by Brian Cody
“They’re all about Sterling Blue”, David interjected as he stepped to the mirror’s right and glared at a square with the words ‘Sterling Blue Pulls Damaged Dinghy to Connecticut Shore’. “This one’s from forty-seven”, he began before turning to the item on its left. “This one’s from the same year, a few months later.” David reared up and then stepped back, his head spinning from left to right as he skimmed each square. “They all mention him in one way, shape, or form.”
“Oh snap”, Shawn groaned. “I’ve seen this one: ‘Sterling Blue Saves Police Commissioner from Drive-by; Five Alleged Gangsters awaiting Trial’—my dad has this one; you’re right.”
“The outer ones don’t mention him.” Shawn and David spun to Bryen beside them and looking to the front corner of the wall, where the last of the clippings sat in a more organized but scattered arrangement. “‘Minnesota Campers Surrounded by Forest Fire Miraculously Unhurt’—that’s from sixty-eight. ‘DEA Raid in Kentucky a Success; Ten Captured, None Hurt’—eighty-five. Some of these look like he was working with the police. With others, it seems like he was at the right place at the right time; perhaps, even when he wasn’t working legally, he was still patrolling the state…even the country.”
“And who else but him and the government would know that?” David asked as he lowered his phone. “This is it; Sterling Blue lived here…this might be…his room”, he continued as he glanced to the bed.
“Well…you were right”, Shawn began as he looked back, “So what do we do now? Where do we start?”
“Let’s check all the doors on this floor. If any are locked, we’ll have B try to get into the rooms to see what’s inside of them. Sterling Blue might be dead, but…I’d feel better if we left this place as intact as possible.”
“I gotcha”, Shawn replied. David sauntered out of the room. He turned to the right, continued down that hall, and stopped in front of the next door. Across from him, Shawn and Bryen turned down the opposite direction, stepping past the stairwell and towards the end of that corridor.
“This door’s locked”, Bryen remarked as he nudged on the first door on the hallway’s left side, and tried, three times, to turn it, while Shawn strode past.
“Save it for later”, David called.
“Word”, Bryen replied as he jogged for the door on the right.
Shawn, simultaneously, reached for the second door on the left and opened it before entering and looking around via the illuminating glow of the moon. “Empty!” he called as he turned to Bryen doing the same.
“Same here”, Bryen replied as he stepped back and slammed his door.
“Did you look hard enough? It’s pretty dark in there”, Shawn remarked as he looked down the opposite end, to where David was closing the second door and walking for the third.
“Yeah, we’ve been over this”, Bryen grunted. “You know, the whole ‘really sharp vision-thing’? Secondly”, Bryen reached back and opened his door to show the moonlight leaking into that room and reaching across the floor. “If anything, you should be the one double-checking since it might take a while for you to see without extra light.”
“Well, that’s how wrong you are, sir!” Shawn exclaimed as he crossed his arms and smirked, “my eyes_”—he huffed. “Hold up!” Shawn opened his door. He bowed and traced a plane of light arching across the ground and ending in front of him. He turned to the right to follow that soft-white glow along false tiles, and he traced it to a window on the nearest wall of the room, about a yard above the floor and standing at five feet, from which was a view of the muddled moon. Shawn then looked around the room, scanning it once more but still finding only an empty floor and barren walls. “I found the other window for this floor and_” he silenced and spun to his left, “and…jackpot!”
“What is it?” David called.
“B-money, try the door again—the one near the stairwell”, Shawn ordered as he stood along that glowing room’s threshold, his left hand pointed forward, but his eyes locked onto the wall adjoining to the door.
Bryen stepped past Shawn as David started towards them, and Bryen, once more, grabbed the knob closest to the stairwell, turned it, and pushed, but the door stood firm. “Nothing has changed”, Bryen groaned.
“The door’s fake”, Shawn called to Bryen, “It’s all wall on the inside of the room, just made to look like a door from the outside.”
“Why?” Bryen grunted as he stepped back and tapped his foot against the false entrance, while David walked by.
“My guess is Sterling Blue designed this house by himself; wanted to throw people off in case someone broke in”, Shawn replied as he sidestepped into the room and David entered after him.
“But why would he leave his doors unlocked now?” David asked as he looked to his left. A second room sat before him, or more, enough space in to suggest that it had been separated into two rooms. The space, as a whole, neared forty feet in length and about ten feet in width. Halfway in, a maple threshold darted across the floor and connected at the ceiling to present an indicator from where the first room, an empty area overlooking the house’s left side, was cordoned.
Along the second room’s nearest corner was a desk composed of glass and metal, with three drawers on both sides, and which stretched to twelve feet. Atop that desk were three flat-screen monitors arranged in a concave and surrounding an oblong keyboard and a wireless mouse. In front of the desk was a rocking chair, while, along the desk’s left side was a black computer tower. Across from the desk, on the opposite wall, stood a server tower, also colored black but translucent, as both David and Shawn could perceive the polychromic flashes contained within.
“Uh…okay?” David muttered. “B”, he called while stepping into the hall, “you have got to see_”—the hallway was empty.
“Other side.”
David stomped into the room and looked to Bryen next to the server, a line of his shadow retracting to his feet.
“B-money, I swear, you keep sneaking around, and I start throwing stuff”, David growled.
“It kind of makes sense”, Bryen began as he stepped to the desk, “if he was still working with the government, he’d have to at least be partly up to date with the latest technologies…and also…not senile.”
“Him not being senile could mean something”, Shawn began as he started towards the desk. “Think about it, Piekarsky; maybe he was within his right mind when he was talking to you.”
“Maybe he was actually trying to tell me something, to lead me to this…” David finished, his voice lowering to a murmur as he stepped to the desk and stood beside Shawn and Bryen. “We’ve got nothing to lose; let’s get it turned on.” Bryen activated the tower, with the three screens illuminating into a bright, blue background. A loading icon appeared on the center screen, and, after that, a textbox.
“Password”, Bryen muttered.
“Any guesses?” David asked.
“His name? Maybe his name, his birthdate, and this address; it could be any number of combinations”, Shawn noted.
“Password hint”, Bryen muttered as he pointed towards a question mark beside the textbox.
“I see it”, David replied as he grabbed the mouse and motioned the cursor. He clicked, and a bubble hung over the question mark, with one line of text:
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can…
“I’m guessing Pope again”, Shawn noted, “If we knew more about the poem_”
“‘But vindicate the ways of God to man’.” Shawn and David looked to Bryen dragging the keyboard towards his body and typing out the phrase. Before either Shawn or David could stop him, Bryen had selected the Return key, and the textbox was replaced with another loading icon. “I looked up the poem on my phone; read the entirety of Epistle One before we crossed out of Pennsylvania”, Bryen explained as he looked up.
“Works for me”, David replied as the three screens changed into a bright blue desktop. On the far-right screen was a column of twelve icons—the internet brow
sers, the word processor, recycling bin, and then at the nadir of that arrangement, a folder labeled ‘Voicemails’. “Let’s see what’s in here”, David muttered as he clicked that icon twice, with the folder expanding and revealing a dozen audio files, arranged by date, with the oldest marked as ‘August 2006’.
“Should we listen to them?” Shawn asked.
“Yeah”, David replied. “B, do you have your headphones?”
“Word”, Bryen replied as he pivoted into the rocking chair while pulling out his mp3 player.
“Listen to the files and let us know if there’s anything that might be important; there’s three of us here, so Shawn and I will cover more ground.”
“Word”, Bryen repeated as he inserted both ear-buds, unplugged them from his mp3, and knelt to insert them into the tower.
“Where do we start first?” Shawn asked.
“I’ll finish this floor”, David replied. “You head up to the top floor. Let me know if you find anything. If anyone is in danger, for whatever reason, yell as loud as you can. If it’s serious, you can even scream, and maybe I won’t judge you for it later.”
“No thanks”, Shawn replied as he started for the door. “I’ll stick with yelling.”
“There’s nothing girly about a little scream when you’re in imminent danger; just don’t extend it for too long”, David replied as he walked after him. “Did you get that, B?” he asked as he stopped at the door. Bryen replied with a thumb-up while facing the screen. “Sweet”, David replied as he walked out.
Bryen lowered his right arm and slid it across the desk as he yawned, wrapped his hand around the mouse as he rocked the chair, and then selected the oldest audio excerpt, with that file popping up to eclipse the center screen. Bryen then motioned the cursor to the bottom of the left screen to lower the volume.
Aye, Scott—it’s Arthur—it wasn’t him…it was another lug-head named ‘Charles the Ironclad’. He’s wanted for a dozen murders including his wife and maybe his daughter. They never found her… I got clues to Richie’s whereabouts, though. Call me when you get the chance; and, Scott, I’m being serious: stop going out on patrols. Radar keeps picking you up movin’ up and down the eastern seaboard. You’re not an official hero anymore, and I can only cover you so often…
“Huh”, Bryen muttered as the file closed. He motioned the cursor for the next file, selected it, and, as it appeared and eclipsed the center screen, raised the volume.
***
“Yo, Piekarsky; come up here for a second!”
David stepped back from the last room on the third floor and looked towards the stairwell. “Pardon?” David called.
“You might want to see this—I think it’s important”, Shawn replied, his voice echoing off of the hallway walls. David looked down the opposite end of the corridor, walked to the stairs, and hopped up the steps before landing on the fourth story, a structural setup identical in appearance, but having a lower, arched ceiling about six feet over the floor. David looked to his right, finding no doors down that end of the hall, and spun to his left, finding one entrance, and that entrance ajar.
“What’s up?” he asked as he jogged down the hall and then turned right into an open space which extended to both ends of the hall, and which had both windows placed along the far wall. To David’s left was a workout bench, unblemished with a barbell placed over it that held four, hundred-pound weights on either side, while, in the back corner of that room sat another pile of weights, ten in all, layered with dust. “How much you want to bet that was his warm-up level?” David inquired as he spun to and looked past a pool table, a set of speakers and the radio across from it, and to Shawn standing before the farthest wall.
David stepped past the pool table and across the wooden floor before stopping alongside of Shawn and looking to a five-foot-square political map of the world. The full view of the map was impeded by scraps of paper pinned to various locations and then yellow string darting across land masses and oceans, and connecting some of those papers. David took another step and then squinted to read the scribbled notations. “Triple-homicide—Berlin—2001; suspected gang members”, he spoke. “Then in England:” he continued as he lifted his hand, pressed it along a piece of string, and followed it across the English Channel, “Assassination of prominent police officer in Northern Ireland—case gone cold.”
“They’re murders?” Shawn asked as he scanned the map. “There’s a good one hundred-twenty different notes here.”
“Wait”, David began as he placed his hand alongside of a note beside the Caribbean. “This one’s a ‘suspicious suicide’; a South American politician somehow jumped over the ten–foot-high fence lining his hotel’s roof and plunged to his death…And this one”, David began as he dragged his finger just off of Northern California, “prominent American businessman’s boat sinks in apparently clear weather…boat remnants found days later; no bodies.”
“Hey, Dave”, Shawn began as he pointed towards North America, to a note pinned on the eastern coast of Canada, then another an inch below that connected by string, then one above New Hampshire, then in Quebec, New York, then Pennsylvania, and then Quebec again—Shawn’s finger slinked from side to side, passing over each successive note within a tight grouping of twelve scraps pinned in haphazard order. “They’re all connected, and they’re all happening in the Northeast; it’s kind of like back and forth.”
“Some of these descriptions look mob-related”, David noted, “ambushes, drive-bys, executions. Others seem random: missing persons, malfunctioning vehicles, houses exploding…but, overall, they’re all heading south and further into the States.” He pointed to a note over New York City; “this one’s dated 2009, and_” he stopped as he found another string rising from that note and to a five-by-eight, lined document which hung on the map’s edge and was inscribed with one word that looked to have been overlaid several times.
“That’s not the only one connecting to that piece”, Shawn noted. David scanned the perimeter of the unbroken document, where he found seven more strands connecting to several other chains of notes, all concentrated in populated locations of the world, and some zigzagging across political lines. “Is that what he was talking about?” Shawn asked. “Was he warning us? Was he trying to explain something to us? Some sort of connection to all of these random acts of violence, maybe?”
“I don’t know”, David began, while stomps diverted him towards the hall, where those paces, strong and forced, increased in volume until Bryen slinked into that room. His strides then became imperceptible. “Could you get any louder?” David grunted.
“You said I was too quiet so I walked loud enough to awaken everyone within a one-mile radius”, Bryen replied.
“Have you found anything?” David asked as he looked to the map.
“‘Found anything’?” Bryen repeated. “Yeah, I’ve found something…you could say I’ve found a problem”, he finished as he lifted his phone towards David and Shawn. Both had turned away, with their eyes glued to the map and concentrated on that one note connected to dozens.
“Well, that’s no good”, Shawn mumbled as he crossed his arms and scanned the southern half of North American.
“What exactly are you guys looking at?” Bryen asked as he started forward.
“B, you’ve been doing this for a while”, David began as he stepped back while facing the map, “and I’m assuming you’ve got some decent street-cred.”
“Not really…” Bryen muttered as he stopped and lowered his phone.
“Would the word ‘wraith’ mean anything to you?” David asked.
BEWARE—that was the first thing to explode in Bryen’s mind, to blast and then to ricochet through his head, to stifle his thoughts, and to gape his eyes. He tensed before he could discern the utterance that his body, it seemed, had reacted to, but, as the moments passed and his right fist squeezed over his phone, he looked past Shawn, past David, and to the top of that map, where that word— WRAITH—had been inscribed.
>
As Bryen eyed that notation, his head burned, while his heart moved with precipitous beats. Shawn and David awaited a response for ten seconds, then twenty; yet, as they found Bryen’s silence—an almost cadaverous silence—they glanced to one another and then looked back.
“B-money?” Shawn began.
“Oh—uh—no”, Bryen grunted through his tightened chest, “no…it…doesn’t ring a bell”, he replied as he thrust his phone into his pocket and stepped back.
“Everything okay?” David asked.
“Yeah…I-I need to double-check something.” Bryen jogged out of the room, with his jog accelerating into a sprint as he rushed down that hallway, his sprint accelerating into a series of sharp bounds as he rushed down the stairway, and his bounds accelerating into a superfast race as he rushed down the left side of the third floor’s hall, darted into the work room, bolted for the desk, and hopped into the seat. The moment before he came to rest in the rocking chair, he had motioned his hand for the mouse to reactivate the screens, but, when they appeared, he found not the desktop, but the welcome screen—it had been locked. “But I didn’t…” he murmured. He entered the passphrase.
Password Incorrect.
Bryen froze. He looked down at his hands, then shaking. “Adrenaline rush—spelling error—yeah”, he muttered as he re-entered the passphrase and selected the Return Key.
Password Incorrect.
Bryen squeezed his fists. He entered that poetic phrase a third time, then a fourth, a fifth, and finally a sixth—in a flash, the loading icon appeared, and then, in a peal, the screens blackened. Bryen tensed once more, awaiting the appearance of the desktop and confirmation that his fears, muddled and distorted, were, for that moment, unfounded. As he watched, however, the darkness remained, and then, in the center of the center screen, a cursor appeared. Pushing that line to the right in a gradual appearance, were letters and then words: