by Jim Heskett
Sneer and Revolver both kept their guns down, but their presence was enough to send Harry’s pulse into overdrive. Even through the mask, Harry could see the fire in Sneer’s eyes. Revolver didn’t seem threatening, but he had a gun, so Harry wasn’t going to add him to his allies list just yet.
He took another step back and held up his hands. “Please leave my house. I did not give you permission to enter, so this is breaking and entering. You gotta get out of here. Right now.”
“I don’t see anything broken,” Revolver said.
“I’ll call the police.”
“You’ve been talking to them already,” Sneer said. “Oh yeah, Harry, we know all about you. Why are you poking around in the holler, putting cameras in trees? Nobody wants you there. You don’t belong. And a private citizen installing surveillance at a crime scene? I think that’s illegal, actually.”
“Yeah,” Revolver said, nodding his dumb head, “that’s definitely illegal.”
“Look, guys, I don’t want any trouble. I don’t know who you are, or why you’re here, but you need to leave, now.”
After he’d said it, it suddenly connected with Harry that Sneer had said holler. These two were from No-Name. Had to be. Despite the panic, Harry felt a burst of confidence, too. If he could extract the right info from these two (before they managed to shoot him), that would catapult him directly to the end of the case.
“We’re not leaving until we’ve had a conversation,” Sneer said.
“Okay, fine, let’s talk. You go first.”
Sneer narrowed his eyes for a moment, as if trying to suss out a ruse. “Try any of your Jedi mind tricks on us, and you’ll regret it.”
“Star Wars fan?” Harry asked. “I’ve always sorta been more of a Trekkie, myself. But each one has its merits, for sure.”
Sneer maintained his unforgiving gaze through the panty hose on his head. “That’s what I’m talking about. No deception.”
“Okay, sure, fine. What do you want? What will it take to get you to leave my house?”
“The barber was just here. What’d he want?”
“Kemba? He brought me a guitar pick.”
Sneer grunted and took a step closer, making Harry shrink back.
“Can you believe this guy?” Sneer said to Revolver. “We’ve got guns out and he’s messing with us. Must have balls of steel.”
“My balls are flesh, I promise,” Harry said. “I’m not messing with you. He came by to give me a guitar pick. That’s absolutely true.”
“Okay, fine. Where is it?”
Harry patted his pockets for a second, then he remembered. “I didn’t actually take the pick. I told him I didn’t want it.”
“This doesn’t make sense,” Revolver said.
“It’s true.”
Sneer’s lips swished back and forth. “I’m not sure I believe anything coming out of his mouth. Maybe he needs a few teeth knocked out before he remembers how to talk properly.”
Harry watched Sneer’s bicep flex, his grip tightening around his pistol. Dread descended on Harry. Maybe he had thought he could talk his way out of this, but that hope had melted and now it seemed unlikely. His eyes flicked to the windows, hoping against hope he might see Kemba’s or Serena’s face there. But no one was coming. No one would save Harry, and he had to come to grips with that.
“If you need a guitar pick,” Harry said, “there are at least two or three music shops in town. I don’t play, so I don’t have anything sitting around.”
Sneer raised his gun, which Harry could see Revolver didn’t like. While hard to tell through the pantyhose mask, it looked like Revolver tossed a hard glare at his partner. But Harry didn’t care about their interpersonal dynamics. He wanted to not die, mostly.
The gun came up. “Stop asking questions. Stop poking around.”
Sneer wrapped his finger around the trigger and something welled up inside of Harry. Maybe adrenaline, or some internal animal desire for self-preservation, but he saw two objects in his peripheral, and he merged them into a plan. The first was the umbrella sitting two feet to Sneer’s right. The other was the smart home hub sitting next to the WiFi range extender adjacent to the living room couch.
“Computer,” Harry said in a commanding voice, which caused both goons to tilt their heads in confusion, “activate disco party!”
When Harry had installed the smart home lights and outlets to power the house’s electronics, he had also included a disco ball and lights and connected them all to his network. This had been a lark, mostly for his Dungeons & Dragons friends, and he hadn’t been sure he’d ever get a chance to use it.
When he spoke the command, the home hub launched into action. All the lights in the house went out, landing all of them in total darkness. Strobe lights flicked on, sending beams of red and yellow and blue everywhere. Music blared from the speakers hidden in the furniture and pulsing lights flashed off the disco ball in the corner.
Harry knew he had only a fraction of a second before they recovered. In the immediate aftermath, Revolver lowered himself and Sneer took a step back.
Harry lunged for the umbrella near the front door. He grabbed it by the point, then turned to his right and swept the handle toward Sneer’s lower leg. He hooked an ankle and gave it a tug to pull Sneer off his feet. A silenced pistol blast went off, barely audible over the sound of music.
With Sneer on the floor, Harry jumped over him and tossed a shoulder into Revolver, throwing him into an end table.
Harry jumped over Sneer and headed for the front door. He pulled it back and burst outside onto the slick front porch, where he almost slipped and fell down the stairs. But he managed to keep his feet underneath him as he skidded down the steps and raced along the street. For a moment, he panicked with the simple choice of left or right. Then he saw a bulky mailbox thirty feet to his left, and he realized he was out of time to pick his hiding spot.
Harry crouched behind the blocky hunk of metal on the sidewalk. He peered around to see his two assailants streaming down the front steps, with their pistols clutched to their chests. Both of them spun, swiveling around. Harry could hear them cursing each other through the rain.
One of them sprinted to the right, away from Harry. The other followed, and grabbed that one by the back of the shirt. After another quick discussion, they both raced toward an old beige sedan. They jumped inside and Harry squinted, but he couldn’t read the license plate as it sped off. In the dark, with light rain still falling, he could only see waves and shadows.
Once they were gone, Harry stood and checked himself for holes leaking blood, since he was sure he’d heard a gun go off. Then he leaned over and vomited.
After, he stood again, wiped his mouth, and began the arduous walk through the rain back home.
But now, he’d learned two very important things. One, he was in danger. And two, that danger meant he was on the right track.
26
For the second time in three days, Serena Rojas performed a sweep of Harry’s house. As he ate a bagel and drank coffee in the kitchen, she searched the exterior and interior as thoroughly as she could. The events of the night before still upset her, even though she hadn’t been present for any of it. The fact that she hadn’t been present is what frustrated her most of all.
After failing to prevent the attack on Harry yesterday morning, she had also failed to stop an attack at his house last night. And since Harry had already refused to accept her resignation, she had only one choice remaining: be better.
“A disco ball, huh?” she said as she closed the front door behind her.
Harry looked up from his breakfast, a dab of cream cheese on his lower lip. “Yeah. I couldn’t believe it worked, either. If I went through that scenario a hundred times, ninety-nine of those times, I would never think to use a smart home prank as self-defense. But it happened the one time I needed it, and I actually slept pretty well last night.”
“They’ll come back for you,” she said. “And they won�
�t fall for that again.”
He spread a flat smile toward her, as if trying to convince her everything was fine. “I know. I’ll be more careful from now on.”
“Next time, they’ll either bring more guys, more guns, or both. And they won’t give you a chance to talk your way out. They’ll put a bullet in your foot to make you compliant, then they’ll haul you off to wherever they intend to interrogate you and then leave you. Probably deep in a holler where things like bodies go missing.”
He flashed an uneasy smile. “You paint quite a vivid picture.”
She studied him. Serena knew from joint weapons training exercises that Harry had indeed fired multiple types of guns before. But she didn’t know if he’d ever once pulled a trigger not at the range. She didn’t know if he’d even punched anyone before. Weeks and months of trying to get him to arm himself had resulted in little movement toward that idea.
Serena could see only one way to fix this situation, and although she didn’t like it, it seemed like the most logical option on the table.
“I’m going to stay with you, for a while,” she said. When a surprised Harry opened his mouth, she said, “It’s not up for discussion. For the time being, where you go, I go.”
“Um…”
“How many bedrooms you got here?”
“Three. One is already set up as a guest room. The sheets are clean and everything. But when you say ‘not up for discussion,’ let me present a counter-argum—“
“No,” she said, raising a hand like a crossing guard. She pursed her lips and decided to say no more, since she felt like they had covered the topic sufficiently.
He chewed on this for a few seconds. “Okay. Okay. I usually go to bed early and get up pretty early. And—fair warning—I’m not used to being quiet in the mornings now. I’ve been living alone in this house for a while, and I’ve fallen back into most of my old bachelor habits.”
“That’s fine. I don’t sleep late, either.”
“I see.” He stood and tilted his head toward the basement. “If that’s all settled, then let me catch you up on the investigation so far.”
Serena followed him. She knew she would have to tell Harry about her activities, but she didn’t want to. Ever since Harry had been attacked with a baseball bat at the cabin, she had been on a hunt. Deep in the holler, she’d tried to track the man for the last twenty-four hours.
Serena Rojas had worked operations deep in the jungles of Thailand, among the dunes of North Africa, in the alleys of Parisian streets. She’d hunted lone targets and teams and eliminated every single one of them. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t be standing here, still alive. But there was something about the chaotic and haphazard layouts of these valley hollers that made them incredibly difficult to search. Every turn had to be scrutinized, and she always felt at a disadvantage.
And there were secrets around every corner. The kind of secrets people ate bullets over. Maybe she was simply feeling rusty, since she had officially been out of the espionage game for a couple of years now.
Either way, she had to do better. No more mistakes.
In the basement, Harry wheeled a large whiteboard over to the couch area, then he motioned for her to sit. As she did, she shivered, now feeling the change in temperature in Harry’s subterranean lair.
“Okay,” Harry said, his eyes darting over the multitude of taped pictures and intersecting lines and scribbled annotations. “I’m almost certain that Kemba is not our murderer.”
“That’s a relief. I kinda like him.”
Harry nodded. “I kinda like him, too.”
“You just want someone to join your Dungeons & Dragons group.”
He smiled. “Yeah, maybe. I’ll worry about that later. Anyway, when I added the evidence and realized it wasn’t him, I went back over everything. Here’s what I have: so, Lukas Maslow breaks into the barbershop to steal the cigars. He takes them into a squatter’s cabin in No-Name Holler, then he’s murdered hours later. All of this makes sense… not logical sense in that it explains his murder, but logical in that it all fits nicely into the timeline. But the thing is, I’ve been so focused on the motive, I haven’t been considering the items.”
“The dildos and stuff?” Serena asked.
“Yep. The dildos and stuff. Lukas was part of this hardcore religious group called the New Day Church of the Sinner. They think the existence of sinful temptations creates sin, and so they want to destroy anything they consider wrong. It’s all about keeping their members pure as a way to spread purity through some kind of communal osmosis.”
“Are they one of those groups that dresses their women in the most drab outfits possible so they don’t tempt their virtuous menfolk into doing non-virtuous things?”
Harry nodded and Serena tightened her jaw. She shook her head. “Typical.”
“Fair assessment. It’s not the most progressive church I’ve ever seen.”
She pointed at the picture of Lukas as her fingers found the crucifix around her neck. “He thought he was doing God’s work when he smashed up everything?”
Harry nodded. “Either that, or he was feeling guilty about something sinful he did, and that’s how he atoned.”
“What was he feeling guilty about?”
Harry faced the board and let out a slow and grumbling sigh. “That’s something I definitely don’t know. But there was one important detail about the footlocker I remembered when I woke up this morning: the vapes. Along with all the broken naughty parts was a container full of empty vape cartridges and batteries. Unharmed.”
“And you think the fact that they weren’t smashed up is important.”
Harry tapped a finger against his temple. “That’s exactly what I was wondering. I was thinking about some bits of passing conversations from the other day from my visit to the coffee shop, and I took a dive into the deep web and discovered some very interesting local news.”
“Such as?”
“Such as nearly a dozen people in Carroll County getting sick from black market vaping cartridges, including four in Eureka Springs alone. The number is probably much higher, but I think most people don’t want to admit to buying their vapes from some street dealer.”
“These are just the ones who went to the hospitals?”
“Correct,” Harry said. “I can’t verify for certain that the vapes making people sick are the same kind I saw in the footlocker, but…”
“But it seems reasonable.”
Harry crossed his arms. “Yeah, it does.”
“So we have… what? A black market vape operation in Eureka Springs?”
Harry wandered over back toward the board and stopped in front of Lukas’s picture. “Seems like it. And, for whatever reason, Lukas was probably killed over it.”
27
With Kemba no longer the main suspect, Harry moved the operation from his basement to his office. No reason to fear working two doors down from the barber. He certainly had a better computer setup at home, but the coffeemaker at his office percolated quicker and he was less tempted to procrastinate or do non-work things at his boring strip mall shoebox.
He tried not to think about the two assailants at his house the night before. But honestly, he would prefer a return visit here, not at home. This place felt more public.
As she’d promised, Serena hadn’t left his side. When Harry had awoken bright and early, he’d found Serena already awake and fully dressed, sitting at the kitchen table. With a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and an open King James bible in the other, she’d greeted him and said nothing about the fact he’d accidentally forgotten to put on his pants. In a t-shirt and tightie-whities, he’d been halfway through his first cup of coffee before realizing it.
Now at the office, she made a check of the building before allowing him to enter. He appreciated her overkill for now, but it might turn into a hindrance. But it’s not as if he could refuse. If Serena said she thought he was still in danger, then he wouldn’t argue with her expertise.
Behind his desk, Harry’s stubby fingers flew over his laptop’s keyboard. While Serena wheeled in the whiteboard, Harry took his first positive step of the day: he found a company named Arkansas Vaporizer Products, with an office in Little Rock.
“Got something,” Harry said as Serena rolled the board toward his desk.
“What?”
He sat back and eyed the screen. “I looked into those four reports of Eureka Springs residents getting sick. Two of them are completely vague and anonymous, and I don’t know who the other two are. But those first two did contribute mentions in their forum posts that they were using vapes that came from AVP.”
“All the sickness is coming from these AVP-brand vapes?”
Harry shook his head. “At least some of them are, but I don’t have proof it’s all of them.”
“So Lukas Maslow worked for this company who is a front for drugs, or money laundering, or something. But it went wrong, and whoever is behind the AVP company is responsible for his death?”
Harry winced. “I doubt Lukas actually worked for them. He had the mental capacity of a kindergartner.”
Serena set the dry erase markers on the tray underneath the board. “So are we headed to Little Rock today?”
Harry sighed. “That’s what I was thinking, but I just looked up their address.” He turned the laptop around to face her. On the screen was a maps search for the address, which showed an empty parking lot. “Most likely, the Little Rock address is for tax purposes, and the real office is in Beijing or Kuala Lumpur or something like that.”
“But if it’s a legit company, they have to have tax records. There has to be a paper trail.”
“That’s what I was hoping, but I haven’t found the thread. If anything ties this company to the New Day Church of the Sinner, it’s invisible. And even if we found them, the vaping batteries and cartridges this company makes aren’t illegal. It’s the stuff people are putting in them that’s illegal. There’s almost certainly a middleman between the vape maker and the end user. I’ve put out some feelers to investigate the supply chain, but I’m not holding out hope for a major breakthrough.”