Authors: Neal Goldy
“What is wrong with you?”
“Not until you tell me what you’re hiding. I
want to know – no, I need to know.” In the last sentence, Advert pointed an
angry finger at his chest. He then repeated the same thing emphatically:
“I—need—to—know.”
But D. didn’t answer.
“You know what?” Chief Advert’s voice rose in a
fiery crescendo.
D. stroked his chin, thinking that if the chief
needed to say something, then let him say it.
“I’m going to get some coffee, maybe even
another smoke. Don’t move ’cause I’ll be right back. And when I get back, we’ll
be able to talk about what you need to get off your chest.”
When
he left the room, D. didn’t move, not in the first few moments. What had
happened to Advert, he had no idea. All of a sudden he altered his appearance,
becoming such a different person while contradicting the very claims he made
and dismissing the same warnings in order to accuse him of temper issues. It
really caught him off guard. Who had this man become? It sounded like a long
shot, but D. could see maybe – just maybe – Chief Advert had been possessed
from the unknown potency that had once taken his body to do their bidding.
*****
Advert glanced back to check if D. had followed him. No,
he hadn’t. And a good thing, too, otherwise he’d be in a miniature game of
cat-and-mouse (and he was the chief, after all!). He reached the kitchen and
went to where the coffee maker was, Advert pouring some stale coffee from the
decanter. Then, when no one was looking, he flipped on his walkie-talkie.
Unheard, mumbling voices shot out from the speakers. A little weight lifted
from the chief’s shoulders; finally, some protection, you know?
He tasted the coffee. Yup, it still tasted
stale. Advert never could have afforded good coffee beans to make his brew
during working hours – if it tasted bad he always made a quick ride to a
convenience store, easy enough. Stale never meant good, but Advert supposed
that for now, he needed to set the detective straight.
A voice – no two voices--came from his
walkie-talkie. He asked about any problems. They spoke of it. Okay, okay, he
thought, and told them he’d be right there. No worries, sir, just let me handle
things the way they should be. He didn’t want to keep D. waiting, but in any
case, the problem he needed to deal with involved D. anyway. The man had lived
long enough, and surely he could wait a few minutes?
The letter D. found
in the bathroom of McDermott’s penthouse was a strange one, no doubt. The front
was written specifically for him, which he guessed was why it was put there in
the first place. He hadn’t read it before, but waiting for Chief Advert, he
decided to read it now in order to pass the time. On the greeting, D. noticed
the sender forgot to put a period after D, and nothing after. Was it
intentional or a typing mistake?
Dear D
Make
sure McDermott doesn’t see this when he looks for it. I had slipped it into his
letters hoping, when you investigate his place from Advert’s orders, you will
find it. I know you, and you know me, but we have never met. Don’t analyze it;
you’ll make things worse.
You
will experience the worst pain humans will endure when you look for the answer,
the key, to the disappearance of McDermott. Nobody will explain the cause of
this strangely disturbing phenomenon, not even scientists of the greatest kind.
A nightmare of beauty this will become.
They
will be looking for you – the government, the police – and I say don’t worry.
Just find out not who took McDermott – no, that story’s well-worn off and it
sounds like it came from a tabloid—but why you were given this and not anyone
else.
A poem was written on the backside of the note written to
D., a Chinese to be specific. He identified this from the strange characters on
the upper half of the letter’s flipside. D. had read about the differences
between Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, so he figured out what language it was
written in. Below the original Chinese version there was the same poem, but
translated into English. Why put the original language on top? He thought it
easier to simply put the English one and be done with it.
He
expected that this’d be slightly more complex, though. If the poem had been in
Chinese, it would have been more of a mystery to D. Around where he lived,
detectives didn’t like easy jobs, so this might suit their tastes more. He
preferred easy jobs – easier ways to make more profit – but this made it all
the more suspicious. At an old age, D. prefers easier mysteries to solve, but
this has the feeling of being too easy.
Checking his watch, D. made a note that it had
been almost ten minutes Advert still hadn’t come back. Making coffee and
grabbing another cigarette would take no longer than five minutes, much less ten.
He lowered the level of the chair and laid it back like a recliner. He folded
his glasses away, drifting off to sleep. D. had never caught sleep for some
time—on those Sleep Hours he roamed the streets thinking endless thoughts which
would never find themselves in proper recovery or the man who thought them—so
what better time to do it than now? He would still keep his eyes on like a
watchtower, searching until Advert came back. He might bring company along, so
just in case, he turned off the safety of his pistol. Even as old as he was, D.
needed preparation. Most investigators needed to, but he never put his finger
on whether they did it because of trouble or paranoia. He hoped he wasn’t part
of the latter.
D.’s eyes closed and opened back up again. He
had slept, he noticed, but how long had it been? Minutes or was it hours? He
needed reassurance, but when he glanced at the clock placed carelessly too
close to the ceiling, it was gone. Clocks didn’t disappear like that so easily,
D. thought. He wasn’t going to be fooled so childishly.
“Chief Advert?” D. held his pistol at the ready.
“Chief, are you here?”
“He is not here at the moment.” The voice that
spoke had a higher authority to it yet was soothing: a god-like presence had
entered the chief’s office. “We are aware that he asked you for the evidence
you had found during the scene of the fire.”
So there’s more than one, thought D. It struck
him as odd that there had been no police investigators before him to find
evidence or hints. Not only would it make more sense and assure the authority
of the police force at a common scene of a crime or murder, but it would help
D. in the mystery he was going through. But as far as he was in this, things
weren’t going too well. This case, he realized, wasn’t bringing any answers;
nor did any of the supposed authority figures care to bring up anything (and to
think about Advert growing upset when he asked one silly question!). D. had
stepped into a world populated with sugary deceits.
Bullets fired, puncturing the office door.
Dozens of holes went through it, making it look like cratered cheese. D.
scrambled to a far corner, his pistol shaking in his hand. The blood veins on
his right hand—his good hand whenever he aimed —popped out of the back of his
hand. His eyes bloated into large marbles. “Who’s out there?” he demanded. He
raised his voice in case nobody heard him.
“What kind of sick joke is this? Put your guns
down!” D. kept his pistol aimed at the door. Somebody would soon come inside,
firing, but by then D. would kill him first.
He wanted to yell, to scream threats, but his
voice was too hoarse to do it. Long ago, when he had the power to look superior
to his peers, they feared him. Years of aging pulled in symptoms that made him
all the weaker. And now his stern, baritone voice had lost its edge, its feel:
what it had worn down to was a shallower version of how awesome it had been. D.
wished—no, begged—for a replacement for his recent body. But wishes like that
didn’t come easy.
Rapid gunfire continued. D. clung to the metal
office desk belonging to Chief Advert. On the floor he found a pair of
handcuffs. There was no key. He rattled through different drawers and smaller
boxes until he found a handcuff key. D. didn’t know if the key he found was the
same one that opened and locked the handcuffs, but he took it anyway. He took
all of them, in fact, every key he found until no more could fit inside his
coat and pants pockets. The handcuffs were stuffed in his belt, and D.
proceeded to the door. Were they being attacked? Bullet holes on the door
weren’t enough to conclude it. As he got closer to the savage holes watching
like dead eyes, he wondered where Chief Advert was. He said he was getting
coffee and a smoke . . . was it the truth? Did he have officers and guards sent
to kill him? Everything blurred together into one, mysterious conjugation.
“D.!” someone cried. It didn’t sound like the
chief. “Get out or we’ll come in!”
“Come in, then!”
No response from the other side. D. reached for
the doorknob, but another gunshot blared.
D. crumpled to the ground, shivering in fetus
position. He breathed hard like a fish out of water. When getting to his feet,
he held his pistol up while he shinnied to the far right wall next to the door.
Another gunshot, this one louder than the
previous. Some metal broke off (maybe the doorknob?) and out of shot a man
cursed. D. heard the gun being reloaded and readied his stance.
His heart panicked. “Don’t come in!”
“Playing games, are you? Tease me into coming in
only to warn me not to? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
D. refused to speak. The man from the other side
shot and the doorknob flew off. For some reason, wires began pulling out,
indented like a cliffhanger. His eyes flicked to the door. No sudden movement
or gunfire came after that, and everything fell into a hushed silence.
“Tell
me your name!” D. demanded.
.
. .
“Speak or I’ll fire!” He pushed the door open just a teeny
bit with the barrel of his pistol.
. .
.
D. fired. He didn’t
give a second warning, and his feet blew off the ground. Just for a few seconds
he flew in weightless motion. When the moment ended, he fell hard on his back.
He swore that if he couldn’t get back up, then his spine must have broken
during the fall.
“Okay, okay, I’ll
say it!” The man whimpered like a puppy. In no way did D. think it was the same
man who had shot previously.
“Are you the same
man from before?”
Without waiting D. sprung
up and out the door. He kept one hand in the space between the wall and the
door in case anybody fired; he would then have a quick barrier of protection.
Out in the hall, though, lay a frightful young man in a police uniform.
D. got a closer
look. It was a rookie, he supposed, judging from the humane characteristics
this one possessed. Never had he met policemen who cowered from a gunshot.
“Boy,” he barked. The
young police officer shook as he looked up.
“Are you a rookie?”
He nodded. Yes.
“Why were you firing
at me before?”
The rookie got up
from his knees. “I-I didn’t do that, sir. Please don’t hurt me.” He went back
down as if in prayer.
“Who did, if it was not you?”
A shaky finger
indicated the source. “Over there,” he said, and crawled off. D. took a second
of silence and turned. In that duration of the turn he fired, regardless who it
was. He knew he hit something when blood splattered over his coat and face.
Some went into his mouth; it tasted metallic and warm. He ceased right then and
paced back, staring at a police officer whose uniform had large bloodstains. “I
demanded a name,” D. said. “You never spoke.”
Surprisingly, the
bloody officer answered him. “I didn’t need to. I have my own authority.”
“Not when I’m here.”
“I don’t give a damn
about what you want.” His smile was greedy. He shot near the officer’s ear.
Tears filled around his eyes and blood began dripping in. He searched for his
pistol, a weapon, anything . . . but found none.
“Why did you shoot?”
He kept his cool voice as light as pink petals jittering in the wind. “I’m
looking for Chief Advert. Have you seen him?”
“He told me to.”
The ticking landed
on D.’s shaking shoulders. They cramped. What did he mean? “I thought you said
you had your own authority.”
“I do!” protested
the bloody officer. “But . . . he threatened. He didn’t want any arguments. If
I did, then . . .”
“Who was this man?
Was it the chief?”
“He’ll kill me if I
say anything.”
“The chief will kill
you—?”
“I never said it was
the chief! But I won’t speak of him. Just please, please leave me alone! I need
to get as far away from here as possible.”
“Why deal with all
the hassle? Wouldn’t it be easier to work things out with whoever ordered you
to do this disastrous deed? If I were you I’d think about doing that first before
running off and looking like a fugitive.”