The Long Fall Into Darkness

by Charlie Cottrell

  “Stop,” he whispered as we came to a door. He crouched down beside it and pulled a thin fiber optic cable out of a pouch on his pants leg. Feeding it under the door, he pulled up a vid window and scanned the corridor on the other side of the door. “Okay, we’re clear,” he said, pulling the cable back and pinching the vid window shut. He turned the handle and pulled the door open quietly, slipping through and not waiting for me to catch up at all. I grabbed for the door and barely caught it before it closed.

  Out in the hallway, Xavier was crouch-walking down the corridor, pausing outside every doorway for a moment before gliding on. I knew my knees wouldn’t take something like that, so I just walked along, peering around every doorway for the briefest of moments before hopping past and continuing on. Every office was empty on this floor. Eventually, I gave up even trying to sneak past them and just ambled at a pace that kept me a few steps behind Xavier.

  The next to last office on the floor belonged to Marcus Franklin, the Medical Examiner for Precinct #4. And the doctor was in.

  He happened to glance up just as I was walking past his door. “Eddie?” he called out, surprised.

  I stopped dead, as did Xavier in front of me. I saw him going for a knife and tried to indicate with my eyes and a very subtle nod not to draw the thing and kill my friend. He thrust it back into its scabbard and scowled up at me.

  “Uh, hey, Marcus,” I said, turning toward the man. He was seated behind his desk, an old-fashioned computer monitor and keyboard standing between us. “What’s happening?”

  “What are you doing here? Aren’t you currently a wanted criminal?” Marcus asked.

  “Well, I mean, sort of, I guess,” I said, an embarrassed smile popping up on my face. “It’s kind of a long story, and I didn’t really, um, do it.”

  “Do what? Run the Organization? Become the leading crime boss in the city of Arcadia?”

  “Okay, I might’ve done those things, but it’s not what it looks like, honest.”

  “What’re you doing here, then? Looking to clear your name?”

  I leaned against the door jamb. “Is it that obvious?” I asked.

  “Why else would you be here? Not to turn yourself in, not up here.”

  “Point,” I conceded. “Anyway, um, think I could use your computer for a minute?”

  Marcus frowned for a moment. “I dunno, Eddie,” he said uncertainly.

  “C’mon, you know me. You can trust me.” My face radiated honesty and sincerity. Or maybe just constipation. It’s hard to tell with faces sometimes.

  Marcus sighed. “Fine. Come in. But be quick. O’Mally’s on the warpath, and he’d love to have your head on a pike.”

  “Metaphorically speaking, I’m sure,” I said as I walked over to his desk.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Marcus said. His eyes narrowed when Xavier came in behind me. “Who’s that?”

  “He’s just a friend, Marcus. He won’t bite, I don’t think.” I turned to Xavier. “You won’t bite him, will you?” Xavier made a disapproving noise in the back of his throat. I turned back to Marcus. “Yeah, may wanna take a step back, just in case.” I got around behind the desk and pulled the keyboard and mouse toward me. “Okay, buddy, what am I looking for?”

  “Search for the Lazarus case, file #21432-07,” Xavier said. I punched in the case number while Marcus shifted uncomfortably.

  “Um, Eddie, you may not want to go messing with that case,” he said.

  “Why not?” I asked, the computer presenting the file to me on the monitor. “Got it,” I told Xavier.

  “Download it onto this.” He tossed me an old flash drive about the size of the first joint of my thumb. I searched the computer under Marcus’s desk for a USB port, tried to insert the drive a couple of times, then finally got it on the third try. Always on the third try with those things, no matter how you tried to insert them to begin with. Bizarre.

  “What’s the big deal about it, Marcus?” I asked again, starting to download the files to the drive.

  “It’s a cold case from back before you were even on the force. It’s bad news, Eddie. Trust me.”

  “Y’know, everyone keeps telling me to trust them, but so far I haven’t been given a whole lot of reasons to follow that advice.” The computer beeped, informing me my download was complete. I removed the flash drive and tossed it to Xavier. “Okay, anything else?”

  Xavier shook his head. [DS3]“Let’s go.”

  “Still not a hundred percent on why you needed me along on this thing, Xavi,” I muttered to him.

  “Insurance and an extra pair of eyes,” was all the response I got.

  I shrugged. It was better than nothing, I suppose. “Alright, it’s been fun, Marcus. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone about my visit. Especially Captain Edison O’Mally.” I gave Marcus a confused look when I saw he was staring at something over my shoulder. “He’s standing right behind me, isn’t he?” I asked. Marcus nodded. “Well, fuck.”

  VIII.

  I turned slowly to find myself face to be-tusked face with Captain Edison O’Mally, leader of the 4th Precinct. He looked – more so than usual – very pissed off. Captain O’Mally’s ground state of being was peeved, and he was several miles beyond that at this point.

  “Eddie Fuckin’ Hazzard,” he growled, and I was close enough to smell the coffee on his breath. Police station coffee isn’t a smell you would wish on your worst enemy, but I was taking in a lungful of it. “You’ve got about five seconds before I throw your ass into a cell and leave you there to rot for the rest of eternity.”

  “Hey, Cap, long-time-no-see. I will have you know there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for what I’m doing here, what I’ve been doing outside of this building lately, and why I should definitely not be thrown in a cell downstairs. And my friend here will be more than happy to provide that explanation.” I gestured toward Xavier. O’Mally turned to face him and got a faceful of gun butt for his trouble.

  “Run!” Xavier snapped as he took off past the tumbling O’Mally. I tossed a quick “Sorry!” in the captain’s direction as I followed Xavier.

  “Where the hell are we going? There’s no way we can get out downstairs now, that’s for damn sure. O’Mally’ll have the place on lockdown before we can even get to the stairs.”

  “We’re not going downstairs,” Xavier said as he picked up his speed. I glanced down the hallway and saw the large plate glass window at the end of it.

  “You are a fucking maniac,” I moaned as I urged my legs against all reason to move faster. Xavier tossed a small object at the window from about ten yards away. It stuck, beeped for a second, then blew out the glass. Alarms started going off up and down the hallway, and Xavier put on a final burst of speed as he leapt out the window. “God, please don’t let me die like this, it’s too embarrassing!” I shouted as I followed him out.

  We were on the 10th floor of the precinct building, high enough up that we’d definitely die when we hit the concrete below. But there was something else down there. A dumpster, filled with what appeared to be old mattresses. Then I recalled that the jail downstairs had just renovated, replacing all their beds. I didn’t know if Xavier had known about it, or just jumped out of a window and hoped there’d be something there to land on. Either way, it was going to save us.

  Landing still hurt like hell. Ten stories is plenty of time to build up velocity, and these were old, flat, beaten down mattresses. We landed with a muffled thwump[DS4] and a yelp on my part.

  “I’m fine, really,” I said, trying and only partially succeeding to sit up among the mattresses.

  “Get up and out of there; we aren’t in the clear yet,” Xavier said, grabbing me by the hand and hauling me out of the dumpster. I stumbled into a crouch on the sidewalk, stood, and hobbled after Xavier, who’d taken off at top speed for the nearest alleyway. Behind us, klaxons and sirens were going off in the precinct. Any second now, the streets would be crawling with Arcadia’s finest, or at least th
ose who’d bothered to show up today.

  All of which made getting the hell out of there imperative. Luckily, Xavier had stashed a getaway vehicle just around the corner from the precinct. We got to it and threw ourselves into the car. Xavier turned it on and gunned the engine, whipping us out of the alley and into the light late-evening traffic, aiming to put as much distance between us and the cops as possible.

  And none too soon at that. Police cars exploded from the Precinct House’s garage like angry hornets from a nest, sirens wailing and lights flashing. Xavier made a very pointed effort to drive with the flow of traffic, working to not draw attention to us. It worked. The cop cars blew past us without anyone even glancing in our direction. I heaved a sigh of relief. “Okay, where to?” I asked.

  “We go to ground now,” Xavier said. “I know a place.”

  * * *

  Turns out, Xavier’s place was a ramshackle tenement building on Escher Avenue, deep in the heart of Old Town. “This place looks like it ought to be condemned,” I muttered as we entered the building.

  “It was, about a week ago,” Xavier replied.

  “Oh. Well.”

  Xavier led me up three flights of stairs before my legs got wobbly and I started wheezing like an old radiator. “Here,” he said, exiting the stairwell and heading off down the hallway. He stopped in front of a door, knocked four or five times in a weird, polyrhythmic way, and waited. While we stood there, I looked up and down the hall. The carpet had been torn up, revealing a cracked and rotting underfloor. Loose nails stuck up at all angles from the floor. The wallpaper, which I’m sure had once been a cheerful bright yellow and green, was now faded and pealing. There were stains all over it, mostly old tobacco smoke from the smell of things. That just reminded me I hadn’t had a cigarette in almost two months. God, I would almost have turned myself in for a cigarette.

  The door opened just a crack – like whoever was on the other side hadn’t taken it off the chain – and someone on the other side held a brief, hushed conversation with Xavier. Apparently satisfied, the door closed completely once again for a brief moment, during which you could hear the chain rattle and scrape across the wooden door, then the door opened wide. Xavier motioned for me to follow him in.

  Inside the apartment, a woman with a shaved head held a gun pointed at me.

  “Hands up, detective,” she hissed.

  My hands were already in the air before she’d even finished the first word. “Hey, okay, wow. First of all, this is no way to treat a house guest. You could’ve at least cleaned before I got here. Second of all…” I trailed off as she shoved the gun up under my nose and cocked the hammer.

  “Shut up,” she growled. There was something almost feral about this woman, and her canines flashed a little too brightly in the dim light of the single, naked bulb in the room.

  “Shutting up,” I said, snapping my mouth closed. I threw a look at Xavier, who ignored me and walked over to a couch. He plopped down onto it and settled in like it was his one goal in life to merge his butt cheeks with the sofa cushions. As far as I could tell, whatever altruism had driven Xavier to “rescue” me in the first place seemed to have run its course. He didn’t give a damn about what this crazy woman wanted to do to me.

  “Siddown,” the woman snarled at me as she tucked the gun into the back of her pants. I took a seat next to Xavier, who ignored me and closed his eyes. The guy was gonna take a nap at a time like this? Figured.

  “So, what’s the plan, Xavier?” I asked. The woman shot me a sharp look, and Xavier opened up a single eye to bore right into me. “I mean, you had me download that stupid casefile, and nearly got me caught by Captain O’Mally – who is probably out for my blood now, thanks for that – and I’m also apparently on the run from Vera? I mean, at some point we need to start thinking about how to reduce the number of enemies I’ve got, y’know?” I paused for a second before adding, “I mean, aside from killing them.” The woman, who had slumped into an arm chair across from us, looked frustrated at that.

  “I’ll start going over the Lazarus casefile soon,” Xavier said. “It’ll give us what we need.”

  “And what, exactly, do we need from the casefile? Why was it so damn important I help you break into a police precinct house?” I asked.

  “I needed someone with experience with the cops in case we had to crack into their computer system,” Xavier said. It sounded simple and obvious, but that got my suspicions up. Nothing about this situation was simple or obvious.

  “What’s the Lazarus case about?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Xavier said, closing his eyes again.

  “Do you mind if I do a bit of research myself?” I asked.

  “He said he’ll tell you later!” the woman snapped at me. “Now sit there quietly or I’ll rip your fuckin’ jugular out.”

  “Eesh, touchy,” I mumbled, folding my arms and settling in for a nap of my own.

  IX.

  I woke to find the woman staring at me like a lobster in a tank at a seafood restaurant or a cartoon character lost in the desert staring at a person who’s turned into a turkey leg.

  “Um, hey,” I said uneasily. “I don’t suppose there’s coffee and a continental breakfast at this joint, is there?” The rumble in the back of her throat was answer enough. I got up off the couch and wandered around the small apartment. There were only a couple of rooms aside from the living room: a bathroom with an old, scum-stained tub and toilet, a bedroom with a desk and a single bed with a mattress that smelled like hobo urine, and a tiny kitchenette that had a fridge and a hot plate. Xavier was in the bedroom, sitting on the end of the bed and pouring over what I assumed was the Lazarus casefile.

  “Find what you’re looking for yet?” I asked. He shook his head. “Care to explain what you’re looking for, then? Maybe I could help.”

  “I’ll know it when I see it,” he replied.

  “Ugh. You are just as bad as Vera, y’know?” I moaned.

  A look of annoyance flashed across Xavier’s face. “No one is as annoying as that woman,” he said. “As soon as I have found what I am looking for, I will tell you. Now, go, I have work to do.”

  I sighed. “Fine. But I would really like a coffee and a cigarette about now.” Xavier ignored me, so I wandered off into the kitchenette. The feral woman was there, sitting cross-legged in a chair at an old folding table. She had both of her hands wrapped around an old, chipped, stained mug that smelled of coffee. Delicious, life-giving coffee.

  “Hey, where’d you get the coffee, and would it be possible for me to skiv a cup off ya?” I asked as sweetly as possible. She glanced up at me under hooded eyes, then returned her gaze to the nothingness she’d been staring into the moment before. “Okay, so, is that a ‘no’ on the coffee, then?” Continued silence from the feral woman, who chose that moment to take a long sip of her coffee. “Well, that’s just fuckin’ rude,” I said, wandering off back into the living room and flopping down on the sofa. “What’s your endgame here, anyway, Sally Sunshine? Gonna starve me to death? Seems like a waste after Xavier took the time to come ‘rescue’ me.”

  The feral woman rose from her chair and stalked into the living room. “I wanted to gut and eat you,” she growled. “Now, shut up, or I’ll do it regardless of what Xavier thinks.” She stormed back into the kitchenette and resumed her seat.

  I sighed. “Still not hearing a solid ‘no’ on the coffee, love,” I said loudly.

  * * *

  I dozed fitfully on the couch for the rest of the day, waking up and prowling around the tiny apartment occasionally. The feral woman disappeared in between my first and second naps, but Xavier remained firmly planted on the edge of the bed, pouring over the Lazarus casefile.

  Finally, I couldn’t take the sitting around doing nothing anymore. “Xavier, what the hell, man?” I asked him. “I’m trying to be patient here, but you gotta give me something.”

  “Come, look at this,” Xavier said, tilting a vid window in my dir
ection. I sidled up to him, looked down at the hard light construct, and started reading.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “It’s how we break everything,” Xavier said.

  “Yeah, that doesn’t sound ominous at all,” I deadpanned. I kept reading, but nothing became clearer. “What the hell am I looking at, Xavier?”

  “It’s John Bodewell’s last case on the Arcadia police force,” Xavier replied.

  I balked. “Why in the ever-loving fuck would you want this casefile?” I asked. “Let the dead rest, man.”

  Xavier shook his head. “There is more to the case than meets the eye. Understanding this case can help us understand Arcadia.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Maybe this is the complete lack of caffeine and nicotine talking, but what are you going on about? What’s to understand about Arcadia?”

  “This town is not what it appears to be,” Xavier replied cryptically. “Things are hidden from us. We are lied to daily.”

  I shrugged. “Well, sure, but that doesn’t mean there’s some shadowy conspiracy or anything.”

  Xavier turned the vid window back toward him. “We shall see.”

  X.

  “Come look at this,” Xavier said. He was standing in the entrance to the living room, staring down at me lying on the sofa. I got up, rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, and followed him into the bedroom. “Here. This,” Xavier said, pointing to the vid window. I sat down and stared at it, reading over what was onscreen. Then I read it over again. Then again. Then I looked up at Xavier, baffled.

  “Maybe it’s the lack of coffee talking, but this doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

  “It makes perfect sense,” Xavier replied.

  “No, perfect sense would be something else entirely. This here is utter nonsense.” I gestured at the vid window, which flickered faintly in the dim light of the bedroom. “This is bullshit, Xavier. There’s no other word for it.”

  “And yet, every word of it is true,” Xavier said.