Hard Wired

by C. Ryan Bymaster

A blond, cowboy-boot-wearing man met them with a wave at the small reception desk near the front door. Dent looked the man up and down. Brown polo shirt, faded dark blue jeans, and no insignia or badge denoting his rank or association with the station or even the city itself.

  “Afternoon,” he greeted as they walked up. “Sheriff Rick Bobseyn. How may I help you?”

  Dent still hadn’t been practiced enough with understanding people’s tones and small mannerisms, but if he had to put money down on it, he’d say this man did not act as if his city was beset by murders as of late.

  Taking the man’s offered hand, Dent said the only thing that came to mind. “I’m Marion Dent.”

  The handshake became quicker, a touch more insistent, and Sheriff Rick Bobseyn bobbed his head in acknowledgment. “Glad you could make it,” he said before dropping Dent’s hand and rummaging through a small basket full of papers on the desk between them. A few thumbed pages and he came up with a sheet and handed it to Dent.

  Dent looked at it, looked at his picture looking back at him.

  “Your guys called ahead,” Bobseyn stated. “Sorry about your losing some of your bags on the trip here. That’s got to be a pain. Anyways, they emailed me over a copy of your ID badge so I could print it up for you once you got here. Don’t really matter either way, though. Don’t need badges around here. And besides,” he flicked the back of the paper Dent was holding, “you flash that around and people would laugh at you. Who’d believe an actual FBI agent came to Graftsprings.”

  And that’s what it was. Otto, hacker extraordinaire that he was, somehow managed to dummy up a badge and agent status with Dent’s name on it. If it came down to it, Otto would make a very dangerous enemy, Dent noted.

  Bobseyn cleared his throat and Dent looked up. The man was expecting something. Dent had no clue what.

  “All feds as quiet as you, Agent Dent?” he inquired.

  “Oh,” Dent stammered. “Actually it’s just Dent, Sheriff Bobseyn.”

  The sheriff stuck out his hand for another handshake — perhaps the first one hadn’t been official enough — and said, “In that case, I’ll go with just Bobseyn. We’ll get along just fine, you and me.” He finished with a wink and Dent was concerned that either the man had just told a joke or he was physically attracted to Dent.

  Either way, Dent carefully smiled back.

  Bobseyn looked over to Fifth and asked, “And who might you be, young miss? Youngest FBI agent I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

  “Kasumi Takeda, sir,” Fifth answered before Dent could open his mouth.

  Bobseyn looked back and forth between the two and asked slowly, “What brings a young girl with you on your investigation, Dent?”

  Dent was incapable of lying. Well, to be honest, he could lie, he was just terrible at it. The thought process it took to understand what the other person wanted to hear, the subtle convincing it took to express a falsehood, the conveyed emotion behind the words — all that was beyond Dent’s scope. He’d rather snap a man’s neck than lie. Easier, cleaner. Quieter.

  And that was were Fifth came in.

  “I’m in witness protection, Sheriff,” she piped in. “Agent Dent is taking me on after this to visit my mother. She’s out it California and she’s not doing too well.” She let her face fall forward and Dent could swear he saw her eyes glistening.

  “Well, I hope your mother pulls out of it, Kasumi,” the sheriff said. Dent noticed the man’s eyes were glistening as well.

  Fifth had her uses.

  After the appropriate time spent in silence had passed, Bobseyn looked to Dent. “So, do you want to jump right in or get yourselves situated first?”

  “I think it’s best we jump right in.” Dent looked at the girl and back at the sheriff. “Tell me, Bobseyn, why exactly am I here?”

  XII

  The sheriff looked at Fifth and then back to Dent. “Should we go to my office? Maybe the young miss can hang around out here?”

  Dent was struck with how odd it would sound if he told Bobseyn than he wanted Fifth along for the details on the murders. When he came up with, “She’s seen quite a bit of death in her life already,” he realized it had been the wrong thing to say.

  The sheriff opened his mouth, likely to say something to that degree, when Fifth stepped into the conversation.

  “I’m in witness protection for a reason, Sheriff. I can’t go into detail about it all, but I’m no stranger to violence. I can handle it, can’t I, Dent?” She looked up at Dent, her eyes big and her lips in a tight, straight line.

  “She can,” Dent admitted. Then he added, “Let’s go over the basics, Bobseyn, but we can do it out here. If the girl gets too … emotional she can walk around the station.” Then to both of them he asked, “Is that satisfactory?”

  Both sheriff and girl shrugged and Bobseyn headed back to his office, presumably to grab the files. When he was a safe distance away Dent turned on Fifth.

  “You think it’s wise to go talking about violence like that?”

  “It’s the truth,” she came back at him. “Unless you think you can think up a suitable lie to explain my presence here?” She waited a moment and then said, “I didn’t think so. So, just do your thing with him, get whatever info we came here for, and then we’ll discuss it when we get a place for the night. Okay?”

  Dent could do nothing but stare. In the span of a few heartbeats the young girl just took control of the situation.

  “You’re manipulating me,” he warned her.

  “Not with … you know,” she said, pointing at her head.

  No chance to think of a suitable reply as Sheriff Bobseyn returned with an armload of folders, a mix of manila and blue, and gestured them over to one of the desks near the center of the station. He placed them down, forming four neat stacks. Two manila, two blue. He pointed to the chairs in front of the desk and Fifth plopped into one. Both men remained standing.

  “Four deaths,” Bobseyn began, cutting right to the chase, “in six months. Graftsprings sees six, maybe seven a year, none of them suspicious.” He tapped each stack once with his right index finger. “Four deaths that lead me to think that something out of the norm is definitely going on here.”

  Fifth leaned forward and pointed. “Why are those two blue?”

  Dent saw the sheriff look at her briefly, as if possibly deciding on answering. Whatever reservations he may have had were pushed aside as he explained, to Dent, “The blue files are murders, the manila are supposed suicides.”

  Dent stared at the files like he could read what was hidden inside. “Supposed?” he asked.

  “No sign of foul play, but there were definite signs of witnesses or assailants at the time of death. I can’t say exactly why, but they weren’t suicides. At the least, if they were suicides, I’m thinking they were assisted suicides.”

  Dent gathered the man’s meaning. “Somebody forced the victim’s hands?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “And the murders?”

  “Again, something about them raised a red flag. Both cases, the victim and the perpetrator knew each other. In one instance they were brothers. Nothing would have made me think that the perpetrator would be capable of committing such a heinous act, especially on a loved one.”

  “So,” Dent mused aloud, wondering why these murders had anything to do with him, why Otto had declared there was a possible use of eTech here, “four deaths, two of them unlikely suicides. All four are under suspicious circumstances. Did any of the victims or supposed perpetrators show signs of depression or aggressive behavior? Anything that a normal person would have taken note of?”

  Dent, of course, was not normal in that respect, and if there were some sort emotional distress he would have to rely on Bobseyn’s expertise regarding these peoples’ states of mind.

  “That’s the thing. Not a word about them acting out of the norm. No hints, nothing. It’s like one day they were fine, the next ….”

  Maybe that was the eTech Otto wa
s concerned about. Dent would have to check the victims’ files, see if they had any ties to anything illegal.

  From her chair, Fifth quietly ventured, “Drugs?”

  Bobseyn looked over to her and said, “From what I can gather, none of the people in these files had any drug habits. Alcohol, maybe. Pot. A few sleeping pills. But nothing that would be personality changing enough to result with this.” He tapped one of the blue files again.

  But the girl pressed on with the drug angle. Dent didn’t know if she truly thought it was drugs or if she was trying to eliminate the drugs as a probable cause. “You guys can do a drug test on the bodies, right?”

  “We don’t have the facilities for that in Graftsprings,” Bobseyn admitted. “Never really needed high-tech forensics here. That’s why I’ve been reaching out to you at the FBI.”

  Now Dent spoke up, sending the girl a look that he hoped she would recognize and keep her mouth shut. He asked, “You’ve contacted others besides the FBI?”

  “FBI, local big-city outfits, anybody who could help shed some light on this. I tried working it from my end, but this is becoming too much.” He paused to stare at the files. “Something is going on in my town and I plan on using any means necessary to bring it to an end.”

  Dent nodded.

  “But to be honest, you guys told me I was drawing irrelevant conclusions from connections that weren’t really there. Said I was making these murders into something bigger than they truly were. That’s why I was surprised when I got the email from your head office telling me that they were sending you out here to help with the investigation, provide a fresh set of eyes on it all. I thought you guys had blown me off.”

  That email was a fabrication, Otto’s doing. But if that was the case ….

  “When did you get the email?” Dent inquired.

  “Hold up a sec,” the sheriff replied as he came around his desk and walked to the reception desk, where he rummaged through the same stack of papers from which he had produced Dent’s “FBI” ID. He found what he was looking for and walked back, handing it to Dent.

  It looked official, Dent immediately noticed. He himself even bought it. He scanned through the bulk of the email, found it said what Bobseyn had claimed, and then checked the date.

  Seven days ago.

  Dent handed it to Fifth, his finger just above the date.

  Reading it, recognizing it for what it meant, she tensed.

  “What?” Sheriff Bobseyn asked, his voice an octave higher than what it had been moments ago. He must have noticed something was wrong.

  As close to lying to the man as he could manage but still within the realm of truth, Dent explained, “Seven days ago, I wasn’t even aware that I would be coming here. I hadn’t even been … contacted yet.”

  Seven days ago was one day before Fifth received her first cryptic message from the man they had taken to calling Otto.

  One did not have to be endowed with feeling emotions to realize that something was off. Otto had assumed, had known, they would be coming here even before he first made contact with Fifth, like it had been a forgone conclusion.

  Dent and Fifth had played right into Otto’s hands.

  That was … not good.

  XIII

  Her legs started to cramp from sitting at Sheriff Bobseyn’s kitchen table, so Kasumi stood and stretched. She took a breath to stretch her lungs as well, the bitter smell of old, stale coffee almost making her cough.

  Back at the sheriff’s station, when Dent had mentioned that they had to find a room to rent for the night, Sheriff Bobseyn had insisted on them staying with him. He said he lived by himself and had rooms to spare, so Dent took him up on the offer. Kasumi figured Dent thought it a waste of money to splurge on motel rooms, but secretly she hoped he had decided it was safer if they stayed with the sheriff, just in case Noman showed up again.

  She shivered at the thought of that man and hid the shiver by turning away and walking into the huge living room.

  Dent and the sheriff were sitting at the kitchen table, coffee mugs in hand, blue and manila folders spread out before them. It was getting close to eleven at night and the two had been at it for hours. She left them to do their thing, running her eyes over the rustic surroundings of Sheriff Bobseyn’s house. The outside of the house looked like a normal two-story house painted in white, or beige, or yellow — she couldn’t tell since it was dark by the time they’d reached the place — but inside it looked like it was done to resemble a log cabin. Everything was wood, flannel blankets and pillows on the couches and chairs, even some animal heads mounted on the walls. The only thing that didn’t fit was the piano off in the corner, near the stairs. She didn’t peg the sheriff as a piano-playing type of guy.

  The men kept talking back in the kitchen, paying her no attention, so she felt it was only right to entertain herself. She went around the living room, checking out the various knickknacks, picking up pillows, giving them a spin, and then putting them back where she found them upside down or flipped around. She shot a glance back to make sure the sheriff wasn’t looking and grinned when her pranks went unnoticed.

  Her wandering took her over to the piano. She didn’t know anything about pianos, but she thought this one was smaller than normal. It was polished redwood, not a speck of dust on it. She ran her fingers along the keys, from high to low, and the men stopped talking. One of them cleared his throat and she pretended like she hadn’t touched a thing. The talking started up again after a moment and so did her exploration.

  She was working her way back toward the coffee-clouded kitchen, when a picture framed in gold caught her eye. She picked it up from the dusted and polished shelf and took a closer look. It was the sheriff and a blonde girl, huge trees and a blue lake in the background. She could tell right away, from the high cheekbones, that they were related, and that the girl must have gotten her cute, rounded chin from her mom since the sheriff had a more square one.

  She waved the picture over her head and called out, “She’s pretty! Takes after you.”

  “Thank you,” the sheriff called back. “That’s my daughter, Cherry.”

  That piece of information was unnecessary — she wasn’t an idiot.

  “Hmmhmm,” she replied, fighting back the temptation to roll her eyes.

  “Um, young miss, do you mind? I kind of like things the way they are out there ….”

  She took the hint and put the picture back, if at an angle. She stifled the laugh that wanted to burst out at the thought of imagining his reaction to all his pillows being moved and flipped upside down and the picture frame not quite centered. She liked the guy, she really did, but he was too uptight. He was kind enough to give them a place to stay, his eyes squinted whenever he smiled, and she could tell he tried putting up with Dent being so Dent-ish. But the sheriff needed to relax a little.

  An idea sprang to mind.

  She went back to the kitchen and sat back in her seat. The two men stared at her as she planted a smile on her face.

  “What?” she asked in her most innocent voice.

  Sheriff Bobseyn looked at Dent and then back at the case files before them, triggering Dent to do the same, leaving her to work her magic.

  She wanted to help the sheriff, make him happier, so she thought real hard on building up her own happiness. She had the perfect memory in mind. It was back in New Jersey, the first snow, when she had convinced Dent that it was perfectly normal for kids her age to grab anything they could sit down on or in and then slide down the snow-covered driveway. She’d even convinced Dent to take a ride down the decline on an old and battered garbage lid.

  She held on to the memory and imagined herself like one of those magical fairies, using those happy thoughts to make fairy dust and sending it out to the sheriff. She was laying it on pretty thick and finally the man grinned, seemingly at nothing, but then like a flash his lips slackened and he went back to looking at a photo Dent was holding.

  She stopped projecting her happy thought
s, wondering why it hadn’t worked better. All she got was a small grin? That should have made him smile wide, maybe get him to chuckle. She balled her hands on the table and stared at them, annoyed that she couldn’t control her projections better than what she had hoped. She noticed the kitchen had gone quiet again and she slowly looked up.

  “You okay?” the sheriff asked her. He had a confused look on his face, but Dent was staring right into her eyes. Dent knew what she had tried doing. He could tell. Sometimes he was clueless, but other times he read her like a book. She swallowed.

  Kasumi the Magnificent had to draw the curtain on this practice performance before the audience got rowdy.

  “I’m fine,” she assured the sheriff. As a distraction, she leaned across the table and grabbed Dent’s coffee mug and took a sip of the lukewarm and stale stuff. She choked it down and handed it back into Dent’s expectant hand and under his knowing eye.

  “You got anything else to drink?” she asked.

  The sheriff gave her a wink and got up. The fridge whirred loudly as he stood there with the door open and listed off, “Water, milk, OJ, cranberry ….”

  “Milk. Please.”

  “As her majesty wishes,” he regally replied, going about filling up a small cup for her and setting it on the table with a bow. Kasumi giggled and tried bowing from her chair. See, she liked the sheriff, and she could tell he must have been a good father to Cherry.

  She took a long drink and let out a satisfied smack of her lips as she put the glass on the table. That was when she noticed the sheriff staring at her oddly. Did she have a milk mustache? She wiped her lip.

  “What?” she said, embarrassed.

  “Dent,” Sheriff Bobseyn said all serious-like.

  “Bobseyn,” Dent replied automatically.

  The sheriff looked away from Kasumi and then at the three cups on the table, saying, “This might sound a bit off, but … I think we may be dealing with a family.”

  “Why?” Dent asked.

  “I think they had a kid with them!”