An Exaggerated Murder: A Novel

by Josh Cook

  And the lady drew a gun.

  “What a lovely dress you’re wearing,” she said. “You can put the knife away.”

  “Who are you?” Lola said, not about to put her knife away. “And how do you know my name?”

  “My apologies. I know so much about you, I forget we’ve never met. It is one of the constant situations of my life. Your partner may have spoken of me as The Lady on the Corner. People come to me because I know things. For example, I know the training you received from your father, and exactly what Lola Lenore is capable of with the knife in her hand. Note my absence of fear.

  “Now, put it away, so I can put my gun away, and we can talk.”

  Lola could tell from the grip that The Lady knew how to use the gun, and she slowly put her knife away. The Lady on the Corner as slowly put her gun away.

  “What brings you to this part of town in such a lovely dress?”

  “Information isn’t free,” Lola said.

  The Lady on the Corner raised an eyebrow and nodded slightly. “An exchange then. Question for question. Answer for answer.”

  Lola knew what Trike went through and how much he paid for information from The Lady on the Corner. This was an opportunity. If she asked and answered the right way, she might find the information they were missing. But she also needed to get home.

  “Agreed. I was kidnapped and brought here by the kidnappers.”

  “Interesting. Very interesting. And well played. It begs follow-ups. You may ask me a question.”

  Lola went with the immediately actionable. “Where am I?”

  “A very good question. Practical. Actionable. You are in an alley behind the H. H. Holmes Elementary School. Vidocq Street is behind you.”

  Lola thought, “Eighty-six bus. Take me to the office.” She wanted to turn and run to make sure she got the last bus. But there was another question in The Lady’s eyes, and if The Lady had another question, Lola could get another answer.

  “How did someone of your abilities come to be kidnapped?” The Lady on the Corner asked.

  “I allowed it to happen.”

  The Lady on the Corner laughed a deep, echoing, diaphramic laugh. “My, my, my. You might have to settle for the detecting machine so enraptured with you. Very few other humans on the planet have the inherent confidence to be your partner. If you want one, of course. I owe you an answer.”

  “Why can’t we find Joyce?”

  The Lady on the Corner smiled. Gave a congratulatory nod. “Trike will solve the case. But he will never understand it. As an artist, though you might not be able to solve the case, you will easily understand it. Don’t explain it to him. Everything, absolutely everything, has its limit, and this is beyond Trike’s.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The Lady on the Corner shook her head. “You do not have another question. Information isn’t free and there’s not enough tucked into your bra for both that information and bus fare. You’d better go now. The Eighty-six will be at the corner soon. It’s the last one for the night.”

  The Lady on the Corner turned and walked out her end of the alley. Lola jogged to the street and just caught the bus as it was pulling up to the stop.

  ON THE RAG

  “Hey, guys,” Lola said as she entered Trike’s office. “Did either of you pick up my purse? I dropped it when I was kidnapped. There wasn’t anything really in it, but I’ve only got, like, two purses total.”

  “Huh,” was all Trike initially managed. He checked his cell phone for missed calls. He dashed to the hallway. Looked for a note on the door or the floor. And then on every reasonable surface the office and environs offered. He double-checked the phone messages. He checked the agency’s e-mail, his e-mail, Max’s e-mail. Nothing.

  While Trike searched, Max said to Lola, “Only gone … two-plus hours?”

  Lola flopped into the available client chair. “Yeah, well, eventually they gave one of those inept thugs a gun and there was no way I was going to spend much time near an armed idiot. And anyway, I overheard them say they’d already gotten what they wanted from me. Didn’t they call or something?”

  Trike sat down, on his face the stoic expression of a warlock whose spell worked too well. “I called the janitor. Let him know to look for your purse. Fire alarm went off before anyone else went to the bathroom. Purse is still where you dropped it. We can pick it up tomorrow.”

  Trike’s eyes narrowed. He pressed his palms together in front of his face. “No, they did not call. They did not leave a note anywhere in space where we would find a note. They did not drive up in an imposing black sedan to proclaim threats on your life at us. They did not hire thespians to depict potential horrors as a way to induce particular actions on our parts. They did not throw a note-wrapped brick. We have heard nothing from them.”

  “Easy escape?” Max asked.

  Lola rolled her eyes. “They did the whole cover-my-face-with-a-rag thing, but they didn’t put on the rag whatever they meant to put on the rag. I was only tied up in the loosest sense of the phrase. They left me with just one guard. The only thing they did right was make sure the gun they gave the thug wasn’t loaded.”

  “Tell me everything,” Trike said, unmoving, “from beginning to end, leaving nothing out, no matter how trivial it might appear to you.”

  Lola noticed the remains of takeout. “Are there any fries left? I’m fucking starving.”

  Trike reached under his desk, retrieved the full order of fries, and handed it to Lola.

  “Now, in between bites,” he said, “tell me everything.”

  Trike sat monolith-still while Lola told her story, until she reached the name of the school.

  “Stop—H. H. Holmes Elementary School?” Trike confirmed.

  “Yep,” Lola said, stuffing fries into her mouth.

  “You are certain it was H. H. Holmes Elementary School?”

  “ ’Cause I’d just make that shit up to fuck with you.”

  Trike nodded.

  “Max?” he said.

  “Boss.”

  “Lola?”

  Lola muttered a vague affirmative through a face full of fries.

  “Though the world’s languages are rich with words, terms, phrases, and idioms of hatred, though there is a wealth of curses, profanities, and blasphemies, though humans have joined word and fury as long as both have coexisted in consciousness, though poets and scholars, popes and pundits, geniuses and savants, have committed rage to language for eons, there are no curses, profanities, blasphemies, or idioms of hatred in the lexicon of expression capable of capturing the satanic anger boiling my soul.”

  Lola and Max knew to just wait these speeches out.

  “As you both recall, we wanted Joyce to use Lola as a means of communicating directly with me, and in that sense, our plan succeeded beyond our wildest booze-soaked fantasies, for Joyce, though he did not call us to explain the kidnapping, nor send a message by post, analog or electronic, nor do anything more than bring you, Lola, to a specific location, has made a direct statement. At least, he assumes so.”

  Trike stood and began pacing around his office.

  “There are many in both the detecting world and the emerging world of neurophysics who spend much time and spill much ink on the subject of my memory, many seeing it as a particularly dramatic demonstration of the limitless potential of the human brain and the truly paltry understanding we have of its abilities, with two postdocs currently working on a postulation that the brain is a quantum computer, a theory they believe will explain how the bioelectricity of its actions become thoughts and why so much of our experience is mysterious to us.

  “In the interest of these investigations, I told the story of my memory many times, a condensed version of which I will share with you now because without this context you cannot begin to comprehend the satanic anger boiling my blood.

  “Sometime in seventh grade I realized that my memory was capable of information acts beyond those delineated by typical experience. I dis
covered I could train it to automatically and semiconsciously record specific sets of information, storing them in an organized and accessible manner. From that unremembered moment forward, the process was much like a slowly developing photograph, as I improved the techniques, structures, and images to the point where they reached their current level of sophistication and utility four years, two months, four days, and three hours ago.

  “That is the level the public is familiar with, through my exploits in this agency, but before that moment, my memory was not uniquely distinctive. It was different by degrees rather than in nature. And so this brings us to this moment in which Joyce, making a rational assumption, did no more than bring Lola to H. H. Holmes Elementary School, because I attended H. H. Holmes for only one year, sixth grade.”

  “What happened in sixth grade?” Lola asked.

  Trike continued as if Lola hadn’t spoken. “One might guess Joyce is making a statement about my father’s murder, which happened the summer after sixth grade, but if he knows me well enough to steal only my radio when he breaks into my office, he must know that nothing occurred at H. H. Holmes that could in any way reference the following summer’s tragedy.”

  Trike sat down in his chair.

  “There can be only one conclusion. Joyce used Lola to tell me he is getting revenge for something I did in sixth grade.”

  He put his head in his hands.

  “And I have no ideas what it is,” he concluded.

  “So this whole thing,” Lola said with a gesture encompassing the beautiful world, “all these millions and millions of dollars are to get revenge on you for something that happened in sixth grade?”

  Trike put his feet up on his desk. “As indicated by the evidence.”

  “It’s not absurd,” Max explained. “Sixth grade … beginning of social life. An insult, slight, prank … could retard someone’s social development … dramatically.”

  “But that would only be memorable to the victim,” Trike said, “and to me after seventh grade.”

  Max shrugged. “I gave an explanation … not an answer.”

  Trike sighed again. His gaze drifted around the room as if following a gnat. After a minute, Trike snapped his eyes back to his companions.

  “Okay. The plan. Max, you drive Lola home, assuming Lola wants to go home and does not insist on jogging home in her formal wear. My sixth-grade class picture is in the box of pictures in the closet I never use. I will go home, drink something caustic and alcoholic, and stare at that picture until I figure this out. I will contact both of you when I do and both of you will contact me immediately if you come up with anything. Plan approved?”

  “Plan approved,” Max said.

  “Plan approved, but only if Max is willing to swing by Store24. The fries were nice, but I need something else.”

  “Amendment approved … and on me.”

  “Max, you don’t have to—”

  “You were kidnapped. This is … combat pay.”

  “Thanks, Max. See you tomorrow, Trike.”

  “See you, boss. Good luck.”

  Trike did not respond. His drifting gaze returned.

  Max and Lola left. Both tossed an additional goodbye wave over their shoulders as they went through the door.

  It took Trike fifty-eight minutes to get himself out of the office. He sat in all the chairs. He drank all the tallboys. He looked out the window. He rifled through the filing cabinets. He turned off the computers. He tapped on his desk with the eraser end of his favorite pencil. He sighed. He sulked. He muttered, “At this point, one could be forgiven for being skeptical of my conclusion, but as the evidence mounts, the darkened room becomes more suspicious,” as he left the office.

  Much of detecting is unpleasant. Which is part of the point. You sign up for the job because it engenders emotions of substance. Not the junk one felt at the office. But unpleasant is still unpleasant, no matter what ancillary psychological benefits are conferred. And whatever was in that class picture was sure to be unpleasant. Unpleasant in an unpleasant way.

  STANDING IN THE WAY OF THOSE WHO HAVE ALREADY REJECTED THE LAW

  A bottle will hold vodka as well as a glass. And you don’t have to wash a vodka bottle when you’re done drinking. And then there’s all that extra effort glasses pose.

  Bring bottle to glass.

  Unscrew cap.

  Pick up and pour.

  Determine portion.

  Set down and cap.

  Return bottle to place.

  Trike decided to drink out of his favorite fuck-my-life vodka cup, so all that effort would slow down his pace. It was a plastic tumbler with a handle of almost the same height as the cup itself and with enough width that he could interlace his fingers within it. Its original color was a reasonable blue that had since faded into an approximation of mid-nineties teal. In the middle, facing into the world when held by the handle by the right hand, was an equally faded Disney World logo, encircled by the archaeological traces of the catchphrase “WHEN YOU WISH UPON A STAR.” He was still drinking pretty damn fast.

  He added pacing to his pacing.

  Holding the class picture, Trike walked past the table through the living room, around the couch, to his bedroom desk, to the front door, and back. He emptied the cup on each circuit.

  Trying to figure this out.

  Trike had four basic mental analysis techniques: data-frame, matrices, annotated images, and narrative columns.

  With data-frames, he framed an argument with scrolls of facts, like TV news tickers, allowing him to fact-check his reasoning as he reasoned. With matrices, he set known facts at four corners and positioned possible explanations in the space between them based on how strongly they correlated with particular facts. With annotated images, Trike held a single image in his mind, such as a picture from the crime scene, and surrounded it with conclusions, observations, and relevant data. With the narrative columns, he told up to four concurrent stories about the case, instantly replacing those deemed impossible with new stories, allowing him to churn through hundreds and, occasionally, thousands of possible explanations, because sometimes the key to the case was the least insane possibility Trike could imagine.

  He ran narrative columns starring his sixth-grade classmates.

  John Ottney.

  William Pinkerton.

  Trevor Bingham.

  Emily Gourbin.

  Alice Burnham.

  Harry Villers.

  None of them looked like Joyce of the portrait, so he had to be a proxy. Joyce in the portrait was decades too old to have been a classmate of Trike’s. But his proxiness was not necessarily meaningful in the ultimate meaning of the case. Or maybe Joyce was a disguise, which was not necessarily meaningful in the ultimate meaning of the case.

  Walter Drew.

  Julian Gault.

  Bernard Spillsbury.

  William Melville.

  Trike had to lengthen his route. He was getting back to the vodka bottle too often. He added the almost-empty second floor. There was a point to boozing. It made permeable barriers between intelligences that are typically impermeable. For whatever that is worth.

  John Wilson Murray. John Wilson Murray was Trike’s accountant. If it actually was Trike’s accountant, the case would not end up in a court of law.

  Bill Wilcox.

  Joseph Holle.

  Winny Moore.

  Trike found himself in one of the empty second-floor bedrooms. When that drunk on vodka, as good a place as any to speechify.

  “I have thrown criminal kingpins in jail. I have outdueled mafia hit squads. Toppled international syndicates. Bested brilliant psychopaths. Tapped on the shoulder those who thought they had gotten away. By definition, perhaps by design, my career collects revenge-seekers like loan consolidation offers. I get more death threats than thank-you notes, more curses than congratulations, more bricks than bouquets. And in that sense, I know dozens, perhaps hundreds of people in rooms and cells plotting or imagining revenge against
me.

  “So I will not be surprised if someone, someday, sneaks into my house and shoots me while I sleep. I will be prepared if someone endeavors to track down all my friends and family to subject them to an amplified version of whatever it is they believe I subjected them to. I expect specters of my youth to appear before me in my crippled and broken old age to avenge actions decades ancient. Such is the lot of standing in the way of those who have already rejected the law.

  “The amount of money involved in this case greatly expands the possible explanations. With enough money, what is impossible becomes easy. But the extremity of the money itself highlights how this case is distinguished from the normal course of revenge. Revenge is supposed to be extreme. But what do we have here? Childish taunts, duplicitous paperwork, bloodless frustration, a diminishing reward; these are not the techniques of revenge. They are something else. Something different. Something troubling. I. Am thirsty. A problem with a solution.”

  Trike went where the vodka was.

  Marie Latalle.

  Edward Drew.

  William Gilette.

  All rejected.

  Other students.

  Teachers.

  Janitors.

  Parents.

  Who the fuck.

  Trike grabbed the vodka bottle, took a desperate gulp, and cutmarionette can-canned himself to sitting in a chair at the kitchen table.

  Trike said out loud, to the table, to the bottle, to the picture, to the night, to the idea, to the image of Lola always just there, “Goddamn it. Sixth grade. Dad. Fuck it. For tonight. New plan. Before I fucking kill myself. New plan. Step one. Pass the fuck out right here at this fine kitchen table. Step two. Wake up and hate myself for awhile. Step three. Get my shit together for the conference. Step four. Call Max and Lola and have them start searching the quote-unquote surrounding area of my sixth-grade year. Maybe have Lola chat with The Butler. Yeah. Knitters are weird. Step five. The conference. Shit. Wanting to do this for years. Perfect state of mind for the microphone, though. Step four-A. Get some nicotine patches for the conference. Amendment approved. Plan accepted. Now, step one.”