Machine City: A Thriller (Detective Barnes Book 2)

by Scott J. Holliday

  His body arched, head to heels.

  The Vitruvian Man test pattern.

  Please Stand By.

  “Prepare for transmission.”

  Adrian Flaherty was staring at himself in a mirror. His skin was pale, and purple bags rimmed his eyes. He was in a restaurant bathroom. The door was closing as a restaurant patron left. The sounds of people outside—talking, eating, laughing—went mute when the door fell shut.

  Flaherty sported a Mohawk tucked beneath a Detroit Tigers baseball cap. Red, circular lines peeked out where the machine’s suction cups had recently been applied. Barnes’s head felt hot, his body quickened by adrenaline. Flaherty cleared his throat and began speaking.

  “I am a homicide detective with the Detroit police, First Precinct. I’m about to begin a personal surveillance on a man I have come to associate with something called the Madrox Project. This is not a sanctioned assignment, but I have reason to believe this man may be interfering with my investigation of the Eddie Able killer, possibly as part of a cover-up. For anyone who finds this memory, if the Eddie Able case hasn’t been solved by the time you’re here with me, please do what you can to bring information from this surveillance to the Detroit police, Homicide division.”

  Flaherty swallowed, adjusted his hat brim low to his eyes, and turned up his collar. He left the bathroom and entered the dining area of a small restaurant. Barnes’s mouth watered with the scents of burgers and onions. The place was packed to the gills. He sidled by a waitress and filtered through a maze of tables. As he neared a wall of booths, he reached into his jacket pocket and gripped a small metal object. He kept his eyes away from the restaurant patrons. As he passed a particular booth he used the back like a walking stick and left the metal object, a tiny microphone, wedged between the vinyl cushion and the wood.

  Flaherty crossed back through the tables and took a seat in a booth of his own. Barnes looked down to see bread crumbs on a white plate, plus the yellow streaks of mustard and some onions and chili from what remained of two coney dogs and seasoned curly fries. Next to the plate was a brown bell-shaped coffee mug, nearly full. Flaherty hunched low in the booth and moved up against the plate glass that served as the diner’s outer wall. He put in a set of earbuds and focused his eyes on a couple sitting in the booth where he’d left his microphone.

  The man was Dr. Hill, and sitting across from him was Jessica.

  Barnes curled up on the motel bed like he’d been gut-shot. Around the Bible between his teeth he said, “No.”

  The first sound through the earbuds was Jessica’s laughter. She threw back her head and slapped the table, tumbling silverware and drawing the eyes of other diners. Her hair was tied back, and she wore a loose-fitting sweater over a T-shirt and blue jeans. Her big blue eyes sparkled over her pixie nose and full lips.

  Barnes felt pain in the back of his neck and shoulders. Nausea. His mind’s eye turned over to a vision of himself standing up, walking across the diner, and dragging Dr. Hill out of that goddamn booth by his hair.

  Once Jessica composed herself she looked into Dr. Hill’s eyes, the smile still on her face, that small scar buried in her right eyebrow. She reached across the table and took the doctor’s hand. On her left ring finger she brazenly wore her wedding band, her engagement ring inside of it, closer to her heart, the golden prongs gripping at an empty spot where a solitaire diamond had once been. What’d happened to it?

  Dr. Hill gripped her hand in his own. The microphone picked up his sigh.

  “Uh-oh,” Jessica said. “Fun’s over, isn’t it?”

  Dr. Hill hung his head, looked off.

  “Tell me,” Jessica said, piling her second hand on top of those already clasped. “It’s the project, isn’t it?”

  Dr. Hill nodded.

  “What happened?”

  “Those kids,” Dr. Hill said. “You know? The ones who escaped?”

  Jessica nodded.

  “It’s almost like they felt bad for him,” Dr. Hill said. “I mean, here they were, trapped in some basement set up like a funhouse, brought there by a drug dealer posing as a policeman, and they felt bad?”

  “Stockholm syndrome?” Jessica said.

  “Maybe,” Dr. Hill said, “but they weren’t with him for that long. Not like the others.”

  Jessica nodded thoughtfully.

  “We put them on the machine,” Dr. Hill said, “recorded their memories.”

  The waitress arrived at the couple’s table. She was carrying a cup of soup and what looked like half a tuna melt, undoubtedly Jessica’s order, plus a club sandwich with house chips and a pickle spear. The sight of the sandwich nearly made Barnes puke. Dr. Hill hadn’t only stolen his wife but his favorite lunch.

  Flaherty whispered to himself while the waitress served Dr. Hill and Jessica their food. “File name Eddie Doe One. That’s Michael Doe, not his real name. Eddie Doe Two is Amy Doe. Also not her real name. They’re two of only three to survive the ‘funhouse’ in the basement of 1613 Caulfield Avenue in Detroit, soundproofed with acoustic panels as well as noise insulation foam. The others he mentions are the victims that didn’t survive. The cold case files revealed a photo album full of their pictures. Their remains were found buried in the home’s backyard or in the earthen floor of the unfinished basement beneath the porch. Nine missing persons cases have been closed as a result of DNA matching. Michael and Amy both attest that, after several hours locked in the basement of 1613 Caulfield Avenue, a man dressed in an Eddie Able costume entered the room with Tyrell Diggs at his side.”

  “You know,” Dr. Hill said, interrupting Flaherty’s flow. The waitress had gone. “We started the project specifically to help solve this case.”

  “Bullshit,” Flaherty whispered.

  “To get him back on track,” Dr. Hill said. “It’s been on the book for decades. This guy, whoever he is, has been kidnapping and killing kids nearly as long as we’ve been alive.”

  The couple fell into silence. Jessica picked at her sandwich.

  “Thirty years ago,” Flaherty whispered, “there were two full-time Eddie Able costume rental operations running in Detroit, along with a handful of sole proprietorships. Twenty-seven known Eddie Able costumes in metro area circulation. Michael Doe described his Eddie Able as a doctor, while Amy Doe described hers as a plumber. Of the sole proprietorships, all of which possessed only one version of the Eddie Able costume, none had Eddie as a doctor or a plumber. Mostly they were the more common firemen and policemen versions. Of the two full-time rental operations, only an operation called Sparky Time Amusements had both a doctor and a plumber version.”

  “You’re going to catch him,” Jessica said. Again she reached out and gripped Dr. Hill’s hand. “He won’t hurt any more kids.”

  Barnes’s sickness increased. His body overheated. Here was Jessica with another man, which was bad enough on its own, but she was back to her old self. No grim look on her face, no stress or worry. With Dr. Hill she was the girl he’d fallen in love with.

  Was this the explanation for her erratic behavior? She found someone else, someone not so screwed up?

  “That’s just it,” Dr. Hill said. “We were getting close, and then Flaherty started to fall apart. I wonder if we’ve made things worse.”

  “Some good has come out of it,” Jessica said, “right?”

  Flaherty whispered, “Each living Eddie Able costume renter from the years surrounding the abductions of Michael and Amy Doe was questioned by police. Particular attention was paid to those who rented both the doctor and plumber versions, as well as those who rented on multiple occasions. None of the costume renters were proven to be the Eddie Able in the basement of 1613 Caulfield Avenue. However, no employees, nor the owner of Sparky Time Amusements, were ever investigated. Inexplicably, their names have been redacted from the case files.”

  “I can’t help but think,” Dr. Hill said, “that we’re risking his life.”

  “You can’t compare the project to kidnapping and murde
ring children,” Jessica said. “You’re doing it for the right reason.”

  A waitress appeared at Flaherty’s table, blocking his line of sight. She held out a glass coffee carafe. “Warm-up, hon?”

  “No,” Flaherty said gruffly.

  The waitress lifted one eyebrow. “Okay then,” she said, holding the O syllable. “I’ll just leave you with this.” She placed the bill on the table and walked off.

  Flaherty refocused on Dr. Hill and Jessica.

  “You’ve made progress, haven’t you?” Jessica said.

  Dr. Hill nodded. “In that regard, the project is showing promise, though we suspect he’s onto us. He wrote ‘Madrox’ in one of his reports, plus there’s some evidence missing.”

  Flaherty patted his chest pocket. Something small and rectangular in there. A cassette tape.

  “Why would he steal evidence?” Jessica said.

  “He’s confused,” Dr. Hill said. He pushed his food away, untouched. “Can we go?”

  Jessica nodded. “Yeah.”

  Dr. Hill signaled for the waitress to bring the check. When he brought his hand back down, Jessica took it once again. She pulled him across the table and leaned forward into him, kissed him on the lips. “You know how much I love you, right?”

  Darkness and silence.

  “End of transmission.”

  The Vitruvian Man test pattern.

  Please Stand By.

  12

  Barnes jiggled the serum bottle. Empty. He dropped it on the motel room floor and let his head fall into his hands. For a moment he just sat still, fighting back the whispers in his mind, the visions of Jessica with Dr. Hill. Her happiness.

  You know how much I love you, right?

  Tears pushed at the corners of his eyes. It was his fault, wasn’t it? Had to be. His actions had somehow brought them together. Maybe she’d sought out psychiatric help for her messed-up husband, found the good doc on Google, decided she was the one who needed attention. Hell, maybe he’d introduced the two of them himself. He tried to recall Dr. Hill’s face at a police get-together, maybe one of Darrow’s barbecues, but nothing came to mind. Lost time? Blackouts?

  Barnes peeled the suction cups off his temples and dropped them. They knocked mutely against the carpet. Next was the syringe. He slid it out of the vein in his right elbow. When the needle came free, a squirt of blood mixed with serum shot out. He thumbed the wound closed and held it with pressure.

  When the bleeding stopped, Barnes left the motel room.

  The morning sun fried his eyes. He stood still for a moment, letting them adjust. He felt like a rebar rod had been knocked over his head. Once he could see properly, he found there was crime scene tape dangling from one side of the open door to 114, a coroner’s van waiting in the lot. The detectives must have come through while Barnes was on the machine. Cleanup time. The scent of death still hung in the air. It was worse than last night, in a way. Worse now that his sense of smell wasn’t dimmed by alcohol.

  The scent put Barnes in mind of Keisel Street, a cul-de-sac of three project apartment buildings on Detroit’s southwest side, otherwise known as Machine City, otherwise known as Hell. When they were working together, he and Franklin had been called to one of the three buildings seemingly every month. He recalled one of his and Franklin’s most unpleasant visits. They had moved toward the crime scene down a dingy hallway where the overhead fluorescent lights blinked and zapped over the bodies of dead june bugs and curled spiders. A large woman with a heaving chest alternately cried in pain and screamed some sort of garbled revenge outside an open apartment door while two uniforms pinned her against a wall to keep her from entering the crime scene. The uniforms’ faces were pinched, their posture stiff due to the stench coming from inside the apartment.

  It’s unique, the scent of human death. The kind of scent that, even if you’ve never smelled it before, you know precisely what it is. You’re made more acutely aware of your own mortality. You’re forced to acknowledge the way of all flesh.

  Barnes and Franklin stepped over the threshold as the wailing woman clutched at them through the locked arms of her captors. Her legs flailed as she snarled and grunted with the effort. Her yellow eyes were bloodshot from whatever toxin coursed through her system. Somewhere deeper in the building would be her apartment unit, inside of which there’d be a lineup of kids, small to large, like unstacked Russian dolls, taking care of each other while Mom shot up, snorted, or fucked her dignity into the ground.

  The lone apartment window and sliding glass door had been covered over with a sheet and comforter respectively, leaving the bed bare. The mattress was soaked through with sweat, and black strands of hair lay on the crusty pillow. Stare at the bed long enough and you could see the contour of a body, like a sleeping ghost. Lie down and you might take on someone else’s nightmares.

  The furniture looked like props, the kind of stuff you’d put near Chris Farley for a fall-and-smash gag. One lamp wore a shade, the other did not. Dust particles swirled around the bare bulb. Drywall tape looped down from the ceiling with jagged paint along the sides, like band-saw blades with busted teeth. The bathroom door was framed in faux walnut. Bluebottle flies zipped in and out of the crack in the slightly ajar door. Franklin, his hands now in latex gloves, pushed the door open.

  Both detectives recoiled. In the bathroom were the remains of a man, a munky who’d been killed for a reason that would likely never be known. Nor would his killer’s identity. When the detectives arrived he had been dead for weeks, his body decayed to the point where it appeared to have liquefied into the bathroom floor, leaving only bones and bluebottles behind. There was a bullet hole in the back of his skull.

  Barnes shook off the memory as he walked down the block to the liquor store at the corner, took $500 out of the ATM, and brought a fifth of Jack Daniel’s plus a box of Band-Aids to the cashier.

  “You’re bleeding,” the clerk commented as he rang up Barnes’s purchases. He was standing behind inch-thick bulletproof glass. The goods and money had to be transferred between them like the case files between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice.

  Barnes nodded and pushed two twenties under the glass.

  “Guess that’s what these are for, eh?” the clerk said, holding up the Band-Aids. He smiled, revealing two rows of summer teeth—some’re here, some’re there. Barnes hadn’t noticed until now that his Band-Aids were branded for kids, Eddie Able in his doctor’s getup. Antibacterial. The impulse-buy snack cakes near the counter were branded as Eddie Able as well. Each wrapper made up his facial features with a winking eye, while the yellow cake inside filled out the color of his hair.

  Wouldn’t it be bliss if you never got old, like me?

  “Serum?” Barnes said to the clerk, raising his eyebrows in question.

  “You’re kidding, brotha,” the clerk said, shaking his head. “You’re kidding.” He pushed Barnes’s change under the glass.

  Barnes collected his items and left. He stopped just outside the door to pour some Jack Daniel’s over his bloody forearm. He dried off and bandaged his wounds in Eddie Able imagery. When it was done, he applied a healthy dose of the Jack Daniel’s to his insides as well. He walked back down the street and went to the motel office of the Fleabag. Three of the walls were plate glass, floor to ceiling, and the other was concrete block. A tall U-shaped counter made up the service desk. The door behind it was halfway open. The counter’s front panels were cheap laminate down to the floor. A TV was on in the back room, a low-rate comedy on the screen.

  Barnes rang the steel bell on the counter.

  The TV was paused. A chair squawked and a man emerged from the back fronted by the scent of yeast. He wore a nondescript T-shirt that he’d sweated down to a different color. His face was unshaven, but beneath a Michigan Wolverines hat his temples were bald. The needle tracks at his elbows confirmed his munky status.

  “I’d like a couple more nights,” Barnes said.

  “Hey, man,” the guy said, sitting down on
a high stool that creaked beneath this weight, “we do by the hour. Told you that when you showed up. You already owe me fifty.”

  Barnes put $150 on the counter between them. “Two more nights.” He nodded over his shoulder toward the coroner’s van and the crime scene tape on the door of 114, all of which could be seen across the parking lot through the office’s plate glass. “I think your clientele will be running a little thin for a couple days.” He tapped the money with this finger. “Might be the best offer you get.”

  The man sighed and pulled the money across the counter.

  “You know where I can get some serum?” Barnes said.

  “Nope.”

  “What’s your name?”

  The guy looked up from his money. He leaned forward, laid his left elbow on the counter, and dropped his right arm beneath the Formica countertop. “Jerry.”

  “Listen to me, Jerry,” Barnes said. “I’m in dire need of serum.” He gestured toward Jerry’s head, his clean-shaven skin. “Seems like you know the score. If you could help me out, I’d very much appreciate it.”

  His right hand still beneath the counter, Jerry held up the bills he’d just collected with his left hand. “This is me helping you out, bub.”

  “Hey now,” Barnes said. “Big fella. I’m asking politely.”

  Jerry smiled. “And I’m refusing politely.”

  Barnes sighed. He pulled back his jacket to reveal the .45.

  The sound of a clicking gun hammer was Jerry’s response. It’d come from under the counter, where he undoubtedly had a shotgun hanging on a hook, Old West faro dealer–style, the serious end pointed out. It’d rip through the laminate panels and make mince of Barnes’s thighs.

  “You were saying?” Jerry said, his face slack beneath his dark-blue hat.

  Barnes’s body shivered. He closed his eyes and allowed the vibration to emanate from his chest out to his extremities. He swallowed and clenched his jaw. When the shivering was over he felt cold, but calm. “Go ahead,” he said to Jerry. “Pull the trigger.”