Douglas glanced over at his partner. Shaking his head, Ross took a small brown envelope from his jacket pocket and took the hairs from Asher’s hand. He put them in the envelope and tucked it back into his jacket. “You realize that being clean doesn’t mean you don’t sell.”
The teenager’s face drooped, and his voice was empty as he said, “You think so little of me?” He pulled out his wallet and opened it to show them. “All I have is five bucks on me. Not drug deal money. Search my stuff all you want. I would never sell that stuff to anyone.”
“Hey I believe you, kid,” Ross said.
“Drugs or no, you’re not getting out of this easy,” said Douglas, sending his partner a sharp look. Ross shrugged and got back into the car.
The next few minutes were spent in awkward silence while Asher stared at the ground muttering to himself and Douglas stood wrapped in a haze of rage. Detective Ross waited with an eye on the travel agency until Jacobs showed up in an unmarked car to take Douglas’ place.
Douglas and Asher got into the car Jacobs had brought and headed towards the school. They drove in silence for a solid minute before either of them spoke.
“Look Dad, I know you’re mad and I know why you’re grounding me,” Asher said finally. “But I need the computer at least for homework.”
Douglas scoffed. “So now you care about school again? The thing I am wondering right now is how many times has this happened in the past that I haven’t heard about? Am I going to get a big surprise when your final report card comes? You are going to graduate, aren’t you?”
“Come on, Dad! Of course I am,” said Asher earnestly. “I had all my credits done except for one as of last semester. I could fail all my classes but English and still graduate! I just took them for fun. I wouldn’t have missed math if it mattered. Sheesh, there’s only a couple weeks left of school. It’s all review right now anyway.”
He was right. Asher had tested out at genius level. School was a cakewalk for him and the only reason he hadn’t graduated early was because he hadn’t wanted to. What really worried his father was Asher’s lack of concern for his future. All the kid seemed to care about was following whatever interested him at the moment.
Douglas grunted. “Look, Asher. I know how smart you are. But ever since your mom died, you have changed. You used to-.”
“This has nothing to do with mom!” Asher shouted. “And she would have heard me out before grounding me forever.”
“She would have been just as mad as I am,” Douglas said, but his son’s point had stung. His temper had been quite short lately, he knew that. His wife Anne had died early in the previous year. The pressures of being dad and mother along with adapting to his recent promotion to detective had taken their toll on his relationship with his children. “Look, you’ll just have to wait until I have calmed down to talk to me about this. When I get home from work tonight you will tell me everything. Then I’ll decide whether anything changes.”
Asher sighed again and stared out the window. “Yeah, you’ll decide whatever you want to decide.”
Douglas didn’t bother to answer this time.
Chapter 2: Mist and Light
Asher paced back and forth in front of the kitchen phone, twisting the long cord in his fingers. Every other family he knew had cordless phones or didn’t have a home line at all. His cheapskate dad’s philosophy was, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t spend money to replace it.’
“Come on, Aarin!” he said. “You can just drop me off a block away from the place like before. I won’t be long. If you get nervous, just circle the block for a while.”
“Did you get in a fight with dad again?” asked Asher’s younger sister Agatha.
Asher glanced back to see her standing behind him in the doorway to the kitchen. He frowned at her and raised a finger to his lips. “Aarin, come on. I need your help here. I told you, my dad has the car. Aarin, please? Aarin? Aarin? Crap!”
Asher slammed the phone down into the cradle and leaned back against the wall. He crossed his arms, a scowl on his narrow face. He had a driver’s license but no car. His dad had sold their mom’s car to help pay for the funeral costs and Asher hadn’t been able to scrape up enough cash to buy a junker to drive around in. He couldn’t even get a job because he had to watch his sister. “Now what do I do?”
“I knew it,” Agatha said, then shook her head and let out an exaggerated sigh. “I was right. You fought, didn’t you?”
Agatha was as unlike her brother as her father was. At eight years old, she was one of the shortest kids in her class. She had a cute round face topped with a mass of black curls. However, she was every bit as smart as her brother, a fact that she seemed determined to prove at every possible moment. “Dad isn’t hard to handle. You just needle him too much.”
“Yeah-yeah. Easy for you to say. You’re Daddy’s little girl.” Asher closed his eyes, thinking hard. He glanced over at her again for a moment and his scowl faded.
Agatha’s current obsession was knitting. Their mother had been a casual knitter and Agatha had taken it up soon after her death. It seemed everywhere she went, the eight-year-old had a set of needles in hand. She wasn’t very good yet, but she was prolific. Asher already had three scarves and two pairs of mittens. Their dad had several hats and a set of knitted gun holsters that Asher was sure would never leave his top drawer.
“Aggie, what on earth are you making?” The current mass of yarn that hung from her needles looked like some sort of deflated octopus.
“Oh, it’s an octopus,” Agatha pronounced with a proud smile. Her fingers never stopped moving as she spoke, the needles clacking together as yarn spooled from a bag tied at her waist. “When I’m done, I’m gonna stuff it and sew some buttons on for eyes. I’m gonna give it to Jenny’s sister for her birthday next week. She loves cephalopods.”
“Yeah, uh, good luck with that, Aggie,” Asher said and edged past her before heading up the stairs towards his room. “Cephalopods,” he muttered to himself as he shut the door behind him. He had to have the weirdest little sister in the world.
He came back down the stairs a few minutes later having changed his clothes. He now wore a gray shirt and a black hoodie, and his pockets were filled with the items he might need. He entered the kitchen and opened the drawer next to the fridge where he emptied a narrow black box. There were three twenties inside. He kept an ear out for the door in case his father came home.
Douglas usually came home late, especially on nights when there was a lot of paperwork involved. The children were used to it. Their father had been a police officer all their lives. But if he was going to be too late he always called. He hadn’t called yet that night.
Douglas filled the narrow box with money every month in case the kids ever needed to call for delivery when he was working late. They used it as needed and he never asked questions. Until this evening they had never given him reason not to trust them.
“Hey, why are you taking the pizza money?” Agatha complained from behind him. She had started loading the dishwasher. The tentacled mass of her knitting sat on the counter next to her. “Dad will be ti-icked.”
“Don’t tell him then,” Asher said, and shoved the bills in his pocket. Hopefully it was enough money for a cab there and back.
“But I have to tell,” she said, her brows raised with sincere indignation.
Just then the phone rang. Agatha ran to answer it.
“Don’t tell!” Asher said.
She stuck her tongue out in response. She raised the receiver to her ear with a flourish.
“It’s the Joneses. Whaddya want?” Agatha said in her best impression of the receptionist from Ghostbusters. She always answered the phone that way. Douglas thought it was cute. Asher found it annoying.
“Hey, Daddy . . . Uh huh . . . yeah. Right, I’ll tell him.” She raised her voice and looked at her brother as she shouted, “Asher! Dad says for me to make sure you don’t play video games or the computer!” She ignored Asher’s rol
led eyes and lowered her voice again.
“I told him. Right . . . Okay, bye. Love you too.” She hung up the phone and gave Asher a sour look.
“How long is he going to be?” Asher asked.
“Two hours or so.” She folded her arms. “Hey, what did you do to get in that much trouble?”
Asher bit his lip. “Two hours. That should give me just enough time if I hurry.”
Now her hands went to her hips. She stuck her chin out at him. “Asher, what did you do?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.” He ruffled her hair as he walked past her towards the front door. “Listen, Aggie. Keep the door locked behind me and don’t answer the door until I get back. If dad gets home before me, tell him I will be right back.”
“Ooh, you are going to be in so much more trouble!” she promised.
Asher sighed. “Yeah, I’ll deal with that when I get back. Hopefully he’ll understand when I explain.”
“Wait! You aren’t supposed to leave me home alone, you know.” Her voice was sounding worried now. “I’m only eight.”
“I’m not worried about you, Aggie.” They lived in a good neighborhood and everyone knew a cop lived there. No one was messing with their house. “If someone tries to rob the place, you’ll just poke his eyes out with your knitting needles.”
“I’m too short! I couldn’t reach his eyes,” she insisted.
Asher grinned at her. “You don’t fool me. I know what you are really doing with those things all day; practicing your yarn-fu. You’d knit any burglar into an octopus before they could draw a gun.”
She looked at her knitting needles on the counter. Asher saw a slight grin appear on her face as he shut the door.
The cab driver wasn’t about to wait for him in this part of town. Asher shut the door of the cab and watched it speed away, a sense of foreboding settling in his stomach.
The sun was nearly set. With its departure, a cool breeze blew along the street dispersing the heat that had pounded down earlier in the day. The breeze should have been refreshing. Instead, Asher shivered and pulled up the hood of his hoodie.
After he was finished he would have to walk back several blocks to a busier street to get a cab for the ride home. Of course, that would mean spending the rest of the pizza money he had stolen. Maybe he would just find a pay phone and call his dad to pick him up and take his lumps early.
The street was empty but for drifting pieces of litter. Long shadows leaned from every building along the street. To Asher’s fertile mind, the possibility of danger lurked in each shadow. It was something he hated about living in the city. He could walk three blocks to the north or south and be on safer streets. But a few steps away from where he stood, anything could happen. If he yelled out no one would come. He was truly alone.
“Come on!” Asher clenched his hands into fists, grit his teeth, and fought the fear down. He had prepared for this moment. He had a plan in place.
His hoodie and shirt were neutral colors. No gang member would have reason to threaten him. He was tall now, a senior in high school. From a distance, he looked like an adult. He did not look like prey, no, he could very well be the predator. The long shadows were his friends. He just needed to use the darkness to pass along the streets unnoticed.
He strode across the street and walked down a dark alleyway, going over his plan in his mind. First, he needed to see if the police were still watching the travel agency. The far side of the alleyway opened up across the street from the parking garage that his father and his partner had been parked in earlier that day.
Asher paused at the alley’s exit and peeked up to the second floor of the garage. The stakeout car was still there. He could just see the hood of it protruding up from behind the concrete barrier. Asher headed back down the alley and crossed the street again, away from the view of the police.
From that point of view they could see the entrance to the rear lot, but not the loading dock itself. He doubted that there was another team watching the rear of the agency. His father had made it sound like they were the only ones on watch. He was pretty sure that it was still early in the department’s investigation. There wouldn’t be a command center holed up in a nearby building for surveillance yet.
Still, he was careful to keep an eye out for other possible cars being used as watch points. He took the long way around, darting down alleyways and making sure that he was never in view of the car in the parking garage.
He wasn’t harassed by anyone. In fact, he didn’t see a living soul. Asher was feeling pretty confident by the time he made it to the fence at the back of the travel agency. The sun had set and it was mostly dark now, the sky faded to dark blue. It was nearly 8:00. The street lights hadn’t started to tick on yet. A perfect time for his venture. Now he just needed to get inside.
There was a coil of razor wire atop the fence all the way around, so he wasn’t climbing over it, but that was okay. He walked to the point where the fence touched the side of the brick building and crouched in the shadows.
On the other side of the fence he could see a short gravel driveway in the back of the property that led from the employee parking to two loading docks that were bracketed with a dumpster on one side and a metal door on the other. His goal was the doorway that was bathed in yellow light from a dimly lit bulb above.
He hadn’t seen any security cameras on his approach earlier that day, something which seemed a bizarre choice for a building in this part of town. On second inspection that still seemed to be correct.
He pulled his Leatherman out of the pocket of his hoodie. It was a useful all-in-one tool with pliers, a knife and scissors. His dad had given it to him for his sixteenth birthday. He would be furious to find out what he was planning to use it for now.
Asher opened the tool and found that the wire cutting part at the base of the pliers was barely wide enough for the thick chain-link fencing. It didn’t want to cut through. Asher squeezed the short handles of the tool with all his might and finally clipped through one piece of wire.
“Ow,” he grunted and shook his hand which now had an impression of the handle running across the palm.
A car came down the street. He huddled in the shadow by the building as it passed, rethinking his plan. Cutting his way through the fence would be a painful process. Besides, it was going to take too long.
He lifted at the bottom of the fence and was surprised to see that it was fairly loose. He could lift it a few inches off of the ground. Maybe he wouldn’t need to cut very many wires at all.
The street lights came on as he finished clipping the fifth wire up from the bottom. A pool of light came down from above, compromising his hiding place. Thankfully, there was now just enough of a gap at the bottom of the fence for him to slide his way under. For once he was grateful for his wiry build.
He grunted as he shoved his way under the fence on his belly, feeling the cut wires snagging on his hoodie as he pushed through. He made it to the other side, scratched and covered with dirt, but undiscovered as far as he could tell. Encouraged, he pressed himself up against the side of the building and ran to the dumpster at the side of the loading dock.
He crouched behind the dumpster, his nose wrinkling at the horrid stench that came out of it. Flies buzzed all around it, active even in the night. The metal was rusted through at the bottom corner and a brownish fluid had leaked out. The light from the doorway at the other side of the dock illuminated the area just enough that Asher could make out the squirming of maggots in the fluid.
There were more than just office supplies in there. And not just discarded lunches either. Asher had been part of a service project once during his failed attempt at boy scouts a few years earlier. They had helped clean up dead animal carcasses off the side of the highway. That’s what this smelled like.
Asher gagged at the thought of what might be in there. He considered lifting the lid and peering inside with the LED flashlight in his pocket, but Asher couldn’t summon the courage to even touc
h the lid. He shook his head and focused on the doorway. He would definitely tell his dad about this when he got home, though.
Asher placed his back up against the loading dock and slid towards the rear door of the building, staying in the limited shadows left by the foam pads that surrounded the dock doors. Then, as quickly as he could, he stretched his arm out into the pool of light and grasped the handle of the door. A gentle twist told him that it was locked.
He withdrew his hand and cursed silently. The possibility that the owners of the building would have forgotten to lock the door was a long shot, but he had let hope creep in. Now he had to try the set of lock picks that he had in his back pocket.
Douglas would be pissed if he knew he had them. Picking locks had become an obsession for Asher. He had researched the subject for weeks online before purchasing the set he had. He had practiced on multiple doors at home and at school until he felt that he was pretty good.
He was confident that given enough time, he could open this door. It was a simple single handle with a lock. There was no deadbolt. No security card scanner. Another oddity about this place that made his skin crawl.
His main concern now was the light above the door. It would leave him too vulnerable while he worked. He was tempted to chance it but decided against it. He would have to break the light. The small flashlight he carried would discreetly provide all the light he needed to work on the lock. The question was what to break it with?
Asher looked around for a rock or something bigger than the fine gravel on the driveway but didn’t see any nearby. He headed back to the dumpster. As much as the thought of looking inside terrified him, perhaps there was something in there that he could use.
As he reached the dumpster, a set of headlight beams shown across the employee parking lot. Someone was at the gate. He heard a door open and the blaring sound of Spanish music as someone worked the chain.
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