by Tom Keller
"The garden Faeries say it is a human female," Charlie replied. "She is sleeping."
"Sleeping, eh? Doesn’t sound that dangerous to me," I said as I finished getting dressed. I went over to the window and looked out. I could just see the car parked a few houses away on the other side of the street. It was an older blue compact, identical to the one that I had seen last night. "Oh yeah, the plot thickens. She must have been the one watching us last night. Let’s go see who it is."
We went out the back door and jumped the fence, cutting through the neighbor's yards until we were across the street from the parked car. It was still early, and at the speed we moved, no one would have noticed us anyway. Hugging a wall of Italian Cyprus, I moved closer and stopped to get a better look. Although the windows were tinted, it was the standard legal kind, and even without Fae eyes, I was able to see inside. I almost laughed at the sleeping figure, mouth open with her head tossed back against the seat. Better still, I knew who she was. Complications seem to be the norm these days, I thought to myself as I turned to Charlie.
"Might as well have a little fun," I said, pointing to the car. "You take the driver side, I'll take the other. When I give the word, you let her know we're here. Let's see if we can give her a proper wake up call."
He nodded and trotted across the street, taking up position below the driver's side window as I crept up to the other side. He waited until I was at the door. Then he began to bark, loudly and ferociously.
At the first sounds, she jumped, hitting her head on the top of the car. At the same time, she threw her arms up and coffee from a cup she'd balanced between her legs went everywhere. She turned to her window and shrieked. Charlie had stopped barking, instead, he'd opened his mouth, showing his large canines and was running his tongue up the window. Her eyes widened, and she screamed again. Her arms flailing, she punched the side of the door, unintentionally hitting the unlock button. I opened the passenger side door and stuck my head in.
"You seem a little lost, Miss Brickey," I said, reaching and picking up the reporter's camera from the passenger seat. "Last I checked, the nearest TV station is about 20 miles from here."
"Hey, that's mine," she yelled, grabbing for it as I held it out of reach.
"Just trying to keep it safe," I replied, moving back. "You're not so good with coffee this morning. It looks expensive, I'd hate to see anything happen to it if you keep emptying that cup."
She looked down, finally noticing the coffee stains, still wet and dripping, oozing down her shirt and onto her pants. She picked up the crushed cup and placed it into one of the center holders. "I'm just… I'm just…"
"You're just what, Miss Brickey?" I asked, closing it and walking around to the driver's side door. I opened it and offered my hand. "Wet and messy? Yes, you are. Why don’t you come with me and we'll get you out of those wet and stained clothes? I've got some dry ones back at the house that I think will fit."
"I'm… I'm… I'm kind of busy at the moment," she sputtered.
"If by busy, you mean that you're conducting a surveillance on my house," I said, reaching for her arm. "Might as well go for broke then. Come on, I'll give you a tour.
"Oh shit," she said, unbuckling her seat belt. She started to put a leg out and then stopped. "What about the dog?"
"Who? Charlie?" I replied, glancing back at him. "Come now, Miss Brickey. You've been watching us for some time now, I gather. You've seen us out in public. Has he bitten anyone that you're aware of? You don’t need to worry about him."
She sighed and reluctantly got out of the car. I started to close the door, but she grabbed it.
"Wait!" she insisted. "I need to get my purse." She reached over the seat and grabbed a large leather bag. I stopped her before she could get it out of the car.
"This is getting old," I said, reaching into the bag and pulling out a small revolver. Opening the cylinder, I tilted it up and let the bullets fall into the bag. I held up the empty weapon. "I'll just hold onto this for now. I'll give it back to you before you go."
She pulled the bag out of my reach, angrily, then slammed the car door as I escorted her by the arm to the house. After entering the gate code, I led her through the yard and to the front door.
"After you," I said, opening it. She huffed a bit and then went inside, and I led her to the kitchen. "Have a seat. This'll only take a minute." With her camera still in my hand, I punched the coffee button and went into the downstairs bedroom, leaving Charlie sitting between her and the front of the house. After rummaging through the closet, I returned to the table, laying down a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. "You look close to my daughter's size, so these should fit. You can use the room I just came out of, there's a bathroom in there as well." While she was gone, I began to look through the images on her camera.
"Please don’t do that," she implored, as she saw me looking at the digital screen.
Dressed in clean clothes, she was composed now, and more resembled the TV anchor she'd been in the late '90s. Oh, she was older now, maybe in her mid-40's. But she still cut a trim figure. The lines on her face were new, but I guess that happens with age, or maybe they were caused by her fall from grace.
As I recalled, she'd been an up and coming reporter with one of the big 3 for several years when a story she'd been working on broke. It was about Aliens and Area 51. There'd been some controversy about forged government documents and unreliable sources. When it was over, she'd been let go from the station, but not before she'd been dragged through the mud a few times. I hadn’t seen much of her since then, and it took a minute to recognize her after our run in at the car lot with O'Malley.
"Not very flattering," I said, turning the screen toward her. It was a picture of Charlie and me at the motel. Taken by a telephoto lens, I'd been bending over to look at something and most of the image was filled with my backside. I turned the screen back and twisted the camera around before showing it back to her a few seconds later. "Do those pants make my butt look big?"
"Ha-ha," she muttered, sitting down at the table.
"Coffee, Miss Brickey?" I asked, pushing the cup with the VGK logo I'd poured for her across the table. "There's cream and sugar on the counter. But be careful, this one's hot, it'd be better if you don’t spill it like the last one."
"You're just a barrel of laughs, aren’t you? And my name's Michelle," she said, reaching for the cup and taking a sip. "So? What do you want?"
"You're the one snooping outside the door, Michelle," I replied, taking a drink myself. I picked up the camera and began fiddling with a few buttons. "Not to mention spying on me when I'm working. Maybe I should just delete these and let you go on your merry way."
"No," she pleaded. "Come on! I'm just following up leads! I need those pics. I can get a buck fifty from some of the online sites for some of those. Maybe more. A girl's gotta eat, doesn’t she?"
"Really?" I asked, scrolling through the images on the screen. "For pics of me and Charlie?"
"Not you," she scoffed. "I was following you because of the car caper the other night. But I did get a picture of something big before you showed up. That one's worth some bucks to somebody."
"Show me," I said, handing the camera across the table to her.
She looked at the screen for a moment, pressing buttons a few times before giving it back to me. The image she selected was grainy and blurred, and while I doubted anybody would believe her, I knew from my earlier experience she'd captured an image of one of Circe's beasts. Back lit from the interior lights, it was moving along the sidewalk in front of the hardware store's windows.
"Where'd you take this at?" I asked.
"Charleston and Boulder," she replied, looking serious. "Night of the car caper over by the hardware store. I tried to get a better shot, but the cops were still working the scene. I'm hoping I can clean up the image."
"I bet you are," I agreed, putting down the camera. "A few tweaks with some photo manipulation software and that could be anything."
"I'
m telling you," she argued, picking it up and pointing at the screen. "That's a picture of a monster, and it's real!"
"Sure," I countered, deciding to play the bad cop. "Just like the Aliens were. What? It's been almost 20 years, hasn’t it? For your information, I was at that hardware store that night. I didn’t see anything that looked like that."
"Screw you, you prick," she said, brushing back some stray hair from her eyes. "That was a frame job! I vetted those sources. Everything I said in that story was true!"
"Then why didn’t you prove it?" I asked.
"Because it was stolen," she replied as her eyes welled up with tears. Her head drooped, but she went on. "Everything was gone that night when I got home. Broke into my office safe and took it all. There was nothing I could do after that. I had no proof, and all my notes and video were gone. By the next day all my sources disappeared as well. Hell, one never even existed, or at least that's what they said." She raised her head and wiped her eyes with her arm. "You happy now?"
I knew she was telling the truth. I would have done the same thing if I thought she'd discovered something about the Fae. Maybe with a little more finesse. I'd like to think that any story about us would never have gotten aired, but the end result would have been the same. What was I saying? I'd been planning the same thing as I listened to her talk. Now, I only felt sorry for her. Damn it! I hate it when they cry. I got up and grabbed a box of tissues from the counter.
"Forget the monster for a minute," I said, handing it to her as I sat back down. "Why me? What is it you're looking for?"
She wiped her eyes and blew her nose, then took a sip of coffee. "Can I have another one of these?" she asked, holding up the cup.
I refilled it and sat back down. She didn’t say anything for a minute, just held her head in her hands before finally lifting it up.
"What the hell?" she said, grabbing the cup with both hands. "First off, you're full of shit. I don’t know who you work for, but it sure isn’t an insurance company."
"Oh, really?"
"Damn straight," she said, moving the cup to her lips. "I checked. No insurance company handled the damage complaints from that incident. At least not that I can find. It was a corporation named Dark Zeus. Other than a private company by the same name, I have no clue who they are yet. They're Registered Agent is just a lawyer's office. But they laid out some big money."
"How would you know that?" I asked, aware of the non-disclosure agreements anyone would have had to sign in order to get paid.
"I've got contacts at several of the banks," she replied with a crisp nod. "Saw the cancelled checks myself."
"So what's your point?" I asked.
"It doesn’t really matter, does it?" she fired back. "I know how it works. You're not going to reveal your clients, and I don’t care. But for the record, no one's ever heard of them. As for you, you were just a lead because of the self-driving story and where you were last night.
"Say what you want, but that's not the first time shit like that has happened here. Just like that monster I photographed. There is something else going on here. I've been following stuff like this for years, and this time, I'm close. I know it… I… Crap!" She pushed her chair back and folded her hands over her chest. "Just forget it."
"No. I want to hear about it," I replied, putting my arms on the table and leaning towards her. She was doing pretty good for a disgraced reporter that slept in her car. I might have to do something about her after all. But first I needed to know what she'd come up with. "What do you mean by where I was last night?"
"Why should I tell you anything else," she said, glaring at me from across the table. "You wouldn’t believe me anyway."
"Maybe because I have your camera," I said, holding it up. "I think you may have mentioned that there were a few shots on here you wanted to sell. You do have to eat, don’t you?"
"You really are a prick, you know that? Whatever," she said, in a resigned tone. She held out her hand. "You're just going to accuse me of making things up, but I can prove there is something weird going on. Give it to me."
"Why should I do that?" I asked, lifting it back up and holding it away from the table.
"You want to see the pictures, right?" she said, reaching down for her purse. She rummaged through it for a moment and then removed a manila envelope. Opening it, she pulled out two pieces of paper and unfolded them, then laid them face down on the table before holding out her hand again. "The camera, please."
I placed it in front of her and she picked it up and scrolled through the images on the screen. When she was done she put it down and put her hand over the papers she'd removed from the envelope.
"This happened about three weeks ago," she said, flipping over the first page. It was a printed picture of a gas station taken from a surveillance camera. The pumps were almost all in use.
"What about it?" I asked. "It's a gas station. So what?"
"I got this from the manager a couple days after it happened," she said, pointing to the image. "When this was taken, all 12 pumps were dispensing gasoline for free. Even those that used a credit card weren't charged."
"So they had a glitch in the system," I said, not wanting her to know that I thought I saw where this was going.
"Look at this car here," she said, pointing to a dark sedan on one of the back pumps. The car was difficult to see clearly because of the glare from the rear window that was visible behind the pump.
"Looks like the sun hit it just right," I noted.
"That's not glare," she explained. "It doesn’t show up as well printed, but if you look closer you can see that the glare, as you call it, is coming from the inside. For what it's worth, that was the only car that hadn’t prepaid for gas when this picture was taken." She flipped another page over. "Now this one is from the Long Shore Casino on Boulder last week. Three rows of slot machines all started paying out at the same time. Didn't matter if they were being played. They claimed it was an electronic malfunction. What do you see?"
This image was another printed picture. This one showed a casino floor with rows of slot machines and patrons. Some looked awed as the machines jackpot lights were all lit. Barely in view, on the far side of a row, what looked like a girl sat in front of one of the end machines. It could have been a quirk in the camera, or a stream of light hitting the lens just right, but I didn’t think so. The rest of the picture was clear, but the image of the girl was surrounded by an aura of light, and I'll be damned if it didn’t look like she was glowing.
"Could be a coincidence," I said, even though I knew better.
"Yeah, sure," she replied, picking up the camera and handing it to me. "I took this the night of the car caper. Just some random shots. But look closely at the dumpster. You can't see her, but the same glare shows up behind it. I think it's the same girl. I think she was watching when everything on the cars went to shit." She sat back up and looked directly at me. "Three separate incidents and she was at every one. That's no coincidence. Whatever that girl is, she's involved somehow."
"So what do you think she is?" I asked.
"I don’t know," she replied, picking up the pages and staring at them before putting them back down. "Maybe she's an Alien. Maybe she's something else. I don’t know. But whatever she is, she can do something to electronics. But cameras don’t like her."
"That's kind of a stretch isn't it," I said, leaning back in my chair. "Malfunctions occur all the time. She might just be a hacker carrying some kind of device that interferes with the camera. I've seen scientific research on the subject. Especially for military applications."
"Think what you want," she said, picking up the papers and putting them back in the envelope. "They've kept it quiet, but I've got sources on the inside. No evidence of hacking was found. No malfunctions were logged. Nothing! This isn’t all, you know. Over the last year I've spoken with several businesses that had similar occurrences. Two even had their ATM's emptied. Camera's didn't work at all on those. I'm telling you this is somet
hing different."
"Okay," I said, reaching over to put my hand on the envelope she'd placed the pictures in. "I'm not saying I buy into your theory of Aliens. But I do have a client that just paid out a shitload of money. Why don’t you let me go over these? I'll do some checking on my own. See what comes up."
"No way," she snapped back. "Not unless I go with you… and I can’t let you have all the pictures. I wasn't kidding when I said I had to sell them. Between the sites I have deals with and selling a few as stock photography that memory cards good for at least $1,500.00, and I've got rent to pay."
"What if I told you that some of these pictures might help in my client's case," I replied.
"Not gonna work," she said with a smirk. "I didn't get there until after the cars crashed, and don’t try to argue the pic of the dumpster is evidence. No one would believe it other than me."
I stared at her for a moment, trying to decide why I wasn't just going to shut her down the moment she left. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn't gonna bury her again. Whoever had done it the first time had done it without mercy. I didn't work that way, at least not with people that weren't assholes. I'd have called in a Wizard or Mage. A few tweaks here and there and she'd forget any of this ever happened. Maybe it was the tears, but more likely it was the fact that I knew she wasn't crazy, and that meant that she'd done a hell of an investigation with the odds stacked against her. None of this stuff had been reported by any of the Fae contacts I was privy to, and she'd done it under everybody else's radar as well. That meant she had talent, and that was something I hated to waste. I pushed back my chair and stood, then walked down the hall to my office to get my checkbook out of a drawer.
"Give me one week," I said, setting it down on the table. It was my P.I. expense checkbook. I'd thought about grabbing one of the Dark Zeus account books, but she didn’t need to know about that connection just yet. "I need to look into this without being distracted, especially by you. In the meantime, take a week's vacation. I'll buy your photos. That ought to cover you for that long. If any of it pans out, we'll meet to discuss it. If not, no harm, no foul. Either way you get paid."