more fitting of her station like the equine or sailing clubs.

  Once they realized she’d never be who they preferred and that a dark room with a powerful computer was where she belonged, they relented.

  Her parents were gone now. She and her two sisters split the family fortune, which Malina never touched. She was saving it for the very real possibility that she might have to one day disappear for good.

  The phone in her pocket dinged. The tone was that of her security system alerting her it had detected something in her unit. Unalarmed, she pulled the phone out. This happened often due to the abundance of rodents in the building and the fact that hers was the only unit in the building that contained food of any type.

  She looked, shocked by what she saw. The alert wasn’t for movement inside the unit, it was alerting her that all her cameras and sensors were down. She checked the feeds. Nothing there.

  With a few quick taps on the phone to check other systems inside the unit, she confirmed she still had power. What could have taken down all those sensors and cameras if not a power outage, she thought. And if it were an outage, she had backup power packs for her security.