Tyrell Diggs was just picking up his sleepy head as Michael arrived and turned the door handle.
“Tyrell!” Eddie breathlessly screamed.
Diggs came alive, eyes wide. He reached out for Michael, but the boy slipped beneath his grasp and through the open door.
Michael grabbed the outer handle and yanked the door shut behind him, but it never clicked home. Instead there was a cracking sound and a howl of pain. Tyrell Diggs’s forearm.
Barnes ran up the stairs. Through the kitchen and into the living room. People slept on beat-up couches, some on the floor. White powder on small mirrors. Needles and metal spoons on the coffee table.
“Hey, little man,” a woman said, her voice dreamy.
Michael ran out the front door and down the block.
Darkness and silence.
“End of transmission.”
The Vitruvian Man test pattern.
Please Stand By.
15
Barnes sat up in bed, his body coated in sweat. His lips were cracked and bleeding from biting the Bible. He spat the book onto the filthy mattress and rested his elbows on his knees. His breathing hitched as flashes of Eddie Able’s fiberglass head rolled through his mind. He blinked and shook the visions off, but they kept coming, like bowling balls knocking down pins.
He stood but found he was unbalanced and had to sit back down. His legs trembled. Too many sounds. Too many visions. He cried out in the empty room. The sound was like feedback in his ears, but it helped. His breathing returned to normal. His body stopped shaking.
Eddie had been a white male and still young at the time of Michael Doe’s abduction, maybe early twenties, judging by the look of his hands. His voice had that same weakness as Shadow’s, the same as the breathless voice inside his head, that same inability to string words into sentences.
How could this person be inside me?
Barnes stood, steadying himself with the stand on which the gutted TV and machine rested. He wheeled the whole thing with him into the bathroom and sat down on the toilet, the IV still in his arm, the suction cups still on his temples. The concentration of his piss was so dark it came out like fire.
The motel room’s grimy tub was inviting. Barnes imagined himself in it, lying faceup, the water over his ears. A sensory deprivation chamber. He could just lie there for days, draining the cooled water and refilling it. So warm. So red.
He closed his eyes to the vision, rubbed his wrists.
“Don’t think like that.” A new voice from within. The kid. Michael Doe.
“Shhh.”
Barnes wheeled his IV dance partner back to the bed. He stationed the TV stand near the head and pulled out the keyboard tray. He reached out to begin tapping the keys, but his phone rang, stopping him. He pushed the tray back in, picked up the phone, and connected the call. “Barnes.”
“How’s it going, buddy?” Franklin said.
“Well,” Barnes said, “it’s an overcast day in Detroit, and I’m sitting in a shitty motel room that rents by the hour.”
“You should call Robin Leach,” Franklin said.
“I did,” Barnes said. “He’s on his way.”
Franklin laughed.
“What was it that doctor of yours said?” Barnes said.
“Dr. Hill?”
“Yeah. How does he help?”
“He marginalizes the other voices,” Franklin said. “Gives you a bigger slice of the pie. You really should—”
“How?”
“Shit, I don’t know,” Franklin said. “Better to ask the doc yourself.”
“I’ve done it before,” Barnes said. “After Calavera, I beat the voices on my own.”
“Even a blind squirrel,” Franklin said. He paused, and then continued. “Your mysterious caller. You sure you want to know?”
“Of course,” Barnes said.
“No one.”
“What’s that?”
“No one but me has called your number in days.”
Barnes sighed.
“You need help, bud.”
Barnes disconnected the call. He tossed the cell phone aside and dropped his head into his hands. From the corner of his eye he could see the Gideon Bible. The spine looked like it’d been attacked by a dog. He flipped the book open. The pages came to rest in the book of Jonah. Barnes recalled the Sunday school story about the prophet being swallowed by a whale. According to the scripture, Jonah lived in the whale’s belly for three days before it barfed him back onshore so he could preach the word of God. Barnes recalled the cartoon imagery the church had provided: Jonah inside the whale, sitting near a campfire inside the belly of a beast. Absurd. In reality his bones would have been instantly crushed, he’d suffocate and die within minutes, if not seconds, and later he’d be shat out into an endless ocean. Barnes smirked to imagine his Sunday school teacher clapping the Bible closed and saying, “The truth is, kids, Jonah would have been whale shit.”
He began to chuckle. The laughter grew from within, like a storm cloud in his belly, in his lungs. He erupted with it, found himself slapping his knees and hooting. He laughed until he choked, until he was crying. His body jerked with each howl. Tears streamed down his face, dripped onto his ankles and the dampened carpet below.
When it was done, he called Jessica.
The call was connected, but Jessica didn’t say anything.
“Is that you, baby?” Barnes said, still smiling.
“What do you want?” she said.
“I miss you.”
No reply.
“Remember how things used to be?”
“Yes, I remember,” she said. “Do you?”
“Of course.” His eyes found the pulsing red LED of the machine. “I want us to be like that again.”
“It doesn’t matter what you want,” Jessica said. “Isn’t that right? It only matters what that machine wants.”
“To hell with the machine.” As the words left his mouth he placed a hand on the machine’s hard plastic top, felt the vibration of its cooling fan. “It’s not the machine, okay? It’s . . . Look, a man’s life is at stake. A little girl. Am I supposed to just let them die when I could stop it?”
“You can’t stop it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Whatever you want it to mean.” She hung up.
Barnes whipped the phone across the room. It smacked against the drywall and fell behind the second bed. He pulled out the machine’s keyboard tray and typed “EddieDoeTwo.” One file returned. He tapped the “Enter” key to load the file, reached for the knob to begin transmission.
His phone rang.
Barnes crawled across the second bed and reached over the edge. He found the phone and checked the caller ID.
UNKNOWN.
Barnes connected the call and said, “Fuck you,” into the mouthpiece.
“Tsk, tsk,” Shadow said. “Again with the. Vulgar language.”
“You’re not real,” Barnes said. “I’m talking to myself right now.”
“We’re back. To this now?” Shadow said.
“You don’t sound like him.”
“Who am I. Supposed to. Sound like?”
“You know damn well who,” Barnes said.
Silence on the line, and then, “But I. Helped you. Didn’t I?”
“Listen to him.” The familiar voice.
“Shhh.”
“How are we. Doing,” Shadow said. “On our little. Project, anyway? Where did we. Leave off?”
“You. Are. Not. Real.”
“What did you. Discover about. Ricky’s code?”
“What?” Barnes said. “Who cares about my brother’s riddle? I’m trying to save a little girl.”
“She’s dead!” Shadow said. “Don’t mention. Her again!”
Barnes pulled the phone away from his ear, angled the mic toward his mouth. “And you are not real!”
“Adrian Flaherty,” Shadow said. His voice sounded thin from the earpiece at a distance. “M
ay disagree. With you. I’m sure I will feel. Very real. To him. When I carve out. His lungs.”
Barnes shook his head. He put the phone back to his ear. “I’m arguing with myself. This is so stupid.”
“Don’t double. Your trouble,” Shadow said. “What does. It mean?”
“What?”
“Your brother’s words. Right? Don’t double. Your trouble. I’ve got thoughts.”
Barnes rubbed a hand over the bristles on his head, unsure how to respond.
“You’re. Supposed to solve. The riddle,” Shadow said. “But don’t double. Your trouble. What were the. Decoder ring. Numbers. That made up. Shadow?”
Barnes found Ricky’s note on the opposite bed. He read the numbers he’d written down. “Nineteen, eight, one, four, fifteen, twenty-three.”
“How does. It read,” Shadow said. “If you don’t. Translate. The letters. That make. Double numbers?”
Barnes wrote it down, and then read the results aloud. “S-eight-one-four-O-W.”
“And what was it. Ricky said. To Freddie. About the menu?”
“So crazy that you brought that menu,” Barnes said, staring off. “Oh, shit.”
“What?”
“It’s a license plate,” Barnes said. “S-eight-one-four-O-W. One of the plates under the resin counter at Mancino’s. Jesus. We saw it every weekend for years, ate breakfast on it every Saturday morning. It’s a Maine plate.”
“Huzzah,” Shadow said.
Barnes smiled. “How could you know these things if you weren’t in my head?”
“I know nothing,” Shadow said. “I simply. Played detective. Took the time. To think about. The clues. You were the one. Who figured it out.”
“I don’t buy that,” Barnes said. He took the phone away from his ear and was about to disconnect the call.
“Detective!”
Barnes put the phone back to his ear.
“It was Franklin,” Shadow said. “Wasn’t it? He told you. There were no. Incoming calls. From me. Yes?”
Barnes said nothing.
“Oh. Poor Barnesy. Let me clue. You in. On a little secret. Just between. You and I.” He took a long, slow intake of breath and then struggled to say a complete sentence. “William Franklin is telling you lies.”
It’d grown late. Luckily, Mancino’s was a twenty-four-hour joint. Barnes sat in his truck in the parking lot, watching through the plate glass as diner patrons went in and came out, cooks hard at work behind the counter, waitresses pouring coffee and gleefully throwing their heads back in response to customer quips. His spot at the counter was taken, so the thing to do was wait. The scents invaded his vehicle. Burgers, onions, fries.
Melodian and Brittanian protesters were stationed outside of the Three Aces Memory Shop across the street. They walked a pill-shaped circuit on the sidewalk out front, each holding a handmade sign—THE MACHINE IS GOD’S WRATH, SERUM = POISON, YOU ARE NOT BRAD PITT! A nuisance to memory men trying to make an honest buck. Shop owners were part of the good side, the side aiding people with med cards, people whose reality was truly worth escaping, but these nuts didn’t know any better. To them any machine was a tool of the devil and a sign of the apocalypse. Any shared memory was a sin.
One of the protesters, a Melodian who had clearly called it quits for the evening, was inside Mancino’s enjoying what looked like a burger and fries. His sign was propped next to him in his booth, the words facing down. His sideburn bangs dangled down toward his food.
Barnes’s attention was pulled back across the street. A man, likely the shop owner, had come out of Three Aces and started screaming something at the protesters. Barnes couldn’t make out his words. The protesters screamed back, jabbing their signs at him from the sidewalk. So long as they stayed on that concrete strip they were on public property, allowed to be there. But move in the shopkeeper’s direction and it was trespassing. The memory man reared back and hurled an object at the protesters. Maybe a rock? It fell harmlessly between them and bounced out into the street. One of the Brittanians turned around and waggled her ass. Or maybe it was his ass. Hard to tell.
Barnes turned on the truck radio and adjusted the volume. A low hum like static came forth. He reached for the tuner but stopped when the speakers sounded off:
“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”
There was a cassette in the old truck’s player.
“It’s Georgie,” a woman said, her voice frantic and wavering. “He didn’t come home from school. He’s got yearbook, but after that he always comes right home. In an hour it’ll be dark and . . . and . . .”
Barnes pressed the “Eject” button. The cassette popped out. It was labeled CASE #572486-627. He pushed the cassette back in.
“Calm down, ma’am. Can you tell me your name?”
“My name’s Alice. I . . . wait. Hold on.”
In the background there was the sound of a door hinge creaking. It was a light, tinny sound, followed by the sound of the latch clicking. Then there was a bang, presumably the phone clapping down on the counter or a table as the sound was followed by quick footsteps. The woman’s voice could now be heard at a distance from the phone. “Where have you been? You had us frightened to death!”
“I’m sorry, Mom,” a boy said. He seemed out of breath.
“Young man, you are in very deep trouble. March straight to your room right now. I’ll send your father to come talk to you.”
“But Mom—”
“No buts! March!”
Then came the sound of footsteps, first against a hard floor and then muted against carpet. A moment later the woman came back to the phone. “It’s okay. He’s home now. My God, I’m so embarrassed.”
“That’s quite all right, ma’am. Happy to be of service.”
“Goodbye.”
Just before the call was disconnected, the creaking door hinge could be heard again, and the woman pulled an intake of breath. The tape played a dial tone for several seconds before it stopped and ejected itself.
Barnes turned off the radio.
He called Franklin’s phone. Got voice mail. “This shit isn’t funny,” Barnes said into the cell. “Planting this evidence tape in my truck? Why are you doing this, Billy? Why are you—” His body tremored uncontrollably. His mouth stayed open to say more, but he found himself unable to speak. Didn’t know what to say. He disconnected the call and set the phone down.
His spot at the diner counter opened up. He got out of the truck and went to the front door. Nostalgia cracked like a whip. Barnes was twelve years old again coming through that door. He passed the dusty gumball machine, the drop-a-quarter scale and horoscope, and the empty newspaper rack on his way into the dining area. He stepped off the outdoor rug onto brown, square tiles and damp-darkened grout. A diner was as close as a wayward soul could get to coming home without actually walking over their own threshold. A place as much for the down-and-out as the well-to-do. No judgment, no remorse, no bullshit.
Barnes plopped down on what was once his customary stool. The only difference from twenty-five years before was a duct tape repair job on the cushion. He smirked to consider that his own bony ass had been part of wearing it out. He plucked up a menu from the vertical stand before him.
Yeah, the prices had definitely changed.
“Coffee?”
The waitress standing before him was middle-aged with hawkish features and a little too much eyeliner. Her brunette hair was tied up behind her head and seemingly held in place with a pencil. Her name tag read PALOMA. She tilted a coffeepot toward Barnes’s overturned cup. He flipped it over to accept what she was offering.
“Know what you want?” she said.
“Club. Sandwich.” The breathless voice.
“Fuck you.”
“Excuse me?” the waitress said, her face screwed up into shock.
Barnes closed his eyes and put two shaky fingers to each temple, rubbing to no avail. He opened his eyes and looked at the waitress. “I’m sorry,” he said, and
pointed to his head. “It’s this thing I got. Sometimes I say things I don’t mean.”
“Oh my God,” she said. She set down the carafe and laid a hand on his arm. “You have Tourette’s? My cousin has that. He can’t stop saying ‘That’s a classic’ and . . .” She leaned in close and whispered, “‘Fuckface,’ over and over again. It’s pretty much all he says.”
Barnes smirked and nodded. “I know how he feels.”
“I don’t judge,” Paloma said. She poised her pen over her notepad. “I just take orders.”
“Two eggs,” Barnes said, “over medium, sausage, and rye toast.”
“Hash browns?”
“Nah.”
Paloma called out to the back as she walked away. “I got two chicks flipped medium, side of fingers, and fake-bakes on fifteen.”
A cook called out, “No micks?”
“No micks,” the waitress replied.
The system hadn’t changed since Barnes was a boy. No micks meant no potatoes. Had he ordered white toast instead of rye, she would have asked for sunburns instead of fake-bakes. Had he ordered wheat toast, she would have asked for suntans. Rye toast was fake-bakes because it was already brown before it met the heat.
Barnes picked up his cup and spun on his stool. He took in the sights and sounds, the clinking silverware, the rattling ice, the hot slurps of low-octane coffee. Truckers and students, munkies and families. The tabletop jukeboxes of long ago had been replaced with framed photos of local high school football teams and cheerleading squads extending back through the years. At a nearby booth was a picture of the squad from twenty years back. The girls all sported big hair and wide smiles with fists on hips. At that same table a man dug into a slice of apple pie with ice cream on top. The scene jogged Barnes’s memory. His first date with Jessica, or second, according to her logic. They’d gone to a diner in Brush Park and had apple pie with a slice of American cheese baked on top. The food had been amazing. She had been amazing. She’d cracked him up with how much she hated the Grand Canyon. Her smile that night had been magical. He could still pick up her scent, somewhere in his mind, as though she were there with him now.
“She doesn’t love you.” The familiar voice.
“Here you are, hon,” the waitress said.
Machine City: A Thriller (Detective Barnes Book 2) Page 13