The machine stopped recording.
Barnes opened his eyes to find Dawn standing over him, smiling happily as her tongue traced her upper teeth. She waggled the Taser before his eyes and pressed the button. Electricity arced from one post to the other.
“Good night, sweet prince.”
20
The back of a pickup truck is no place for a nap. Barnes woke up with his head against the toolbox in the back, his neck kinked at an angle. He sat up blinking and rubbed his head. His body was fried. Maybe literally. But he smiled. They’d get nothing from his memory pull. If anything, Hannah Daniels would feel his happiness instead of Leo’s horror.
He struggled over the side of the bed wall and landed on his knees on the concrete below. The truck was still parked at Mancino’s. He leaned against the vehicle to stabilize himself as he stood up.
Across the street, in front of Three Aces, remained two protesters. They sat on the curb, their signs over their knees, sharing a cigarette. The one on the left was a Melodian, the other a Brittanian complete with pigtails and a plaid backpack. If only these nuts knew where Gabriel Messina was hiding. In plain sight, as it were.
Barnes got into the truck, started it, and drove away. He fought the urge to drive right back to Ziti’s, knock some teeth from Messina’s head, and drag Hannah Daniels out of their misguided captivity. The woman was a mess and the Sect was making matters worse, offering the machine as a beacon of hope. There was only suffering for Hannah, only pain until her daughter was found safe. Worse if she wasn’t. He needed to get in front of this investigation, find Flaherty, find Cherry, and unplug all these people from more damage. Dealing with Messina could wait.
He pulled up to Candy Harper’s childhood home at 2120 Fairchild Avenue. The tiny house was situated up against the train tracks at Calvary Junction, where suburbia began giving way to the expanse of Whitehall Forest. The roads here were gravel. The grass at 2120 hadn’t been mowed in weeks. The hedge out front had overtaken the concrete porch and was reaching for the house itself. Sun-bleached paint flaked away from the T1-11 siding.
Barnes picked up Zandar and Destro, got out of his truck, went to the front door, and knocked on the screen. The flimsy aluminum rattled under his knuckles.
A teenage girl opened the door. She had light brown eyes and blonde hair. A black BTBAM T-shirt was cut and tied in a knot above her belly, and her jeans were cut so short the white front pockets peeked out against her thighs. Memories came rushing back. Barnes had to blink to ensure he wasn’t looking at the Candy Harper of his youth but undeniably the woman’s daughter. The scent from inside the house was Chef Boyardee and stale cigarette smoke. Barnes recalled Candy as a girl younger than the one who stood before him running off to the gas station at Calvary Junction to buy her mother’s Viceroys.
The girl said, “Momma told you not to come around anymore. You people got shit in your ears, or what?”
“Excuse me?” Barnes said.
“You’re one of them Jehovahs, right?”
“No.”
“Okay then, whaddya want?”
“Is your mother home?”
“You know my momma?”
“Candy Harper,” Barnes said. The name felt both familiar and strange coming out of his mouth.
“She’s Candy, all right, but she goes by Smith now.”
“Is she home?”
“Course she is. Where else would she be?”
“Could I come in and talk with her?”
The girl looked at the two G.I. Joe action figures in Barnes’s hand. “You bringing her those?”
Barnes nodded.
“Then I guess she’ll want to see you.” She pushed open the door. “Come on in.”
Barnes stepped into the house, which was run-down and unkempt. He pulled a double take. The furniture was the same as when he was a boy, at least thirty years old now, undoubtedly more. The cushions on the couch were as thin as sheets, the material torn to expose stuffing the color of chicken fat. Two-by-fours had breached the arms in various places. The cheap wood was browned and smoothed by human touch. The art on the walls was the same as he remembered—three separate paintings of nothing more than colorful strokes resembling tangled yarn. He recalled Candy telling him and Ricky that her grandfather had painted them and that they were abstracts. Barnes couldn’t make sense of them, then or now.
“I ain’t seen you before,” the girl said as she led him down the hallway toward the back bedrooms where the cigarette smoke scent grew stronger. “How do you know Momma?”
“We’re old friends,” Barnes said.
“Then you might want to brace yourself, mister.”
“How’s that?”
“She ain’t like she used to be.”
When Barnes and Ricky were boys, Candy Harper was their queen. A tall girl, plus she was a couple of years older with the female shape to go with her maturity. She wore too-short shorts, just like her daughter, and during the summer she ran around in nothing else but a bikini top. Barnes grew flush, recalling he used to masturbate to a vision of Candy smiling at him while pulling the string on that bikini top, her breasts finally popping loose after days of threatening to. Mom used to say she felt sorry for the poor girl, that she’d end up twirling on a pole. Barnes hadn’t known what twirling on a pole meant, but he understood that it was probably improper and probably something worth considering.
Everyone thought Candy was dumb. She ran around with two boys younger than she was, her ass hanging out of her shorts, playing with their G.I. Joe action figures while she practically ignored the boys and girls her own age. Her G.I. Joe collection shamed what Johnny and Ricky had. She kept the figures in their packaging and never actually opened them. The boys couldn’t understand that. Ricky once said, “Why have them if you don’t play with them?”
Candy, sitting with her legs hugged up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her knees, said, “They’ll be worth money someday.”
Ricky said, “Well, they ain’t worth shit right now.”
Candy smirked and looked off, nibbled at her wrist. “Mr. Price says each one is worth a hand job, and a blow job gets me five.”
The boys exchanged a wide-eyed glance. Johnny was marginally sure what a hand job meant, but a blow job? Good God. The words, spoken through a mouthful of her own skin, reddened his cheeks and dampened his palms.
“She’s in here,” Candy’s daughter said. She pushed open the door to the home’s master bedroom.
The person in the bed was a skeleton image of what Candy Harper had once been. She was lying on her side in silk pajamas that had fallen down her hip to reveal the bony frame below. The skin sagged down and then sloped back up toward her ribs before her pajamas covered her again. Her face was almost literally a skull, her lips pulled back to reveal her teeth and gums, her eyes dropped deep into eye sockets, glinting like pinballs. Her hair was thin blonde wisps, and a tracheostomy tube had been placed in her throat. A cat sprawled on the bed next to her. The animal was fat, its tail curling and moving languidly.
The room was stuffy. An oscillating fan turned in the far corner, pushing the scents of cat piss and cigarette smoke around the space. A box of Marlboro Mediums lay on the nightstand, plus a yellow plastic lighter. The walls were lined with shelving units to the ceiling, each one meticulously stacked with G.I. Joe action figures, all still in their packaging, including the skin-color-changing Zartan, the Baroness, Duke, and Cover Girl, who came with a tank. With so many duplicates the shelves looked like they were factions from different armies. Barnes found the Destro shelf. He smirked. She had more than he could count.
“Momma,” the girl said, “you got a visitor.”
Candy picked up her head. She blinked.
“Don’t move too much,” the girl said. “She’ll lose you.”
“Who is it?” Candy said, holding a finger on the end of her trach tube to give strength to her brittle voice. Her eyes moved back and forth across the area where Barnes stood.
A smile came to Candy’s face. “Little Johnny Barnes?”
“Hello, Candy.”
“To what do I owe such a pleasure?”
“Don’t make her talk too much,” the girl said. “She’s got cancer in her throat.”
Barnes nodded.
Candy waved her daughter off with a skeletal hand.
“You need some water?” the girl said.
Candy closed her eyes and shook her head. The girl looked at Barnes by way of asking the same question.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’m fine.”
The girl left the room.
“Have a seat, Johnny,” Candy said, “if you haven’t already. My eyes aren’t what they once were. This goddamn diabetes. I only get shapes these days. Soon I’ll be totally blind. Edgar does my looking for me.”
At the sound of its name the cat lifted its head and looked at Candy, who reached out and dragged a hand across its back. The cat turned to watch Barnes take a seat on a kitchen chair next to the bed, gripping the nearby dresser to ease himself down. The action figures in his hand clacked against the wood.
“What’s that?” Candy said, turning an ear to the sound.
“Oh, these?” Barnes said. “Couple of G.I. Joes. I found them recently, and I . . .” He stopped when a strange smile came to Candy’s face. Water welled up in the red lines around her sunken eyes.
Barnes said, “What is it?”
“You come here looking for a hand job, Johnny Barnes?”
Barnes’s cheeks, already flush, grew enflamed. His palms got sweaty. He rubbed his off hand against his leg, felt a tear welling in his own eye, soreness in his throat. He held up the two action figures so that Candy might see them more clearly. “I wish I had three more.”
Candy looked curiously at the figures for a moment, trying to find focus, and then the mathematical realization struck her. She laughed as heartily as her frail body would allow.
Barnes laughed, too.
Edgar’s tail swayed like seaweed.
Candy put her finger to her trach tube and said, “Did you ever wonder why I used to hang around with you two boys?”
“I have always wondered that,” Barnes said.
“People used to say I was nuts to be running with a couple of boys years younger than me, but you know what you boys had that the rest of them didn’t?”
Barnes shook his head. “No.”
“Humility. Your cheeks got red when you saw me the way I was, barely dressed all the time, flaunting what I had.” She smirked and took a beat, moved her head to find him again. “Please tell me they’re red right now.”
“They are.”
“Yeah. You got quiet and coy, just like now.”
“We had our thoughts,” Barnes said.
“But you kept them to yourselves,” Candy said. “That’s what mattered.”
Barnes nodded.
“That Ricky, though,” Candy said, “he would have made his move one day. Of that I was sure. The little scoundrel. I can’t say I wouldn’t have let him. No offense, Johnny.”
“None taken.”
A train hurled by on the tracks just outside the window. The floor rumbled, the house’s old bones creaked, and the G.I. Joe shelves rattled, but everything stayed in place. Edgar never took his eyes off Barnes.
“So what brings you here, Mr. Barnes,” Candy said, “all grown up and probably a cop?”
“Used to be,” Barnes said.
“Knew you would,” Candy said. “Detective even, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Of course. What brings you, honey?”
“Well,” Barnes said, fiddling with the action figures in his hands, “did Ricky ever tell you about a time capsule he was—” He stopped when Candy held up her hand.
“Say no more,” she said. “I know what you came here for. Been waiting all these years to give it.”
“Give what?” Barnes said.
“Ricky’s riddle. I can’t remember it for shit, but your brother made me write it down. I still have it.” She wiped at her nose with the back of her hand. “Last time I ever saw him.”
“Where is it?” Barnes said.
Candy pointed at the dresser next to Barnes, which was covered in trinkets and figurines, bangles and bracelets. Situated in the center was a pink-and-silver jewelry box. Barnes opened the lid. A ballerina popped up and wobbled around on a spring. The music box played the theme to Swan Lake in plinking notes.
Candy smiled and swayed to the music. “Lift up the tray.”
Barnes gripped a pink velvet tray filled with rings and necklaces embedded with ruby-colored stones. Beneath the tray were folded pieces of paper that looked like notes passed in high school.
“The green one,” Candy said.
Barnes pushed aside some of the notes to find a folded sheet that was pale green. He removed it from the box and unfolded the paper.
“Read it to me,” Candy said.
The handwriting was not Ricky’s but clearly that of a girl. Barnes read out loud what was written.
“The runner-up and who’s next, three threes and two dozen. My age minus one, midnight’s younger cousin.”
Candy nodded as he read, smiled knowingly. When he was done, she said, “Take it with you, Johnny Barnes, but before you do, circle ‘my.’”
“What’s that?”
“Circle ‘my.’ Ricky stressed ‘my’ when he made me write it down. My age minus one. My age. He wouldn’t tell me why.”
“But I’ll bet he smirked,” Barnes said, finishing up the circle around my.
“You’re goddamn right he did,” Candy said. “And he winked at me. Made me want to smack him one good.”
Barnes chuckled. “You and me both.”
Candy’s off hand returned to Edgar’s back. The cat closed its eyes to her touch. Candy blindly regarded the cat for a moment and then said, “You ever hear that question marks are based on cat’s tails?”
“No,” Barnes said. “I never heard that.”
“If you watch a cat from behind when he’s getting into something, watch his little butthole and tail curling, it looks like a question mark.”
Barnes smirked.
“Exclamation marks, too,” Candy said. “Soon as they get excited, up goes that tail, straight as can be. Pow!”
Barnes looked at Edgar. The cat dropped its head onto the bed and purred, turned its belly to Candy’s touch.
“There was too much in that brother of yours,” Candy said. “Too much life. Too much knowledge. Too much . . . light.” She took her hand away from the cat and reached out aimlessly toward Barnes. “Too much for one little body to hold.”
Barnes hesitated but eventually took her frail hand.
She gripped his hand and squeezed. “I know you took responsibility for Ricky dying. Maybe you still do. Hell, it’s twenty-five years later and you’re chasing his riddle.”
Barnes breathed out through his nose.
“Your little brother was never long for this world, Detective Barnes. Had it not been that train that took him, it would have been something else. The world just reached up and stole him the same way a kid steals something from a candy store, not knowing it’s wrong. The world just sees something bright, something that shines, and takes it. That’s all.”
“I guess so,” Barnes said.
She patted his hand. “Go on and solve that riddle, Johnny. Go and find that last bit of shine.”
21
“His name is Leo,” Barnes said into his phone. He was sitting in his truck in Candy’s driveway, talking to Franklin.
“How do you know that?” Franklin said.
“What does it matter?” Barnes said. “I just know. Were any of the sole proprietors or independent costume renters from the case files named Leo or Leon? Maybe Leonardo?”
“I can check,” Franklin said.
“While you’re at it,” Barnes said, “why were the owners of Sparky Time A
musements redacted from the files?”
Franklin sighed. “You’re going on Flaherty’s theory now, huh? You spent some time with him on the machine and, let me guess, you’re looking for info on something called the Madrox Project?”
“What is it?” Barnes said.
“What is what?”
“The Madrox Project.”
“Get that bullshit out of your head,” Franklin said. “Flaherty theorized a cover-up. He thought some cop went off the reservation, got dressed up as Eddie Able, and sliced up an entire family—the unnamed third boy that escaped Caulfield Avenue, plus his mother and father.”
“Georgie and Alice,” Barnes said. “The 911 call.”
“Yeah, well, I guess you’d know about that now, too. Flaherty wanted to expose what he called the Madrox Project, so he started sniffing around the precinct and with Internal Affairs, got himself into a kettle of water with Captain Darrow. That’s when he started using the machine daily.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The dude thought using the machine was making him a better detective. Thought it was expanding his brain power or something.”
“Come on.”
“Who do you think redacted those files?” Franklin said. “Flaherty himself. He decided there was a cover-up, and no one could convince him otherwise, so he created one.”
“Bullshit.”
“What’s bullshit?” Franklin said. “The idea that a cop dressed up as a life-size doll and killed the family who just happened to own Sparky Time Amusements, putting himself on the hook for everything that went down at 1613 Caulfield Av? Or that Adrian Flaherty was a shit detective and a munky so desperate for a case to solve he made up his own?”
“They were the owners?” Barnes said.
“Huh?”
“You just said that the family, Georgie and Alice’s family, were the owners of Sparky Time Amusements.”
A flash of memory ran through Barnes’s mind: the six-foot Eddie Able across the river from young Freddie Cohen, the one with blood on his gloves, the one with blood on his lips after he gestured for Freddie to shhh.
Machine City: A Thriller (Detective Barnes Book 2) Page 17