Machine City: A Thriller (Detective Barnes Book 2)

by Scott J. Holliday

  Barnes turned back to the counter as she set down a heavy plate and refilled his cup. The sausage was cooked crispy brown, as was the toast, and the eggs looked perfect for dipping. The scents made him salivate, but he recalled his mission and moved the plate aside. Beneath his breakfast and beneath the resin that had trapped it for so many years was the Maine license plate he’d come to see. S81 4OW. The plate depicted a black-capped chickadee on an evergreen branch, a pine cone dangling beneath the bird’s feet. The subscripted state motto was VACATIONLAND.

  Barnes dropped a twenty on the counter and ran out of the diner.

  16

  The battered old sign at Vacationland had a subscript:

  A LAND OF FUN . . . FOR EVERYONE!

  Barnes stood before the rotting remains of a wooden split-rail fence. He overlooked what resembled a postapocalyptic putt-putt golf course. A fiberglass gorilla stared down from the eighteenth hole, its features pale and worn from years of weathering. Cavities appeared at the shoulders and feet, strands of fiberglass-like hair protruding into the black holes. It was the same with the T. rex on the seventh hole and the windmill on the twelfth, which had a noticeable lean. Barnes recalled that if you aimed just right you could shoot your ball between the base of the windmill and the turf, where it would get caught and be lost for good. Ricky once reached inside the gap to retrieve his ball and said he could feel a bunch in there. The boys surmised it was cheaper for Vacationland to buy more balls than fix the problem.

  Beyond the putt-putt course there was an abandoned go-kart track, rusted-out batting cages, and the skeletal remains of a bungee trampoline. The dilapidated building at the edge of the putt-putt course once held Vacationland’s video arcade. The arcade’s interior was always warm, always smelled of fresh popcorn and pizza. Whenever they had enough bottle-return money, Johnny and Ricky rode their BMX bikes to Vacationland to spend the afternoon. They played Pac-Man and Journey and Galaga until their money was almost up, and with their last two quarters they faced off on Mania Challenge.

  Vacationland had finally closed its doors several years back. Home entertainment systems had not only grown capable of replacing the arcade games but the putt-putt, go-karts, and batting cages, too. The place had been up for sale for around a decade before they finally padlocked it. Barnes recalled that the offering started confidently: a couple of inconspicuous FOR SALE signs in the smaller windows, something to lure in a big spender. After a few weeks there were a couple more signs in the windows, then some around the putt-putt course and at the batting cages. Vacationland’s owners finally resorted to a Realtor sign out front, but to no avail.

  The place still seemed to be for sale. The Realtor sign was still there, though coated in graffiti. The FOR SALE signs in the arcade windows might still be up, too, if they hadn’t been shattered and pushed in.

  An emaciated couch sat in the center of the Vacationland parking lot. Two hooded figures in baggy jeans perched like vultures on the furniture’s back. Their stark white sneakers rested on ruined cushions. Barnes could recall a dozen arrests he’d made at that couch.

  His cell buzzed.

  A text message from UNKNOWN. He read it.

  Go balls out.

  Barnes turned in a circle, checking the nearby cars and alleys, certain he was being watched. Surely a voice in his mind couldn’t produce a text message, could it?

  He checked the phone again. The message was still there.

  Barnes looked up at the tilted windmill on the putt-putt course. The blades were gone now, but miraculously the base still stood. He hopped over the split-rail fence and started toward the windmill, marginally aware that one of the two figures on the couch rose to his movement and started across the lot in his direction.

  Barnes continued forward.

  The dealer called out, “Fuck you doing here, boss?”

  Barnes moved toward the windmill, stepping over the shredded remains of green outdoor turf and rubber tee mats.

  “Hey, man,” the dealer said, “golf course is closed.” He hopped over the fence on a course to intercept Barnes before he reached the windmill.

  Barnes stepped past a fiberglass pelican whose mouth used to hold putt-putt scorecards. The top beak was broken off now, and the mouth was filled with leaves, cigarette butts, and used hypodermic needles.

  The dealer appeared in front of Barnes with his hand up. A young Asian man with a scar above his left eye. His pants sagged ridiculously, exposing the full ass of his underwear.

  “Just playing through,” Barnes said with a smirk.

  The dealer lifted his hoodie to reveal a knife tucked into his waist. The handle was mother-of-pearl. “Well, I ain’t playing at all.”

  “What’s the problem?” Barnes said. “I can’t walk across here?”

  “This here Yakuza territory.”

  Some years back it’d been White Wolf territory, and before that the Latin Lords. The couch stayed the same through the regime changes. The Iron Throne.

  “What do you want?” Barnes said.

  “Your soul,” the kid said. He removed the blade from his waist and brandished it. “And it won’t come cheap.”

  “Damn,” Barnes said, smiling, “that was pretty good.”

  The kid blinked, tilted his head.

  Barnes pulled back his jacket and exposed the hilt of the gun. “No, I’m not five-o or poe-poe or whatever little phrase you’ve got, okay? I’m just a—”

  “You’re a pig?”

  “No. But I’m Falling Down, understand? Michael Douglas–style.”

  “Michael who?”

  “You don’t know Michael Douglas?”

  “Nah, man,” the kid said. “I ain’t a sack of old balls like you.”

  “What are you, seventeen?” Barnes said.

  The kid rolled his eyes.

  “Let me guess. You grew up on the skids south of Chinatown, your mother was Japanese, your father was a white dude, maybe, but you’ve never met him. Or maybe he’s the one who gave you that scar. Either way, you dropped out of school because some gang-lord told you Yakuza means ‘gangster’ and your skin tone and eye shape make you family. And now here you are selling dope, wielding a blade, and rocking a bad attitude in the name of family.”

  “You don’t know me, motherfucker.”

  “But I do,” Barnes said. “I grew up the same way.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Really,” Barnes said. “I used to be a Japanese kid, too.”

  At first the kid’s eyebrows collided, but then a big smile grew on his face. He chuckled. “Sure you did.”

  “Yakuza doesn’t mean gangster,” Barnes said, “no matter what your gang-lord says. It means ‘bad hand.’ Eight-nine-three. The worst hand you can be dealt.”

  “What are you looking for here, boss?”

  “I just want to look under that windmill over there,” Barnes said. “I won’t be a minute.”

  The kid stepped aside and gestured for Barnes to pass.

  Barnes went to the windmill. He knelt beside it, opposite the lean, and tried to pry it up. The mill wouldn’t budge.

  “Hey, kid,” Barnes said. “Help me out, will ya?”

  The kid checked with his mate back on the couch, who was talking with an addict in a tank top and a pair of Pistons shorts, preoccupied with a drug deal. Dude must have been freezing.

  The kid came over.

  “Grab this edge right here,” Barnes said, indicating the gap where the windmill rose away from the concrete course.

  The kid pulled up his pants and gripped the windmill.

  “On three,” Barnes said. “One, two, three.”

  The windmill creaked, cracked, and finally toppled over.

  “Whoa!” the kid said as colorful golf balls spread out at their feet. One of them actually rolled into the cup at the end of the course. “Hole in one, bitch!”

  Barnes looked around inside the hollow windmill. On the near wall, at about the full length of a boy’s arm, he saw a note held do
wn with duct tape. Barnes reached in, removed the note, and pocketed it.

  “What was that?” the kid said.

  “A clue,” Barnes said.

  “I thought you weren’t a pig?”

  “Call it a scavenger hunt,” Barnes said.

  “Whatever you say, boss,” the kid said. He made a pocket out of his loosely fitting hoodie, scooped up a few of the colored golf balls into the pocket, and ran back toward his partner on the couch. “Yo, man, check this shit out.”

  Barnes went back to his truck. He hopped into the cab, took a breath, and opened the note. It read:

  Johnny,

  I must really be dead. That’s messed up. Give my G.I. Joes to Candy Harper, okay?

  Here’s your next riddle:

  I come out in spring,

  I make a loud crack.

  I give stitches their wings,

  While onlookers react.

  Ricky

  Candy Harper? Barnes vaguely recollected the name but couldn’t connect it to a face.

  He lifted his head and looked out across the Vacationland parking lot. The two drug dealers had taken off their shoes, dropped golf balls into their socks, and were swinging them around like ancient weapons, parrying in bare feet.

  Barnes drove back to his motel room.

  He sat down on the bed. The search result for EddieDoeTwo was still on the machine’s small screen. He spun the decoder ring on his finger while he sat and thought.

  I come out in spring.

  What comes out in spring? Flowers? He could imagine a flower rising from parched soil and making cracks, but that didn’t seem like Ricky’s style.

  I give stitches their wings?

  No idea.

  Barnes rubbed his temples. He looked again at the screen. EddieDoeTwo. Another child kidnapped. A girl in the memory this time. Amy Doe. Barnes felt pressure behind his eyes, a roiling in his guts. He felt alone. Trapped in a small place with the machine. His slaver.

  It wasn’t true, though. He could leave anytime. He could just walk out the door, go home, and try to fix his life . . . but could any of these kidnapped kids say the same? Certainly not those buried at that horrible house. Certainly not Cherry Daniels.

  Barnes inserted the needle. He applied the suction cups. He bit the spine of the Gideon Bible, tapped “Enter,” and turned the dial. The machine clicked and hissed. The serum flowed and his body seized. The Vitruvian Man test pattern appeared.

  Barnes found himself walking down a sidewalk, his thumbs hooked into the straps of a heavy backpack. Amy turned her head to the sound of children playing. A little girl, no more than two or three, was chasing a slightly older boy through a nearby front yard. She was in diapers, he wore no shirt. They were laughing. Amy smiled. Despite the weight of her backpack, she began to skip down the sidewalk, purposefully stomping the cracks that break mothers’ backs. She envisioned her mother yelping and falling to the ground from her perch above the powdered mirror on the coffee table, screaming for help but no one coming. The thought made Amy feel weightless.

  A car pulled up beside. The engine idled as it kept her pace.

  Barnes ignored the car.

  “Hey, sweetie,” a voice said.

  Amy stopped. She looked. One of those old police cars. A man in the driver’s seat.

  “Where you headed?” Tyrell Diggs said.

  “What’s it to ya?” Amy said.

  Diggs smiled. Big teeth. “Thought I might give you a lift home. Your parents are looking for you.”

  “No they’re not,” Amy said.

  A dreamy smile came to Tyrell’s face. “Aw,” he said, “you remind me of my daughter.”

  “You have a daughter?”

  “Of course,” Tyrell said. “She’s not as beautiful as you are.”

  “What an awful thing to say,” Amy said, but her heart raced as Tyrell’s eyes scanned her up and down. She lowered her head and rolled her ankle, felt those butterflies she’d been feeling of late, the sickness that came to her when boys looked at her. The terrible sweetness she felt when their eyes found her chest, which had sprouted over the summer, when their eyes found her tummy, her legs.

  Diggs reached over and popped the passenger door open. “Get in. I’ll take you back home.”

  “No,” Amy said. “I’m running away.”

  “Why?”

  “My parents are losers. All they do is drink beer and snort coke and watch Jerry Springer.”

  “Then let’s run away together,” Diggs said.

  “Where?”

  “Where would you like to go?”

  “Seattle.”

  “Seattle, it is.”

  “What about your daughter?”

  “What about her?”

  “Won’t she miss you?”

  Diggs’s smile faded. “I don’t really have a daughter.”

  “Then why’d you say you did?”

  “Because I like you.”

  The sweetness swam through Barnes’s system. Amy’s heart thumped in his chest. He scratched at her arms. “Don’t lie anymore, okay?”

  “Cross my heart,” Diggs said, elaborately crossing his heart with long yellow fingernails.

  Amy took off her backpack and got in the car. “How far away is Seattle?”

  That big smile returned to Diggs’s face. “Just look out there,” he said, pointing outside of the car.

  Barnes turned her head to look. The two kids she’d seen earlier were rounding a house and heading toward the backyard, the girl still chasing the boy.

  “Do you see it?” Diggs said.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  Burlap dropped in front of Amy’s eyes, startling her. She reached up and felt the material over her ears and over the top of her head. The scent of it. The scratchy feel.

  The burlap suddenly cinched around her neck. Her scream was choked off by the bag.

  Darkness and silence.

  “End of transmission.”

  The Vitruvian Man test pattern.

  Please Stand By.

  17

  Barnes lay still on the motel room bed, his eyes closed. He said, “Why did it stop?”

  “I stopped it.”

  Barnes opened his eyes. Detective Franklin sat on the opposite bed, his elbows on his knees, his big hands clasped together. Dr. Hill stood in the far corner, leaning against the wall, his hands in his pockets, his horsehead cane propped against his hip.

  Barnes glanced at the machine as he sat up. The dial had been turned back from “Transmit” to “Idle.” He turned his body and set his feet on the floor. His vein was still tapped, the suction cups still attached. He checked the time on the nightstand alarm clock: 2:41 a.m.

  “I’m sorry I got you into this,” Franklin said.

  “How’d you find me?”

  Franklin flicked the badge that hung from a chain on his neck. It reverberated with a pinging sound as it swung back and forth. “Echo Ring. Led us right to this machine.”

  William Franklin is telling you lies.

  “How come you’re not looking for Flaherty?” Barnes said.

  Franklin frowned. “You think we aren’t trying?”

  “You’re here with me, aren’t you?” Barnes said. He gestured to indicate the room as well as Dr. Hill. “You two are sitting on your asses when you could be out finding Flaherty and taking down this bastard that keeps calling me. You could be finding Cherry Daniels.”

  “Despite what you think,” Franklin said, “we’re round the clock on Little Cher’s case right now. We got detectives digging into every one of her friendships, her relatives, even the people at Starmonizers. Uniforms have been canvassing her neighborhood for days.”

  Barnes looked off.

  “And I’ve got you telling me about this mysterious caller who claims to have Flaherty, only no one’s called your cell phone in days except me.” Franklin looked at the nearly empty fifth of Jack Daniel’s on the nightstand. He sighed. “We all thought you were good, but you’re not.
Even Jes—”

  “Leave her out of this.”

  “Fine,” Franklin said, “but what about the kid, huh?”

  Barnes held his old partner’s stare. “Why are you here?”

  “Came to help you before it’s too late.”

  “Before what’s too late?”

  “You’re losing. Can’t you see that?” Franklin tapped his temple. “The people inside are taking you over. Maybe they never left.”

  “I’m good.”

  Franklin shook his head. “You don’t want supervision? Fine. You don’t want professional help? Fine.” He reached into his jacket pocket and slid out an envelope. “Maybe this will help you get your head on straight.”

  “What’s that?” Barnes said. “Another vision quest from Freddie Cohen? No thanks.”

  Franklin handed the envelope over. “She asked me to deliver it if I found you.”

  Barnes opened the envelope. Inside there was an application for divorce. None of the fields were filled in, and there was no signature. He shook his head. “She’s bluffing.”

  “No, she’s not,” Dr. Hill said.

  “What the fuck do you know about it?” Barnes said. “Huh, prick?”

  Dr. Hill popped off the wall, picked up his cane, and used it as he stepped toward Barnes.

  Franklin held up a hand to Dr. Hill, stopping him.

  “I don’t want him here,” Barnes said to Franklin. “Get him out of here before I kill him.”

  Franklin looked at Dr. Hill and nodded. The doctor rolled his eyes. He left the motel room on a gimpy leg, slamming the door shut behind him.

  “What happened to him?” Barnes said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Franklin said.

  “Whatever it was,” Barnes said, “I hope it hurt.”

  Franklin sighed and rubbed his hands over his face and head. He looked off. “After Calavera, I heard you’d been shot. I thought I lost my partner.”

  “Lucky me,” Barnes said. “I lived.”

  Franklin turned to face him. “You’re an asshole.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “You’re an asshole with no friends,” Franklin said. “Figured I’d be the one to have to say some words at your funeral.”