Machine City: A Thriller (Detective Barnes Book 2)

by Scott J. Holliday

  “He went missing,” Barnes said.

  “Bingo.”

  Barnes started back toward the truck. “I’ll find him. After that, we’ll talk.”

  23

  Jessica was sitting on the porch steps when Barnes pulled up to the curb in front of his home. He parked the vehicle and killed the engine. Both he and Richie looked at Jessica through the windshield.

  She waved to them, his note in her hand.

  “Don’t be hard on her,” Richie said.

  “I won’t.”

  They got out.

  Richie ran up the sidewalk and hopped into his mother’s arms as she stood up. She hugged him fiercely. “I’m so sorry,” she said. Her voice was muffled because her lips were buried in the boy’s hair.

  “It’s okay, Mom.”

  She set him down and squatted to look him in the eye. Tears threatened at her lower eyelids. “I will never do that again.”

  “I know,” Richie said. Then he leaned close to his mother and whispered something in her ear.

  Jessica nodded at whatever the boy said. She pulled back and regarded him. “Go inside now, okay?”

  Richie smiled. He opened the screen door, ran through, and let it slam shut behind him.

  “Thank you for the note,” Jessica said.

  Barnes nodded.

  “I’m sorry for what I’ve done,” Jessica said. “It was irresponsible and dangerous.”

  “We all make mistakes.”

  “It’s just . . . this whole thing, it’s been difficult. You, back on that machine, back in that horrible world.” She looked away in pain, shook her head.

  “What did he say to you?” Barnes said.

  “Who?” Jessica said.

  “Richie. Just now.”

  She closed her eyes, took a breath, and said, “Don’t be so hard on him.”

  Barnes smirked. “That’s all?”

  “Come inside. I want to show you something.”

  Barnes followed her into the house, past the stairs, and into the den, which held a computer desk with a Mac Mini and monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Jessica sat down in a spare chair and gestured for Barnes to sit in the computer chair. He started to peel off his jacket.

  Jessica gasped at the Band-Aids on his arms, the dry blood.

  Barnes slid the jacket back on. “Sorry.”

  “Bring up the Detroit News,” Jessica said.

  Barnes sat down. He moved the mouse and the monitor lit up. He went to a browser and typed in the URL for the Detroit News. The main headline read, LITTLE CHER STILL MISSING, COPS REFUSE MACHINE.

  “That’s who you’re trying to save,” Jessica said. “That’s who matters right now, okay?”

  “They think I can help them,” Barnes said, “by finding Flaherty.”

  Jessica hung her head. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Barnes reached out to her, but she stood up and backed away. “Then find him.”

  “I’m trying,” Barnes said.

  “Try harder,” she said angrily and left the room.

  Barnes turned back to the computer monitor. He read more of the article, which stated that the police had discovered an eyewitness but wouldn’t use the machine to record the witness’s memories. The story went on to discuss particulars of the legal battle a few years back that had ended with the machine’s use for investigations and recreation rendered illegal. The reporter felt the police should break the law to save the girl.

  Barnes was about to shut down the browser when the familiar voice sounded off in his mind.

  “The IP address.”

  “What?”

  “Look it up.”

  Barnes searched his pockets to find the IP address he’d written down at Ziti’s, the address of the peer-to-peer Echo Ring computer where the ColdCase, Franklin, and FiveLives files were stored.

  64.199.1.7

  Slowly, and with growing trepidation, he typed a new URL into the browser—http://www.whatismyip.com.

  The browser reloaded and a page appeared. Among the various ads and blinking buttons competing for space on the screen was his computer’s IP address—64.199.1.7.

  Barnes opened the Finder app. He searched for Echo Ring and found a folder. He double-clicked the folder, but it was password protected.

  “Madrox.” The familiar voice.

  Barnes typed in “Madrox.”

  The folder opened. Three files were inside:

  ColdCase.

  FiveLives.

  Franklin.

  24

  Barnes drove down Keisel Street. He pulled up to building C and parked. People were everywhere. Most sat on stoops over ground-floor patios made up of brick pavers. Some sat in lawn chairs on the concrete that passed as the courtyard commons. The rest were on the move, clad in colorful shirts, oversize shorts, and untied sneakers. Baseball caps were turned backward, the brims level straight. Bottles in brown paper bags. Drug dealers and their prey. Deals were being made beneath rimless backboards. Shouting could be heard, both near and far. Little kids chased each other around the grounds, slipping in and out between the buildings in bare feet. A woman in green shower shoes staggered past the front bumper of Barnes’s truck, a handbag in the crook of her arm, her head wobbling in a drugged-out state. She hitched her long skirt as she stepped up the curb onto the sidewalk.

  Barnes got out of the truck. He weaved through the crowd to the doors of building C. Someone had freshly spray-painted a gang symbol on the door. White Wolves. The paint’s scent wafted as he pushed through and entered the stairwell. His steps echoed on the mesh steel steps as he climbed to the third floor where the paint scent turned over to the tang of ammonia.

  He opened the hallway door to find a man standing there in a striped tank top and pair of cargo shorts, looking at his own reflection in the scratched plexiglass that covered the fire hose. His skin was so pale it resembled Elmer’s glue. He pointed a finger aggressively into his own chest. “You talking to me?”

  Barnes started past him, but the man spun on him, reached out and grabbed his arm.

  “What are you doing here, pal?” the man said.

  Barnes looked down at the man’s spindly hand clutching his bicep. “Just passing through.”

  “This is a private residence,” the man said, squeezing Barnes’s arm. “How’d you get in he—” He blinked, shook his head, regarded Barnes again. “How’d you get in he—” He blinked again.

  Barnes raised an eyebrow.

  “Who are you?” the man said.

  “I might ask you the same question,” Barnes said.

  The man’s eyes shifted to the envelope sticking out from Barnes’s inner jacket pocket. He smirked. “I see. You want an autograph.” He let go of Barnes’s arm and grabbed the letter, pulled a Sharpie from his own pocket. “Who should I make it out to?”

  “Freddie Cohen,” Barnes said.

  The man turned around and placed the letter against the plexiglass. He said “To Freddie C” as he wrote, and then finished the signature with a flourish. He turned around and slapped the letter against Barnes’s chest. He winked. “Next time, just ask.”

  Barnes checked the letter as the man walked away. The autograph was mostly a scribble, but he made out Robert De Niro. “Hey, Bobby,” he said.

  The man stopped at the stairway door, his hand on the knob. He looked back at Barnes, gave him that famous De Niro squint, that bemused frown.

  “Thanks.”

  “Forget about it.”

  De Niro left. The hallway was quiet now. Barnes pulled his weapon and approached Unit 37 slowly, stepping on the balls of his feet. He put an ear to the door and listened. The TV was on. Muffled canned laughter. He tested the door, found it unlocked. He opened it slowly and peeked through. Josh was passed out in his recliner. Sandy looked like she hadn’t moved since the last time he’d been there. The heroin kit was over by her now.

  Barnes moved past them and down the hallway. He came to Verbatim’s door and knocked lightly. For a moment there was no sound, but
then Barnes heard shuffling feet. He readied his gun and stood back away from the door, against the wall. It opened slowly, only a crack. Verbatim’s eye appeared, searching. When he found Barnes, he said, “You coming in?”

  Barnes didn’t move. “Your dad called the precinct. Said you were in trouble.”

  “He didn’t call,” Verbatim said. “It was me.”

  “Why?”

  “Wanted to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “Come in.”

  “Who’s in there with you?”

  “No one. I swear.” He opened the door more fully, showing Barnes the room was empty.

  “Don’t. Go in.” The breathless voice.

  “Shhh.”

  Barnes examined the empty room, tried to see beneath the bed from the hallway. All seemed clear.

  Verbatim backed away from the door. He sat down on the edge of the bed and waited.

  Barnes entered the room and closed the door behind him. After a final scan he holstered his gun and said, “I’m on an important case. If you’re in trouble, you—”

  “I’m not the one in trouble,” Verbatim said. “You are.”

  Barnes tilted his head. “How’s that?”

  “It’s better if you see for yourself.” Verbatim reached under the bed with two hands. He gripped the machine and slid it out.

  Barnes closed his eyes and fought back the shiver. He won the battle with the sick feeling rising from his guts, remaining himself.

  “You know that cop, Flaherty?” Verbatim said. He set the machine on the nightstand, plugged a keyboard into a USB port along the side.

  “What about him?”

  “You need to see what he’s been up to.”

  “How do you know Flaherty?”

  “I don’t. I guess he used to come around here to fill his quota by making busts.” Verbatim unwrapped a new IV tube. “My mom said he was a munky and that a guy down the hall sold him a lot of shitty serum, sold him time on the machine until one day Flaherty decides he’s gonna bust the guy instead. I would say he’s a bastard for that, but the vacancy helped me reestablish my own game. My dad told you I just got back a few weeks ago? Yeah, well, I got back from six months served. Use to have a tidy little operation running in Redford, now I’m back in with the Needle-Dum and Needle-Dee until I get enough saved.”

  “What does this have to do with me?” Barnes said.

  Verbatim held up the machine’s suction cups. “You need to see for yourself.”

  A pain worked its way from one side of Barnes’s head to the other. An image of a falling boy. A bullet hole to the chest. A falling girl. Another bullet hole. The gunshots. Over and over. The blood. The empty meadow. Again he started to tremble but bit it back and focused. “No.”

  “Was I right about the case you’re on?” Verbatim said. “Cherry Daniels?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “I’d just like to know.”

  “Your guy, Flaherty,” Barnes said. “He’s gone missing.”

  “Just gone, right? Into thin air?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Just a hunch, based on some files I found.”

  “I’ve checked the Ring for Flaherty’s files,” Barnes said. “I’ve already been him.”

  “That’s funny,” Verbatim said, “’cause he sure spent a lot of time being you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Don’t you know?” Verbatim said. “Your memory is a classic on the Ring. You busting Calavera, getting shot, nearly dying. People love it. Especially the salt in the wounds. I hear it hurts like a mofo.”

  Barnes stood there, dumbstruck.

  “It seems Flaherty rode your file all the time,” Verbatim said, “according to the people around here that knew him.” He gestured toward Barnes with the suction cups.

  “What memory is this?” Barnes said.

  “A binge I made. I think it will help you.”

  “A binge of what?”

  “Flaherty’s memories.”

  “I told you,” Barnes said. “I already rode his files.”

  “Not this,” Verbatim said. “You would never have found this.”

  “Why not?”

  Verbatim sighed. “Okay, look . . . the Echo Ring is illegal as shit, but it’s kind of like streaming free movies or whatever. Everyone does it and no one seems to care. Too many people to bust, housewives and kids and shit, so the police just leave it alone. But the real hard stuff? The kind of memories they’ll kick down your door about? That all goes down on Sickle Web. If you’re not a hacker, you’ll never get in.”

  “And you’re a hacker?”

  Verbatim breathed on his knuckles and then rubbed them on his shirt. “Your boy Flaherty put his files on the Echo Ring. That was as much as he was going to do to make sure they’d be found someday, but someone—I swear it wasn’t me—hacked his machine and stole some of his files, deleted the original copies.”

  “Why would someone do that?”

  Verbatim gestured again with the suction cups. “The guy in this binge had plenty of reason.”

  “Why would he put the files on this Sickle Web?”

  “It’s like a secret society where crazies go to show off, the sick shit they’ve done. No sense having it unless you can . . . I don’t know, preen?”

  Barnes paused. He watched Verbatim for a moment and then asked, “Why would you go to all this trouble to help me?”

  “I’m not helping you,” Verbatim said. “I’m helping Little Cher.”

  Barnes ruminated, suspecting a trap. No. The kid was being honest. “How long is the binge?”

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  Barnes peeled off his jacket and sat down on the bed.

  “Been a fun couple of days, huh?” Verbatim said, indicating the Eddie Able Band-Aids and dry blood on Barnes’s arms.

  “A riot,” Barnes said.

  Verbatim ran his fingers along Barnes’s temple. “Gotta take you down a bit,” he said. He grabbed a can of shaving cream and a blue disposable razor.

  Barnes closed his eyes as Verbatim coated his head with shaving cream. The scent hurled him back to his days as a detective, when he was on the machine almost daily. It’d cost him so much. But he’d saved lives. He’d done some good.

  Hadn’t he?

  After the shave, Verbatim toweled off Barnes’s head and applied the suction cups. “Go ahead and lay back,” he said, pulling up a chair. He unwrapped a clean needle and attached it to the tube. With expert-level finesse he slid the needle into an open spot on Barnes’s right arm, successfully tapping the vein.

  Barnes spat out his gum and caught it in his left hand. “Got a bit?”

  “I figured you for a grinder.”

  “A grinder?”

  “Tooth grinder,” Verbatim said. He clacked his teeth together. “No bit.”

  “Who on earth would do that?”

  “Aren’t you a member of the Sect?”

  “No.”

  “Not yet,” Verbatim said.

  Barnes put the gum back in his mouth.

  Verbatim typed on the machine’s keyboard and tapped the “Enter” key. “You ready?”

  “Can you sing?” Barnes said.

  Verbatim said, “Nope,” and turned the dial.

  Click.

  Hiss.

  Barnes’s body arched.

  Darkness and silence.

  25

  A blue dot pulsed on a computer screen, around it a map of Detroit. The dot centered on the northeast corner of Tillman and Selden Streets, northwest of Corktown.

  “Got you, son of a bitch,” Flaherty said.

  -Record skip-

  Flaherty was in an unmarked sedan. He drove slowly down a darkened city block past burned-out basements and abandoned homes. He parked at the curb, eyes locked on a dilapidated white house sitting alone in a field at the end of the block. The house’s upstairs windows were all blacked out, but the basement windows were emit
ting weak, colorful streams of light around wooden planks. The street sign at the corner was sheared off at the base. Sections of the sidewalk were missing, and a fire hydrant was unplugged but dry, its mouth like an open sore.

  Flaherty got out of the car and lightly clicked the door closed. The sounds of vehicles moving down the nearby I-96 freeway nearly drowned out the chirring crickets. The air had that wrong-side-of-the-tracks smell, something like decaying drywall and rust. Flaherty drew his .45 Glock and clicked off the safety. Barnes felt soothed by the gun in his hand.

  Flaherty moved across the street and started up the sidewalk.

  -Record skip-

  Flaherty stood on the porch of the house. The structure leaned to one side and Barnes had to counter-lean to keep his balance. There was no storm door, and the front door had the same diamond-shaped window of the Masterson trailer of Barnes’s youth. He blinked away a vision of Ted Nugent staring out crazily, fought the urge to ring the doorbell and run. The door’s cheap veneer peeled down in curls that rattled like leaves when Flaherty knocked.

  No answer.

  “Open up,” Flaherty said. “Police!”

  No response.

  Flaherty clicked on a long metal flashlight, held it overhand-style and kicked in the door. The mildew scent was instant and fierce. Before him was a clogged vein of a path that weaved through the foyer toward the kitchen. Walls of stacked magazines and newspapers to the ceiling. No doubt there were entryways to rooms on either side, but the stacks blocked them off. Flaherty moved through, flashlight in one hand, Glock in the other. Creaky floorboards. He passed the legs and heads of dolls stuffed between the magazines and papers, piles of circuit boards, notebooks, and clear plastic cups with pools of molded juice.

  “Police!” Flaherty said. “Anyone in the house step out into the open, now!”

  The house remained silent.

  He made his way into the kitchen and pulled the string on a light over the table. Moths and flies lifted from unseen places and converged toward the light. They whirled around the bare bulb as Barnes backed up and assessed the scene. The table was overrun with stacks of half-eaten TV dinners, some crawling with maggots. The sink was filled to overflowing with red pots, yellow-and-green plates, and grimy silverware. The cupboard knobs were haloed by decades of dirt.