Machine City: A Thriller (Detective Barnes Book 2)

by Scott J. Holliday

  “Meet me at Roosevelt’s.”

  7

  Roosevelt’s Bar was situated a little too close to Keisel Street for it ever to be a hip spot. To make matters worse, an E. coli breakout in a tub of coleslaw had nearly shut the place down several years back. After that most people stayed away, save for the munkies and crack zombies with enough leg power to propel themselves over from Machine City.

  Barnes pulled into the parking lot, got out, and went into the bar.

  Franklin was sitting at a booth against the back wall of the joint, a half-empty draft beer in front of him. His new partner was with him. The guy’s leg was propped awkwardly beneath the table, a horsehead cane leaning against the booth at his side. Franklin signaled with three fingers to the bartender as Barnes weaved through the mix of empty two-tops and four-tops.

  Barnes sighed and rubbed two hands over his bristly scalp as he plopped down into the booth across from Franklin and his partner. There was a news anchor on the television overhead, next to him the familiar video clip of Little Cher at her audition for Starmonizers. The girl was cute with pigtails tied up with red ribbons, but her voice outsized her tiny frame. The set was muted, but the closed-captioning was on. At the bottom of the screen the words passed by . . . POLICE ARE BAFFLED BY THE DISAPPEARANCE OF “LITTLE CHER” CHERRY DANIELS, WHO IS STILL ON AMBER ALERT. SHE WAS LAST SEEN WALKING DOWN THE SIDEWALK BETWEEN A NEIGHBOR’S HOME AND HER OWN . . .

  “You stroll in here soaked to the crotch and sporting a shaved head,” Franklin said, “and I’ve got some explaining to do?”

  The bartender appeared, set down three shots, and left. Bourbon. Barnes threw back a shot and then slapped Freddie Cohen’s letter down on the table. “This is bullshit.”

  Franklin said nothing. He downed his shot.

  “You wrote it,” Barnes said.

  “I didn’t.”

  “We were partners,” Barnes said. He leaned in toward Franklin with a quick glance toward the new guy. “We were friends.”

  “We’re still friends,” Franklin said.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Who were you on the machine?”

  “Like you don’t know.”

  Franklin waited. Above his head the news story switched over to the interview with Hannah Daniels, Little Cher’s mother, from the night of the abduction. Barnes hadn’t noticed before, or maybe he attributed it to her state of mind at the time of the interview, but the woman looked drunk. To Franklin he said, “Freddie Cohen.”

  “Is that name supposed to mean something to—”

  “You know it does,” Barnes said, pounding a fist on the tabletop and causing the shot glasses to dance. The full glass in front of the new guy nearly spilled out, but he caught it before it tipped. Barnes flicked the letter across the table. “Read the letter you wrote.”

  Franklin slid on his reading glasses. He opened the letter, lifted it to the light, and read it. Afterward, he looked up at Barnes, his eyes just above the paper. “Was it?”

  “Was it what?”

  “About Ricky?”

  “You couldn’t. Save him.” The breathless voice. “You failed him.”

  “Shhh.”

  Barnes held Franklin’s gaze for a moment and then looked away. “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry,” Franklin said. “If I had known”—he indicated the letter—“I wouldn’t have delivered this.”

  “Why not?”

  Franklin set down the letter and removed his glasses. “A few hours ago you were a happy father and husband with a head full of hair. Now—”

  “Now I’m a munky.” He gestured toward Franklin’s partner. “Who the fuck is this guy?”

  “Meet Dr. Hill,” Franklin said.

  Dr. Hill offered his hand to shake.

  Barnes left the doctor hanging, kept his eyes on Franklin. “Doctor?”

  Franklin nodded.

  “What’s this about?”

  “You need help, John,” Franklin said. “I dragged you into this because I thought Flaherty might have left a few clues as to who wanted him out of the picture, which could lead us to Little Cher. But you were right, I never should have asked. Let me help you now.” He indicated Dr. Hill. “Let us help you. Dr. Hill is a psychiatrist, he works exclusively with—”

  “Eddie Able,” Barnes said, cutting Franklin off.

  “Come again?”

  “That’s who I saw when I was Cohen. Eddie Able.”

  Franklin cocked his head and blinked. “The toy?”

  “Not the toy,” Barnes said. “The life-size version. Some maniac in a suit, his hands covered in blood.”

  Franklin exchanged a glance with Dr. Hill.

  “And then again when I was Flaherty,” Barnes said.

  “Hold on,” Franklin said. “You were Flaherty, too?”

  “He had files stashed away, just like you said, on the Echo Ring. One with your name on it.”

  Franklin rubbed his hands down his face. “Aw, shit.”

  Barnes smirked. “Starting to come together now, isn’t it?”

  “Look,” Franklin said, “I don’t know what you saw in this Freddie Cohen’s memories, okay? But this Eddie Able thing, you need to stay away from it. It’s a cold case that Flaherty reopened, and it’s nothing to do with you.”

  “You’re saying the cold case has nothing to do with Cherry Daniels?”

  “I’m saying you need to focus on what matters.”

  “So it’s just pure coincidence,” Barnes said, “that you show up at my door with a letter from Freddie Cohen’s estate, asking me to go back on the machine, where I find a blood-soaked psychopath dressed up as Eddie Able, and in the next breath you’re asking me to go be Flaherty on the same goddamn machine, where I find he was also working a cold case involving a guy who dressed up for little kids’ birthday parties as Eddie fucking Able?”

  Franklin put both his hands up, palms out.

  Barnes addressed Dr. Hill. “You’re a shrink, huh?”

  “I can help you sort things out,” Dr. Hill said.

  “Ignore him.” The breathless voice.

  “Shhh.”

  “We need to marginalize the other voices you carry,” Dr. Hill said, “giving you a bigger slice of the pie. It makes you stronger, mentally. Once your slice is big enough, you can kick the others out.”

  “I don’t get it,” Barnes said to Franklin. “You wanted me on the machine to help you find out what happened to Flaherty, to help you find Cherry Daniels. Now you bring along a psychiatrist? For what?”

  “Look,” Franklin said, “I would have introduced you earlier had you agreed to get on the machine when I asked. Dr. Hill was set to monitor you while you were under and after you came out, make sure you’re doing okay mentally and that we don’t put you under too much pressure.”

  “But I refused.”

  “The Barnes I knew,” Franklin said, “the detective I knew, risked everything for a collar. Like a dog with a bone, only your bone was the machine. I wouldn’t have asked in the first place, I wouldn’t have set all this up, except for something Flaherty said before things went to shit.”

  Barnes waited.

  “He said, ‘Barnes will know how to find me.’”

  “What? When did he say that?”

  Franklin’s face went grim. “A month ago.”

  “And when did he go missing?”

  “His wife reported it last night.”

  “You said he was abducted.”

  “Car never left the driveway, credit card hasn’t been used, no girlfriend on the side, as far as we know. Fits the bill that someone snatched him up.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Barnes said. “A month ago this guy predicts he’ll go missing and lets you know I’ll be able to help you find him?”

  “I thought he was just acting crazy,” Franklin said. “Tired or something. Too many cases. Too many unsolved.”

  “Last night he finally goes missing,” Barnes said, “just as he said he would,
and you came to me?”

  “He was close on this Daniels thing,” Franklin said. “Maybe this guy saw Flaherty coming. Maybe Flaherty knew more than what’s in his reports.”

  “The girl’s been gone two days,” Barnes said. “How does that jibe with his prediction from a month ago?”

  “There’s more,” Franklin said. “The stuff in his reports. It all points to a bigger picture.”

  “What stuff in his reports?”

  “A bunch of notes about cold cases,” Franklin said. “Mostly this Eddie Able thing. He’s had a hard-on for that case going on five or six years. Links every missing kid to it, every runaway, every homicide. Plus . . .” He shook his head.

  “Plus what?”

  “Madrox,” Dr. Hill said.

  “Madrox?”

  “Just that single word,” Franklin said, “written in Magic Marker on a few of his more recent cases, including Cherry Daniels.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  Franklin shrugged.

  Dr. Hill looked away.

  “All right, then,” Barnes said. “Maybe you can tell me about the Sect of Shifting Sands?”

  Both Dr. Hill and Franklin eyed him cautiously.

  “Ooh, now that got your attention. Who’s the Shivering Man?”

  “Don’t go there,” Franklin said. “The Sect is just a bunch of machine fanatics.”

  “A cult,” Dr. Hill said.

  “They’re led by Gabriel Messina,” Franklin said. “Some call him the Shivering Man because he’s got dozens of personalities inside him and he’s constantly changing.”

  “Shifting sands,” Barnes said.

  “Yeah,” Dr. Hill said.

  “Messina’s got a powerful mind,” Franklin said. “He’s able to draw up any one of his personalities at any time. He’s a godlike figure to Sect members. Got maybe a hundred followers.”

  “The Melodians and Brittanians hate him,” Dr. Hill said.

  “How come I never heard of this guy?” Barnes said.

  “He’s underground,” Franklin said. “Keeps a low profile these days, like one of those mountain gurus. People come to him for wisdom and help. Always comes at a price, though.”

  “Used to be he’d show up with his people at memory shop protests,” Dr. Hill said, “to beat back the Melodians and Brittanians, but he’s more like David Koresh now. Jim Jones.”

  “I’ll be sure to skip the Kool-Aid,” Barnes said. He picked up the third shot of bourbon and downed it, clacked the glass down on the table. “Maybe Flaherty was right.”

  “How’s that?” Franklin said.

  “If what you’re saying is true,” Barnes said, “that Flaherty predicted he’d go missing, he must have known something, right? And if he was as thorough as you say, he would have recorded the memory. So, maybe I know how to find him after all.”

  “This was never meant to be a rogue operation,” Franklin said. “You were supposed to be professionally monitored. Supervised.”

  Barnes turned to Dr. Hill. “He left two other files. Did you know that? One of them was called ColdCase.”

  “Don’t,” Franklin said.

  Barnes collected the Cohen letter and stuffed it into his pocket as he stood up to leave. He smiled. “Why not? I already shaved my head.”

  8

  Barnes walked across the parking lot toward his truck. A voice from behind called out, “Wait up!” He stopped and turned to see Dr. Hill hobbling toward him on his cane.

  “No,” Barnes said. He started again toward his truck, zigzagging between the parked cars. He arrived at the driver’s-side door and got in. He put in the key and was about to turn it when a knocking came to the passenger-side window. Dr. Hill. He made the old-school rotating hand movement for rolling down a window.

  Barnes used the electric button to roll the window down. The truck was old but not that old.

  “We need to talk,” Dr. Hill said.

  “No, we don’t.”

  “We do,” Dr. Hill said. “You don’t understand what’s happening to you.”

  “And you do?”

  “I’ve been there, okay? I’ve traveled down that road.”

  “So have I,” Barnes said, “and I beat the voices. I’m me again.”

  “Says the guy with the shaved head.”

  Barnes turned the key and started the engine. He shifted into reverse and looked over in time to see that Dr. Hill had reached into the vehicle and popped the passenger door open. He was in and sitting down before Barnes could pull away.

  “Look,” Dr. Hill said, “I know you don’t like the idea of talking to me about this stuff, but it could help.”

  “How?”

  Dr. Hill reset himself in his seat, seeming to want to find a comfortable way to situate his bum leg. Once he stopped moving, he said, “I used to get these shivers, you know? That’s how I knew when I was losing control of my mind and letting someone else run the show for a while. I’d get this cold feeling inside, and my whole body would shake. You ever get that?”

  Barnes fought back the very feeling Dr. Hill described, the coldness, the shiver. He stomped hard on the sensation. “I’ve got control.”

  Dr. Hill looked him up and down and said, “Why do you think they outlawed the machine?”

  Barnes sniffed. His hand was still on the gearshift, the truck still in reverse. “It fucked people up, just like any drug, even the legal ones. Alcohol fucks people up every day, save for those who can handle it.”

  “In the simplest sense, you’re right; the machine fucks people up. But the problem is bigger than that.”

  “I’m sure you’re going to expand,” Barnes said. He shifted back into park, took his foot off the brake. The truck settled.

  “Remember the Knowledge Reform?”

  “Rings a bell,” Barnes said, though it didn’t.

  “It started out by asking the question, what if every person was highly educated? What if every kid really had a chance, not some bullshit token bone, not affirmative action, but a real chance from the beginning? The government decided to give it a shot. The reform went into action, and all sorts of pathways were made so that any person from any socioeconomic background was given an opportunity to get a degree and make something of themselves.”

  “Sounds like a good plan,” Barnes said, still struggling to recall the program. He’d lost time as a munky, sure, but enough to be completely unaware of national education reform?

  “Sure it does, and if you opposed it you were labeled an elitist asshole who just wants the world’s riches for himself.”

  “Your point?”

  “My point is that the world needs janitors. Not everyone should be educated, not everyone should be wealthy. Not everyone should live the high life, else there’ll be no high life left to live. If everyone’s a CEO, who will pick up the garbage or clean the toilets?”

  “I don’t know, man. Robots?”

  Dr. Hill smirked. “Maybe someday.”

  “So what, then, the reform didn’t work?”

  “It was canceled during the recent change up top. Democrats enacted it, Republicans killed it.”

  “Sounds about right. But how does the analogy relate to the machine?”

  “We all want a better reality. We all want to live the kind of life we’ve been conditioned to believe we should live. That’s why things like the Knowledge Reform were enacted in the first place. Unfortunately, most of us just get a raw deal, and that’s all there is to it. It can’t be helped.”

  “Jesus,” Barnes said. “I thought shrinks were supposed to help people feel better about themselves.”

  “When the machine came around,” Dr. Hill continued, “it was sold as a device to aid in homicide investigations, then evolved to punish criminals and otherwise just show people a good time. Harmless fun, right? Virtual reality.”

  “And if you opposed it?”

  “You were a Neanderthal who opposed progress. But what happens when half the world can suddenly be whatever they
want to be? What happens when, compared to a ride on the machine, reality is nothing more than a slog through a monotonous life? People stopped dreaming. People stopped striving.”

  “People stopped cleaning the toilets,” Barnes said.

  “People stopped choosing reality.”

  Barnes looked at Dr. Hill. “You one of those people?”

  “For a time, yes. I chased the man, as they say, the Vitruvian Man. The thing is, the machine isn’t like recreational drugs. When you get high from heroin or crack, or even something as innocent as weed, you’re still you; you’re just excused from yourself for the moment, so to speak. You might see illusions or have strange thoughts, but it’s just a phase, and everyone around you can see it. They know you’re struggling, and they pay you little mind when you’re high or drunk or spacing out. But what happens when, say, a trusted government official is asked to make decisions on behalf of a city, a state, or even this entire country, only the man really making the decisions is the porn star he rode the night before?”

  Barnes chuffed. He shook his head.

  “How many of us are really happy?” Dr. Hill said. “How many of us spend our days wishing for something more? So many want just a little of what the other guy has, and with the machine they can have it. Trouble is, they don’t always come back. Mothers and fathers go missing. They just walk away. Kids are left orphaned. Teachers stop showing up for school, and the next day they’re found in a crack house down the street, or maybe in another state, wondering why people can’t seem to get their name right.”

  “I’m Justin Timberlake, goddammit!” Barnes crowed. “Why do you keep calling me Earl?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, who were you?” Barnes said. “Who was your big fix?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Well, maybe you’re not Dr. Hill, eh? Maybe you’re Gene Simmons.”

  Dr. Hill produced a card from within his jacket pocket. He handed it to Barnes. It was a Machine Anonymous business card. He was a sponsor. “This is who I am.”

  Barnes tapped the edge of the card against his knuckles. He gestured toward the bar. “What’s he got on Cherry Daniels?”