30.1.08
23.1.08
Letter From The Editor: Guest Editor Jack Getze
When the magazine is called SPINETINGLER, it’s not as tough picking through submissions as one might expect. Basically, you’re waiting for that unmistakable chill at the back of the neck.
The goose bumps take a while arriving in Sweetening The Pot by Colorado writer D.A. Davenport. But you’ll be covered head to toe when these two ladies get down to business.
In Drop Off, by Philip Beloin Jr. of Connecticut, a woman named Sarah quickly hustles us into narrow alleys and dark interiors where the tingles come early.
A Simple Kindness by Chris F. Holm features a hero who wonders where he went wrong. Here? ”I’d seen her picking absently at the hem of her skirt...”
Nice guys finish last in The Horror Novelist’s Daughter by Todd Cameron of Vancouver. When things get really bad, they’re much, much worse.
Damien Seaman is having his fiction published a lot these days, and Coming Up Roses shows us why. An undercurrent of tension and violence shimmers like the alien in Predator.
Last Writer Standing is Kentucky-resident Gene Sittenfeld’s first published fiction. The thrills jump out from behind an imaginative framework of humor.
Wolf Janus of Oregon succeeds in his quest for quirky in Prime Element, a story cat lovers may find disturbing. In fact, everybody should find this one disturbing. Wolf, dude, you creeped me out.
But new fiction is only half the SPINETINGLER story this issue. Look who we’ve interviewed for your pleasure and enlightenment:
Tess Gerritsen published her first novel, Call After Midnight, a romantic thriller, in 1987. Her first medical thriller, Harvest, was released in 1996, and marked her debut on the New York Times bestseller list. Her suspense novels include, Gravity (1999), The Surgeon (2001), The Apprentice (2002), The Sinner (2003), Body Double (2004), Vanish (2005), The Mephisto Club (2006), and The Bone Garden (2007).
Ray Banks, author of Donkey Punch, no longer writes his own bios. Here’s why: “I am a shaman, a fabulist, a rebel with a cause, a spit-in-yer-eye-visionary with balls the size of coconuts. My job - nay, my calling - is to stare lizard-eyed into the dark heart of man and become a sculptor of dreamscapes, imagination bridges that lead from this drab reality to the emotional and spiritual core of Humankind. I am at once God and of God. I am, simply.”
Finally, this fantastic, one-of-a-kind issue of SPINETINGLER also sports a special feature on Ian Rankin. But Sandra wants to talk about Ian herself.
I hope you all have as much fun reading this issue as I had helping Sandra put it together.
Jack Getze
Special Guest Editor
SPINETINGLER Magazine
The goose bumps take a while arriving in Sweetening The Pot by Colorado writer D.A. Davenport. But you’ll be covered head to toe when these two ladies get down to business.
In Drop Off, by Philip Beloin Jr. of Connecticut, a woman named Sarah quickly hustles us into narrow alleys and dark interiors where the tingles come early.
A Simple Kindness by Chris F. Holm features a hero who wonders where he went wrong. Here? ”I’d seen her picking absently at the hem of her skirt...”
Nice guys finish last in The Horror Novelist’s Daughter by Todd Cameron of Vancouver. When things get really bad, they’re much, much worse.
Damien Seaman is having his fiction published a lot these days, and Coming Up Roses shows us why. An undercurrent of tension and violence shimmers like the alien in Predator.
Last Writer Standing is Kentucky-resident Gene Sittenfeld’s first published fiction. The thrills jump out from behind an imaginative framework of humor.
Wolf Janus of Oregon succeeds in his quest for quirky in Prime Element, a story cat lovers may find disturbing. In fact, everybody should find this one disturbing. Wolf, dude, you creeped me out.
But new fiction is only half the SPINETINGLER story this issue. Look who we’ve interviewed for your pleasure and enlightenment:
Tess Gerritsen published her first novel, Call After Midnight, a romantic thriller, in 1987. Her first medical thriller, Harvest, was released in 1996, and marked her debut on the New York Times bestseller list. Her suspense novels include, Gravity (1999), The Surgeon (2001), The Apprentice (2002), The Sinner (2003), Body Double (2004), Vanish (2005), The Mephisto Club (2006), and The Bone Garden (2007).
Ray Banks, author of Donkey Punch, no longer writes his own bios. Here’s why: “I am a shaman, a fabulist, a rebel with a cause, a spit-in-yer-eye-visionary with balls the size of coconuts. My job - nay, my calling - is to stare lizard-eyed into the dark heart of man and become a sculptor of dreamscapes, imagination bridges that lead from this drab reality to the emotional and spiritual core of Humankind. I am at once God and of God. I am, simply.”
Finally, this fantastic, one-of-a-kind issue of SPINETINGLER also sports a special feature on Ian Rankin. But Sandra wants to talk about Ian herself.
I hope you all have as much fun reading this issue as I had helping Sandra put it together.
Jack Getze
Special Guest Editor
SPINETINGLER Magazine
Short Story: THE HORROR NOVELIST’S DAUGHTER by Todd Cameron
This story has been moved to the new site, here.
22.1.08
Short Story: LAST WRITER STANDING by Gene Sittenfeld
This story has been moved to the new site, here.
Profile: Jack Getze - Who is he and how did he land this guest editor gig?
This profile has been moved to the updated Spinetingler site, and can be read here.
Interview: Tess Gerritsen - Switching Genres, Taking Risks and Surviving Twenty Years in Publishing
This interview has been moved to the updated Spinetingler site, and can be read here.
Review: PERSON OF INTEREST by Theresa Schwegel
This review can now be read at the updated site, here.
Review: WHO IS CONRAD HIRST? by Kevin Wignall
This review can now be read at the updated site, here.
Review: THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING by Thomas H. Cook
This review can now be read at the updated site, here.
Profile: In Conversation With Ian Rankin
This profile has been moved to the updated Spinetingler site, and can be read here.
Interview: Ray Banks - On Mexican Taffy, Dead Hookers, Ruth Rendell and more..
This interview has been moved to the updated Spinetingler site, and can be read here.
21.1.08
Fall 2007 Issue Contents
The PDF download is available here along with the archives of all our issues. Our thanks to Daniel Hatadi for interim hosting of the pdf downloads.
Short Stories
RIC WITH NO K by Patricia Abbott
IN THE DITCH by Patrick Shawn Bagley
MISSED CONNECTIONS by Kaylea Hiscall Champion
ON SILENT FEET by Jan Christensen
THE RORSCHACH AFFAIR by KP Dorsey
UPON A NEW ROAD by Jonathan C. Gillespie
BUS STOP by Keith Gilman
UNDER THE BLANKET OF THE SUN by Daniel Hatadi
DEEP FREEZE by Jordan McPeek
THE YEARS OF THE WICKED by Karen Pullen
MY BEDTIME BUDDY by Barbara Stanley
OUT OF SERVICE by Mark Troy
Reviews
BLOODTHIRSTY by Marshall Karp reviewed by K. Robert Einarson
BAD THOUGHTS by Dave Zeltserman reviewed by K. Robert Einarson
PAY HERE by Charles Kelly reviewed by K. Robert Einarson
A Double Dose of PLAY DEAD Claire McManus Reports on books by David Rosenfelt and Anne Frasier
POISON PEN by Sheila Lowe review by Claire McManus
SILENCE by Thomas Perry review by Deb Shaffer
HIDDEN DEPTHS by Ann Cleeves review by Martin Edwards
BEATING THE BABUSHKA by Tim Maleeny review by Angie Johnson-Schmit
AMMUNITION by Ken Bruen review by Sandra Ruttan
Features
IN FOR QUESTIONING by Angie Johnson-Schmit
BRONX NOIR: The Story Behind The Story by Steven Torres
Together We Write: The Story of the Authors Behind The Debutante Ball by Eileen Cook
Profile
Derek Nikitas: Profiling the Author of PYRES by JB Thompson
Interview
Rick Mofina: Series, Standalones, Settings and Charting a Course For The Future interview by Sandra Ruttan
Two Ladies Chat With Robert Fate, Author of BABY SHARK's BEAUMONT BLUES by Julia Buckley and Sandra Ruttan
Feature Author: George Pelecanos
In Conversation with George Pelecanos by Rob Lord
Pelecanos Country: The Works of George Pelecanos by Rob Lord
Feature Author: Kevin Wignall
Kevin Wignall: Romantic in Search of Redemption? by Sandra Ruttan
WHO IS CONRAD HIRST? by Kevin Wignall review by Sandra Ruttan
7.11.07
Short Story: RIC WITH NO K by Patricia Abbott
Ric didn’t look at me once when they took him out of the courtroom yesterday. I was sitting in the fourth row next to Mrs. Roney, my latest foster mother. There were 64 people in that courtroom; only a couple seats were empty. Mrs. Roney put her arm around my shoulders as Ric passed by, probably ‘cause she knew people were watching us. I noticed when I came to their house three months ago that Mrs. Roney was a lot nicer to me when other people were around. Oh, she was okay the rest of the time, but not like when we were out in public. Those times she put on a little show, hugging me, whispering in my ear, pretending to know all about me. Mr. Roney, a little bitty man with hair that stuck out and a nearly flat nose, never came to the trial at all. There was no real meanness in him though. Meanness took more energy than he seemed to have.
It was Mrs. Roney who took in the stray children. Mr. Roney just went along with it. If he had something to say to me, he usually told his wife—even with me standing right there. Like, “Tell Rumer she left her jacket on the patio.” Mrs. Roney didn’t actually say his words over again, but looked at me till I went to do it. This is just an example though ‘cause I never left my jacket anywhere but in my room. I wasn’t the only kid coming and going in that house. Most of Mr. Roney’s remarks were about chores needing doing or things done wrong. Square corners on beds was one of his biggest worries and he made me cover all my school books with grocery store brown bags to protect them—even after I told him they didn’t charge nothing for marks on books at my school. He also hid bags of the kind of candy that comes at Halloween in the yellow shoe pockets that hung from his closet wall. Oh, I knew what was going on in that place. Those Roneys had lots of secret places from us kids. I don’t know why I’m telling you so much about the Roneys. I guess I’m kinda warming up for the real story.
Ric’s lawyer and the court’s attorney both said I should be there for the sentencing, not that I would ever have missed it. I’d only been in the courtroom on the days I testified before then. They told me to stay away the rest of the time. “You never take your eyes off him,” the D.A. said. And Ric’s attorney said we didn’t need to keep reminding everyone I was only fifteen. One of ‘em wanted me to dress up for my appearance; the other asked me to wear my hair in a pony tail. Oh, I was right in the middle of those two.
I planned on making everyone understand about Ric and me during the trial. I lay in bed every night, first at the Children’s Home, then at the Roney’s place in the Whispering Pines Subdivision, trying to figure out what I would say. I had a good idea of the questions Ric’s lawyer and the district attorney would ask from the times we talked before the trial started. But when I said stuff in court, it came out all wrong. It sounded dirty and cheap—the things Ric and me did together. Maybe I can get it down right on paper, when there’s no one watching or listening or telling me what to think or say. Ric’s lawyer said he was going to appeal the sentence so I’d get another crack at it. The trouble is it seems so long ago already. Some of the things, I might have made up in my head, and the D.A might have made up stuff too. “Don’t let them manipulate you,” a therapist in the Children’s Home told me once. But it’s hard to know when that’s happening. Sometimes it feels like people are on your side and later you find out they’re not. ‘Specially people who put their arm around you and buy you new clothes.
No one guessed the judge would come down so hard on Ric—sending him away for twelve to twenty years. I wanted to gasp or scream when I heard the judge say it. But I knew Ric wouldn’t like any of those dramatics so I held back. If there’s a new trial, like Ric’s lawyer says there’ll be, I can get my story out right. I can explain what we were to each other to the whole world.
I never once got my mother to tell me who my father was. I’m pretty sure she didn’t know, if you can believe that. Kids at school said it was probably my grandfather or my Uncle Ray since she almost never left her house, but I don’t think that’s true ‘cause I don’t look like either one of them. If we were animals, they’d be pigs and I’d be an old barn cat. Jessie herself looked more like a fancy-ass bird that had no business being in your yard but somehow was. Like a flamingo or peacock or something.
My mother—Jessie— was only seventeen when she had me and I don’t know if she even guessed she was going to have a baby till someone pointed out she had put on a lot of weight. They say my mother was a dreamy sort of girl. It was hard to talk to her about anything real, but she knew every fact about Demi Moore and Tom Cruise. She grew up on those stars. She didn’t even need to see their movies after a while. Jessie just made her own movies up in her head. I could see those movies whirling around when she looked at magazines from the eighties she’d saved in an old red record player case. I could see her lips mouthing the words. She even named me after Demi and Bruce Willis’ first kid, Rumer. I’m just glad I was born before the third girl, the one Demi called Tallulah.
Somehow, we made out okay those first twelve years. Welfare took away my baby brother, Emilio, when I was seven, but let me stay with my mother ‘cause I was pretty good at fooling people into thinking she could take care of me. I went to school every day, in clean if used-up clothes. I got good enough marks to move up to the next grade every spring. I made sure Jessie showed up at school or at the church once in a while, watched what she wore outside, and chased her home from her stopping places before midnight. You might think I mean bars by that, but lots of times I found her swinging in the playground or sitting on that low wall over by the Peasley’s garden. Lots of people knew Jessie Simcoe—that’s my mother’s whole name—couldn’t take care of a guinea pig much less a kid, but they probably also knew firsthand what happened to kids in foster care. So no one said anything. And I was doing all right mostly—even if I didn’t have any friends or much money to spend on things. I could live with that easy. I could do that with my eyes shut.
I was still in middle-school when I met Ric. Eighth grade. This is exactly how it happened: I was coming home from school the way I always did, just passing the convenience store at the corner of Walnut Street and Fifth and wishing I had enough money for a bag of those Cape Cod potato chips when I saw Ric coming out through the glass doors. He was about to put a cigarette in his mouth, but when he saw me he put it behind his ear instead and squinted, shading his eyes with his hand. That was about the first time I remember anyone really taking notice of me. He stopped flat in his tracks, taking me in. I kept right on going though, wondering if he still was watching me. I figured he was about eighteen, though it turned out Ric was twenty-five then. He never exactly said he was younger than he was; I just believed it. I saw him again the next day except this time, he said, “We’ve gotta stop meeting like this,” which made me laugh though I tried to swallow most of it down. I knew enough not to take up with strange men on the street. That’s a good way of ending up in the Children’s Home or, even worse, at that place for girls that get knocked up or flunk out of the tough love class at the high school.
The third time I saw him was about three days later ‘cause the weekend came up about then and got in the way. Ric was already out in the street that Monday, leaning against his car, a little red Contour, when I passed by. He did a little dance and I stopped dead, probably with my big mouth open.
“Name’s Ric with no K,” he said. But I misheard him and thought he said, “Name’s Ric. Okay?”
“It’s okay with me,” I said back, shrugging. He laughed. And that’s how we met finally. Ric thought I was making a joke and really, I just hadn’t heard him right.
It turned out there was no K in Ric because his real name was Ricardo not Richard. He was short and awful skinny with dark hair and even darker eyes. I thought he was pretty nice-looking but I’m nearly the only one who ever did. That’s why it was good we found each other that day. No one took a shine to either of us before that day. We about made each other up.
Neither of us was too good at talking. I noticed that right off. We kind of wiggled around by his car and laughed at nothing till Ric lit a cigarette and offered me a drag. I’d been smoking since I was ten—anytime Jessie had money to buy her Salems I took a few. Ric never smoked the same brand twice. He said it was like buying the same candy bar every time. I took the drag he offered me and made the smoke go up my nose. I had practiced that at home enough to be pretty good at it. Ric laughed and said he guessed I could keep the cigarette for myself after that stunt. He lit another one and we mostly just smoked cigarettes and watched the cars go in and out of the lot.
I started counting those cars in my head, the way I always do, but kept that information to myself. Nobody needs to know I count everything that can be counted. Cars turning into a lot, the number of people waiting in line, the number of chairs in a room. It’s a real bad habit but I need to keep track of things, otherwise they get away from me. Distracting, the counselor they sent me to said. Anyway, the lot was busy with people buying stuff for dinner. About five minutes later, Pastor Wilkins from the church I sometimes dragged Jessie to pulled into the lot and I took off, hoping he hadn’t spotted me. Pastor Wilkins’ church is kind of strict but it’s the closest one to our apartment and we never did get a car since Jessie don’t drive. I think if she did, she would drive till she hit the Atlantic Ocean and still keep on going.
Ric and I met up quite a bit after that and soon we even found some subjects to talk about. The DA said later, he was reeling me in by then, but it wasn’t really like that. We just played music, and talked, and smoked cigarettes. Ric never tried to get me to drink or smoke weed. And he didn’t try to kiss me. Not for a long time. By the time he did, I wanted him to, had been thinking about him doing that and more every night. Putting my own hands where his would soon be. So one day we just started kissing and it felt like something we should have been doing all along. It was like falling off the bank into Tyson’s pond for the first time each summer. When that water flowed over you, nothing ever felt so good. I want to do more than just kissing right away—even if doing stuff made me a slut like some people might say. I wanted him to pour into and over me. I wanted to carry him inside me like he was my baby and my boyfriend all at once. I bet nobody in that courtroom wanted to hear that but that’s how it was. For me, at least. Before Ric, I only had mama and that wasn’t enough cause of how she was.
Ric made his living doing favors for a man named Mr. Nerone, who owned a club ‘cross the river. That’s what Ric always called it—doing favors—not working for him. Favors like picking up Mr. Nerone’s laundry, chauffeuring him around town, picking up money from people who owed him. One time Ric was waiting for me in a navy-blue Cadillac. That was the car used for driving Mr. Nerone around town. Ric made me sit on a towel to keep the seat clean, but it was still nice.
Mr. Nerone was a pretty important man; I could tell that from how twitchy Ric was when he had just been to see him or was planning to go. In my mind, I pictured him as big, but when I finally saw Mr. Nerone, he was a tiny man: fat, with piggy blue eyes, and smelling of some old cologne. Mr. Nerone had a regular guy named Tommy who drove him most places, but Ric was the backup driver and fixin’ to be number one some day.
After a while, it seemed like a good idea not to hang around that 7-Eleven store all the time so we drove around when Ric had enough gas. Or else we sat in the car next to the rinky-dink airport our town has and watched planes come and go. Not many did, but I counted them, of course. Ric caught me doing it once in a while, but he didn’t mind. He said there were a couple of weird things he did too, though he wouldn’t say what.
One day, we were sitting there doing nothing when Ric asked me if I wanted to make a little money. “You just have to go into the bathroom at that gas station over on Birch and wait till a lady shows up with a package.” I didn’t much like the sound of hanging around in a bathroom, but Ric said he’d be right outside and it would definitely be a woman who came in with the package. Finally, I agreed, but I was kind of mad with Ric for a minute or two that day. It was the same nasty bathroom for men or ladies so why couldn’t he wait in there himself? Truthfully, I was scared that some man might come in and show me his thing. This had happened to a few girls at school in public bathrooms, and, once on a bus, Sheri Mason once had to hold a man’s thing till he rang the bell to get off. “He got off in more ways than one,” Sheri told us the next day, making a face.
I don’t think it really was a woman who came in either. She was too big and her voice wasn’t right though she didn’t say much. She was wearing a peacocky-blue dress like she’d just been to dinner at a fancy restaurant and wore makeup and nail polish and lots of heavy gold jewelry that rattled when she walked. Before I could take her all in, she was gone and the package was in my hand. After I gave Ric the package, he peeked inside, smiled, and then he gave me $10. “Not bad for ten minutes’ work,” he said, trying to get past it. When I didn’t smile or say anything at all, he added, “I hate sulky women.” So I had to stop being a big baby. I sure wasn’t gonna give Ric up over something like that so I put my head to the grindstone and made Ric forget what he had called me.
There were other days Ric asked me to do things. None of them were sex things like the D.A. said though. Not unless you count letting his friend, Pico, go to third base on me for his birthday. Pico was eighteen and he had never been with a girl. Ric said it was the best present we could give him and it hardly bothered me at all. It didn’t even take five minutes before he was finished. And I knew Ric was standing outside if Pico tried anything more, but he didn’t. Pico just got a shit-eating grin on his face when he opened the car door afterwards. Then we all split a pizza and never once talked about it.
The thing that finally got us in trouble happened because of my mother. Ric had asked to meet her a million times. I wasn’t too keen on it though. You never knew what she’d be like from day to day, but usually she was pretty much out of it. I really didn’t know why he wanted to meet her so much. I never met his family; he claimed he didn’t have none when I asked. The D.A. had some things to say about all this, but that guy was always trying to make Ric look bad and me look stupid.
I finally brought Ric home to meet Jessie in March. It was one of her better days. She was only a few years older than Ric and they knew some of the same people from high school since she had fallen behind and never did graduate in the end. She wore her best pair of jeans and her hair was fixed up pretty good though she was always prone to sticking something in it. That day, she had stuck in a pinwheel. I don’t even know where Jessie found things like pinwheels. When was the last time you saw one? But wandering around the way she did, she found some wondrous things and stacked them up all over the apartment. Once in a while, I would get rid of some of the smellier or dirtier stuff, but the pile grew up again like she watered it at night. You’d think Jessie’d come across something valuable from time to time, but if she did, she hid those items away. The piles I saw were the same things you saw in trash cans at the park: broken toys, candle stubs, empty food and wine containers, discarded magazines, dirty combs, torn clothing, a lost glove. So the pinwheel was a pretty good find for her.
Ric went out after we’d all talked for a while and brought back takeout from the Summer Palace Restaurant and I found out that day that my mother knows how to use chopsticks. I couldn’t figure them out no matter how hard I tried. Ric held one in each hand and stabbed his food, which made us laugh. After we were done, Jessie washed all six chopsticks and I knew where I’d see them next time I looked. That was one of the best nights we ever had. Later, we watched an old movie called Stripes with Bill Murray and drank a liter of Diet Coke and ate a jumbo-sized bag of Cheetos between us. When I fell asleep, Jessie and Ric were still looking through her high school yearbook, which I didn’t even know she had. Ric said later it was somebody else’s yearbook—from some other high school in some other state, but that makes it even better to me. Maybe my mother even walked over to that other state to get it. Jessie could walk farther than anyone I ever met as long as she was going forward. Anyway, it was nice to fall asleep with the sound of my mother and boyfriend laughing in the next room. It felt real normal. Later people would say they did more than just talk but I don’t believe it.
Ric came over a couple more times after that, but Jessie was never that good again. On her worst days, she just rambled on about movie stars and old TV shows that no one else even remembered. But that’s why we lived as good as we did. She got a check each month from the State and a little more money from the County. For being half-crazy. We could stretch that money into a life for us if nothing bad happened.
Ric was nice about it though and never said anything mean to her. And when she fell asleep in her armchair, we could have sex in her bedroom instead of in the car. That part worked out real good. Even though the sheets were gritty and the window bled cold air right in on us, we didn’t mind ‘cause we could be naked there instead of half or more dressed—like in the car. I kept telling Ric, he could spend the night, that Jessie wouldn’t notice or care, but he wouldn’t do it, not ever. Once he was finally spent, he always left in a hurry, barely remembering to kiss me goodbye.
Next comes the hardest part to tell right. My grandmother, who lived down in Kentucky, had died two years before and left us some money from selling her house. It was a lot of money— about ten thousand dollars. Granny’s lawyer made Jessie put it in the bank, telling us to keep it for a rainy day. When Ric was fooling around in her room one day, he found her bankbook in an old purse and asked me about it.
“You know I could invest that money and double or triple it in no time,” he said. I must have I looked like I didn’t believe him because Ric got all huffy and said, “You know, Mr. Nerone has a guy that does nothing but make money for him.” I believed him more after he said that ‘cause I had seen that navy-blue Cadillac and the kind of clothes Mr. Nerone wore. It wasn’t hard talking my mother into it either; it was raining outside and she marched right down the bank, got that money out and handed it over to him. He gave us an IOU, which Jessie fastened to the fridge with a Strawberry Shortcake magnet.
A month or two later, Jessie got a letter from her half-brother in Kentucky saying didn’t we want to put a headstone on Granny’s grave? Once I explained it, Jessie decided she really did want to do that and while she was at it, she wanted to send a gift to Coco Arquette, Courtney Cox’s new baby. Jessie had been a real fan of Courtney Cox since she saw her climb up on the stage with Bruce Springsteen in that Dancing in the Dark video
“Just get me two thousand dollars of the money for the headstone and Coco Arquette and let the rest keep growing,” Jessie decided. “I can get something nice for both of them with that.” She was sitting in the chair, looking at a catalogue from the Target store when I left.
I couldn’t find Ric that day, nor the one after that. I knew where his house was ‘cause he had to pick something up there once and he made me wait in the car. I took a bus up there twice a day for the next three days. But he was never home. I could tell that from a distance ‘cause the mail was making the door hang open and his Ford Contour was gone. Ric had disappeared like this before so I wasn’t the least bit worried except Jessie kept dogging me. She had forgotten about the headstone already but she had a bunch of stuff picked out for that Coco Arquette. Stuff that even I knew no rich lady’s kid would wear or want.
“I’ll go up and get it tomorrow,” I told her, figuring Ric would be home by then. “And maybe we can even have a party—like we did that one time.”
Jessie’s face lit up. “Chinese food,” she remembered. She looked around wildly, and I know she was worrying about those darned chopsticks. I had to throw them away after she gnawed the red paint off one end.
“Maybe we’ll buy some other kind of food this time,” I said. “How about Mexican? We’ll bring it home after I get him. Burritos,” I reminded her, not sure if she knew what Mexican food was. She nodded, but I still wasn’t sure she knew much about Mexican food when we both favored Chinese. Mostly we ate pasta and rice with stuff like okra, corn and black-eyed peas thrown on top. Sometimes we threw a piece of bacon on or some scrappy sausage. Usually it was mostly ketchup and beans.
I took the bus to Ric’s place again. It had gotten real dark, like it might start to rain and I didn’t have an umbrella. I’m not fussy about much, but I hate to get wet and all the kidding in the world about me melting won’t change it. I hurried up the street. Ric’s door was shut tight this time, the mail gone. His car stood on the street but sometimes he took Mr. Nerone’s car so I wasn’t sure if he was home or not. I knocked for ten minutes but nobody answered. Finally some old man from next door came out and screamed at me to go away—that I was disturbing his sick wife and his old dog. I could hear the dog howling so I left after a bit. A dog howling means a storm.
I didn’t have any money just then so I couldn’t go and get Jessie any tacos. I came home empty-handed as usual. Or to where our home used to be because the house wasn’t there. All that was left of our house was some smoky, burnt boards, electrical wiring, a few old pipes and a sink, and some pieces of metal and furniture that hardly looked like furniture at all. Our refrigerator looked like someone had taken an axe to it. Jessie’s bed, an iron stead, was black where one it was golden. The chimney was propped up like a drunken man on the porch next door. What was left of our one-time house smelled twice as bad as the processing plant south of town. It wasn’t just the smell of fire but of chemicals mixing in with it. That yellow tape you see on TV kept me from going inside.
“This your house?” a policeman asked, stopping me when I tried to duck under the tape. I nodded. “Looks like someone burned it down,” he said, half-scolding and half- feeling sorry for me. “Your mama a smoker?”
I nodded. “But she never smokes inside. She had a cousin died that way.” I looked around, feeling sick to death. “Where is she?”
He didn’t answer me. “How do you think this happened if she doesn’t smoke? Who would have burned down your house? Do you have any enemies?”
While I was thinking about that, the neighbor lady walked over and said, “I saw Jessie lighting candles all over the house. Like she was getting ready for a party. Twitting about like some damned fairy.” She started to laugh but stopped herself when she saw that cop’s face. I wanted to tell that lady to be quiet ‘cause she made it sound like Jessie was crazy, not like she was just getting ready for Mexican food and having Ric over again.
“I could see inside real good,” the old witch explained. “Cause it was getting so dark with the storm coming. I could see her flitting around from one room to the next, her long white skirt catching the draft from time to time.”
I started shaking my head. I knew that skirt she was talking about but where would Jessie get all those candles? And then I remembered those piles of junk and the dollar store in town that had closed down a week or two ago. “Where’s my mother?” I asked again.
“Why, she’s at the hospital,” the neighbor lady said. “They took her there in an ambulance.” The cop grabbed my arm just in time.
Jessie didn’t die that night, but I never did see her face again because they had so much ointment and other stuff covering it. “Was it those dollar store candles?” I asked her more than once, but she didn’t say a word or move a muscle. I don’t know why I kept fixin’ on those candles. It was all I could think to say with her under that gauze. I couldn’t pick up her hand, or touch her at all. I just stood there and talked about candles, the nurses, one black and one white, lookin’ at me like I was brain dead instead of Jessie.
After that they took me to the children’s home and started looking for Ric. I had to tell them about him—just too many things came back on him. I never thought they would blame him for any of it. I didn’t see how they could. It was Jessie who burned the house down after all.
They did though ‘cause they heard lots of other bad stuff in my story. The D.A. said all Jessie’s money was gone as far as they could tell. Ric used it up in the first few days after I gave it to him though no one ever said how. They also said he had raped me and hired me out as a whore and a drug courier. Lots of other bad stuff too. The biggest lie that D.A. told was that Ric had also slept with my mother and that was why Jessie got dressed up and lit candles all over the house. She was dreaming of her lover.
The first time the D.A. said that I wasn’t in the courtroom but two people told me at school ‘cause I guess it was in the newspaper. That was about the worst thing anyone ever said to me. Even if I know it’s not true. I didn’t believe anything they said after that. Maybe Ric used Jessie’s money for a little while, but he would have paid it back. I’m sure of it.
The love that we had for those four months was real—the realest thing I ever knew. I think when Ric gets out we will be together again, maybe have a place of our own. I just wish Ric had looked at me once when he passed out of the courtroom. Maybe he didn’t even recognize me after all this time. My hair’s a lot longer. Mrs. Roney says it might be because I’m practically a woman now. If I am, no one can tell us we can’t be together. I’m counting on that.
About the Author:
Patricia Abbott has published literary and crime fiction in publications such as Spinetingler, Demolition, Hardluck Stories, Thuglit, Murdaland, Shots, and Shred of Evidence. She lives and works in Detroit and is working on a novel.
It was Mrs. Roney who took in the stray children. Mr. Roney just went along with it. If he had something to say to me, he usually told his wife—even with me standing right there. Like, “Tell Rumer she left her jacket on the patio.” Mrs. Roney didn’t actually say his words over again, but looked at me till I went to do it. This is just an example though ‘cause I never left my jacket anywhere but in my room. I wasn’t the only kid coming and going in that house. Most of Mr. Roney’s remarks were about chores needing doing or things done wrong. Square corners on beds was one of his biggest worries and he made me cover all my school books with grocery store brown bags to protect them—even after I told him they didn’t charge nothing for marks on books at my school. He also hid bags of the kind of candy that comes at Halloween in the yellow shoe pockets that hung from his closet wall. Oh, I knew what was going on in that place. Those Roneys had lots of secret places from us kids. I don’t know why I’m telling you so much about the Roneys. I guess I’m kinda warming up for the real story.
Ric’s lawyer and the court’s attorney both said I should be there for the sentencing, not that I would ever have missed it. I’d only been in the courtroom on the days I testified before then. They told me to stay away the rest of the time. “You never take your eyes off him,” the D.A. said. And Ric’s attorney said we didn’t need to keep reminding everyone I was only fifteen. One of ‘em wanted me to dress up for my appearance; the other asked me to wear my hair in a pony tail. Oh, I was right in the middle of those two.
I planned on making everyone understand about Ric and me during the trial. I lay in bed every night, first at the Children’s Home, then at the Roney’s place in the Whispering Pines Subdivision, trying to figure out what I would say. I had a good idea of the questions Ric’s lawyer and the district attorney would ask from the times we talked before the trial started. But when I said stuff in court, it came out all wrong. It sounded dirty and cheap—the things Ric and me did together. Maybe I can get it down right on paper, when there’s no one watching or listening or telling me what to think or say. Ric’s lawyer said he was going to appeal the sentence so I’d get another crack at it. The trouble is it seems so long ago already. Some of the things, I might have made up in my head, and the D.A might have made up stuff too. “Don’t let them manipulate you,” a therapist in the Children’s Home told me once. But it’s hard to know when that’s happening. Sometimes it feels like people are on your side and later you find out they’re not. ‘Specially people who put their arm around you and buy you new clothes.
No one guessed the judge would come down so hard on Ric—sending him away for twelve to twenty years. I wanted to gasp or scream when I heard the judge say it. But I knew Ric wouldn’t like any of those dramatics so I held back. If there’s a new trial, like Ric’s lawyer says there’ll be, I can get my story out right. I can explain what we were to each other to the whole world.
I never once got my mother to tell me who my father was. I’m pretty sure she didn’t know, if you can believe that. Kids at school said it was probably my grandfather or my Uncle Ray since she almost never left her house, but I don’t think that’s true ‘cause I don’t look like either one of them. If we were animals, they’d be pigs and I’d be an old barn cat. Jessie herself looked more like a fancy-ass bird that had no business being in your yard but somehow was. Like a flamingo or peacock or something.
My mother—Jessie— was only seventeen when she had me and I don’t know if she even guessed she was going to have a baby till someone pointed out she had put on a lot of weight. They say my mother was a dreamy sort of girl. It was hard to talk to her about anything real, but she knew every fact about Demi Moore and Tom Cruise. She grew up on those stars. She didn’t even need to see their movies after a while. Jessie just made her own movies up in her head. I could see those movies whirling around when she looked at magazines from the eighties she’d saved in an old red record player case. I could see her lips mouthing the words. She even named me after Demi and Bruce Willis’ first kid, Rumer. I’m just glad I was born before the third girl, the one Demi called Tallulah.
Somehow, we made out okay those first twelve years. Welfare took away my baby brother, Emilio, when I was seven, but let me stay with my mother ‘cause I was pretty good at fooling people into thinking she could take care of me. I went to school every day, in clean if used-up clothes. I got good enough marks to move up to the next grade every spring. I made sure Jessie showed up at school or at the church once in a while, watched what she wore outside, and chased her home from her stopping places before midnight. You might think I mean bars by that, but lots of times I found her swinging in the playground or sitting on that low wall over by the Peasley’s garden. Lots of people knew Jessie Simcoe—that’s my mother’s whole name—couldn’t take care of a guinea pig much less a kid, but they probably also knew firsthand what happened to kids in foster care. So no one said anything. And I was doing all right mostly—even if I didn’t have any friends or much money to spend on things. I could live with that easy. I could do that with my eyes shut.
I was still in middle-school when I met Ric. Eighth grade. This is exactly how it happened: I was coming home from school the way I always did, just passing the convenience store at the corner of Walnut Street and Fifth and wishing I had enough money for a bag of those Cape Cod potato chips when I saw Ric coming out through the glass doors. He was about to put a cigarette in his mouth, but when he saw me he put it behind his ear instead and squinted, shading his eyes with his hand. That was about the first time I remember anyone really taking notice of me. He stopped flat in his tracks, taking me in. I kept right on going though, wondering if he still was watching me. I figured he was about eighteen, though it turned out Ric was twenty-five then. He never exactly said he was younger than he was; I just believed it. I saw him again the next day except this time, he said, “We’ve gotta stop meeting like this,” which made me laugh though I tried to swallow most of it down. I knew enough not to take up with strange men on the street. That’s a good way of ending up in the Children’s Home or, even worse, at that place for girls that get knocked up or flunk out of the tough love class at the high school.
The third time I saw him was about three days later ‘cause the weekend came up about then and got in the way. Ric was already out in the street that Monday, leaning against his car, a little red Contour, when I passed by. He did a little dance and I stopped dead, probably with my big mouth open.
“Name’s Ric with no K,” he said. But I misheard him and thought he said, “Name’s Ric. Okay?”
“It’s okay with me,” I said back, shrugging. He laughed. And that’s how we met finally. Ric thought I was making a joke and really, I just hadn’t heard him right.
It turned out there was no K in Ric because his real name was Ricardo not Richard. He was short and awful skinny with dark hair and even darker eyes. I thought he was pretty nice-looking but I’m nearly the only one who ever did. That’s why it was good we found each other that day. No one took a shine to either of us before that day. We about made each other up.
Neither of us was too good at talking. I noticed that right off. We kind of wiggled around by his car and laughed at nothing till Ric lit a cigarette and offered me a drag. I’d been smoking since I was ten—anytime Jessie had money to buy her Salems I took a few. Ric never smoked the same brand twice. He said it was like buying the same candy bar every time. I took the drag he offered me and made the smoke go up my nose. I had practiced that at home enough to be pretty good at it. Ric laughed and said he guessed I could keep the cigarette for myself after that stunt. He lit another one and we mostly just smoked cigarettes and watched the cars go in and out of the lot.
I started counting those cars in my head, the way I always do, but kept that information to myself. Nobody needs to know I count everything that can be counted. Cars turning into a lot, the number of people waiting in line, the number of chairs in a room. It’s a real bad habit but I need to keep track of things, otherwise they get away from me. Distracting, the counselor they sent me to said. Anyway, the lot was busy with people buying stuff for dinner. About five minutes later, Pastor Wilkins from the church I sometimes dragged Jessie to pulled into the lot and I took off, hoping he hadn’t spotted me. Pastor Wilkins’ church is kind of strict but it’s the closest one to our apartment and we never did get a car since Jessie don’t drive. I think if she did, she would drive till she hit the Atlantic Ocean and still keep on going.
Ric and I met up quite a bit after that and soon we even found some subjects to talk about. The DA said later, he was reeling me in by then, but it wasn’t really like that. We just played music, and talked, and smoked cigarettes. Ric never tried to get me to drink or smoke weed. And he didn’t try to kiss me. Not for a long time. By the time he did, I wanted him to, had been thinking about him doing that and more every night. Putting my own hands where his would soon be. So one day we just started kissing and it felt like something we should have been doing all along. It was like falling off the bank into Tyson’s pond for the first time each summer. When that water flowed over you, nothing ever felt so good. I want to do more than just kissing right away—even if doing stuff made me a slut like some people might say. I wanted him to pour into and over me. I wanted to carry him inside me like he was my baby and my boyfriend all at once. I bet nobody in that courtroom wanted to hear that but that’s how it was. For me, at least. Before Ric, I only had mama and that wasn’t enough cause of how she was.
Ric made his living doing favors for a man named Mr. Nerone, who owned a club ‘cross the river. That’s what Ric always called it—doing favors—not working for him. Favors like picking up Mr. Nerone’s laundry, chauffeuring him around town, picking up money from people who owed him. One time Ric was waiting for me in a navy-blue Cadillac. That was the car used for driving Mr. Nerone around town. Ric made me sit on a towel to keep the seat clean, but it was still nice.
Mr. Nerone was a pretty important man; I could tell that from how twitchy Ric was when he had just been to see him or was planning to go. In my mind, I pictured him as big, but when I finally saw Mr. Nerone, he was a tiny man: fat, with piggy blue eyes, and smelling of some old cologne. Mr. Nerone had a regular guy named Tommy who drove him most places, but Ric was the backup driver and fixin’ to be number one some day.
After a while, it seemed like a good idea not to hang around that 7-Eleven store all the time so we drove around when Ric had enough gas. Or else we sat in the car next to the rinky-dink airport our town has and watched planes come and go. Not many did, but I counted them, of course. Ric caught me doing it once in a while, but he didn’t mind. He said there were a couple of weird things he did too, though he wouldn’t say what.
One day, we were sitting there doing nothing when Ric asked me if I wanted to make a little money. “You just have to go into the bathroom at that gas station over on Birch and wait till a lady shows up with a package.” I didn’t much like the sound of hanging around in a bathroom, but Ric said he’d be right outside and it would definitely be a woman who came in with the package. Finally, I agreed, but I was kind of mad with Ric for a minute or two that day. It was the same nasty bathroom for men or ladies so why couldn’t he wait in there himself? Truthfully, I was scared that some man might come in and show me his thing. This had happened to a few girls at school in public bathrooms, and, once on a bus, Sheri Mason once had to hold a man’s thing till he rang the bell to get off. “He got off in more ways than one,” Sheri told us the next day, making a face.
I don’t think it really was a woman who came in either. She was too big and her voice wasn’t right though she didn’t say much. She was wearing a peacocky-blue dress like she’d just been to dinner at a fancy restaurant and wore makeup and nail polish and lots of heavy gold jewelry that rattled when she walked. Before I could take her all in, she was gone and the package was in my hand. After I gave Ric the package, he peeked inside, smiled, and then he gave me $10. “Not bad for ten minutes’ work,” he said, trying to get past it. When I didn’t smile or say anything at all, he added, “I hate sulky women.” So I had to stop being a big baby. I sure wasn’t gonna give Ric up over something like that so I put my head to the grindstone and made Ric forget what he had called me.
There were other days Ric asked me to do things. None of them were sex things like the D.A. said though. Not unless you count letting his friend, Pico, go to third base on me for his birthday. Pico was eighteen and he had never been with a girl. Ric said it was the best present we could give him and it hardly bothered me at all. It didn’t even take five minutes before he was finished. And I knew Ric was standing outside if Pico tried anything more, but he didn’t. Pico just got a shit-eating grin on his face when he opened the car door afterwards. Then we all split a pizza and never once talked about it.
The thing that finally got us in trouble happened because of my mother. Ric had asked to meet her a million times. I wasn’t too keen on it though. You never knew what she’d be like from day to day, but usually she was pretty much out of it. I really didn’t know why he wanted to meet her so much. I never met his family; he claimed he didn’t have none when I asked. The D.A. had some things to say about all this, but that guy was always trying to make Ric look bad and me look stupid.
I finally brought Ric home to meet Jessie in March. It was one of her better days. She was only a few years older than Ric and they knew some of the same people from high school since she had fallen behind and never did graduate in the end. She wore her best pair of jeans and her hair was fixed up pretty good though she was always prone to sticking something in it. That day, she had stuck in a pinwheel. I don’t even know where Jessie found things like pinwheels. When was the last time you saw one? But wandering around the way she did, she found some wondrous things and stacked them up all over the apartment. Once in a while, I would get rid of some of the smellier or dirtier stuff, but the pile grew up again like she watered it at night. You’d think Jessie’d come across something valuable from time to time, but if she did, she hid those items away. The piles I saw were the same things you saw in trash cans at the park: broken toys, candle stubs, empty food and wine containers, discarded magazines, dirty combs, torn clothing, a lost glove. So the pinwheel was a pretty good find for her.
Ric went out after we’d all talked for a while and brought back takeout from the Summer Palace Restaurant and I found out that day that my mother knows how to use chopsticks. I couldn’t figure them out no matter how hard I tried. Ric held one in each hand and stabbed his food, which made us laugh. After we were done, Jessie washed all six chopsticks and I knew where I’d see them next time I looked. That was one of the best nights we ever had. Later, we watched an old movie called Stripes with Bill Murray and drank a liter of Diet Coke and ate a jumbo-sized bag of Cheetos between us. When I fell asleep, Jessie and Ric were still looking through her high school yearbook, which I didn’t even know she had. Ric said later it was somebody else’s yearbook—from some other high school in some other state, but that makes it even better to me. Maybe my mother even walked over to that other state to get it. Jessie could walk farther than anyone I ever met as long as she was going forward. Anyway, it was nice to fall asleep with the sound of my mother and boyfriend laughing in the next room. It felt real normal. Later people would say they did more than just talk but I don’t believe it.
Ric came over a couple more times after that, but Jessie was never that good again. On her worst days, she just rambled on about movie stars and old TV shows that no one else even remembered. But that’s why we lived as good as we did. She got a check each month from the State and a little more money from the County. For being half-crazy. We could stretch that money into a life for us if nothing bad happened.
Ric was nice about it though and never said anything mean to her. And when she fell asleep in her armchair, we could have sex in her bedroom instead of in the car. That part worked out real good. Even though the sheets were gritty and the window bled cold air right in on us, we didn’t mind ‘cause we could be naked there instead of half or more dressed—like in the car. I kept telling Ric, he could spend the night, that Jessie wouldn’t notice or care, but he wouldn’t do it, not ever. Once he was finally spent, he always left in a hurry, barely remembering to kiss me goodbye.
Next comes the hardest part to tell right. My grandmother, who lived down in Kentucky, had died two years before and left us some money from selling her house. It was a lot of money— about ten thousand dollars. Granny’s lawyer made Jessie put it in the bank, telling us to keep it for a rainy day. When Ric was fooling around in her room one day, he found her bankbook in an old purse and asked me about it.
“You know I could invest that money and double or triple it in no time,” he said. I must have I looked like I didn’t believe him because Ric got all huffy and said, “You know, Mr. Nerone has a guy that does nothing but make money for him.” I believed him more after he said that ‘cause I had seen that navy-blue Cadillac and the kind of clothes Mr. Nerone wore. It wasn’t hard talking my mother into it either; it was raining outside and she marched right down the bank, got that money out and handed it over to him. He gave us an IOU, which Jessie fastened to the fridge with a Strawberry Shortcake magnet.
A month or two later, Jessie got a letter from her half-brother in Kentucky saying didn’t we want to put a headstone on Granny’s grave? Once I explained it, Jessie decided she really did want to do that and while she was at it, she wanted to send a gift to Coco Arquette, Courtney Cox’s new baby. Jessie had been a real fan of Courtney Cox since she saw her climb up on the stage with Bruce Springsteen in that Dancing in the Dark video
“Just get me two thousand dollars of the money for the headstone and Coco Arquette and let the rest keep growing,” Jessie decided. “I can get something nice for both of them with that.” She was sitting in the chair, looking at a catalogue from the Target store when I left.
I couldn’t find Ric that day, nor the one after that. I knew where his house was ‘cause he had to pick something up there once and he made me wait in the car. I took a bus up there twice a day for the next three days. But he was never home. I could tell that from a distance ‘cause the mail was making the door hang open and his Ford Contour was gone. Ric had disappeared like this before so I wasn’t the least bit worried except Jessie kept dogging me. She had forgotten about the headstone already but she had a bunch of stuff picked out for that Coco Arquette. Stuff that even I knew no rich lady’s kid would wear or want.
“I’ll go up and get it tomorrow,” I told her, figuring Ric would be home by then. “And maybe we can even have a party—like we did that one time.”
Jessie’s face lit up. “Chinese food,” she remembered. She looked around wildly, and I know she was worrying about those darned chopsticks. I had to throw them away after she gnawed the red paint off one end.
“Maybe we’ll buy some other kind of food this time,” I said. “How about Mexican? We’ll bring it home after I get him. Burritos,” I reminded her, not sure if she knew what Mexican food was. She nodded, but I still wasn’t sure she knew much about Mexican food when we both favored Chinese. Mostly we ate pasta and rice with stuff like okra, corn and black-eyed peas thrown on top. Sometimes we threw a piece of bacon on or some scrappy sausage. Usually it was mostly ketchup and beans.
I took the bus to Ric’s place again. It had gotten real dark, like it might start to rain and I didn’t have an umbrella. I’m not fussy about much, but I hate to get wet and all the kidding in the world about me melting won’t change it. I hurried up the street. Ric’s door was shut tight this time, the mail gone. His car stood on the street but sometimes he took Mr. Nerone’s car so I wasn’t sure if he was home or not. I knocked for ten minutes but nobody answered. Finally some old man from next door came out and screamed at me to go away—that I was disturbing his sick wife and his old dog. I could hear the dog howling so I left after a bit. A dog howling means a storm.
I didn’t have any money just then so I couldn’t go and get Jessie any tacos. I came home empty-handed as usual. Or to where our home used to be because the house wasn’t there. All that was left of our house was some smoky, burnt boards, electrical wiring, a few old pipes and a sink, and some pieces of metal and furniture that hardly looked like furniture at all. Our refrigerator looked like someone had taken an axe to it. Jessie’s bed, an iron stead, was black where one it was golden. The chimney was propped up like a drunken man on the porch next door. What was left of our one-time house smelled twice as bad as the processing plant south of town. It wasn’t just the smell of fire but of chemicals mixing in with it. That yellow tape you see on TV kept me from going inside.
“This your house?” a policeman asked, stopping me when I tried to duck under the tape. I nodded. “Looks like someone burned it down,” he said, half-scolding and half- feeling sorry for me. “Your mama a smoker?”
I nodded. “But she never smokes inside. She had a cousin died that way.” I looked around, feeling sick to death. “Where is she?”
He didn’t answer me. “How do you think this happened if she doesn’t smoke? Who would have burned down your house? Do you have any enemies?”
While I was thinking about that, the neighbor lady walked over and said, “I saw Jessie lighting candles all over the house. Like she was getting ready for a party. Twitting about like some damned fairy.” She started to laugh but stopped herself when she saw that cop’s face. I wanted to tell that lady to be quiet ‘cause she made it sound like Jessie was crazy, not like she was just getting ready for Mexican food and having Ric over again.
“I could see inside real good,” the old witch explained. “Cause it was getting so dark with the storm coming. I could see her flitting around from one room to the next, her long white skirt catching the draft from time to time.”
I started shaking my head. I knew that skirt she was talking about but where would Jessie get all those candles? And then I remembered those piles of junk and the dollar store in town that had closed down a week or two ago. “Where’s my mother?” I asked again.
“Why, she’s at the hospital,” the neighbor lady said. “They took her there in an ambulance.” The cop grabbed my arm just in time.
Jessie didn’t die that night, but I never did see her face again because they had so much ointment and other stuff covering it. “Was it those dollar store candles?” I asked her more than once, but she didn’t say a word or move a muscle. I don’t know why I kept fixin’ on those candles. It was all I could think to say with her under that gauze. I couldn’t pick up her hand, or touch her at all. I just stood there and talked about candles, the nurses, one black and one white, lookin’ at me like I was brain dead instead of Jessie.
After that they took me to the children’s home and started looking for Ric. I had to tell them about him—just too many things came back on him. I never thought they would blame him for any of it. I didn’t see how they could. It was Jessie who burned the house down after all.
They did though ‘cause they heard lots of other bad stuff in my story. The D.A. said all Jessie’s money was gone as far as they could tell. Ric used it up in the first few days after I gave it to him though no one ever said how. They also said he had raped me and hired me out as a whore and a drug courier. Lots of other bad stuff too. The biggest lie that D.A. told was that Ric had also slept with my mother and that was why Jessie got dressed up and lit candles all over the house. She was dreaming of her lover.
The first time the D.A. said that I wasn’t in the courtroom but two people told me at school ‘cause I guess it was in the newspaper. That was about the worst thing anyone ever said to me. Even if I know it’s not true. I didn’t believe anything they said after that. Maybe Ric used Jessie’s money for a little while, but he would have paid it back. I’m sure of it.
The love that we had for those four months was real—the realest thing I ever knew. I think when Ric gets out we will be together again, maybe have a place of our own. I just wish Ric had looked at me once when he passed out of the courtroom. Maybe he didn’t even recognize me after all this time. My hair’s a lot longer. Mrs. Roney says it might be because I’m practically a woman now. If I am, no one can tell us we can’t be together. I’m counting on that.
About the Author:
Patricia Abbott has published literary and crime fiction in publications such as Spinetingler, Demolition, Hardluck Stories, Thuglit, Murdaland, Shots, and Shred of Evidence. She lives and works in Detroit and is working on a novel.
Short Story: IN THE DITCH by Patrick Shawn Bagley
Randy Buzzell waited to come up out of the ditch until the mail carrier’s Subaru wagon disappeared over the hill. He’d been squatting there on a hummock of boggy ground just behind a stand of cedar saplings, about six feet down from the hot top, swatting at blackflies for the better part of an hour. These must have been some kind of mutant blackflies, because Ben’s 100 did not bother them. It was his second attempt, his second afternoon spent with wet feet and bug-bitten skin. Today he’d worn a flannel shirt with the sleeves buttoned down, but the bugs still got at him; the money had damn well better be worth all the sweating and itching. Randy jumped over the trickle of yellow-brown water along the bottom of the ditch and, crouching low as he could, climbed to the shoulder of the road.
Old lady Viles’ big rusty mailbox sat atop a cedar post across the road from her house. Randy stayed down behind it, waiting to see if she would come right out. The check her son always sent her was a day late, and she’d be anxious to get it. Randy sure as hell was. But she might not come out right away. Maybe Mrs. Viles was taking a nap. Maybe she had the TV or radio on and hadn’t heard the mailman. She had not seen him yesterday; there’d only been a reminder from her doctor’s office, so he’d opened and closed the box fast and slunk back into the woods. He had a plan in case she came out and caught him: Randy would say he was down here checking out the fiddleheads, seeing if they were ready to be picked. But the more he went over the plan the dumber it sounded. No, not dumb. Simple. Keep it simple, that was the idea.
He’d heard a couple of old bluehairs gossiping in the IGA the week before, talking about how Mrs. Viles couldn’t afford her mortgage. She was too proud to let her son pay it directly, but her good boy mailed her a check the first of every month. So old Mrs. High-and-Mighty Viles couldn’t make ends meet. Served her right. Sometimes when Randy was hard up for beer money, he would cut her grass, but she always complained he’d done a lousy job. What did she expect for ten bucks?
Ruth Viles was a tough little woman who’d spent her whole life on farms. But now her husband was dead, her children grown and moved away, her land all sold but the couple of acres her house was on and another couple just across the road. She couldn’t afford hired help and she couldn’t do the work by herself, so the cows and pigs were all long gone. She kept a few chickens, and a nasty little rooster Randy could hear every morning at his place, up the hill. And poor as she was, the old lady still looked at Randy like he was trash.
Maybe Mrs. Viles was right. Maybe he really was trash. What kind of guy stole money from an old woman, even if she was mean as hell? But when you borrowed twelve hundred bucks from Stony Pelletier, you paid him back on time or his guys took it out of your hide.
Randy squinted, trying to see movement behind the lacy white curtains. Nothing. He waited a few seconds more, then rose up and stepped around to open the mailbox. Sweat dripped off his forehead and spattered on paper as he rifled through the mail: a Reny’s flier, a postcard from Canada, National Geographic, something from the AARP. There it was, an envelope with Bruce Viles’ name at the top of the return address. The check. Had to be. Randy folded the envelope in thirds and slid it into the front pocket of his jeans. He would take the check home and, with a few pieces of Scotch tape and some of Tammy’s nail polish remover, wash the old lady’s name right off it. Tammy was at work and she’d never have to know. Even if the money wasn’t enough to cover the whole debt, Stony would get off Randy’s ass for a while, give him time to find the rest.
“Here! What are you doing with my mail?”
Randy turned around and smiled. “Mrs. Viles, you didn’t have to come all the way out here. I saw the mailman drive off and figured I’d bring it in for you. I ain’t in any hurry to see my own mail. Nothing but bills anyway. Phew, it’s some hot today, ain’t it?”
She stood just the other side of the road, leaning on the cane she did not really need, since she could walk faster and steadier than any other old fart Randy knew. Now he knew she could be sneaky, too.
“Of course you’re hot. You’re wearing a flannel shirt and the thermometer on my porch reads eighty degrees. A man with any kind of sense would walk around in short sleeves today. Never mind that awful beard. I don’t know why you want to look like a lumberjack, you never did a decent day’s work in your life.” She reached out with a liver-spotted hand as Randy stepped toward her across the two-lane. “Come on then, give me my mail.”
Randy handed it over and she shuffled through it. He said, “That National Geographic’s a good magazine. My dad used to get it.”
“Your late father used to do a lot of things. I wasn’t aware reading was one of them. No, no, no. It’s still not here. Are you sure you got it all out of the box?”
Randy ignored the dig on his father. If he was going to talk his way out of this, he didn’t dare piss the old bag off any further. “That’s all there was, Mrs. Viles. Was you expecting something else?”
She tucked the mail under her arm and gave him that look she always did, one eyebrow raised up and her mouth set tight. Together, they crossed over to the mailbox. Randy yanked it open it and they both looked inside.
“See? I told you I got all your mail,” Randy said.
She turned around and looked up at his face. “You got it all right.”
“Now what’s that supposed to mean?”
“You took my check.”
Randy scratched at his beard. “Huh?”
“I expect you hear well enough. You have the check my son Bruce sent me. I loaned him some money and he’s been paying me back a little every month. It didn’t come yesterday, so I called Bruce and he said he mailed it Thursday. You took it.”
“I didn’t either.”
Mrs. Viles raised her cane and tapped Randy on the chest. “Don’t try that innocent look on me. That’s the trouble with all you Buzzells, every one a liar and none of you any good at it.”
Randy stepped back toward the middle of the road. He held up his hands. “Look, Mrs. Viles, you don’t have to get ugly about it. I never done nothing to you. The only reason I even came down here was to take a look at your fiddleheads. They grow real good down in that low boggy spot, and I was going to offer to pick them all for you if I could keep a couple pounds. That’s all. I saw the mailman stop, so I thought as long as I had to go to your house to talk to you anyway, I might as well bring your mail. Save you the walk, you know? And you call me a thief. What would I do with a check made out to you anyway?”
The old lady dropped her magazine and junk mail on the shoulder and raised her cane like a baseball bat. It was light but looked strong. Aluminum or titanium or something like that. Whatever it was made out of, Randy didn’t want it going upside his head.
She said, “There’s ways of changing the name on a check, and I bet you know every one. You’d cash my check and buy drugs or booze with it. Buzzells. Where’s your bucket if you were picking fiddleheads?”
“I didn’t bring it. I said I just came down to look.”
Mrs. Viles whacked him the elbow with the cane. It wasn’t much of a blow, more like a warning.
Randy said, “I ain’t got your Christless check.”
She pulled back the cane like she was winding up for a good one, but then she whipped it down and jabbed the road. “All right, mister man. We’ll see what the sheriff has to say about it.”
Randy felt his scalp prickling. He’d had his share of trouble with the police: some fights at the Solon Hotel—fights he never started, but sure as hell finished. And there was that one time he got busted on an OUI. Thirty days in the county jail; Tammy had almost dumped him over that. Getting caught messing around with the mail, though? That was like a federal offense or something. And here he was with the old lady’s check in his pocket, and her about to sic the cops on his ass.
Mrs. Viles tried to go around him, but Randy sidestepped in front of her. She swung the cane against Randy’s leg, banging it off his knee. He grabbed her by the elbows and half-lifted, half-pushed her backwards toward the mailbox. She kept whacking Randy in the knee, but couldn’t get enough room for a good hard swing.
“Listen to me,” Randy said. “Quit it and listen. I’ll give you the check back. Just don’t call the cops, all right?”
Mrs. Viles kept right on hitting him. She shook her head, not even looking at him anymore. “Prison! You’re going to prison. It’s where all you Buzzells belong. Cheating on welfare and breeding like rabbits while my husband worked himself into an early grave.”
“Goddamn it, you shut up now.”
“Stinking pack of thieves.”
“Shut up.”
The cane got tangled up between Randy’s legs and he stumbled forward. He put his arms out in front of him to block his fall, but he still had hold of the old lady. Randy let go of Mrs. Viles, who let go of the cane and tumbled backwards into the ditch. She didn’t scream or cry for help, just went right down ass over teakettle.
Randy skinned his left hand when he hit the ground, and both his knees felt like he had torn some hide off them. He didn’t have time to look. He scrambled around on one hip, strewing the old lady’s precious mail all over the place, and slid feet-first down into the ditch. Mrs. Viles lay there on her back in the mucky little brook. Her eyes were open and her mouth was moving, but Randy couldn’t hear what she was trying to say. Maybe she was in shock. Didn’t people mumble like that if they were in shock? She had one arm stretched out away from her side and bent at a weird angle.
A car came down the hill. Randy turned around to watch it, a red four-door of some kind with a fat woman at the wheel. She stopped right across from Randy and leaned out the window. What could she see from over there? No way she could help but see the mail spread out all over the road, the state of Randy’s clothes and the sweat rolling down his face. But could she see old lady Viles down in the ditch? She might have been able to when she was still coming down the hill and the angle was different. It would have been hard not to see the yellow blouse and blue slacks against the greens and browns.
“You all right?” the fat woman said. Randy smelled her perfume from clear across the road. She was probably in her forties, but he had always had a hard time guessing a fat girl’s age.
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
The woman craned her neck, trying to see past him. “Somebody hurt down there?”
Randy rubbed his bleeding hand against his jeans. “Mrs. Viles. She’s an old lady. A pulp truck came blasting by while we were getting her mail. Didn’t slow down or nothing. I got us out the way, but I tripped on her cane and we fell.”
The woman unbuckled her seatbelt, shoved it out of the way. “Can she move?”
“She’s hurt pretty bad.” Randy waved her off, but she came over anyway and looked down at the old lady. She took a couple of hesitant steps on the soft shoulder, like she was going down to help. Randy grabbed her arm. “Watch it. You almost fell down there right next to her.”
She nodded and backed away, her face flushed and her eyes tearing up. “We got to do something.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jen.”
“You got a cell phone with you, Jen? No? Well, that’s Mrs. Viles’ house right there. Go on in and call 911. I’ll stay here with her. I know First Aid.”
Jen crossed the lawn as fast as she could waddle. Mrs. Viles groaned in the ditch. Randy got down next to her. “You’ve never been in trouble like me. You don’t understand how much I needed that money. The bank would have let you slide a month. But me? I’m going to get my legs broke, or maybe even killed, all because of you.”
She scowled. “Call the cops,” she said. “I’ll call the cops. Call the cops.”
“You shut up now,” Randy said. He took her by the shoulders and flipped her over onto her stomach. Mrs. Viles squealed as her broken arm swung around, but the sound was cut off when Randy pushed her face into the muddy trickle. She didn’t even thrash much, just scratched at the ground a little with her good hand. Maybe the fall had taken all the fight out of her. Randy held her there as long as he dared. The Good Samaritan would be back any second. How long could it take a rotten old woman to drown anyway?
Randy rolled Mrs. Viles onto her back. Mud and grass clung to her lips and teeth, clogged her nose. He leaned down so his ear was over her mouth, but didn’t hear any breath. He couldn’t see her bony little chest move, either. At least her eyes were closed so she couldn’t give him that look. Even dead, her eyes would have held that look, like she was better than any Buzzell. Randy took off his flannel shirt and wiped her face with it, then dropped it next to her. Without the shirt, the sweat on his back and arms turned cold. Blackflies crawled on his chest and he did not bother to slap them.
The check. That had to go, in case they got suspicious and searched him. Randy took out the envelope and smoothed it against his leg. His hand left a dirty streak along the front. That didn’t matter much, because the three creases would still show no matter how much he tried to flatten it again. Not to mention his fingerprints all over it. With all the folding and unfolding, the envelope’s flap had come open. Randy looked inside. Five hundred and eighty bucks. Jesus H. Christ, it would only have been enough for Stony to give him another couple weeks’ grace. Now he was not even going to get that.
Randy wadded it into a ball, opened it back up a little bit and dropped it into the brook. He moved Mrs. Viles’ foot so it looked like she’d been holding the envelope when she fell and, in all the tumbling, landed on it. Maybe the water would get rid of his fingerprints too, but maybe it wouldn’t. The cops had all this CSI stuff now, even in Maine. But they’d probably have to send it away to Augusta or Portland. That took time, and time was what he needed. Randy stood up and climbed out of the ditch.
Jen came out of the house and chugged back, sweating worse than Randy. She stared at his bare chest and cocked her head to one side, like she was thinking. “There’s police and an ambulance coming, but it’ll take like five or ten minutes. How’s Mrs. Viles?”
Randy stayed in front of the fat girl, so she could not see into the ditch. He shook his head and looked at his sneakers. Jen looked ready to throw up.
“There wasn’t nothing I could do,” Randy said.
“I’m going to pull my car into the dooryard. The 911 lady wanted to know if you got the guy’s license number. She said you could give it when the cops get here.” She turned away, fishing around in her purse.
Randy knelt to pick up the old lady’s mail, giving a reason for his fingerprints being all over it in case the cops checked. The cane lay there near his feet. “No, I didn’t see his plates. I was too busy getting us out of the way.”
A cough. Randy heard a cough behind him, a ragged, gagging hack of a cough. He dropped the mail. Down in the ditch, Mrs. Viles cried for the sheriff. Randy’s balls shrank up into his body and the skin along his chest prickled. Jen paused with her car key in the ignition and gave Randy a look. When Mrs. Viles coughed again, the fat woman heaved herself back out of the car. Randy grabbed the cane and stood up, waiting. No way was he going to prison.
About the Author:
Patrick Shawn Bagley is a big grouchy hick who lives in a one-stoplight town in central Maine. He is the editor of Wicked: An Anthology of Maine Mystery and Crime Fiction and one of the co-editors of Mugshots e-zine. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in CrimeSpree Magazine, The Iconoclast, Animus and other journals.
Old lady Viles’ big rusty mailbox sat atop a cedar post across the road from her house. Randy stayed down behind it, waiting to see if she would come right out. The check her son always sent her was a day late, and she’d be anxious to get it. Randy sure as hell was. But she might not come out right away. Maybe Mrs. Viles was taking a nap. Maybe she had the TV or radio on and hadn’t heard the mailman. She had not seen him yesterday; there’d only been a reminder from her doctor’s office, so he’d opened and closed the box fast and slunk back into the woods. He had a plan in case she came out and caught him: Randy would say he was down here checking out the fiddleheads, seeing if they were ready to be picked. But the more he went over the plan the dumber it sounded. No, not dumb. Simple. Keep it simple, that was the idea.
He’d heard a couple of old bluehairs gossiping in the IGA the week before, talking about how Mrs. Viles couldn’t afford her mortgage. She was too proud to let her son pay it directly, but her good boy mailed her a check the first of every month. So old Mrs. High-and-Mighty Viles couldn’t make ends meet. Served her right. Sometimes when Randy was hard up for beer money, he would cut her grass, but she always complained he’d done a lousy job. What did she expect for ten bucks?
Ruth Viles was a tough little woman who’d spent her whole life on farms. But now her husband was dead, her children grown and moved away, her land all sold but the couple of acres her house was on and another couple just across the road. She couldn’t afford hired help and she couldn’t do the work by herself, so the cows and pigs were all long gone. She kept a few chickens, and a nasty little rooster Randy could hear every morning at his place, up the hill. And poor as she was, the old lady still looked at Randy like he was trash.
Maybe Mrs. Viles was right. Maybe he really was trash. What kind of guy stole money from an old woman, even if she was mean as hell? But when you borrowed twelve hundred bucks from Stony Pelletier, you paid him back on time or his guys took it out of your hide.
Randy squinted, trying to see movement behind the lacy white curtains. Nothing. He waited a few seconds more, then rose up and stepped around to open the mailbox. Sweat dripped off his forehead and spattered on paper as he rifled through the mail: a Reny’s flier, a postcard from Canada, National Geographic, something from the AARP. There it was, an envelope with Bruce Viles’ name at the top of the return address. The check. Had to be. Randy folded the envelope in thirds and slid it into the front pocket of his jeans. He would take the check home and, with a few pieces of Scotch tape and some of Tammy’s nail polish remover, wash the old lady’s name right off it. Tammy was at work and she’d never have to know. Even if the money wasn’t enough to cover the whole debt, Stony would get off Randy’s ass for a while, give him time to find the rest.
“Here! What are you doing with my mail?”
Randy turned around and smiled. “Mrs. Viles, you didn’t have to come all the way out here. I saw the mailman drive off and figured I’d bring it in for you. I ain’t in any hurry to see my own mail. Nothing but bills anyway. Phew, it’s some hot today, ain’t it?”
She stood just the other side of the road, leaning on the cane she did not really need, since she could walk faster and steadier than any other old fart Randy knew. Now he knew she could be sneaky, too.
“Of course you’re hot. You’re wearing a flannel shirt and the thermometer on my porch reads eighty degrees. A man with any kind of sense would walk around in short sleeves today. Never mind that awful beard. I don’t know why you want to look like a lumberjack, you never did a decent day’s work in your life.” She reached out with a liver-spotted hand as Randy stepped toward her across the two-lane. “Come on then, give me my mail.”
Randy handed it over and she shuffled through it. He said, “That National Geographic’s a good magazine. My dad used to get it.”
“Your late father used to do a lot of things. I wasn’t aware reading was one of them. No, no, no. It’s still not here. Are you sure you got it all out of the box?”
Randy ignored the dig on his father. If he was going to talk his way out of this, he didn’t dare piss the old bag off any further. “That’s all there was, Mrs. Viles. Was you expecting something else?”
She tucked the mail under her arm and gave him that look she always did, one eyebrow raised up and her mouth set tight. Together, they crossed over to the mailbox. Randy yanked it open it and they both looked inside.
“See? I told you I got all your mail,” Randy said.
She turned around and looked up at his face. “You got it all right.”
“Now what’s that supposed to mean?”
“You took my check.”
Randy scratched at his beard. “Huh?”
“I expect you hear well enough. You have the check my son Bruce sent me. I loaned him some money and he’s been paying me back a little every month. It didn’t come yesterday, so I called Bruce and he said he mailed it Thursday. You took it.”
“I didn’t either.”
Mrs. Viles raised her cane and tapped Randy on the chest. “Don’t try that innocent look on me. That’s the trouble with all you Buzzells, every one a liar and none of you any good at it.”
Randy stepped back toward the middle of the road. He held up his hands. “Look, Mrs. Viles, you don’t have to get ugly about it. I never done nothing to you. The only reason I even came down here was to take a look at your fiddleheads. They grow real good down in that low boggy spot, and I was going to offer to pick them all for you if I could keep a couple pounds. That’s all. I saw the mailman stop, so I thought as long as I had to go to your house to talk to you anyway, I might as well bring your mail. Save you the walk, you know? And you call me a thief. What would I do with a check made out to you anyway?”
The old lady dropped her magazine and junk mail on the shoulder and raised her cane like a baseball bat. It was light but looked strong. Aluminum or titanium or something like that. Whatever it was made out of, Randy didn’t want it going upside his head.
She said, “There’s ways of changing the name on a check, and I bet you know every one. You’d cash my check and buy drugs or booze with it. Buzzells. Where’s your bucket if you were picking fiddleheads?”
“I didn’t bring it. I said I just came down to look.”
Mrs. Viles whacked him the elbow with the cane. It wasn’t much of a blow, more like a warning.
Randy said, “I ain’t got your Christless check.”
She pulled back the cane like she was winding up for a good one, but then she whipped it down and jabbed the road. “All right, mister man. We’ll see what the sheriff has to say about it.”
Randy felt his scalp prickling. He’d had his share of trouble with the police: some fights at the Solon Hotel—fights he never started, but sure as hell finished. And there was that one time he got busted on an OUI. Thirty days in the county jail; Tammy had almost dumped him over that. Getting caught messing around with the mail, though? That was like a federal offense or something. And here he was with the old lady’s check in his pocket, and her about to sic the cops on his ass.
Mrs. Viles tried to go around him, but Randy sidestepped in front of her. She swung the cane against Randy’s leg, banging it off his knee. He grabbed her by the elbows and half-lifted, half-pushed her backwards toward the mailbox. She kept whacking Randy in the knee, but couldn’t get enough room for a good hard swing.
“Listen to me,” Randy said. “Quit it and listen. I’ll give you the check back. Just don’t call the cops, all right?”
Mrs. Viles kept right on hitting him. She shook her head, not even looking at him anymore. “Prison! You’re going to prison. It’s where all you Buzzells belong. Cheating on welfare and breeding like rabbits while my husband worked himself into an early grave.”
“Goddamn it, you shut up now.”
“Stinking pack of thieves.”
“Shut up.”
The cane got tangled up between Randy’s legs and he stumbled forward. He put his arms out in front of him to block his fall, but he still had hold of the old lady. Randy let go of Mrs. Viles, who let go of the cane and tumbled backwards into the ditch. She didn’t scream or cry for help, just went right down ass over teakettle.
Randy skinned his left hand when he hit the ground, and both his knees felt like he had torn some hide off them. He didn’t have time to look. He scrambled around on one hip, strewing the old lady’s precious mail all over the place, and slid feet-first down into the ditch. Mrs. Viles lay there on her back in the mucky little brook. Her eyes were open and her mouth was moving, but Randy couldn’t hear what she was trying to say. Maybe she was in shock. Didn’t people mumble like that if they were in shock? She had one arm stretched out away from her side and bent at a weird angle.
A car came down the hill. Randy turned around to watch it, a red four-door of some kind with a fat woman at the wheel. She stopped right across from Randy and leaned out the window. What could she see from over there? No way she could help but see the mail spread out all over the road, the state of Randy’s clothes and the sweat rolling down his face. But could she see old lady Viles down in the ditch? She might have been able to when she was still coming down the hill and the angle was different. It would have been hard not to see the yellow blouse and blue slacks against the greens and browns.
“You all right?” the fat woman said. Randy smelled her perfume from clear across the road. She was probably in her forties, but he had always had a hard time guessing a fat girl’s age.
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
The woman craned her neck, trying to see past him. “Somebody hurt down there?”
Randy rubbed his bleeding hand against his jeans. “Mrs. Viles. She’s an old lady. A pulp truck came blasting by while we were getting her mail. Didn’t slow down or nothing. I got us out the way, but I tripped on her cane and we fell.”
The woman unbuckled her seatbelt, shoved it out of the way. “Can she move?”
“She’s hurt pretty bad.” Randy waved her off, but she came over anyway and looked down at the old lady. She took a couple of hesitant steps on the soft shoulder, like she was going down to help. Randy grabbed her arm. “Watch it. You almost fell down there right next to her.”
She nodded and backed away, her face flushed and her eyes tearing up. “We got to do something.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jen.”
“You got a cell phone with you, Jen? No? Well, that’s Mrs. Viles’ house right there. Go on in and call 911. I’ll stay here with her. I know First Aid.”
Jen crossed the lawn as fast as she could waddle. Mrs. Viles groaned in the ditch. Randy got down next to her. “You’ve never been in trouble like me. You don’t understand how much I needed that money. The bank would have let you slide a month. But me? I’m going to get my legs broke, or maybe even killed, all because of you.”
She scowled. “Call the cops,” she said. “I’ll call the cops. Call the cops.”
“You shut up now,” Randy said. He took her by the shoulders and flipped her over onto her stomach. Mrs. Viles squealed as her broken arm swung around, but the sound was cut off when Randy pushed her face into the muddy trickle. She didn’t even thrash much, just scratched at the ground a little with her good hand. Maybe the fall had taken all the fight out of her. Randy held her there as long as he dared. The Good Samaritan would be back any second. How long could it take a rotten old woman to drown anyway?
Randy rolled Mrs. Viles onto her back. Mud and grass clung to her lips and teeth, clogged her nose. He leaned down so his ear was over her mouth, but didn’t hear any breath. He couldn’t see her bony little chest move, either. At least her eyes were closed so she couldn’t give him that look. Even dead, her eyes would have held that look, like she was better than any Buzzell. Randy took off his flannel shirt and wiped her face with it, then dropped it next to her. Without the shirt, the sweat on his back and arms turned cold. Blackflies crawled on his chest and he did not bother to slap them.
The check. That had to go, in case they got suspicious and searched him. Randy took out the envelope and smoothed it against his leg. His hand left a dirty streak along the front. That didn’t matter much, because the three creases would still show no matter how much he tried to flatten it again. Not to mention his fingerprints all over it. With all the folding and unfolding, the envelope’s flap had come open. Randy looked inside. Five hundred and eighty bucks. Jesus H. Christ, it would only have been enough for Stony to give him another couple weeks’ grace. Now he was not even going to get that.
Randy wadded it into a ball, opened it back up a little bit and dropped it into the brook. He moved Mrs. Viles’ foot so it looked like she’d been holding the envelope when she fell and, in all the tumbling, landed on it. Maybe the water would get rid of his fingerprints too, but maybe it wouldn’t. The cops had all this CSI stuff now, even in Maine. But they’d probably have to send it away to Augusta or Portland. That took time, and time was what he needed. Randy stood up and climbed out of the ditch.
Jen came out of the house and chugged back, sweating worse than Randy. She stared at his bare chest and cocked her head to one side, like she was thinking. “There’s police and an ambulance coming, but it’ll take like five or ten minutes. How’s Mrs. Viles?”
Randy stayed in front of the fat girl, so she could not see into the ditch. He shook his head and looked at his sneakers. Jen looked ready to throw up.
“There wasn’t nothing I could do,” Randy said.
“I’m going to pull my car into the dooryard. The 911 lady wanted to know if you got the guy’s license number. She said you could give it when the cops get here.” She turned away, fishing around in her purse.
Randy knelt to pick up the old lady’s mail, giving a reason for his fingerprints being all over it in case the cops checked. The cane lay there near his feet. “No, I didn’t see his plates. I was too busy getting us out of the way.”
A cough. Randy heard a cough behind him, a ragged, gagging hack of a cough. He dropped the mail. Down in the ditch, Mrs. Viles cried for the sheriff. Randy’s balls shrank up into his body and the skin along his chest prickled. Jen paused with her car key in the ignition and gave Randy a look. When Mrs. Viles coughed again, the fat woman heaved herself back out of the car. Randy grabbed the cane and stood up, waiting. No way was he going to prison.
About the Author:
Patrick Shawn Bagley is a big grouchy hick who lives in a one-stoplight town in central Maine. He is the editor of Wicked: An Anthology of Maine Mystery and Crime Fiction and one of the co-editors of Mugshots e-zine. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in CrimeSpree Magazine, The Iconoclast, Animus and other journals.
Short Story: MISSED CONNECTIONS by Kaylea Hiscall Champion
My throat tightens. She’s moving shyly along one side of the shop, a playful smile on her face, balancing her coffee and a muffin in one hand, clutching a red leather purse in the other. Her blond curls bob as she giggles and talks over her shoulder to the counter staff.
Angela. It has to be you. Your hair has never been curly before, but women are always changing their hair. You’re walking toward me. Of course. I’ll look up, our eyes will meet, you’ll smile, you'll pause. Oh, Angela!
But she keeps on walking.
I wait and wait. I wait four hours for her, trying to read a book to pass the time. But I couldn’t focus. I don’t even remember to turn the pages. I just keep staring at the little dance of ants across a crumbling sheet of paper. Where is she? I shove the book into my jacket so hard I could hear the seams straining.
I walk down the street, and I was just slipping into a sweet little vision of her warm soft hands curled around mine, her blond fluffy curls scattered around her face like a crown, and –
SCRRRREEEEECH – red car bright lights street sidewalk what the hell?!
Breathe. Nothing broken. I’m ok. What was that?
I shout at the car as it roars past – “Pedestrians have the goddamn right of way!” Some freaky chick in an orange junker had come inches away from running over my foot! The car tore away down the street as fast as it had come around the corner. An oval charm dangling from the rearview mirror swung from side to side, flashing in the streetlights.
I hurry home and sit upstairs in my chair, the hard wooden one by the window, tearing a small square out of the back of the newspaper. I bend over the ragged-edged paper and write very slowly and carefully, staining my fingers with ink. I’m not going to give those newspaper people any excuse to make mistakes this time. This one was going to work.
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Clark Street Coffee Shop, 12/9. You:
blueberry, mocha, and bouncy curls —
blue eyes, green sweater. Me: Cranberry,
auto-drip, flattop — dark eyes, black down
jacket. Our eyes locked, but I was too shy.
Coffee? Match #7345
---------------------------------------
I watch myself from ten feet in the air; watch myself turn further toward her. I cock my head, ever so slightly, towards the empty table next to mine. She doesn’t see the movement. It was so subtle. But somewhere in her brain, the gesture must have registered. A sign for ‘come this way’ has been projected – and she will come. She won't know why, but...oh, turned away. I give another little head-cock, a little less subtle. She doesn’t see it.
The table I chose for us is broad, so she can spread out a newspaper if she wants to read, and the purple velvet chair beside it is perfect for relaxing. Angela likes purple. She has a backpack with her this time – homework? Angela, when did you go back to school? The back of the chair I picked for you faces the fire. A fake, gas fire, but it projects warmth, and your scarf fringes are dripping with slush. It's just the table you'll like.
She’s just dithering around up there! Pointing at the menu, pretending to consider other options. Playing with me, pretending she can't decide. Just order the mocha, Angela. You always order the mocha. She talks to the guy in line behind her, the one who held the door for her and brushed the snow from her bangs.
Wonder what happened to her curls. Hair with darker streaks than before. That Angela, always messing with her style! Can't she see that she is perfect just as she is, just as she was before?
Two skinny vanilla lattes, blond and blonder, take a seat by the window. My stomach turns over, and my teeth hurt I’m clenching them so hard. I want to get up right then. I want to tell her to wake up, that it’s me. I want to tell him that she’s mine. But I can wait a little longer.
---------------------------------------
Clark Street Coffeeshop 12/16
Sky-blue scarf, purple pack, hair like
sunshine. Me — red cap, brown hair/eyes.
The guy you were with — brother, friend?
A star fell outside as we watched, you
rushed to the window. I talked about the
trajectory and acceleration, should have
asked for your number. The heavens adore
you, let me join them. Match #8142
---------------------------------------
I was late – she must be here already. I look around, but I can’t see her anywhere. I need to buy my coffee first, then I will belong here, and then I will be able to see her.
“Wouldyouliketotry our special Gingerbread Man Mocha? Plus a cookie, just $4.99 plustax.”
Pain shoots through my eyes as they roll up into my head. Why do freaks always work in coffee shops? And ALWAYS with the monotone voice. How could she eat with that thing in her tongue? Nasty. “Coffee, no damn room.”
I sit against the wall of windows, my breath snorting out in clouds as it strikes the frost-scrawled windowpane, staring at the condensation as it spreads and shrinks across the surface of the glass. I run my fingers over the place I marked for her in the table, grooving the varnish with her name. ANGELA.
I can see her easing her way into the seat, smiling and a little flustered with all her jackets and bags and useless outer layers, peeling away everything that separates us until she sits before me in a little tank top – pink, she likes pink, I’m sure she likes pink because she has to, doesn’t she? Yes, pink. Tank top. And then she was really there, just inches from me. She had tried to sneak past me, the clever minx. But no, I looked up in time. The tiniest of vibrations could alert me.
It is Angela. She’s plumper, shorter. But she is still Angela.
I wait, watch, wait. She sits down in a cushy chair on the opposite side of the shop. I’m such an idiot, I should have sat there, I should have known that she would want a comfortable chair after her long day, and here’s our table with only hard chairs beside it, no upholstery in sight.
I keep my eye on her, watching her little movements. When she is ready to leave, I know it as soon as she does. I stand up at the same time, and make it to the front door just a few steps before her. Perfect. Oh, it’s more perfect than perfect. I hold the door open for her, and then it is time. I am ready. I seem to slip on the ice under the awning, just a little, and bump her off-balance. But I won’t let her fall; I wouldn’t. I reach for her hand, but only skim her knuckles, managing to clutch only her sleeve. Soft, her hands are so soft.
I laugh a little at our predicament, and she responds with a genuine giggle, brimming with affection for me. My other hand is very quick. Her glove disappears into my pocket, and my book nestles itself deep into her open tote when I bend to retrieve it, apologizing for knocking it into the snow.
I put my arm across her back, to make sure that she was steady, to keep her warm a moment longer. But she must have somewhere to be – that Angela, always so busy! – and she rushes away. She glances back at me a few times, though – that’s how you know, when they glance back, that’s how you know for sure. And so I stand there in the cold, watching her walk away, my hand in my pocket, fingering her purple glove.
Contact.
---------------------------------------
LOST: Autographed copy of ‘Lords
Of Seleucia’. Inscribed to James from
the author. Great sentimental value.
Reward. Call 773-541-6232, leave msg.
---------------------------------------
No one calls me for three days. I don’t go out. I just stand at my window and wait. I am standing there, staring down at the street, when I see something that makes my blood boil. Dropkickable poodlething on a red leash. What do you know, a goth chick enslaved to a fluffy white dog. She'd better not let him on MY lawn. I pound on the window, pointing with one hand and drawing my other hand across my throat, except what I mean is that it’ll be his throat. Actions have consequences. She has to know that. Don't even try it. Wave your little baggie at me all you want, smirk, whatever. Everyone knows what you'd do if you weren't watched.
“Liketotrya sweet almond latte? Special today, $2.99 plustax.”
Did they THINK I wanted one? Did I ever order anything but coffee, black?
“They'regreatforwarming you up on a colddayliketoday. Regular price is $3.39. Youcansave ten percent!”
I conjure up the blankest, most baleful stare I possess.
Another cheerful voice rings in; the other counterbot is getting into the pitch now too, taking my irritated pause as a sign of indecision. “They're really good. Doubleshot espresso, steamed milk, good dose of syrup. Smothered in whipped cream...yum!”
Is that her coming around the corner? I relent. No time. “Sure, whatever. As long as it's fast.” Have to get to the table, have to settle in and look natural. Faster not to argue.
Deep sip. Another sip. The coffee is bitter. That makes me laugh, on the inside anyway. Apparently sweet almond didn’t really turn out that way. I should’ve gotten the drip. I take a deep pull from the cup, willing the bitter stuff into my stomach, feeling the caffeine flood my veins.
I wait. Another blonde walks in the door – no, that one’s a fake. I notice that my leg is bouncing. That makes me look anxious. No one likes me when I look anxious. I try to look comfortable.
A voice behind me. “James?” Did I miss her approach? I crane my neck around, as casually as I could. A strange girl in little black braids and a flashy eyebrow piercing was smiling at me.
“Yes...?” Who is this, and why is she here? What if Angela sees her here? This is going to ruin everything. All she’s doing is standing there and smiling at me. She has one of those awful tongue-bars and she clicks it against her front teeth. She flips those black braids around, looking nervous. What is this? Then she slides a book across the table. I open it. Yes, this is mine. But this is not Angela.
“You're not....” I try to speak, but I’m feeling so angry now at this imposter, this freak. She gives me this big smile, so big I can see that tongue-bar again and the glisten of her big horse teeth.
“Do you have my glove? I think I lost it when you bumped into me the other week... I didn’t introduce myself, I’m sorry. I’m Angela, Angela Todd.”
An oval nametag hangs around her neck on a thick chain reading “Rose M.” under the coffee shop corporate logo.
I can barely read it – my eyes are all wrong, and the room is starting to twist and reel around me. My legs and arms feel heavy. I have to squint and strain to keep my eyes open. One thought thuds through my brain. I have to get out of here.
I stumble a little but I make it to the door, bells going off all around me, no jacket. I think I can make it, get away, get somewhere else, but the ice is thick and I am so clumsy all of a sudden. I fall heavily against a faded red junker parked crooked and halfway up on the sidewalk.
I try to look up, but I can’t see anything, can’t move, can’t scream, can’t – I feel someone bending over me. One whispered sentence crawls into my ear as I lay there, blind and bleeding in the snow. “If I can’t have you, then none of your damn Angelas can either.”
About the Author:
Kaylea Hascall Champion is a Chicago-area writer. Her chief vices are buying more literary journals than she can read and growing more tomatoes than she can eat. Her fiction is forthcoming in The Literary Bone.
Angela. It has to be you. Your hair has never been curly before, but women are always changing their hair. You’re walking toward me. Of course. I’ll look up, our eyes will meet, you’ll smile, you'll pause. Oh, Angela!
But she keeps on walking.
I wait and wait. I wait four hours for her, trying to read a book to pass the time. But I couldn’t focus. I don’t even remember to turn the pages. I just keep staring at the little dance of ants across a crumbling sheet of paper. Where is she? I shove the book into my jacket so hard I could hear the seams straining.
I walk down the street, and I was just slipping into a sweet little vision of her warm soft hands curled around mine, her blond fluffy curls scattered around her face like a crown, and –
SCRRRREEEEECH – red car bright lights street sidewalk what the hell?!
Breathe. Nothing broken. I’m ok. What was that?
I shout at the car as it roars past – “Pedestrians have the goddamn right of way!” Some freaky chick in an orange junker had come inches away from running over my foot! The car tore away down the street as fast as it had come around the corner. An oval charm dangling from the rearview mirror swung from side to side, flashing in the streetlights.
I hurry home and sit upstairs in my chair, the hard wooden one by the window, tearing a small square out of the back of the newspaper. I bend over the ragged-edged paper and write very slowly and carefully, staining my fingers with ink. I’m not going to give those newspaper people any excuse to make mistakes this time. This one was going to work.
---------------------------------------
Clark Street Coffee Shop, 12/9. You:
blueberry, mocha, and bouncy curls —
blue eyes, green sweater. Me: Cranberry,
auto-drip, flattop — dark eyes, black down
jacket. Our eyes locked, but I was too shy.
Coffee? Match #7345
---------------------------------------
I watch myself from ten feet in the air; watch myself turn further toward her. I cock my head, ever so slightly, towards the empty table next to mine. She doesn’t see the movement. It was so subtle. But somewhere in her brain, the gesture must have registered. A sign for ‘come this way’ has been projected – and she will come. She won't know why, but...oh, turned away. I give another little head-cock, a little less subtle. She doesn’t see it.
The table I chose for us is broad, so she can spread out a newspaper if she wants to read, and the purple velvet chair beside it is perfect for relaxing. Angela likes purple. She has a backpack with her this time – homework? Angela, when did you go back to school? The back of the chair I picked for you faces the fire. A fake, gas fire, but it projects warmth, and your scarf fringes are dripping with slush. It's just the table you'll like.
She’s just dithering around up there! Pointing at the menu, pretending to consider other options. Playing with me, pretending she can't decide. Just order the mocha, Angela. You always order the mocha. She talks to the guy in line behind her, the one who held the door for her and brushed the snow from her bangs.
Wonder what happened to her curls. Hair with darker streaks than before. That Angela, always messing with her style! Can't she see that she is perfect just as she is, just as she was before?
Two skinny vanilla lattes, blond and blonder, take a seat by the window. My stomach turns over, and my teeth hurt I’m clenching them so hard. I want to get up right then. I want to tell her to wake up, that it’s me. I want to tell him that she’s mine. But I can wait a little longer.
---------------------------------------
Clark Street Coffeeshop 12/16
Sky-blue scarf, purple pack, hair like
sunshine. Me — red cap, brown hair/eyes.
The guy you were with — brother, friend?
A star fell outside as we watched, you
rushed to the window. I talked about the
trajectory and acceleration, should have
asked for your number. The heavens adore
you, let me join them. Match #8142
---------------------------------------
I was late – she must be here already. I look around, but I can’t see her anywhere. I need to buy my coffee first, then I will belong here, and then I will be able to see her.
“Wouldyouliketotry our special Gingerbread Man Mocha? Plus a cookie, just $4.99 plustax.”
Pain shoots through my eyes as they roll up into my head. Why do freaks always work in coffee shops? And ALWAYS with the monotone voice. How could she eat with that thing in her tongue? Nasty. “Coffee, no damn room.”
I sit against the wall of windows, my breath snorting out in clouds as it strikes the frost-scrawled windowpane, staring at the condensation as it spreads and shrinks across the surface of the glass. I run my fingers over the place I marked for her in the table, grooving the varnish with her name. ANGELA.
I can see her easing her way into the seat, smiling and a little flustered with all her jackets and bags and useless outer layers, peeling away everything that separates us until she sits before me in a little tank top – pink, she likes pink, I’m sure she likes pink because she has to, doesn’t she? Yes, pink. Tank top. And then she was really there, just inches from me. She had tried to sneak past me, the clever minx. But no, I looked up in time. The tiniest of vibrations could alert me.
It is Angela. She’s plumper, shorter. But she is still Angela.
I wait, watch, wait. She sits down in a cushy chair on the opposite side of the shop. I’m such an idiot, I should have sat there, I should have known that she would want a comfortable chair after her long day, and here’s our table with only hard chairs beside it, no upholstery in sight.
I keep my eye on her, watching her little movements. When she is ready to leave, I know it as soon as she does. I stand up at the same time, and make it to the front door just a few steps before her. Perfect. Oh, it’s more perfect than perfect. I hold the door open for her, and then it is time. I am ready. I seem to slip on the ice under the awning, just a little, and bump her off-balance. But I won’t let her fall; I wouldn’t. I reach for her hand, but only skim her knuckles, managing to clutch only her sleeve. Soft, her hands are so soft.
I laugh a little at our predicament, and she responds with a genuine giggle, brimming with affection for me. My other hand is very quick. Her glove disappears into my pocket, and my book nestles itself deep into her open tote when I bend to retrieve it, apologizing for knocking it into the snow.
I put my arm across her back, to make sure that she was steady, to keep her warm a moment longer. But she must have somewhere to be – that Angela, always so busy! – and she rushes away. She glances back at me a few times, though – that’s how you know, when they glance back, that’s how you know for sure. And so I stand there in the cold, watching her walk away, my hand in my pocket, fingering her purple glove.
Contact.
---------------------------------------
LOST: Autographed copy of ‘Lords
Of Seleucia’. Inscribed to James from
the author. Great sentimental value.
Reward. Call 773-541-6232, leave msg.
---------------------------------------
No one calls me for three days. I don’t go out. I just stand at my window and wait. I am standing there, staring down at the street, when I see something that makes my blood boil. Dropkickable poodlething on a red leash. What do you know, a goth chick enslaved to a fluffy white dog. She'd better not let him on MY lawn. I pound on the window, pointing with one hand and drawing my other hand across my throat, except what I mean is that it’ll be his throat. Actions have consequences. She has to know that. Don't even try it. Wave your little baggie at me all you want, smirk, whatever. Everyone knows what you'd do if you weren't watched.
“Liketotrya sweet almond latte? Special today, $2.99 plustax.”
Did they THINK I wanted one? Did I ever order anything but coffee, black?
“They'regreatforwarming you up on a colddayliketoday. Regular price is $3.39. Youcansave ten percent!”
I conjure up the blankest, most baleful stare I possess.
Another cheerful voice rings in; the other counterbot is getting into the pitch now too, taking my irritated pause as a sign of indecision. “They're really good. Doubleshot espresso, steamed milk, good dose of syrup. Smothered in whipped cream...yum!”
Is that her coming around the corner? I relent. No time. “Sure, whatever. As long as it's fast.” Have to get to the table, have to settle in and look natural. Faster not to argue.
Deep sip. Another sip. The coffee is bitter. That makes me laugh, on the inside anyway. Apparently sweet almond didn’t really turn out that way. I should’ve gotten the drip. I take a deep pull from the cup, willing the bitter stuff into my stomach, feeling the caffeine flood my veins.
I wait. Another blonde walks in the door – no, that one’s a fake. I notice that my leg is bouncing. That makes me look anxious. No one likes me when I look anxious. I try to look comfortable.
A voice behind me. “James?” Did I miss her approach? I crane my neck around, as casually as I could. A strange girl in little black braids and a flashy eyebrow piercing was smiling at me.
“Yes...?” Who is this, and why is she here? What if Angela sees her here? This is going to ruin everything. All she’s doing is standing there and smiling at me. She has one of those awful tongue-bars and she clicks it against her front teeth. She flips those black braids around, looking nervous. What is this? Then she slides a book across the table. I open it. Yes, this is mine. But this is not Angela.
“You're not....” I try to speak, but I’m feeling so angry now at this imposter, this freak. She gives me this big smile, so big I can see that tongue-bar again and the glisten of her big horse teeth.
“Do you have my glove? I think I lost it when you bumped into me the other week... I didn’t introduce myself, I’m sorry. I’m Angela, Angela Todd.”
An oval nametag hangs around her neck on a thick chain reading “Rose M.” under the coffee shop corporate logo.
I can barely read it – my eyes are all wrong, and the room is starting to twist and reel around me. My legs and arms feel heavy. I have to squint and strain to keep my eyes open. One thought thuds through my brain. I have to get out of here.
I stumble a little but I make it to the door, bells going off all around me, no jacket. I think I can make it, get away, get somewhere else, but the ice is thick and I am so clumsy all of a sudden. I fall heavily against a faded red junker parked crooked and halfway up on the sidewalk.
I try to look up, but I can’t see anything, can’t move, can’t scream, can’t – I feel someone bending over me. One whispered sentence crawls into my ear as I lay there, blind and bleeding in the snow. “If I can’t have you, then none of your damn Angelas can either.”
About the Author:
Kaylea Hascall Champion is a Chicago-area writer. Her chief vices are buying more literary journals than she can read and growing more tomatoes than she can eat. Her fiction is forthcoming in The Literary Bone.
Short Story: ON SILENT FEET by Jan Christensen
Had it only been that morning when, on silent feet, the black dog trotted up to Iris and stood, tail wagging?
Now afternoon, Iris sat in an uncomfortable wooden chair in the interview room at the police station, squinting at the small laptop screen where the court reporter typed in questions asked by a police detective. Detective Michaelson sat straddling his chair, chewing on a toothpick, obviously annoyed that he'd had to call in the court reporter to interrupt. Too bad, she thought bitterly. She didn't like the fact that she was deaf any more than he did. And since it had happened so suddenly, only three months ago, she was still adjusting.
Detective Michaelson was the biggest man Iris had ever met. Nearly seven feet tall, with not an ounce of fat, he made three of her slender one hundred pounds. He had a handsome face, marred for her by the toothpick chewing. She had begun lipreading and sign language classes a month ago, and the toothpick got in the way of her ability to understand him. She considered asking him to remove it, but figured it would only make him angrier. She turned her attention back to the screen where words scrolled across, asking, "Why did you go to Mrs. Baker's house?"
Iris sighed. She couldn't hear herself, of course, and didn't know if the detective and the interpreter could either.
She looked at Detective Michaelson and said, "I wanted to return the dog."
He nodded.
"He followed me home from my walk,” she continued, “and hung around for about an hour. I decided to take him back to the house where he'd come out to greet me." Iris smiled, remembering the cute animal, tail wagging, standing still while Iris petted him. Medium, slender, short-haired, the dog was adorable. Iris wondered what would happen to him now.
"Go on," the words appeared on the screen.
"When I got there, no one answered the door. I decided to go to the house next door and ask if they would take the dog until the owner returned. But when I met Mrs. Allen, she said Mrs. Baker should be home because she has, um had, agoraphobia and never left the house. So, we went back, together. There still was no answer. Mrs. Allen had a key, and she let us in. That's when we found . . ." Suddenly, she couldn't continue.
"Take your time." The cursor hung at the end of the sentence, waiting.
Iris looked up at Detective Michaelson. He didn't appear angry anymore. Perhaps, she thought, he hadn't been angry at her after all. Maybe he was upset by the murder. Did hardened police officers continue to be troubled by murder?
"We found Mrs. Baker on her stomach by the door," Iris managed to continue. "Her head was bashed in, and her arms outstretched, as if reaching for help. Mrs. Allen and I got out of there fast, and she called the police."
"You didn't touch anything at the scene?"
Iris read the question again. "Mrs. Allen opened the door. I might have put my hand on the wall to steady myself."
"All right," appeared on the screen. "Now tell me about the accident that caused your deafness."
Iris looked up in surprise. Had his face softened a bit? She couldn't be sure.
When she saw his lips moving, she looked back at the screen to read what he was saying. "It happened in the same neighborhood. A hit and run, the driver never found. Coincidence? Probably. But it wouldn't hurt to hear what you remember."
Iris fingered the tiny scar on her chin. She didn't look at the detective as she began speaking. "I was just walking along, enjoying the nice spring day, when I heard a car come up behind me." She paused, remembering the sound. Would she begin to forget how things sounded? She'd read that she would, and that if years from now she could hear again, she'd have to re-learn what the sounds were. But she didn't think she'd ever forget the noise of that engine accelerating, the squeal of tires as the car speeded up . . .
"Go on," the interpreter typed. Iris glanced at her impassive face. Her hands flew over those keys faster than anyone could type on a regular keyboard. Until her deafness, Iris hadn’t known that some court reporters also did this. She hadn't had much interaction with interpreters yet and wondered if they were all so emotionless. She did know that some sign language interpreters used exaggerated facial expression.
"The car was behind me, and I heard the engine roar, so I glanced around, and saw it overtaking me. I jumped up over the curb onto the grass, but the car kept coming. Then I felt it hit me. I remember falling, but that's all. Until I woke up three days later in the hospital."
"And where were you when this happened?" appeared on the screen.
"Across the street from Mrs. Baker's house," Iris said slowly, now realizing why Detective Michaelson had asked her about it.
"Can you describe the car?"
She nodded. "It was a white Cadillac."
"Year?"
"I don't know. Recent."
"Can you describe the driver at all?"
"A woman," Iris said, still feeling the shock of surprise when the car first hit her, and again when she remembered in her hospital room. "She wore huge sunglasses and a hat and had long blond hair."
"You could see all that in that split second before she hit you?"
Iris nodded again. "The image of her is imprinted on my mind."
The cursor hung at the last question, and she looked at Detective Michaelson as he shifted in his chair. "Have you seen her since?" he asked. He'd removed the toothpick, and she could almost lipread all the words, and filled in the rest. To be sure, she glanced at the screen.
"No." She sighed.
"I'm surprised you still go for walks," the interpreter typed.
Iris looked Detective Michaelson in the eye. "No one's run me down since then. It must have been an accident. She was distracted by something, her foot hit the gas pedal harder than she meant it to, and she ran me over. Plus, I might just see her again. She was driving in our neighborhood for a reason. Maybe she lives there, or she'll come back."
"You're looking for her? That could be dangerous. Hit and run is a felony. She obviously doesn't want to be found."
What have I got to lose, Iris thought. The despair that had been displaced by the horror of finding Mrs. Baker came back, covering her like a cloak. Her vision dimmed around the edges, and she had to pull herself back into the present, into this bare room with the huge man talking to her through the clumsy means of the computer screen.
Her life was already ruined. She'd lost her job, and might soon lose her husband. All because she could no longer hear. The one thing that kept her going was the task she'd set herself to locate the woman and find out why the accident had happened.
Detective Michaelson stood up. Iris imagined the scraping sound the chair must have made. Words began to appear on the screen, and she tried to remember how the keys would clatter.
"That should about cover it, Ms. Phillips." He held out his hand, and hers was lost in it when they shook. "You be careful out there," she managed to lipread.
"I will," she said and started to leave. Then she remembered the interrupter and turned to thank her. The woman was already shutting down her machine, and Iris could tell that she and the detective were saying something to each other. Iris felt frustration well up inside her. She would never again have a normal conversation with anyone.
She turned back around so they wouldn't see the tears gathering in her eyes.
Home, she sank down into her chair and went into a sort of hypnotic state she'd been able to enter easily since the accident. There were no sounds to distract her. She simply stared at the unlit candle on the coffee table, not conscious of any particular thoughts.
She didn't see Evan come in until he touched her on the shoulder.
"How are you?" he asked. She could always make that out from lipreading.
"Okay," she said. "Sit down. I have to tell you what happened this morning."
He gave her a puzzled look and sat next to her on the couch. When she finished, he asked, "Why didn't you call me? I would have come right away."
She got most of the words and filled in the rest. Shook her head. "There was nothing you could have done," she said.
He grasped her shoulders. "I could have been there for you." Slowly, exaggerating his lip movement a little, he said, "Why are you pushing me away, Iris? Why won't you let me help you?"
She twisted out of his grip, afraid to look him in the eye. He might see her doubt there, her fear that he was the one who arranged for her to be run down. She held back a sob and stood up. "I don't know," she said. "I just need some space, Evan." She felt like a new-ager, but she didn't know what else to say.
And she didn't know what else to do. Take her walks, look for the woman who ran her down, watch Evan carefully for any hint that he had something to do with it. She hated her doubts.
They'd begun before the accident. She'd felt he was seeing someone. She had no proof, just a wife's feeling. He had become distant, distracted. He claimed it was his work as Vice President of Mercer Pharmaceuticals, but she thought it was someone at work.
Evan didn't get up, didn't try to touch her again. His shoulders slumped, and his normally bright blue eyes dimmed. He said something, but she couldn't make it out. It might have been, "How long?"
She didn't know how long. She turned away and went to the kitchen to see about dinner.
They didn't talk much while they ate. Iris picked at her salad and grilled fish. Evan would look at her, but when she glanced up at him, he looked away.
When she served the coffee, he asked, "Are you about ready for the party Saturday night?"
She nodded. She dreaded it. She hadn't given one since her accident, and it would be agony not to be able to hear.
The party was in full swing when Iris managed to escape into the kitchen to catch her breath. It was worse than she expected. She felt like the maid. Everyone greeted her when they arrived, then ignored her. She knew they didn't know what to say, how to talk to her. And she didn't know any of them very well because they were all Evan's associates. Except Mandy, Evan's secretary, and she'd been talking to other people all evening.
Telling herself to grin and bear it, she arranged some stuffed mushroom caps on a plate and headed back to the living room.
Evan stood in a corner, talking to the redheaded woman he'd introduced as his boss's new secretary. She laughed at something Evan said, throwing her head back, exposing a long slender neck. Evan seemed pleased with himself. When he caught Iris's eye, his face lost its expression. He said something to the redhead, then made his way over to Iris. She had set the plate down and was taking an empty one back to the kitchen when he caught up with her.
He took her arm and said something in her ear, his breath tickling. She pulled away and turned towards him, eyebrows raised.
He looked stricken. "I forgot," he said.
Iris sighed. She seemed to be doing a lot of that lately.
"How is it going?" he enunciated.
"Fine," she said flatly.
They went into the kitchen. After she put the plate down, he tapped her on the shoulder to make her look at him. "You are not trying."
She looked away and shrugged. "I don't know how, Evan. I need more time."
"Talk to Mandy." His secretary was a motherly sort. She and Iris had always gotten along.
Iris stared at him. "She's ignoring me, just like the rest of you, Evan."
He took her by the shoulders again. "You have to make the effort."
She nodded. "I know," she whispered.
He shook her lightly. "Try," he said.
"Okay." She turned to fill another plate with snacks, and they left the kitchen together.
After putting the plate down, Iris walked over to Mandy. She saw that Evan had gone to join a group of men, leaving the tall redhead to talk to another, younger associate.
Mandy acknowledged her presence by taking her hand. Iris smiled and nodded at the other people in the group which included the President's wife, the Chief Financial Officer and the head of Personnel, all women. Mandy turned to Iris and pulled her aside, saying something Iris couldn't make out. Iris realized she had gotten used to Evan's way of talking and could get a lot more of what he said than she could other people.
"How," Mandy said slowly, carefully moving her lips in a slight exaggeration.
"How," Iris repeated.
"Is."
"Is."
"It."
"It."
"Going?"
"How is it going?" Iris laughed. "Super, Mandy, just great. How are you?"
Mandy grabbed Iris's wrist and said something Iris couldn't get. She led her over to the table in the dining room. "You look so dour," Mandy said.
"I look door?" Iris asked.
Mandy shook her head. "Dour. Rhymes with sour."
"Sore? No, I'm fine. All recovered from the accident, except for my hearing."
Mandy heaved a sigh of frustration. Iris got that. She was getting really good at body language.
"Pen and paper?" Mandy asked.
"Right," Iris said and took her to the kitchen. She picked up the pad and pencil next to the phone and handed them to Mandy.
Mandy wrote the word, "dour."
"Oh," Iris said. "I look dour." She turned away. "Sorry."
Mandy touched her arm, then said, "Nothing to be sorry about. But you need to take this pad and pencil around with you and talk to people for when you miss a word. Make an effort, at least."
"Did Evan tell you about the woman who was murdered?" Iris asked suddenly.
Mandy nodded. "You found her," she said.
"Yes," Iris said, able to read Mandy's lips better now that she was getting used to her way of moving her mouth. "Across the street from where I was hit."
"Really?" Mandy looked thoughtful. "Evan didn't tell me that."
Iris was distracted and didn't get it, so Mandy wrote it down. Then she added, "Does he know that?"
Iris thought for a moment. Had she told him? Did he know where Mrs. Baker lived? "I don't know," she admitted.
"You think the two might be connected," Mandy said.
Iris nodded. "The detective that interviewed me suggested it."
"What do the police say now?" Mandy aked.
"I haven't talked to them. I'm sure it's too soon."
The door swung open, and Brian Holden, the President of Mercer Pharmaceuticals, stepped into the room, an empty glass in his hand. His glance fell to the paper and pen, understanding making him nod.
He held up his glass and said, "Water."
Iris gestured towards the bottles next to the sink. He filled the glass, then turned around. He didn't seem to know what to do next. Actually, Iris decided, he looked more uncomfortable than was warranted by just her deafness. She smiled and asked, "How are you, Brian?"
"Fine," he said, his eyes shifting to look at Mandy.
Something passed between them, confusing Iris. Brian's eyes met Mandy's, then turned towards the door, as if suggesting Mandy leave.
"Nice party," Brian said, now looking at Iris.
"Thanks," Iris said.
He raised his glass in a silent toast and left the kitchen.
Mandy put the pad and pencil in Iris's hands and gestured towards the door.
Iris understood now that Brian hadn't wanted Mandy to talk to her.
When they got back to the living room, Iris looked around, Before, she had been too wrapped up in her own misery to notice that a lot of Mercer's employees were acting a bit strange. Some people gestured too widely, threw back their heads in forced laughter, and others stood morosely staring into their drinks.
For the first time, Iris wondered if maybe people weren't speaking to her for a different reason. She realized Evan hadn't talked about work in quite awhile. She'd put it down to the difficulty of her hearing. But what if it was something else?
She picked up the plate of cheese and crackers and began passing it around, now trying to read lips. She began to piece together the story that had everyone worried. A rival pharmaceutical company, Diatech, (she recognized the name because she’d heard it so often since Evan stated at Mercer) was suing Mercer over the patent for a diet pill. Apparently both companies came out with the pill around the same time, and each claimed its discovery.
She wondered why Evan hadn't told her.
As the last of the cheese and crackers disappeared from the plate, Iris realized that she had been so distracted by trying to find out what everyone was saying that her discomfort had disappeared, and the time had flown by. People were now beginning to leave.
After the last person left, Iris and Evan turned to survey the living room, strewn with plates and glasses.
"Tonight or tomorrow?" Evan asked.
"Might as well do it tonight," Iris said, even though she felt exhausted.
She picked up a full glass of clear liquid. It looked like the one Brian had come into the kitchen to get. Why hadn't he drunk it? She sniffed it. No scent of liquor. So, he really had come to get Mandy out of the kitchen. Why?
"Evan?" she asked.
He turned from picking up a tray of glasses and gave her a quizzical look.
"What's going on at work? You haven't talked about it in weeks. I thought it was because of my hearing loss. But it's something else, isn't it? To do with the lawsuit."
He nodded. "Not much to tell. I'm out of the loop."
"What? You're out of the loop?" she repeated to be sure she'd understood him.
"It's true."
"Why?"
He shrugged. "Don't know."
She went over to him and took the tray. After she set it down on the coffee table, she grasped him by the shoulders, as he so often did with her. "It's bothering you, big time."
"Yeah."
In a funny way, she felt relieved. It explained a lot about how he'd been acting lately. Moving into his embrace, she found a kind of peace. It wouldn't be so bad that she'd lost her hearing and her job, as long as she still had Evan.
"I can clean up tomorrow," she whispered.
On Monday Iris decided to surprise Evan by stopping by the office and inviting him to lunch. She realized he might be busy, but she'd take that chance.
As she drove past Mrs. Baker's house, with the crime scene tape still in place, she averted her eyes and told herself not to think about it. There was nothing she could do to bring Mrs. Baker back or even to find out why she had been murdered.
Her eyes automatically searched the street and driveways for a white Cadillac, but she didn't see one.
She stopped to get gas. At the checkout she noticed the new issue of Forbes with a picture of Diatech's CEO on the cover. On impulse, she bought it.
She drove to Mercer's sprawling white building and parked in the visitor's area. Mandy greeted her warmly and buzzed Evan to tell him Iris was there. "He has someone with him," Mandy said. "He'll be done in about fifteen minutes."
Iris made out most of what Mandy said. "I'll wait. I brought a magazine to read."
She sat on the couch and turned to the article about Diatech. The rival pharmaceutical company was trying hard to become number one in the business, doing its best to overtake Mercer. The article touched briefly on the lawsuit and showed several pictures of the company and some personnel. The picture of the CEO caught Iris's attention. He looked familiar, but she knew she'd never met him. Something about the way he tilted his head . . .
She kept glancing at Mandy to make sure she wasn't trying to catch her attention. Iris looked up from the photo of Diatech's CEO and caught Mandy in the same pose, her head tilted up, staring at the ceiling.
Iris gasped. Could it be? She never would have figured it out if she hadn't seen the photo and Mandy so close together.
But what did it mean? It could be nothing, she tried to reassure herself.
Evan's door opened, and he stepped out with a tall, thin man. Both of them carried briefcases. Evan stopped next to Iris and said, "Hi. I'm sorry, there’s an emergency at the factory, and I have to go over there with Bob. Another time?"
She nodded. Evan pecked her on the cheek and left.
Mandy stood up and retrieved her purse from a desk drawer.
"I'd go to lunch with you, but I'm meeting someone, too," she said.
"That's all right," Iris managed to say. They walked out of the office together.
In front of the building, Mandy greeted a man, but did not introduce him to Iris. Iris stood awkwardly as they walked across the street to the company's parking lot. She went to get her own car. As she pulled out of the lot, she saw Mandy in the passenger's seat of the man's car.
A white Cadillac.
Coincidence, Iris assured herself, but she began to follow them. Her heart pounded harder when she saw the license plate. D-TECH-3. They wound their way through the lunchtime traffic, and the Caddy parked in the Olive Garden's lot. Iris watched the two of them walk inside, then she got out of her car and walked over to the Cadillac, looking at the front for any signs of an accident.
If it had been in one, it had been repaired.
She stood, irresolute, next to the car. It wouldn't do her any good to go inside. She couldn't hide behind a palm tree and eavesdrop. If she sat close enough to try and read their lips, Mandy would spot her.
She pounded her fist on the white Caddy in frustration. Everything she tried to do was blocked by her inability to hear.
But then she remembered how she'd been able to read lips the night before without anyone realizing it. And she'd noticed the similarity between Mandy and Diatech's CEO because her eyes were doing more of the communication work for her these days.
Okay, she said to herself, take the leap that one of Diatech's cars hit you. There must be more than one since the license plate had the number three on it. Had it hit her on purpose? Why? It made no sense.
Could have been an accident, and the driver, knowing she was Mercer's Vice President's wife, didn't want to acknowledge it.
But her gut said that didn't wash. The other factors were that Mandy looked so much like Diatech's CEO, and Evan was out of the loop about the lawsuit.
Iris decided she needed to learn more about Diatech. She drove home thoughtfully. There, she made herself a pot of coffee and a sandwich and booted up her computer. She spent the rest of the afternoon surfing the ‘net, reading about the rival pharmaceutical company. Occasionally, she printed something out.
Evan arrived home on time, for once, perhaps sorry he hadn't been able to take her to lunch. She gave him the print-outs to read while she made dinner.
When they sat down, he asked, "Why did you do this?" He pointed to the papers which he had brought with him to the table.
Iris explained about Mandy and the Cadillac. She showed him the picture in Fortune.
"You think Mandy has something to do with Diatech?"
"I don't know, Evan. But I do think she's related to the CEO. You do see the resemblance? And why was she going to lunch with them? We have to assume the car she went in belongs to Diatech."
"But she openly rode with them. Does that look like she's trying to keep her relationship a secret?"
"No," Iris said slowly, "but there's something definitely wrong here."
"I agree with that," Evan said. "There are innuendos in these printouts that Diatech is associated with organized crime. At least the top officers are. This could mean that your accident wasn't an accident. But why? Why would they want to hurt you? You aren't a threat to them."
"Maybe," Iris said thoughtfully, spearing an olive, "as a warning to someone else in your company?"
"My God," Evan groaned. He took a sip of wine and wiped his brow. "It is odd that Brian isn't talking to me about the lawsuit. Says not to concern myself with it. Ever since your accident."
Evan spent most of the rest of the evening pacing the living room. Iris did the dishes, then sat at her computer, keying in everything that had happened since her accident, trying to decide what to do about it.
The next day, after Evan left for work, Iris drove to Diatech's. The long, low building looked similar to Mercer's and several other pharmaceutical companies in the area.
Iris drove around the parking lot, looking for white Cadillac’s. She found a few, but none had the distinctive license plates.
Then she saw one drive into the lot. The license plate read D-TECH-3. She didn't recognize the driver, but she followed it to a place where the driver used a remote to open a gate. Iris didn't dare enter the restricted area because she might not be able to get out. But she found a place to park nearby and settled down to watch.
D-TECH-2 drove in. Iris slouched down in her seat and watched it enter the restricted area. The driver of this one looked vaguely familiar, but she was sure she’d never seen the passenger before. Maybe she'd seen the driver’s picture in Fortune. She'd brought the magazine with her, and she studied the pictures. Finally she found the man in the far corner of a group picture, unidentified. Why would she have remembered this face in the group? She didn't know. Her stomach clenched.
When D-TECH-2 drove out of the lot an hour later, Iris followed. The car wound through the streets and up into the Jersey hills. Huge estates, hidden behind hedges and fences, lined the avenues. Eventually, the car pulled into the driveway of one and stopped at the closed gate. The driver spoke into a speaker on the brick post. Iris pulled off to the side, hoping they wouldn’t notice her. But suddenly, the Caddy’s door opened, and the passenger got out and rushed over to her, a gun pointing at her chest. Iris felt too stunned to move.
"Get out of the car," the man demanded. Iris could tell he was shouting by the way his face was distorted. He waved the gun at her.
Slowly, she exited the car. The gate had swung open, and the gunman motioned for her to enter the estate.
Terror gripped her, and she stumbled on a stone in the drive. The Caddy drove in slowly behind them, and Iris re-lived the moment the car struck her from behind. Could this be the same car? Teeth chattering, her legs wobbly, she was relieved when the car stopped and the gunman motioned for her to get in the back. He crowded in next to her, the gun pointed unwaveringly at her chest. They drove the rest of the way up the winding drive to a huge, faintly pink building with a red tile roof. It looked more like a museum than a home.
As they got out of the car, Iris glanced again at the driver. When he saw her looking at him, he set his lips and turned his head away. That's when she knew. The lips and nose were all she'd been able to see underneath the sunglasses, but she recognized him as the person driving the car that hit her. Disguised as a woman. She felt dizzy, and her vision faded around the edges. She couldn't pass out. She just couldn't.
One on either side, the gun still pointed at her, they marched up the front steps where another man waited, glaring.
He said something through clenched teeth that Iris couldn't make out. They led her inside to an elevator, and it rose to the third floor where they took her to a bedroom. The driver spoke, but she didn't understand everything he said.
"I can't hear," she said. "I'm deaf, because of you."
"She knows," he said. "We'll have to get rid of her." His face had become an ugly mask of hate.
"Later," the man who had greeted them said. "Not enough time now. We've got to sign those settlement papers. Lock her in. She won't get away."
Iris didn't hear the door close behind them, but she saw it. She ran over and tried the knob. Locked, of course. She wanted to bang on it, but knew it wouldn't do any good.
She sank down into a soft chair and looked around. No phone. The furnishing were opulent with a canopied bed, massive oak furniture, and a plush beige rug under her feet. She stood up slowly and went to the heavily draped and curtained window. She saw no handy trellises or vines to climb down, if she could even get the window open.
Searching for a latch, she found one which she was able to unlock. Surprised, she opened the window. Now there was just a screen. She looked all around it. It appeared to be nailed shut from the outside. Sighing, she went over the nightstand and opened the drawer, hoping for something to cut the screen. Empty. Then she saw another door and opened it. A bathroom. No other exit. Disappointed, she tried the medicine chest. Toothbrush still in its wrapper, toothpaste, a tiny bottle of aspirin. Nothing else. No razor, no nail file, nothing to cut with.
Except the removable glass shelves. Thin, not too difficult to handle. Iris took one back to the window. Using the rough corner of the shelf, she managed to make a hole at the edge of the screen. Then she sawed the shelf down and around the whole screen, making sure it fell into the room and not out onto the lawn.
Perspiring, she sat on the bed to catch her breath. It wasn't the exertion that make her heart pound, but the possibility of escape.
Sitting on the bed reminded her of sheets. Two plus the spread might work to get her down far enough to drop the rest of the way. The spread first. She tied it to the bed leg nearest the window, then tied the sheets together and to the spread. She stuck her head out the window. No one around. Taking a deep breath, she threw the makeshift rope out the window and waited for something to happen. No one appeared to stop her, so she climbed over the sill, grabbed the bedspread, and began her descent.
The last sheet didn't quite touch the lawn below her. She didn't dare look down until she reached the end of the sheet.
A huge Rottweiler stood, obviously barking furiously at her, almost able to reach her feet with his strong jaws.
Iris tried to stop the sheet from swinging so she could remain still. She talked soothingly to the dog. Her arms felt as if they were breaking from the strain.
Suddenly, the dog left. Called away? She didn't know. She waited a minute, but her arms could no longer hold her, and she dropped to the ground and fell over. She stood up quickly and began to run. If anyone pursued her, she didn't know. She couldn't hear, and she wouldn't let herself look back.
She ran around the house, down the front drive, all the way to the gate. Which was closed and locked. Sobbing, she beat her fists against it.
As if by magic, it began to open. Iris looked around frantically. Behind her, she saw a car approaching. The driver must have used a remote to open the gate. She slipped into some bushes and watched the car drive by. Before the gate could close again, she slithered through and stood panting on the sidewalk, astonished she'd gotten this far.
And even more amazing, her car sat where she'd parked it. Locked? She ran over and tried. The door swung open at her touch. Iris breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the keys in the ignition. She looked around the area. No one in sight.
Quickly getting in and starting the car, Iris zoomed down the hill, taking the first curve a bit wide. A white Cadillac coming the other way almost collided with her. Glancing in her rearview mirror, she saw the car fishtail around and come up behind her. The face staring at her out of the windshield was the same as the one she'd glimpsed before she'd been struck while out walking.
Her sweaty palms almost slid off the steering wheel as she gripped it harder. Her mind raced furiously. What should she do?
A feeling of calmness swept over her as she decided to just drive to the police station. The one where Detective Michaelson had interviewed her.
Finally, Iris pulled up in front of the station. She didn't try to get out of her car. She sat in it, doors locked, and pressed on the horn, glad she couldn't hear the blare.
Several police officers approached her as she watched the white Cadillac speed away. All was confusion as she tried to explain to them what had happened. Finally she was ushered into Detective Michaelson’s office. He stood as she entered, then turned to one of the officers. Iris managed to lip read something about a court reporter around his toothpick. She sank into a visitor’s chair, sighing, again wondering if he could hear her.
“Tell me what happened,” he said. He didn’t interrupt her until the court reporter entered with her equipment and set it up. Then he motioned for Iris to finish.
“We’ve been looking for you,” he said when she wound down.
She read the screen, then nodded.
“Mrs. Baker kept a journal. She saw you being run down and got the license number. Diatech 2.”
Iris gasped.
“We think it was a warning to Mercer, specifically to the President, of what could happen to his wife.”
“Is my husband’s secretary involved?” Iris asked.
“We’re not sure, but think so. She’s Diatech’s president’s sister. We think she may have been the go-between.”
Iris shook her head, trying to take it all in. That was why Evan had been kept out of the loop.
“You’ve been very brave and resourceful,” the detective told her. “We can add kidnapping to the charges and be sure that these people are put away for a long, long time.” He smiled at her, the toothpick hardly getting in the way.
Maybe, she thought, her deafness wouldn't be the severe handicap she believed it to be.
She said goodbye to Detective Michaelson and picked up the black dog from Mrs. Allen on the way home. She began training him to let her know when the phone or the doorbell rang and to alert her to other sounds. He kept her company while she decided what to do with the rest of her life.
About the Author:
Jan Christensen has had one mystery novel and over forty short stories published. When not writing, she travels fulltime in a motorhome with her husband. Website: www.janchristensen.com
Now afternoon, Iris sat in an uncomfortable wooden chair in the interview room at the police station, squinting at the small laptop screen where the court reporter typed in questions asked by a police detective. Detective Michaelson sat straddling his chair, chewing on a toothpick, obviously annoyed that he'd had to call in the court reporter to interrupt. Too bad, she thought bitterly. She didn't like the fact that she was deaf any more than he did. And since it had happened so suddenly, only three months ago, she was still adjusting.
Detective Michaelson was the biggest man Iris had ever met. Nearly seven feet tall, with not an ounce of fat, he made three of her slender one hundred pounds. He had a handsome face, marred for her by the toothpick chewing. She had begun lipreading and sign language classes a month ago, and the toothpick got in the way of her ability to understand him. She considered asking him to remove it, but figured it would only make him angrier. She turned her attention back to the screen where words scrolled across, asking, "Why did you go to Mrs. Baker's house?"
Iris sighed. She couldn't hear herself, of course, and didn't know if the detective and the interpreter could either.
She looked at Detective Michaelson and said, "I wanted to return the dog."
He nodded.
"He followed me home from my walk,” she continued, “and hung around for about an hour. I decided to take him back to the house where he'd come out to greet me." Iris smiled, remembering the cute animal, tail wagging, standing still while Iris petted him. Medium, slender, short-haired, the dog was adorable. Iris wondered what would happen to him now.
"Go on," the words appeared on the screen.
"When I got there, no one answered the door. I decided to go to the house next door and ask if they would take the dog until the owner returned. But when I met Mrs. Allen, she said Mrs. Baker should be home because she has, um had, agoraphobia and never left the house. So, we went back, together. There still was no answer. Mrs. Allen had a key, and she let us in. That's when we found . . ." Suddenly, she couldn't continue.
"Take your time." The cursor hung at the end of the sentence, waiting.
Iris looked up at Detective Michaelson. He didn't appear angry anymore. Perhaps, she thought, he hadn't been angry at her after all. Maybe he was upset by the murder. Did hardened police officers continue to be troubled by murder?
"We found Mrs. Baker on her stomach by the door," Iris managed to continue. "Her head was bashed in, and her arms outstretched, as if reaching for help. Mrs. Allen and I got out of there fast, and she called the police."
"You didn't touch anything at the scene?"
Iris read the question again. "Mrs. Allen opened the door. I might have put my hand on the wall to steady myself."
"All right," appeared on the screen. "Now tell me about the accident that caused your deafness."
Iris looked up in surprise. Had his face softened a bit? She couldn't be sure.
When she saw his lips moving, she looked back at the screen to read what he was saying. "It happened in the same neighborhood. A hit and run, the driver never found. Coincidence? Probably. But it wouldn't hurt to hear what you remember."
Iris fingered the tiny scar on her chin. She didn't look at the detective as she began speaking. "I was just walking along, enjoying the nice spring day, when I heard a car come up behind me." She paused, remembering the sound. Would she begin to forget how things sounded? She'd read that she would, and that if years from now she could hear again, she'd have to re-learn what the sounds were. But she didn't think she'd ever forget the noise of that engine accelerating, the squeal of tires as the car speeded up . . .
"Go on," the interpreter typed. Iris glanced at her impassive face. Her hands flew over those keys faster than anyone could type on a regular keyboard. Until her deafness, Iris hadn’t known that some court reporters also did this. She hadn't had much interaction with interpreters yet and wondered if they were all so emotionless. She did know that some sign language interpreters used exaggerated facial expression.
"The car was behind me, and I heard the engine roar, so I glanced around, and saw it overtaking me. I jumped up over the curb onto the grass, but the car kept coming. Then I felt it hit me. I remember falling, but that's all. Until I woke up three days later in the hospital."
"And where were you when this happened?" appeared on the screen.
"Across the street from Mrs. Baker's house," Iris said slowly, now realizing why Detective Michaelson had asked her about it.
"Can you describe the car?"
She nodded. "It was a white Cadillac."
"Year?"
"I don't know. Recent."
"Can you describe the driver at all?"
"A woman," Iris said, still feeling the shock of surprise when the car first hit her, and again when she remembered in her hospital room. "She wore huge sunglasses and a hat and had long blond hair."
"You could see all that in that split second before she hit you?"
Iris nodded again. "The image of her is imprinted on my mind."
The cursor hung at the last question, and she looked at Detective Michaelson as he shifted in his chair. "Have you seen her since?" he asked. He'd removed the toothpick, and she could almost lipread all the words, and filled in the rest. To be sure, she glanced at the screen.
"No." She sighed.
"I'm surprised you still go for walks," the interpreter typed.
Iris looked Detective Michaelson in the eye. "No one's run me down since then. It must have been an accident. She was distracted by something, her foot hit the gas pedal harder than she meant it to, and she ran me over. Plus, I might just see her again. She was driving in our neighborhood for a reason. Maybe she lives there, or she'll come back."
"You're looking for her? That could be dangerous. Hit and run is a felony. She obviously doesn't want to be found."
What have I got to lose, Iris thought. The despair that had been displaced by the horror of finding Mrs. Baker came back, covering her like a cloak. Her vision dimmed around the edges, and she had to pull herself back into the present, into this bare room with the huge man talking to her through the clumsy means of the computer screen.
Her life was already ruined. She'd lost her job, and might soon lose her husband. All because she could no longer hear. The one thing that kept her going was the task she'd set herself to locate the woman and find out why the accident had happened.
Detective Michaelson stood up. Iris imagined the scraping sound the chair must have made. Words began to appear on the screen, and she tried to remember how the keys would clatter.
"That should about cover it, Ms. Phillips." He held out his hand, and hers was lost in it when they shook. "You be careful out there," she managed to lipread.
"I will," she said and started to leave. Then she remembered the interrupter and turned to thank her. The woman was already shutting down her machine, and Iris could tell that she and the detective were saying something to each other. Iris felt frustration well up inside her. She would never again have a normal conversation with anyone.
She turned back around so they wouldn't see the tears gathering in her eyes.
Home, she sank down into her chair and went into a sort of hypnotic state she'd been able to enter easily since the accident. There were no sounds to distract her. She simply stared at the unlit candle on the coffee table, not conscious of any particular thoughts.
She didn't see Evan come in until he touched her on the shoulder.
"How are you?" he asked. She could always make that out from lipreading.
"Okay," she said. "Sit down. I have to tell you what happened this morning."
He gave her a puzzled look and sat next to her on the couch. When she finished, he asked, "Why didn't you call me? I would have come right away."
She got most of the words and filled in the rest. Shook her head. "There was nothing you could have done," she said.
He grasped her shoulders. "I could have been there for you." Slowly, exaggerating his lip movement a little, he said, "Why are you pushing me away, Iris? Why won't you let me help you?"
She twisted out of his grip, afraid to look him in the eye. He might see her doubt there, her fear that he was the one who arranged for her to be run down. She held back a sob and stood up. "I don't know," she said. "I just need some space, Evan." She felt like a new-ager, but she didn't know what else to say.
And she didn't know what else to do. Take her walks, look for the woman who ran her down, watch Evan carefully for any hint that he had something to do with it. She hated her doubts.
They'd begun before the accident. She'd felt he was seeing someone. She had no proof, just a wife's feeling. He had become distant, distracted. He claimed it was his work as Vice President of Mercer Pharmaceuticals, but she thought it was someone at work.
Evan didn't get up, didn't try to touch her again. His shoulders slumped, and his normally bright blue eyes dimmed. He said something, but she couldn't make it out. It might have been, "How long?"
She didn't know how long. She turned away and went to the kitchen to see about dinner.
They didn't talk much while they ate. Iris picked at her salad and grilled fish. Evan would look at her, but when she glanced up at him, he looked away.
When she served the coffee, he asked, "Are you about ready for the party Saturday night?"
She nodded. She dreaded it. She hadn't given one since her accident, and it would be agony not to be able to hear.
*****
The party was in full swing when Iris managed to escape into the kitchen to catch her breath. It was worse than she expected. She felt like the maid. Everyone greeted her when they arrived, then ignored her. She knew they didn't know what to say, how to talk to her. And she didn't know any of them very well because they were all Evan's associates. Except Mandy, Evan's secretary, and she'd been talking to other people all evening.
Telling herself to grin and bear it, she arranged some stuffed mushroom caps on a plate and headed back to the living room.
Evan stood in a corner, talking to the redheaded woman he'd introduced as his boss's new secretary. She laughed at something Evan said, throwing her head back, exposing a long slender neck. Evan seemed pleased with himself. When he caught Iris's eye, his face lost its expression. He said something to the redhead, then made his way over to Iris. She had set the plate down and was taking an empty one back to the kitchen when he caught up with her.
He took her arm and said something in her ear, his breath tickling. She pulled away and turned towards him, eyebrows raised.
He looked stricken. "I forgot," he said.
Iris sighed. She seemed to be doing a lot of that lately.
"How is it going?" he enunciated.
"Fine," she said flatly.
They went into the kitchen. After she put the plate down, he tapped her on the shoulder to make her look at him. "You are not trying."
She looked away and shrugged. "I don't know how, Evan. I need more time."
"Talk to Mandy." His secretary was a motherly sort. She and Iris had always gotten along.
Iris stared at him. "She's ignoring me, just like the rest of you, Evan."
He took her by the shoulders again. "You have to make the effort."
She nodded. "I know," she whispered.
He shook her lightly. "Try," he said.
"Okay." She turned to fill another plate with snacks, and they left the kitchen together.
After putting the plate down, Iris walked over to Mandy. She saw that Evan had gone to join a group of men, leaving the tall redhead to talk to another, younger associate.
Mandy acknowledged her presence by taking her hand. Iris smiled and nodded at the other people in the group which included the President's wife, the Chief Financial Officer and the head of Personnel, all women. Mandy turned to Iris and pulled her aside, saying something Iris couldn't make out. Iris realized she had gotten used to Evan's way of talking and could get a lot more of what he said than she could other people.
"How," Mandy said slowly, carefully moving her lips in a slight exaggeration.
"How," Iris repeated.
"Is."
"Is."
"It."
"It."
"Going?"
"How is it going?" Iris laughed. "Super, Mandy, just great. How are you?"
Mandy grabbed Iris's wrist and said something Iris couldn't get. She led her over to the table in the dining room. "You look so dour," Mandy said.
"I look door?" Iris asked.
Mandy shook her head. "Dour. Rhymes with sour."
"Sore? No, I'm fine. All recovered from the accident, except for my hearing."
Mandy heaved a sigh of frustration. Iris got that. She was getting really good at body language.
"Pen and paper?" Mandy asked.
"Right," Iris said and took her to the kitchen. She picked up the pad and pencil next to the phone and handed them to Mandy.
Mandy wrote the word, "dour."
"Oh," Iris said. "I look dour." She turned away. "Sorry."
Mandy touched her arm, then said, "Nothing to be sorry about. But you need to take this pad and pencil around with you and talk to people for when you miss a word. Make an effort, at least."
"Did Evan tell you about the woman who was murdered?" Iris asked suddenly.
Mandy nodded. "You found her," she said.
"Yes," Iris said, able to read Mandy's lips better now that she was getting used to her way of moving her mouth. "Across the street from where I was hit."
"Really?" Mandy looked thoughtful. "Evan didn't tell me that."
Iris was distracted and didn't get it, so Mandy wrote it down. Then she added, "Does he know that?"
Iris thought for a moment. Had she told him? Did he know where Mrs. Baker lived? "I don't know," she admitted.
"You think the two might be connected," Mandy said.
Iris nodded. "The detective that interviewed me suggested it."
"What do the police say now?" Mandy aked.
"I haven't talked to them. I'm sure it's too soon."
The door swung open, and Brian Holden, the President of Mercer Pharmaceuticals, stepped into the room, an empty glass in his hand. His glance fell to the paper and pen, understanding making him nod.
He held up his glass and said, "Water."
Iris gestured towards the bottles next to the sink. He filled the glass, then turned around. He didn't seem to know what to do next. Actually, Iris decided, he looked more uncomfortable than was warranted by just her deafness. She smiled and asked, "How are you, Brian?"
"Fine," he said, his eyes shifting to look at Mandy.
Something passed between them, confusing Iris. Brian's eyes met Mandy's, then turned towards the door, as if suggesting Mandy leave.
"Nice party," Brian said, now looking at Iris.
"Thanks," Iris said.
He raised his glass in a silent toast and left the kitchen.
Mandy put the pad and pencil in Iris's hands and gestured towards the door.
Iris understood now that Brian hadn't wanted Mandy to talk to her.
When they got back to the living room, Iris looked around, Before, she had been too wrapped up in her own misery to notice that a lot of Mercer's employees were acting a bit strange. Some people gestured too widely, threw back their heads in forced laughter, and others stood morosely staring into their drinks.
For the first time, Iris wondered if maybe people weren't speaking to her for a different reason. She realized Evan hadn't talked about work in quite awhile. She'd put it down to the difficulty of her hearing. But what if it was something else?
She picked up the plate of cheese and crackers and began passing it around, now trying to read lips. She began to piece together the story that had everyone worried. A rival pharmaceutical company, Diatech, (she recognized the name because she’d heard it so often since Evan stated at Mercer) was suing Mercer over the patent for a diet pill. Apparently both companies came out with the pill around the same time, and each claimed its discovery.
She wondered why Evan hadn't told her.
As the last of the cheese and crackers disappeared from the plate, Iris realized that she had been so distracted by trying to find out what everyone was saying that her discomfort had disappeared, and the time had flown by. People were now beginning to leave.
After the last person left, Iris and Evan turned to survey the living room, strewn with plates and glasses.
"Tonight or tomorrow?" Evan asked.
"Might as well do it tonight," Iris said, even though she felt exhausted.
She picked up a full glass of clear liquid. It looked like the one Brian had come into the kitchen to get. Why hadn't he drunk it? She sniffed it. No scent of liquor. So, he really had come to get Mandy out of the kitchen. Why?
"Evan?" she asked.
He turned from picking up a tray of glasses and gave her a quizzical look.
"What's going on at work? You haven't talked about it in weeks. I thought it was because of my hearing loss. But it's something else, isn't it? To do with the lawsuit."
He nodded. "Not much to tell. I'm out of the loop."
"What? You're out of the loop?" she repeated to be sure she'd understood him.
"It's true."
"Why?"
He shrugged. "Don't know."
She went over to him and took the tray. After she set it down on the coffee table, she grasped him by the shoulders, as he so often did with her. "It's bothering you, big time."
"Yeah."
In a funny way, she felt relieved. It explained a lot about how he'd been acting lately. Moving into his embrace, she found a kind of peace. It wouldn't be so bad that she'd lost her hearing and her job, as long as she still had Evan.
"I can clean up tomorrow," she whispered.
*****
On Monday Iris decided to surprise Evan by stopping by the office and inviting him to lunch. She realized he might be busy, but she'd take that chance.
As she drove past Mrs. Baker's house, with the crime scene tape still in place, she averted her eyes and told herself not to think about it. There was nothing she could do to bring Mrs. Baker back or even to find out why she had been murdered.
Her eyes automatically searched the street and driveways for a white Cadillac, but she didn't see one.
She stopped to get gas. At the checkout she noticed the new issue of Forbes with a picture of Diatech's CEO on the cover. On impulse, she bought it.
She drove to Mercer's sprawling white building and parked in the visitor's area. Mandy greeted her warmly and buzzed Evan to tell him Iris was there. "He has someone with him," Mandy said. "He'll be done in about fifteen minutes."
Iris made out most of what Mandy said. "I'll wait. I brought a magazine to read."
She sat on the couch and turned to the article about Diatech. The rival pharmaceutical company was trying hard to become number one in the business, doing its best to overtake Mercer. The article touched briefly on the lawsuit and showed several pictures of the company and some personnel. The picture of the CEO caught Iris's attention. He looked familiar, but she knew she'd never met him. Something about the way he tilted his head . . .
She kept glancing at Mandy to make sure she wasn't trying to catch her attention. Iris looked up from the photo of Diatech's CEO and caught Mandy in the same pose, her head tilted up, staring at the ceiling.
Iris gasped. Could it be? She never would have figured it out if she hadn't seen the photo and Mandy so close together.
But what did it mean? It could be nothing, she tried to reassure herself.
Evan's door opened, and he stepped out with a tall, thin man. Both of them carried briefcases. Evan stopped next to Iris and said, "Hi. I'm sorry, there’s an emergency at the factory, and I have to go over there with Bob. Another time?"
She nodded. Evan pecked her on the cheek and left.
Mandy stood up and retrieved her purse from a desk drawer.
"I'd go to lunch with you, but I'm meeting someone, too," she said.
"That's all right," Iris managed to say. They walked out of the office together.
In front of the building, Mandy greeted a man, but did not introduce him to Iris. Iris stood awkwardly as they walked across the street to the company's parking lot. She went to get her own car. As she pulled out of the lot, she saw Mandy in the passenger's seat of the man's car.
A white Cadillac.
Coincidence, Iris assured herself, but she began to follow them. Her heart pounded harder when she saw the license plate. D-TECH-3. They wound their way through the lunchtime traffic, and the Caddy parked in the Olive Garden's lot. Iris watched the two of them walk inside, then she got out of her car and walked over to the Cadillac, looking at the front for any signs of an accident.
If it had been in one, it had been repaired.
She stood, irresolute, next to the car. It wouldn't do her any good to go inside. She couldn't hide behind a palm tree and eavesdrop. If she sat close enough to try and read their lips, Mandy would spot her.
She pounded her fist on the white Caddy in frustration. Everything she tried to do was blocked by her inability to hear.
But then she remembered how she'd been able to read lips the night before without anyone realizing it. And she'd noticed the similarity between Mandy and Diatech's CEO because her eyes were doing more of the communication work for her these days.
Okay, she said to herself, take the leap that one of Diatech's cars hit you. There must be more than one since the license plate had the number three on it. Had it hit her on purpose? Why? It made no sense.
Could have been an accident, and the driver, knowing she was Mercer's Vice President's wife, didn't want to acknowledge it.
But her gut said that didn't wash. The other factors were that Mandy looked so much like Diatech's CEO, and Evan was out of the loop about the lawsuit.
Iris decided she needed to learn more about Diatech. She drove home thoughtfully. There, she made herself a pot of coffee and a sandwich and booted up her computer. She spent the rest of the afternoon surfing the ‘net, reading about the rival pharmaceutical company. Occasionally, she printed something out.
Evan arrived home on time, for once, perhaps sorry he hadn't been able to take her to lunch. She gave him the print-outs to read while she made dinner.
When they sat down, he asked, "Why did you do this?" He pointed to the papers which he had brought with him to the table.
Iris explained about Mandy and the Cadillac. She showed him the picture in Fortune.
"You think Mandy has something to do with Diatech?"
"I don't know, Evan. But I do think she's related to the CEO. You do see the resemblance? And why was she going to lunch with them? We have to assume the car she went in belongs to Diatech."
"But she openly rode with them. Does that look like she's trying to keep her relationship a secret?"
"No," Iris said slowly, "but there's something definitely wrong here."
"I agree with that," Evan said. "There are innuendos in these printouts that Diatech is associated with organized crime. At least the top officers are. This could mean that your accident wasn't an accident. But why? Why would they want to hurt you? You aren't a threat to them."
"Maybe," Iris said thoughtfully, spearing an olive, "as a warning to someone else in your company?"
"My God," Evan groaned. He took a sip of wine and wiped his brow. "It is odd that Brian isn't talking to me about the lawsuit. Says not to concern myself with it. Ever since your accident."
Evan spent most of the rest of the evening pacing the living room. Iris did the dishes, then sat at her computer, keying in everything that had happened since her accident, trying to decide what to do about it.
The next day, after Evan left for work, Iris drove to Diatech's. The long, low building looked similar to Mercer's and several other pharmaceutical companies in the area.
Iris drove around the parking lot, looking for white Cadillac’s. She found a few, but none had the distinctive license plates.
Then she saw one drive into the lot. The license plate read D-TECH-3. She didn't recognize the driver, but she followed it to a place where the driver used a remote to open a gate. Iris didn't dare enter the restricted area because she might not be able to get out. But she found a place to park nearby and settled down to watch.
D-TECH-2 drove in. Iris slouched down in her seat and watched it enter the restricted area. The driver of this one looked vaguely familiar, but she was sure she’d never seen the passenger before. Maybe she'd seen the driver’s picture in Fortune. She'd brought the magazine with her, and she studied the pictures. Finally she found the man in the far corner of a group picture, unidentified. Why would she have remembered this face in the group? She didn't know. Her stomach clenched.
When D-TECH-2 drove out of the lot an hour later, Iris followed. The car wound through the streets and up into the Jersey hills. Huge estates, hidden behind hedges and fences, lined the avenues. Eventually, the car pulled into the driveway of one and stopped at the closed gate. The driver spoke into a speaker on the brick post. Iris pulled off to the side, hoping they wouldn’t notice her. But suddenly, the Caddy’s door opened, and the passenger got out and rushed over to her, a gun pointing at her chest. Iris felt too stunned to move.
"Get out of the car," the man demanded. Iris could tell he was shouting by the way his face was distorted. He waved the gun at her.
Slowly, she exited the car. The gate had swung open, and the gunman motioned for her to enter the estate.
Terror gripped her, and she stumbled on a stone in the drive. The Caddy drove in slowly behind them, and Iris re-lived the moment the car struck her from behind. Could this be the same car? Teeth chattering, her legs wobbly, she was relieved when the car stopped and the gunman motioned for her to get in the back. He crowded in next to her, the gun pointed unwaveringly at her chest. They drove the rest of the way up the winding drive to a huge, faintly pink building with a red tile roof. It looked more like a museum than a home.
As they got out of the car, Iris glanced again at the driver. When he saw her looking at him, he set his lips and turned his head away. That's when she knew. The lips and nose were all she'd been able to see underneath the sunglasses, but she recognized him as the person driving the car that hit her. Disguised as a woman. She felt dizzy, and her vision faded around the edges. She couldn't pass out. She just couldn't.
One on either side, the gun still pointed at her, they marched up the front steps where another man waited, glaring.
He said something through clenched teeth that Iris couldn't make out. They led her inside to an elevator, and it rose to the third floor where they took her to a bedroom. The driver spoke, but she didn't understand everything he said.
"I can't hear," she said. "I'm deaf, because of you."
"She knows," he said. "We'll have to get rid of her." His face had become an ugly mask of hate.
"Later," the man who had greeted them said. "Not enough time now. We've got to sign those settlement papers. Lock her in. She won't get away."
Iris didn't hear the door close behind them, but she saw it. She ran over and tried the knob. Locked, of course. She wanted to bang on it, but knew it wouldn't do any good.
She sank down into a soft chair and looked around. No phone. The furnishing were opulent with a canopied bed, massive oak furniture, and a plush beige rug under her feet. She stood up slowly and went to the heavily draped and curtained window. She saw no handy trellises or vines to climb down, if she could even get the window open.
Searching for a latch, she found one which she was able to unlock. Surprised, she opened the window. Now there was just a screen. She looked all around it. It appeared to be nailed shut from the outside. Sighing, she went over the nightstand and opened the drawer, hoping for something to cut the screen. Empty. Then she saw another door and opened it. A bathroom. No other exit. Disappointed, she tried the medicine chest. Toothbrush still in its wrapper, toothpaste, a tiny bottle of aspirin. Nothing else. No razor, no nail file, nothing to cut with.
Except the removable glass shelves. Thin, not too difficult to handle. Iris took one back to the window. Using the rough corner of the shelf, she managed to make a hole at the edge of the screen. Then she sawed the shelf down and around the whole screen, making sure it fell into the room and not out onto the lawn.
Perspiring, she sat on the bed to catch her breath. It wasn't the exertion that make her heart pound, but the possibility of escape.
Sitting on the bed reminded her of sheets. Two plus the spread might work to get her down far enough to drop the rest of the way. The spread first. She tied it to the bed leg nearest the window, then tied the sheets together and to the spread. She stuck her head out the window. No one around. Taking a deep breath, she threw the makeshift rope out the window and waited for something to happen. No one appeared to stop her, so she climbed over the sill, grabbed the bedspread, and began her descent.
The last sheet didn't quite touch the lawn below her. She didn't dare look down until she reached the end of the sheet.
A huge Rottweiler stood, obviously barking furiously at her, almost able to reach her feet with his strong jaws.
Iris tried to stop the sheet from swinging so she could remain still. She talked soothingly to the dog. Her arms felt as if they were breaking from the strain.
Suddenly, the dog left. Called away? She didn't know. She waited a minute, but her arms could no longer hold her, and she dropped to the ground and fell over. She stood up quickly and began to run. If anyone pursued her, she didn't know. She couldn't hear, and she wouldn't let herself look back.
She ran around the house, down the front drive, all the way to the gate. Which was closed and locked. Sobbing, she beat her fists against it.
As if by magic, it began to open. Iris looked around frantically. Behind her, she saw a car approaching. The driver must have used a remote to open the gate. She slipped into some bushes and watched the car drive by. Before the gate could close again, she slithered through and stood panting on the sidewalk, astonished she'd gotten this far.
And even more amazing, her car sat where she'd parked it. Locked? She ran over and tried. The door swung open at her touch. Iris breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the keys in the ignition. She looked around the area. No one in sight.
Quickly getting in and starting the car, Iris zoomed down the hill, taking the first curve a bit wide. A white Cadillac coming the other way almost collided with her. Glancing in her rearview mirror, she saw the car fishtail around and come up behind her. The face staring at her out of the windshield was the same as the one she'd glimpsed before she'd been struck while out walking.
Her sweaty palms almost slid off the steering wheel as she gripped it harder. Her mind raced furiously. What should she do?
A feeling of calmness swept over her as she decided to just drive to the police station. The one where Detective Michaelson had interviewed her.
Finally, Iris pulled up in front of the station. She didn't try to get out of her car. She sat in it, doors locked, and pressed on the horn, glad she couldn't hear the blare.
Several police officers approached her as she watched the white Cadillac speed away. All was confusion as she tried to explain to them what had happened. Finally she was ushered into Detective Michaelson’s office. He stood as she entered, then turned to one of the officers. Iris managed to lip read something about a court reporter around his toothpick. She sank into a visitor’s chair, sighing, again wondering if he could hear her.
“Tell me what happened,” he said. He didn’t interrupt her until the court reporter entered with her equipment and set it up. Then he motioned for Iris to finish.
“We’ve been looking for you,” he said when she wound down.
She read the screen, then nodded.
“Mrs. Baker kept a journal. She saw you being run down and got the license number. Diatech 2.”
Iris gasped.
“We think it was a warning to Mercer, specifically to the President, of what could happen to his wife.”
“Is my husband’s secretary involved?” Iris asked.
“We’re not sure, but think so. She’s Diatech’s president’s sister. We think she may have been the go-between.”
Iris shook her head, trying to take it all in. That was why Evan had been kept out of the loop.
“You’ve been very brave and resourceful,” the detective told her. “We can add kidnapping to the charges and be sure that these people are put away for a long, long time.” He smiled at her, the toothpick hardly getting in the way.
Maybe, she thought, her deafness wouldn't be the severe handicap she believed it to be.
She said goodbye to Detective Michaelson and picked up the black dog from Mrs. Allen on the way home. She began training him to let her know when the phone or the doorbell rang and to alert her to other sounds. He kept her company while she decided what to do with the rest of her life.
About the Author:
Jan Christensen has had one mystery novel and over forty short stories published. When not writing, she travels fulltime in a motorhome with her husband. Website: www.janchristensen.com
Short Story: THE RORSCHACH AFFAIR by KP Dorsey
Judy stepped from the back door of the US Embassy into a sub-Saharan Sunday afternoon sun that forced her eyes shut. The wind seemed to blow from an open clothes dryer.
Her chopper idled on the pad. They trained her to duck her head, so she did, though the rotors spun six feet higher than she stood. She carried only her small overnight bag.
A Marine had been sent to her room to collect her things, for security, lest she be assassinated on the street, and he had not interpreted her packing list with perfect intuition. Nor was she thrilled with her military attaché cover legend. MA’s cover is already a mutual wink between the host and guest countries. The whole TDY felt like a neon arrow erected over the coyote’s cave reading 'The American intelligence community went thataway.'
The flight's destination was an oil platform thirty miles off the coast in the Guinea Gulf. A non-notional liaison Foreign Service Officer was along for the ride. The rig workers believed the sole purpose of the visit was a briefing on updated security measures, should the nationalist guerillas operating on land decide to branch out and attack the platform. The Directorate of Intelligence in DC was developing a theory that the guerillas were creatures of Islamist radicals based across the continent on The Horn. Their routine round of kidnapping oil workers and hi-jacking pipelines were, the theory stipulated, part of a pilot program to test the possibility of using oil prices as an economic weapon against the United States. This particular offshore rig had been nationalized by President Boteng's predecessor over a decade earlier and was known to be under-producing by a suspicious margin, compared to reports from a cut-out Judy had recruited months earlier. He told her the volume of oil coming from the seabed remained unchanged. The lower volume filling tankers exerted upward price pressure on Nigeria’s exports. Judy's task for headquarters, and which was compartmented from her FSO counterpart, was to discover where the rest of the oil was going. Her task for the local station chief was to find evidence in support of a different theory altogether.
"So it's not exactly a secret you're not here on some workaday demarche," the desk-fattened FSO shouted at her, as she squeezed past him. He sat in the second of four hard-backed seats in the mid-cabin. She took the port-side window, which was only half an empty seat away from the adipose girth of the bespectacled, sweating diplomat. She intended her body language, as she buckled her safety harness, to communicate that his unsubtle prompt had disappeared into the chest-thumping noise of the engine.
She watched the white x-in-circle shrink beneath them, then disappear behind as they gained altitude. She found cans and a mouthpiece hanging behind her seat.
"I've heard the one about the diplomatic pouch special escort, too," the FSO said, into his own mic. He had enough stomach collapsed over his belt to fill at least two liposuction canisters. She suppressed a thought about how many spittle-flecked words from the mouths of how many similar figurants had coated the mic now half an inch from her own mouth. "So I'd prefer not to read my name or any cryptonym designating my name in any of your reports." It was impossible to know whether he was eliciting or rubber-necking.
"Then don't say anything reportable," she broke in.
He huffed and pretended to look out the opposite window.
"Our ETA is still four hours, Captain?" she shouted for the pilot. She didn't know how good the reception was through the chopper's internal system. She hoped she wasn't too loud. This was her first such flight.
"Affirm," the Marine said.
The FSO did not comment. He must have expected the detour.
The landscape of the Sahel was a flat, brown camouflage pattern interrupted by geometric shapes of green. Livestock or crop farms. Most of the local population scavenged wood for cooking fires and the resulting deforestation was visible, as baked brown dust, all the way to the coast. The amount of rainfall over this part of Africa was directly related to the intensity of the hurricane season in the Atlantic. She noted, for later debriefing, that the green spaces of the farms were literally keeping the man-made desert at bay with little more than a single strand of barbed wire which the wood scavengers would not cross.
"There's the river, ma'am."
They meandered north, avoiding larger towns or settlements. The pilot had a list of way points which coincided with her survey interests. Even he, though, did not know why those sites had been chosen.
The Niger river’s source is the mountains of southern Guinea, where its volume is greater than what reaches Nigeria. Most of the water seeps or evaporates in the desert, past the Guinean border with Mali, resulting in periodic downstream droughts. The unmistakable geometric lines of temporary construction roads were plainly visible, cut through the upland forest canopy. Stacks of cast concrete, round tunnel segments, square box culvert sections, stood three stories high near the crew encampments.
Judy photographed these with a tiny digital camera she bought with her own money from an ordinary big-box store in Virginia before leaving for overseas. The FSO made a gesture with his head that signaled confirmation of his suspicions mixed with disgust at the accuracy of his own foresight. She always marveled at the stupidity of all who believe transparent displays of disgust advance their cause.
There was nothing to be done about it. If he was here it meant he had clearance to observe what she did. He could infer little, though, from what was, in fact, only what it appeared: a construction site to build a water diversion culvert for the purpose of farm irrigation. Various international aid agencies, including USAID, were spending tens of millions to turn the western Sahel into Africa’s version of California’s San Joaquin Valley.
Judy shouted to the pilot they were finished. The chopper banked to the left, heading toward the Gulf. The sideways lean of the banked turn, combined with the relatively slow forward momentum of a helicopter's pivot made her heavy against the chopper door. The force also sent the FSO leaning into her. She was pretty sure he wasn't resisting as much as he could.
From about five miles out, the oil platform resembled a masted sailing ship. Boom arms, the derrick, and the spidery rigging combined to give Judy an impression of armed menace and vast, well-directed power.
The chopper's engine cut off and the rotors wound down. The FSO disgorged himself from the chopper and stood behind her. The pilot would stay with them overnight, racked out in the chopper. Judy hoped whatever accommodations awaited her would not make her envy his assignment.
She was greeted by three of the rig crew's management, all native Africans, all dressed in canvas coveralls smeared with oil, all smiling for the benefit of their VIP guests. The leader looked like the John Henry statue where she grew up in West Virginia. The atmosphere on the landing pad was composed entirely of petroleum fumes, both burned and raw.
The delegation made its way across a steel-mesh deck through which the undulating ocean some hundred feet below plainly showed. This induced a vertiginous flash of nausea that straightened Judy's head and focused her eyes up and away. They climbed steel stairs to a catwalk, toward a fire-door so heavy even the huge leader had to shift his weight to hold it open.
Her first impression of the "mess hall" was that it had recently hosted a wrestling match among crude-soaked hippopotami. Judy took a grimy military-surplus chair on one of the long sides of a battered dining table, at the corner nearest the head. She was pleased to watch John Henry take the head seat, closest to her. She ignored dozens of fork marks in the tabletop, stabbed in a pattern around a hand-shaped, rust-brown stain she knew was made of dried blood.
"I am Madu, head driller. This is Adofo, my rig foreman, and Diallo, my assistant driller."
Judy extended her hand. "Jane Winthrop, United States Military Attaché, and Ralph Zutz, US State Department Security Consultant." The driller's biceps threatened to burst through his coverall as Judy's hand disappeared entirely into an oily, five-fingered bench vice.
"It's 'Rafe,' actually. Pleased to meet you all," the FSO said. He was at the far end of the table, out of range of handshakes. She imagined him turning on a spit with an apple in his mouth.
"We'll need to see the life-support facilities. Especially the water plant. We're thinking of subdue-and-occupy scenarios in which the crew could be incapacitated by infiltrators," Judy said.
"Diallo will lead your tour. Adofo and I will then answer your questions during the third meal, at seven pm. Your bunks will then be ready. If your presentation requires any special equipment, Diallo will get it for you. Until seven, then." The big boss did not invite questions or discussion. He stood and extended his open palm to the door.
"Third meal?" Judy asked Diallo, as they descended a mesh-enclosed steel ladder to the lower works level.
"There are four per day. Many calories make much work."
Diallo was half the size of Madu and still a big, powerfully built man. He was beneath Judy on the ladder and spoke to the bottoms of her feet without any sign of objection.
"This is the lower level. These tanks hold our fresh water supply. The roar from these machines is the sound of desalination of ocean water. In this we are self-sufficient. Across the deck is the waste-water disposal system, also loud. Also self-sufficient. The pipeworks are completely separate. No chance of mixing potable water with gray-water, or brown-water."
Judy dragged her feet, lingering longer than necessary before the two-story-tall machines. The main assembly could be described as a combination of a brewery works and an electrical dynamo; two huge, covered holding vats connected by half-meter-diameter pipes led into and out of two cylindrical pump housings about the size of automobiles. She considered whether to feign sea-sickness, to get a longer look--Diallo was not in a perceptible rush, but wasn't dawdling, either--but she couldn't decide if it was plausible to be seasick on a stationary surface. She did manage to take a surreptitious photograph of two pipes, the same size as the ones to the pumps, which appeared to bypass the water-works then disappear down, through the floor, rather than up through the ceiling, as did all the others. If all the plumbing in this section was for desalination, these two pipes were extraneous--they touched none of the process machinery. While she memorized these details, "Rafe" ogled at the equipment and nodded in empty-eyed wonder, not noticing he had stepped in a puddle of condensation and machine grease.
They exited another steel fire-door and stood on an exterior steel frame landing. Diallo never turned his head to be sure his group was still there, he simply walked on then turned to address them at the apparently well-rehearsed stopping points. They were close to the ocean surface now, only about one story down. The landing was enclosed with metal-tube safety railing, hip-high. Judy stood next to one of the main load-bearing columns of the rig, which passed through the steel floor from far up on the main level. As she gripped the safety rail, she traced the overhead course of another set of pipes leading from the roof of the desalination room, suspended by wires, across a hundred meters of open sea to an adjoining mini-platform about the size of a wealthy landowner's bush veldt bungalow on stilts.
"All treated waste then exits the pump room and collects in holding tanks in that separate platform. The pipes leading down to the sea pump waste to disposal ships, which receive the waste water and transport it for further treatment and disposal on the mainland," Diallo said. His voice was raised over the sea breeze, which on this side of the rig was refreshingly scented with nothing but salt, the open ocean, and a tinge of ozone, like a summertime breeze in North America, she thought, after the lightning of a thunderstorm blows away days of heavy haze.
It was this pleasant smell which hit Judy in the chest, as hard as a pistol round striking her in a bullet-proof vest. She understood what Diallo was showing her.
People being questioned tend to get more defensive the closer they get to releasing themselves from suspicion. For them, interrogation is like being led toward a door while blindfolded. You don't know if the stranger pulling you wants to run your nose into the frame or deliver you safely within. The closer to the door the more squirms.
Judy had just allowed the environment to influence her judgment by asking a question a bit too close to the door jamb. The five involved, Judy, her burden in the form of a morbidly obese "colleague," and the three oil workers, sat around a mess table in the, now, occupied dining area. Judy was no rookie. This was her second hardship post and her third overseas tour. The view appalled her.
Two dozen or so men, the smallest the size of a baby elephant, hunched over trays of food mounded to sternum height. Mouths full of food, food stuffed in there by bare hands the color of pitch regardless of the ethnicity of their owners, spent way more time open, to shout or grunt, than they spent chewing. Across the surface of every table swept a kind of multicolored sirocco composed of flung food particles and spittle. The background white-noise of voices was over-laid with the sticky, phlegmatic static of aspirated mastication.
Judy had just noticed, and decided to pretend not to, a complete absence of napkins when she asked Madu, "And to whom in the government do you report shipping volumes?" It was then she saw first Diallo, then Adofo, unambiguously, unmistakably, squirm.
Just moments after Madu answered, in the voice of an automaton, "These matters are handled through the routine channels. Your bunk quarters are to the right of the main exit, first door on the left," the three notional rig crew managers rose from the table in unison, and excused themselves for the night.
If she had to summarize her career experience to date, she might compare it to spending years viewing Rorschach tests with combative ink-artists who insist on seeing whatever flatters them, while she is duty-bound to call a duck a duck.
She kicked the dingy sheet off the bunk without a care whether she woke what she now thought of as the walrus in the bunk beneath her. His apneatic gurgling fit him right in anyway. In her bare feet, she jumped the meter-and-a-half to the tiled floor and slipped her boots on.
The bunk room was built for ten, and the other eight bunks were divided by sliding wall partitions not nearly thick enough to drown out the collective snoring, which made her think of modern orchestra music. She rolled her feet heels-first until she reached the fire door. If anyone woke, it would be only natural she sought the bathroom.
Past the door, she turned toward the ladder. Flood lights, spot lights, and safety lamps of various sizes and intensities from intimate to blinding silhouetted the rigging on the main level. Webs of shadows fell over every surface. She could hear only the turbine-whine of machinery and the sub-bass rumble of viscous liquid through metal. No voices. She paused at the top of the ladder for one whole minute before she felt certain no one would follow her from the bunk room.
At the landing she turned again toward the desalination works. The machinery was dim in the safety lamps, and unmanned at this hour--eight minutes after 2am by her watch. She pulled the mini-digital camera from the wide waistband of her flopsy, sexless cotton pajamas and snapped the machinery from every angle the radiant heat of the pipes allowed.
When she was satisfied she had it all, she continued down the ladder further than they had gone on the "tour." The ladder went all the way down to the water, then continued under. From the next-to-last dry rung she got what she was sure was the second-place prize of the trip, high-quality photos of the two mystery pipes, which followed the main load column, down into the depths of the Gulf.
First prize, she saw as soon as her night vision recovered from the camera flash, was going to be a little dicier.
She tied her boot laces together and hung them over a ladder rung, then lifted off her pajama top and tied it to the next rung up. Removing the bottoms required a slightly acrobatic balancing act, one leg at time, but she managed to preserve a dry set of clothes for her exit.
The water below the ladders' first wet rung surprised her. It felt like a warm bath. Her camera was not rated for water resistance, so she took the tiny memory stick that held her pictures and slipped it into her left boot. Then she wrapped the camera tight in a clear plastic sandwich bag she had palmed from dinner, twisted the neck closed and clenched the twist in her teeth. The camera's own memory held ten shots if it didn't short out first.
She breathed deeply ten times through her nose, and held the eleventh breath.
The aqueous sound of submersion pushed into her ears. The underwater darkness was nearly total. She couldn't see her photo subject, but she knew where it would be, if it was there. With her head just a few feet under the surface, and one hand white-knuckled to a ladder rung, she snapped away, as fast as the camera's little computer would allow. The flash went off ten times.
Putting her pajamas back on was even more awkward than taking them off, but she couldn’t be found nearly naked, even on the outside catwalk. About an ounce of seawater had invaded the sandwich bag, but the little machine had not given up on her. She wiped it down on a pajama leg and tried to key up a preview of one the pictures she had just taken. In the postage-stamp-sized preview window she was sure she could see two pipes, angling away from the support strut and joining two others, from the mini-platform across the way, in a Y-joint that led to where she would be unable to go, but where the answer of the missing oil, the last answer headquarters would ever expect, was sure to be found.
At six in the morning she awoke in her bunk just a bit damp, but more refreshed than if she had slept twice as long. She had the goods. Even the horrendous sight of the walrus wrapped in a bath towel caused no more than a passing brow-wrinkle. She dressed, balled up her PJs into her bag, and left the bunk room behind, in the happy abode of memory where it belonged.
After breakfast, which was conspicuously unchaperoned, she and her "colleague" delivered the (non-notional) security update to a meeting room full of half-drowsing rig workers who, now that she thought of it, were the last people on earth who needed to be told how to deal with security risks. The trio of "managers" sat in the back, six arms crossed, and paid what they probably thought looked like polite attention. The group dismissed after the briefing, stunned into silence by the walrus' inevitable whining monotone.
Madu walked them to their chopper, which the Marine pilot had already warmed up.
"So very kind of you to keep us current on the latest developments in counter-insurgent tactics, Miss-- Miss-- " He paused, the tone of his voice rising on the second "Miss."
He was actually trying to prompt her to forget she had given a false name. "Winthrop. Mizz Winthrop. Jane, actually. The United States is a friend to the industrious, Madu. We'll be in touch."
As if.
The walrus again waited in the back seat, ready to harp at her as she climbed aboard.
"That's it? All the way here for a half-hour tour and a nap?"
It was obvious the FSO had been around the block with at least one previous notional colleague. They all thought the Clandestine Service had a huge secret orchard of money trees somewhere outside of Reston, VA and that they spent it with profligate glee just to get State's miserly goat. The Marine up front, likely a veteran of dozens of sorties much weirder than this one, didn't even blink.
Judy slung her overnight bag under the seat and buckled in.
About one thousand feet and four nautical miles from the rig, she decided to transfer the cameras' onboard snaps to the memory stick. She rifled through her overnight bag, at first with a feigned look of boredom, since the walrus didn't need to know what she was looking for, or why. Then her movements betrayed anxiety. Once her pajamas were strewn across the cabin floor, even the Marine pilot couldn't help but notice she was close to a panic. He ignored this, though, when she settled herself by thumping the heel of her left boot rhythmically on the floor plate.
She could feel the memory stick under her heel. But the camera was gone.
Judy sat before a typewriter for the first time in her brief career. Some secrets are sufficiently sensitive they are never entered into any computer, no matter how supposedly secure. This was her final report, so she chose every word to conform to the jargon-rich lingo of the dip-pouch-sitreps she had seen during training:
MOST SECRET, EYES ONLY, NOFORN, NODISSEM: DCI (KUDOVE), COS/EWIEMU
DATE: 22, July, 2004
Action: Operation KUENVIOUS
Summary of background:
On 19 July, Senior Officer on Station (SO) debriefed PIXIE re open-source theory motivating KUENVIOUS. Atlantic hurricane activity based on Sahel moisture in combination with ocean temperature. Interagency cross-comparison with National Reconnaissance Office photos of ocean surface temperature patterns in the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (Gulf of Guinea) show plumes of high temperature (84° Fahrenheit) surface water contrary to expected decadal oscillation, suggesting presence of subsurface thermal venting. NRO imagery further suggests greenification in the Sahel concerted plan to amplify west-bound Saharan low pressure waves. Open-source reporting (Gray, et.al) suggests wetter Sahel combined with two degree increase in ITCZ temperature yields 10-28 percent increase in low-pressure organization over ten years and 8-33 percent increase in average storm volatility. A deep-end projection of 25.92 barometric pressure may be expected. KUENVIOUS was an operation to prove Horn-based Islamists are attempting to enhance hurricane strength in the mid-Atlantic.
Prior Reporting:
KUCAGE intelligence estimate of June 2004 lists other-source reporting of 1.) International Finance Corporation funding for greenification projects. 2.) volume discrepancy for petroleum departing JDZ platform 182. PIXIE visited JDZ 182 on 20-21, July. Pipes consistent with furnace fuel supply lines join pipes consistent with those containing air at high pressure. PIXIE confirmed evidence consistent with aerosolized oil/air mixture ignition for subsurface electrical turbine operation. Sea water in vicinity of JDZ 182 was measured at 88° Fahrenheit. Atmospheric ozone was present in high quantity. No detectable vapor from waste disposal was present. PIXIE submitted corroborating photographs 21, July. Remaining photographic evidence disappeared overnight while PIXIE was aboard JDZ 182, likely due to theft. SO offers support theft is evidence for concealment motive.
Current Reporting:
PIXIE returned to operation status, 23, July. Local other-source reporting confirms USAID, Africa section, allocated $10 million USD, earmarked Niger River diversion. See aerial recon photos enclosed.
Recommendations:
SO concurs with PIXIE: Recommend armed SOCOM SEAL reconnaissance of subsurface turbine at JDZ 182. Recommend destruction of JDZ 182, with prejudice, upon final confirmation of turbine-driven ocean heating. Recommend EXEC-level intervention, USAID, Africa Section, immediately. Recommend GAO audit of International Finance Corporation immediately, while ODYOKE holds World Bank Presidency. Recommend FOIA blackout on all aspects KUENVIOUS for life of principals plus fifty years.
While Judy waited for a reply from the Director via the diplomatic pouch special escort, her cut-out aboard the oil platform studied the instructions he had downloaded from the internet on how to operate her digital camera.
On Friday of that week, Madu decided the crew deserved to celebrate their recent success. Routine METEOSAT imagery posted in plain view on the NOAA web site showed a new, seasonally unexpected plume of hot surface water over one hundred miles long off the west African coast.
During the festivities, complete with coolers of freshly imported beer, Madu took a quiet moment to ask Diallo what he thought of the American girl.
Diallo had two open beers, one per hand, and was sitting on the high rail from which, only days earlier, Judy had descended into the water. He stared off into the black, roaring ocean.
"Did she talk about her family at all?"
"No," Diallo said.
"How did she choose you?"
Diallo still looked away. "I was selected during an assignment on a well in Darfur."
"She was there?"
"Posing as a UN aid worker." Diallo chose that moment to toss the first of his beers to go empty into the black void beneath him. “You believe the real rig would escape their scrutiny?”
Madu’s answer was to take the camera, emptied of its easily enhanceable high-definition photos of some spare construction pipes which had been hastily jerry-rigged and submerged to decoy their visitors – in case they showed up under as well as above the water – and throw it over the railing. It tumbled down through a light breeze and disappeared.
Judy received her reply the next day:
MOST SECRET, EYES ONLY, NOFORN, NODISSEM: PIXIE, SO/EWIEMU, COS/EWIEMU
DATE: 26, July, 2004
Action: Conclusion, Operation KUENVIOUS
Preliminary Regional Intelligence Estimate of Current Reporting:
Concur circumstances of theft indicate concealment. Consultation with civilian experts fails to support hurricane theory. All-source reporting combined with DI analysis fails to concur JDZ 182. Best engineering estimate renders pipes shown in PIXIE photos ambiguous. Presence of ozone, absence of waste odor too subjective to support concurrence re recommendation re destruction JDZ 182. KUDOVE critical no consideration given to weaponized crude futures market theory. Evidence also consistent with psy-op campaign to skew PBPRIME public opinion prior 2004 election cycle. Special Adviser to KUDOVE cites HORAYA article of 21, July. Intervention, USAID, Africa Section, submitted for EXEC review, pending. GAO lacks jurisdiction re International Finance Corporation, World Bank. FOIA blackout on all aspects KUENVIOUS for life of principals plus fifty years approved.
Action items:
- Take no further action re KUENVIOUS. File closed.
- PIXIE to return to PBPRIME, immediately, for reassignment NATO HQ, Brussels.
“They don’t believe us,” she said, in the SO’s office, after he burned the reply in an ashtray he used only for that purpose.
"Africa desk," he said. "Besides. Rumor has it Wolfowitz will head the World Bank next. You did a good job."
"But the evidence."
"Was delivered. This is the life we chose, Judith. The big secrets you'll carry for the rest of your life are not vast conspiracies. They are the knowledge of what you've done."
"Then, you don't think there’s a huge electro-turbine, one of maybe dozens, heating ocean water in the Gulf of Guinea?"
"I think HQ has closed the file, whether there is or not. I think you are ordered to report. I think you will have a fine career."
There was nothing more to be said about it. The only thing she would miss in Belgium was working with the SO. She told him so, then went home to pack.
About the Author
KP Dorsey lives and works on a glacial outwash basin, in one of the Great Lakes Eight states, on an eastern branch of the Mississippi flyway, in the Northern Temperate Zone.
Her chopper idled on the pad. They trained her to duck her head, so she did, though the rotors spun six feet higher than she stood. She carried only her small overnight bag.
A Marine had been sent to her room to collect her things, for security, lest she be assassinated on the street, and he had not interpreted her packing list with perfect intuition. Nor was she thrilled with her military attaché cover legend. MA’s cover is already a mutual wink between the host and guest countries. The whole TDY felt like a neon arrow erected over the coyote’s cave reading 'The American intelligence community went thataway.'
The flight's destination was an oil platform thirty miles off the coast in the Guinea Gulf. A non-notional liaison Foreign Service Officer was along for the ride. The rig workers believed the sole purpose of the visit was a briefing on updated security measures, should the nationalist guerillas operating on land decide to branch out and attack the platform. The Directorate of Intelligence in DC was developing a theory that the guerillas were creatures of Islamist radicals based across the continent on The Horn. Their routine round of kidnapping oil workers and hi-jacking pipelines were, the theory stipulated, part of a pilot program to test the possibility of using oil prices as an economic weapon against the United States. This particular offshore rig had been nationalized by President Boteng's predecessor over a decade earlier and was known to be under-producing by a suspicious margin, compared to reports from a cut-out Judy had recruited months earlier. He told her the volume of oil coming from the seabed remained unchanged. The lower volume filling tankers exerted upward price pressure on Nigeria’s exports. Judy's task for headquarters, and which was compartmented from her FSO counterpart, was to discover where the rest of the oil was going. Her task for the local station chief was to find evidence in support of a different theory altogether.
"So it's not exactly a secret you're not here on some workaday demarche," the desk-fattened FSO shouted at her, as she squeezed past him. He sat in the second of four hard-backed seats in the mid-cabin. She took the port-side window, which was only half an empty seat away from the adipose girth of the bespectacled, sweating diplomat. She intended her body language, as she buckled her safety harness, to communicate that his unsubtle prompt had disappeared into the chest-thumping noise of the engine.
She watched the white x-in-circle shrink beneath them, then disappear behind as they gained altitude. She found cans and a mouthpiece hanging behind her seat.
"I've heard the one about the diplomatic pouch special escort, too," the FSO said, into his own mic. He had enough stomach collapsed over his belt to fill at least two liposuction canisters. She suppressed a thought about how many spittle-flecked words from the mouths of how many similar figurants had coated the mic now half an inch from her own mouth. "So I'd prefer not to read my name or any cryptonym designating my name in any of your reports." It was impossible to know whether he was eliciting or rubber-necking.
"Then don't say anything reportable," she broke in.
He huffed and pretended to look out the opposite window.
"Our ETA is still four hours, Captain?" she shouted for the pilot. She didn't know how good the reception was through the chopper's internal system. She hoped she wasn't too loud. This was her first such flight.
"Affirm," the Marine said.
The FSO did not comment. He must have expected the detour.
The landscape of the Sahel was a flat, brown camouflage pattern interrupted by geometric shapes of green. Livestock or crop farms. Most of the local population scavenged wood for cooking fires and the resulting deforestation was visible, as baked brown dust, all the way to the coast. The amount of rainfall over this part of Africa was directly related to the intensity of the hurricane season in the Atlantic. She noted, for later debriefing, that the green spaces of the farms were literally keeping the man-made desert at bay with little more than a single strand of barbed wire which the wood scavengers would not cross.
"There's the river, ma'am."
They meandered north, avoiding larger towns or settlements. The pilot had a list of way points which coincided with her survey interests. Even he, though, did not know why those sites had been chosen.
The Niger river’s source is the mountains of southern Guinea, where its volume is greater than what reaches Nigeria. Most of the water seeps or evaporates in the desert, past the Guinean border with Mali, resulting in periodic downstream droughts. The unmistakable geometric lines of temporary construction roads were plainly visible, cut through the upland forest canopy. Stacks of cast concrete, round tunnel segments, square box culvert sections, stood three stories high near the crew encampments.
Judy photographed these with a tiny digital camera she bought with her own money from an ordinary big-box store in Virginia before leaving for overseas. The FSO made a gesture with his head that signaled confirmation of his suspicions mixed with disgust at the accuracy of his own foresight. She always marveled at the stupidity of all who believe transparent displays of disgust advance their cause.
There was nothing to be done about it. If he was here it meant he had clearance to observe what she did. He could infer little, though, from what was, in fact, only what it appeared: a construction site to build a water diversion culvert for the purpose of farm irrigation. Various international aid agencies, including USAID, were spending tens of millions to turn the western Sahel into Africa’s version of California’s San Joaquin Valley.
Judy shouted to the pilot they were finished. The chopper banked to the left, heading toward the Gulf. The sideways lean of the banked turn, combined with the relatively slow forward momentum of a helicopter's pivot made her heavy against the chopper door. The force also sent the FSO leaning into her. She was pretty sure he wasn't resisting as much as he could.
*****
From about five miles out, the oil platform resembled a masted sailing ship. Boom arms, the derrick, and the spidery rigging combined to give Judy an impression of armed menace and vast, well-directed power.
The chopper's engine cut off and the rotors wound down. The FSO disgorged himself from the chopper and stood behind her. The pilot would stay with them overnight, racked out in the chopper. Judy hoped whatever accommodations awaited her would not make her envy his assignment.
She was greeted by three of the rig crew's management, all native Africans, all dressed in canvas coveralls smeared with oil, all smiling for the benefit of their VIP guests. The leader looked like the John Henry statue where she grew up in West Virginia. The atmosphere on the landing pad was composed entirely of petroleum fumes, both burned and raw.
The delegation made its way across a steel-mesh deck through which the undulating ocean some hundred feet below plainly showed. This induced a vertiginous flash of nausea that straightened Judy's head and focused her eyes up and away. They climbed steel stairs to a catwalk, toward a fire-door so heavy even the huge leader had to shift his weight to hold it open.
Her first impression of the "mess hall" was that it had recently hosted a wrestling match among crude-soaked hippopotami. Judy took a grimy military-surplus chair on one of the long sides of a battered dining table, at the corner nearest the head. She was pleased to watch John Henry take the head seat, closest to her. She ignored dozens of fork marks in the tabletop, stabbed in a pattern around a hand-shaped, rust-brown stain she knew was made of dried blood.
"I am Madu, head driller. This is Adofo, my rig foreman, and Diallo, my assistant driller."
Judy extended her hand. "Jane Winthrop, United States Military Attaché, and Ralph Zutz, US State Department Security Consultant." The driller's biceps threatened to burst through his coverall as Judy's hand disappeared entirely into an oily, five-fingered bench vice.
"It's 'Rafe,' actually. Pleased to meet you all," the FSO said. He was at the far end of the table, out of range of handshakes. She imagined him turning on a spit with an apple in his mouth.
"We'll need to see the life-support facilities. Especially the water plant. We're thinking of subdue-and-occupy scenarios in which the crew could be incapacitated by infiltrators," Judy said.
"Diallo will lead your tour. Adofo and I will then answer your questions during the third meal, at seven pm. Your bunks will then be ready. If your presentation requires any special equipment, Diallo will get it for you. Until seven, then." The big boss did not invite questions or discussion. He stood and extended his open palm to the door.
"Third meal?" Judy asked Diallo, as they descended a mesh-enclosed steel ladder to the lower works level.
"There are four per day. Many calories make much work."
Diallo was half the size of Madu and still a big, powerfully built man. He was beneath Judy on the ladder and spoke to the bottoms of her feet without any sign of objection.
"This is the lower level. These tanks hold our fresh water supply. The roar from these machines is the sound of desalination of ocean water. In this we are self-sufficient. Across the deck is the waste-water disposal system, also loud. Also self-sufficient. The pipeworks are completely separate. No chance of mixing potable water with gray-water, or brown-water."
Judy dragged her feet, lingering longer than necessary before the two-story-tall machines. The main assembly could be described as a combination of a brewery works and an electrical dynamo; two huge, covered holding vats connected by half-meter-diameter pipes led into and out of two cylindrical pump housings about the size of automobiles. She considered whether to feign sea-sickness, to get a longer look--Diallo was not in a perceptible rush, but wasn't dawdling, either--but she couldn't decide if it was plausible to be seasick on a stationary surface. She did manage to take a surreptitious photograph of two pipes, the same size as the ones to the pumps, which appeared to bypass the water-works then disappear down, through the floor, rather than up through the ceiling, as did all the others. If all the plumbing in this section was for desalination, these two pipes were extraneous--they touched none of the process machinery. While she memorized these details, "Rafe" ogled at the equipment and nodded in empty-eyed wonder, not noticing he had stepped in a puddle of condensation and machine grease.
They exited another steel fire-door and stood on an exterior steel frame landing. Diallo never turned his head to be sure his group was still there, he simply walked on then turned to address them at the apparently well-rehearsed stopping points. They were close to the ocean surface now, only about one story down. The landing was enclosed with metal-tube safety railing, hip-high. Judy stood next to one of the main load-bearing columns of the rig, which passed through the steel floor from far up on the main level. As she gripped the safety rail, she traced the overhead course of another set of pipes leading from the roof of the desalination room, suspended by wires, across a hundred meters of open sea to an adjoining mini-platform about the size of a wealthy landowner's bush veldt bungalow on stilts.
"All treated waste then exits the pump room and collects in holding tanks in that separate platform. The pipes leading down to the sea pump waste to disposal ships, which receive the waste water and transport it for further treatment and disposal on the mainland," Diallo said. His voice was raised over the sea breeze, which on this side of the rig was refreshingly scented with nothing but salt, the open ocean, and a tinge of ozone, like a summertime breeze in North America, she thought, after the lightning of a thunderstorm blows away days of heavy haze.
It was this pleasant smell which hit Judy in the chest, as hard as a pistol round striking her in a bullet-proof vest. She understood what Diallo was showing her.
*****
People being questioned tend to get more defensive the closer they get to releasing themselves from suspicion. For them, interrogation is like being led toward a door while blindfolded. You don't know if the stranger pulling you wants to run your nose into the frame or deliver you safely within. The closer to the door the more squirms.
Judy had just allowed the environment to influence her judgment by asking a question a bit too close to the door jamb. The five involved, Judy, her burden in the form of a morbidly obese "colleague," and the three oil workers, sat around a mess table in the, now, occupied dining area. Judy was no rookie. This was her second hardship post and her third overseas tour. The view appalled her.
Two dozen or so men, the smallest the size of a baby elephant, hunched over trays of food mounded to sternum height. Mouths full of food, food stuffed in there by bare hands the color of pitch regardless of the ethnicity of their owners, spent way more time open, to shout or grunt, than they spent chewing. Across the surface of every table swept a kind of multicolored sirocco composed of flung food particles and spittle. The background white-noise of voices was over-laid with the sticky, phlegmatic static of aspirated mastication.
Judy had just noticed, and decided to pretend not to, a complete absence of napkins when she asked Madu, "And to whom in the government do you report shipping volumes?" It was then she saw first Diallo, then Adofo, unambiguously, unmistakably, squirm.
Just moments after Madu answered, in the voice of an automaton, "These matters are handled through the routine channels. Your bunk quarters are to the right of the main exit, first door on the left," the three notional rig crew managers rose from the table in unison, and excused themselves for the night.
*****
If she had to summarize her career experience to date, she might compare it to spending years viewing Rorschach tests with combative ink-artists who insist on seeing whatever flatters them, while she is duty-bound to call a duck a duck.
She kicked the dingy sheet off the bunk without a care whether she woke what she now thought of as the walrus in the bunk beneath her. His apneatic gurgling fit him right in anyway. In her bare feet, she jumped the meter-and-a-half to the tiled floor and slipped her boots on.
The bunk room was built for ten, and the other eight bunks were divided by sliding wall partitions not nearly thick enough to drown out the collective snoring, which made her think of modern orchestra music. She rolled her feet heels-first until she reached the fire door. If anyone woke, it would be only natural she sought the bathroom.
Past the door, she turned toward the ladder. Flood lights, spot lights, and safety lamps of various sizes and intensities from intimate to blinding silhouetted the rigging on the main level. Webs of shadows fell over every surface. She could hear only the turbine-whine of machinery and the sub-bass rumble of viscous liquid through metal. No voices. She paused at the top of the ladder for one whole minute before she felt certain no one would follow her from the bunk room.
At the landing she turned again toward the desalination works. The machinery was dim in the safety lamps, and unmanned at this hour--eight minutes after 2am by her watch. She pulled the mini-digital camera from the wide waistband of her flopsy, sexless cotton pajamas and snapped the machinery from every angle the radiant heat of the pipes allowed.
When she was satisfied she had it all, she continued down the ladder further than they had gone on the "tour." The ladder went all the way down to the water, then continued under. From the next-to-last dry rung she got what she was sure was the second-place prize of the trip, high-quality photos of the two mystery pipes, which followed the main load column, down into the depths of the Gulf.
First prize, she saw as soon as her night vision recovered from the camera flash, was going to be a little dicier.
She tied her boot laces together and hung them over a ladder rung, then lifted off her pajama top and tied it to the next rung up. Removing the bottoms required a slightly acrobatic balancing act, one leg at time, but she managed to preserve a dry set of clothes for her exit.
The water below the ladders' first wet rung surprised her. It felt like a warm bath. Her camera was not rated for water resistance, so she took the tiny memory stick that held her pictures and slipped it into her left boot. Then she wrapped the camera tight in a clear plastic sandwich bag she had palmed from dinner, twisted the neck closed and clenched the twist in her teeth. The camera's own memory held ten shots if it didn't short out first.
She breathed deeply ten times through her nose, and held the eleventh breath.
The aqueous sound of submersion pushed into her ears. The underwater darkness was nearly total. She couldn't see her photo subject, but she knew where it would be, if it was there. With her head just a few feet under the surface, and one hand white-knuckled to a ladder rung, she snapped away, as fast as the camera's little computer would allow. The flash went off ten times.
Putting her pajamas back on was even more awkward than taking them off, but she couldn’t be found nearly naked, even on the outside catwalk. About an ounce of seawater had invaded the sandwich bag, but the little machine had not given up on her. She wiped it down on a pajama leg and tried to key up a preview of one the pictures she had just taken. In the postage-stamp-sized preview window she was sure she could see two pipes, angling away from the support strut and joining two others, from the mini-platform across the way, in a Y-joint that led to where she would be unable to go, but where the answer of the missing oil, the last answer headquarters would ever expect, was sure to be found.
At six in the morning she awoke in her bunk just a bit damp, but more refreshed than if she had slept twice as long. She had the goods. Even the horrendous sight of the walrus wrapped in a bath towel caused no more than a passing brow-wrinkle. She dressed, balled up her PJs into her bag, and left the bunk room behind, in the happy abode of memory where it belonged.
After breakfast, which was conspicuously unchaperoned, she and her "colleague" delivered the (non-notional) security update to a meeting room full of half-drowsing rig workers who, now that she thought of it, were the last people on earth who needed to be told how to deal with security risks. The trio of "managers" sat in the back, six arms crossed, and paid what they probably thought looked like polite attention. The group dismissed after the briefing, stunned into silence by the walrus' inevitable whining monotone.
Madu walked them to their chopper, which the Marine pilot had already warmed up.
"So very kind of you to keep us current on the latest developments in counter-insurgent tactics, Miss-- Miss-- " He paused, the tone of his voice rising on the second "Miss."
He was actually trying to prompt her to forget she had given a false name. "Winthrop. Mizz Winthrop. Jane, actually. The United States is a friend to the industrious, Madu. We'll be in touch."
As if.
The walrus again waited in the back seat, ready to harp at her as she climbed aboard.
"That's it? All the way here for a half-hour tour and a nap?"
It was obvious the FSO had been around the block with at least one previous notional colleague. They all thought the Clandestine Service had a huge secret orchard of money trees somewhere outside of Reston, VA and that they spent it with profligate glee just to get State's miserly goat. The Marine up front, likely a veteran of dozens of sorties much weirder than this one, didn't even blink.
Judy slung her overnight bag under the seat and buckled in.
About one thousand feet and four nautical miles from the rig, she decided to transfer the cameras' onboard snaps to the memory stick. She rifled through her overnight bag, at first with a feigned look of boredom, since the walrus didn't need to know what she was looking for, or why. Then her movements betrayed anxiety. Once her pajamas were strewn across the cabin floor, even the Marine pilot couldn't help but notice she was close to a panic. He ignored this, though, when she settled herself by thumping the heel of her left boot rhythmically on the floor plate.
She could feel the memory stick under her heel. But the camera was gone.
*****
Judy sat before a typewriter for the first time in her brief career. Some secrets are sufficiently sensitive they are never entered into any computer, no matter how supposedly secure. This was her final report, so she chose every word to conform to the jargon-rich lingo of the dip-pouch-sitreps she had seen during training:
MOST SECRET, EYES ONLY, NOFORN, NODISSEM: DCI (KUDOVE), COS/EWIEMU
DATE: 22, July, 2004
Action: Operation KUENVIOUS
Summary of background:
On 19 July, Senior Officer on Station (SO) debriefed PIXIE re open-source theory motivating KUENVIOUS. Atlantic hurricane activity based on Sahel moisture in combination with ocean temperature. Interagency cross-comparison with National Reconnaissance Office photos of ocean surface temperature patterns in the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (Gulf of Guinea) show plumes of high temperature (84° Fahrenheit) surface water contrary to expected decadal oscillation, suggesting presence of subsurface thermal venting. NRO imagery further suggests greenification in the Sahel concerted plan to amplify west-bound Saharan low pressure waves. Open-source reporting (Gray, et.al) suggests wetter Sahel combined with two degree increase in ITCZ temperature yields 10-28 percent increase in low-pressure organization over ten years and 8-33 percent increase in average storm volatility. A deep-end projection of 25.92 barometric pressure may be expected. KUENVIOUS was an operation to prove Horn-based Islamists are attempting to enhance hurricane strength in the mid-Atlantic.
Prior Reporting:
KUCAGE intelligence estimate of June 2004 lists other-source reporting of 1.) International Finance Corporation funding for greenification projects. 2.) volume discrepancy for petroleum departing JDZ platform 182. PIXIE visited JDZ 182 on 20-21, July. Pipes consistent with furnace fuel supply lines join pipes consistent with those containing air at high pressure. PIXIE confirmed evidence consistent with aerosolized oil/air mixture ignition for subsurface electrical turbine operation. Sea water in vicinity of JDZ 182 was measured at 88° Fahrenheit. Atmospheric ozone was present in high quantity. No detectable vapor from waste disposal was present. PIXIE submitted corroborating photographs 21, July. Remaining photographic evidence disappeared overnight while PIXIE was aboard JDZ 182, likely due to theft. SO offers support theft is evidence for concealment motive.
Current Reporting:
PIXIE returned to operation status, 23, July. Local other-source reporting confirms USAID, Africa section, allocated $10 million USD, earmarked Niger River diversion. See aerial recon photos enclosed.
Recommendations:
SO concurs with PIXIE: Recommend armed SOCOM SEAL reconnaissance of subsurface turbine at JDZ 182. Recommend destruction of JDZ 182, with prejudice, upon final confirmation of turbine-driven ocean heating. Recommend EXEC-level intervention, USAID, Africa Section, immediately. Recommend GAO audit of International Finance Corporation immediately, while ODYOKE holds World Bank Presidency. Recommend FOIA blackout on all aspects KUENVIOUS for life of principals plus fifty years.
While Judy waited for a reply from the Director via the diplomatic pouch special escort, her cut-out aboard the oil platform studied the instructions he had downloaded from the internet on how to operate her digital camera.
*****
On Friday of that week, Madu decided the crew deserved to celebrate their recent success. Routine METEOSAT imagery posted in plain view on the NOAA web site showed a new, seasonally unexpected plume of hot surface water over one hundred miles long off the west African coast.
During the festivities, complete with coolers of freshly imported beer, Madu took a quiet moment to ask Diallo what he thought of the American girl.
Diallo had two open beers, one per hand, and was sitting on the high rail from which, only days earlier, Judy had descended into the water. He stared off into the black, roaring ocean.
"Did she talk about her family at all?"
"No," Diallo said.
"How did she choose you?"
Diallo still looked away. "I was selected during an assignment on a well in Darfur."
"She was there?"
"Posing as a UN aid worker." Diallo chose that moment to toss the first of his beers to go empty into the black void beneath him. “You believe the real rig would escape their scrutiny?”
Madu’s answer was to take the camera, emptied of its easily enhanceable high-definition photos of some spare construction pipes which had been hastily jerry-rigged and submerged to decoy their visitors – in case they showed up under as well as above the water – and throw it over the railing. It tumbled down through a light breeze and disappeared.
*****
Judy received her reply the next day:
MOST SECRET, EYES ONLY, NOFORN, NODISSEM: PIXIE, SO/EWIEMU, COS/EWIEMU
DATE: 26, July, 2004
Action: Conclusion, Operation KUENVIOUS
Preliminary Regional Intelligence Estimate of Current Reporting:
Concur circumstances of theft indicate concealment. Consultation with civilian experts fails to support hurricane theory. All-source reporting combined with DI analysis fails to concur JDZ 182. Best engineering estimate renders pipes shown in PIXIE photos ambiguous. Presence of ozone, absence of waste odor too subjective to support concurrence re recommendation re destruction JDZ 182. KUDOVE critical no consideration given to weaponized crude futures market theory. Evidence also consistent with psy-op campaign to skew PBPRIME public opinion prior 2004 election cycle. Special Adviser to KUDOVE cites HORAYA article of 21, July. Intervention, USAID, Africa Section, submitted for EXEC review, pending. GAO lacks jurisdiction re International Finance Corporation, World Bank. FOIA blackout on all aspects KUENVIOUS for life of principals plus fifty years approved.
Action items:
- Take no further action re KUENVIOUS. File closed.
- PIXIE to return to PBPRIME, immediately, for reassignment NATO HQ, Brussels.
“They don’t believe us,” she said, in the SO’s office, after he burned the reply in an ashtray he used only for that purpose.
"Africa desk," he said. "Besides. Rumor has it Wolfowitz will head the World Bank next. You did a good job."
"But the evidence."
"Was delivered. This is the life we chose, Judith. The big secrets you'll carry for the rest of your life are not vast conspiracies. They are the knowledge of what you've done."
"Then, you don't think there’s a huge electro-turbine, one of maybe dozens, heating ocean water in the Gulf of Guinea?"
"I think HQ has closed the file, whether there is or not. I think you are ordered to report. I think you will have a fine career."
There was nothing more to be said about it. The only thing she would miss in Belgium was working with the SO. She told him so, then went home to pack.
About the Author
KP Dorsey lives and works on a glacial outwash basin, in one of the Great Lakes Eight states, on an eastern branch of the Mississippi flyway, in the Northern Temperate Zone.
Short Story: UPON A NEW ROAD by Jonathan C. Gillespie
Yvanna Jasmine stepped right, dodging the burly man that walked past her. He plodded down the sidewalk and entered the doorway of an old restaurant.
She despised this city, and she hated the streets even more. The slums bordered the middle class and rich districts like a ring of scum along the edge of a porcelain tub. Each of the prior two districts were protected by surveillance cameras and a strong police presence.
But this place, and its residents, didn’t have these protections. Here, every vice could be found, the peddlers of the shadow economy scurried into the slums like sewer rats into a gutter. It was this reason alone that Yvanna worked the streets in this area. It was where the majority of her clients came, under auspices of anonymity.
A patrol vehicle hovered inches over the road as it came down the underused street. Its navy blue, egg shape was dotted with a multitude of sensors. It slowed as it neared Yvanna.
Mentally, she cringed, but on the surface she was all smiles. She ran a finger through her black hair and brushed it out of the way, and cast her brown eyes towards the vehicle.
The patrol vehicle’s driver-side window lowered slightly. Yvanna walked over to it. Her hips swayed just slightly as she approached. Her miniskirt was transparent, showing off the pink thong that clung to her voluptuous rear.
She bent down near the vehicle, which she knew exposed the faintest trace of her nipples to the man in the driver’s seat.
"Hey, pretty lady," said the officer inside, but the greeting was formal. He held one hand on the fly-by-wire control yoke; the other fell lazily his groin, and Yvanna realized he was hiding his arousal.
"What’s the take so far this week?" he asked.
"Twelve thousand," she replied.
"So that makes two thousand for me," he said. He nodded, satisfied. "Let’s take a ride."
She walked around the front of the vehicle, dragging a pink-tipped fingernail across the titanium hull, then stepped into the passenger side, and they were off.
As they moved off and ascended to two thousand feet – about half the length of the tallest skyscrapers around them – she lost her patience.
"Damn it, Orlando," she said, "Picking me up in broad daylight? In your patrol car? If you want to get serviced that bad, we could have used my place."
"Shut up," he replied. His plump frame and gray hair belied his age. "You know I don’t ask that of my employees."
"Don’t romanticize it, Detective," she replied. "You’re not some company boss. I work with you because the protection you provide keeps me away from those scum-sucking pimp shitheads. But more importantly, you supposedly could find the Northside Builder…supposedly."
When she got mad, her accent came out. The Jersey shore overtones faded into a rich, vibrant inflection not unlike that of the Turkish.
"You’re the best," said Orlando, "And that’s why I‘m glad we have our arrangement. You pull down more than any of my other girls...more than any of the others." His face was grave.
"What’s wrong?" she asked.
"I have good news for you," he said, "And probably bad news for me. But a deal is a deal, so I’m honoring my part of it."
He handed her a single sliver of clear plastic.
"This is it?" she asked.
He nodded. "Got it off a poor-soiler, of all people. He works as a night shift janitor at one of the big high-rises downtown. You know, Kilo Heights."
…A high-rise so named because it was a kilometer high.
"So this is the one?" she asked, excited. "The one that knows how to over-ride the route codes? This is the Northside Builder?"
"How many times do I have to say it?" he snapped. "I'm dropping you at eighth street, near the public teleway. One of my officers has pre-arranged a camera malfunction for us, so I can drop you without any questions later on. You can work your way to eleventh street from eighth. The john is expecting you on floor 228.
"That access key is valid only for two hours, Yvanna. He doesn't know who you are, or that you know who he is. This is your chance to get them here."
He glanced over at her. Tears were running down her face. She really thought she had a chance. He decided the last favor he'd ever pay her is not breaking her illusions.
Yvanna clutched the piece of plastic like it was some magic ticket out of her tired world. But really, it wasn't her chance that she held. It was someone else's.
Once, the wide strip at Pacific Boulevard had been vital as a hub of subway travel, car traffic, commerce, and pedestrians. Only its notoriety as a place of affluence and foot traffic remained intact. Very few bothered with the subway now, which was hopelessly slow. Even skycars were rare in this district.
The crowd around the public teleway was huge; this she welcomed. It would be easier to blend in and pass without any scrutiny from the cops that still held some semblance of honesty.
The teleway was really northing more than a circular array of large domes, each with entrances guarded by wireless currency account readers, and bored-looking security men in black uniforms.
There were ten yellow domes, and each was as large and wide as the dome of a water tower. These were inter-city transportation units. Many had graffiti and advertisements on their sides. Then there was another array of ten domes; smaller, blue, and crouched side by side. These were national domes.
Finally, three small domes in a dark red were where people disembarked to international routes; often those people would hop through several telepoints before reaching their destination, but sixteen seconds to reach Tokyo (according to the scrolling holotext above the nearest dome) wasn't too bad.
Each dome would fill to capacity with people, then red, bright plasma would descend in a microsecond behind the tinted glass entrances, and the people would blink out of existence, vaporized and transferred on through the route. A few seconds later, a different load of people would re-constitute in the dome, then exit through the gates before another load was allowed in. The rest of how the teleporters worked was very technical – which meant more than Yvanna cared to ever know. She remembered something about molecule mapping on a grid...or something like that.
Private domes had gotten affordable enough for the average family, but she still didn’t have one, primarily because her tiny, run-down apartment wasn’t quite large enough for one. If she had a house, she’d have torn her driveway out and placed her small single-person telenet dome there, but she couldn’t move from the city.
Not without them.
As she pushed her way through the throng of travelers someone bumped into her. She turned and the man extended a hand.
"What do you want?" Yvanna hissed.
He looked absolutely ragged, and when the wrinkled, skinny man smiled he showed only a few teeth in an otherwise bare mouth.
"Spare a little cash for a poor-soiler?" He asked.
"Oh really?" She folded her arms. "Where do you own land at?"
"Downtown Detroit. Used to be in the three hun -- eight hundred-thousand range per unit. I have an entire building full of empty condos. Help a guy out. I just want to eat."
"Then sell your property," snapped Yvanna. She tried to step by the man, but she stepped in front of him.
"No one's buying," he replied mournfully. "Argentina is all the rage. Austria…New Zealand. You know, green space. Convenience don't mean two shits now that everything's relative. Banks are after me; Republic Revenue is after me. I just want one meal in peace…"
She reached into her pocket and fished out a single bill, and dropped it in his hand.
He smiled again, but she turned and walked away.
She passed a group of people that had paused for a moment near a holodisplay. As she walked by, a news report played, and the image of a mountainside dotted with thousands of houses rotated in front of the onlookers.
"Congress met again," said the projected image of a news anchor, "to discuss the ongoing problems with implementing the act dubbed the 'Teton Tariff', after the range of mountains surrounding and comprising Grand Teton National Park. In this portion of the Grand Tetons, not protected by federal park space, single family homes have been built in such numbers that the wilderness itself has been affected."
As she left the crowd behind, she could hear another voice, from one of the protestors that had gathered in Washington to propose the Act.
"This act," said the woman, "Is nothing more than an attempt by Congress to artificially raise or lower land values. Senator Keller said himself that it would help the poor-soilers out. We know what’s going on here, and it’s lobbying. People are fed up with taking hits on their property values, so now they’re turning to their paid friends in positions of power. The poor-soilers don’t like the real estate market turning the table on them. It’s got to stop…"
Then the woman’s voice faded into all the others behind her, as Yvanna walked north, away from the busy teleway.
Kilo Heights towered over her, a white angle drawn sharply against the sky.
The condominium was a rarity in this day and age, because Kilo Heights actually had a high number of residents. With the advent of affordable teleportation, the rush to far-flung green space had sucked huge numbers of residents from the major cities. The high-rises in the cities had to compete fiercely with each other for the remaining wealthy tenants whom enjoyed living in an urban environment.
Kilo Heights, renowned for being state-of-the-art and extremely luxurious, had managed to do just that.
Yvanna stepped around a fountain in the courtyard, then up to a pod that was sunk into the marble entrance. She flashed the plastic sliver in front of its reading strip. There was a chime, and then a glass door slid open. She stepped inside, and was greeted with a single red holographic scanning diode.
She was being recorded.
Her first impulse was to try to open the glass door again. But when she reached a hand out to the door, a voice stopped her.
"Mrs. Jasmine?" the voice asked.
Male. Not old, but not young.
"Yes?" Yvanna replied. She turned back to face the red diode.
"Orlando said you were beautiful," the voice replied. "I see that was not manufactured."
Great, a charmer, she thought. But he held the keys to the kingdom. That made him charming, suave, and as debonair as he wanted to be.
"Thank you," said Yvanna. She smiled, then raised an arm and tucked her index finger into her bottom lip, like she knew some men liked.
In truth, her mind was a thousand miles away.
Just do what he wants, she thought, and don't screw this up.
"I'll bring you up," said the voice.
There was a humming sound, then a burst of light, and for a fraction of a second Yvanna felt like she was a thousand feet tall.
But she instantly forgot the sensation.
As she blinked back into existence on the two hundred and third floor, her neurochemical transmissions – their molecular components – were reconstituted back to where they had been before she had ever been teleported. As such, to her mind no time or event had passed at all. She'd simply blinked and found herself looking out a glass door into an immaculate entrance way.
The door slid open, and a man stood there, with a hand outstretched. She took it and let him guide her into the foyer.
He was a somewhat short man, with unblemished, black skin, and a gentle look to his features. He did not appear strong, but he did appear at ease and relaxed. Were it not for his loafers, designer slacks, and white electropolymer sweater, he would have blended into a crowd of everyday normal people.
And yet, this was him. This was the one that could alter the paths, change the flow of routes, and circumvent the draconian security measures that stood between Yvanna and her goal.
She gripped her wrist. There, embedded in her watch, was a single transmitter, with a message she could send at any moment.
It was tuned to send an encrypted signal to a satellite, which would then pass the message to a watch just like it. The wearer of the other watch waited, five thousand miles away, for this message.
"Don't look so nervous," the john said.
She realized her displaced thoughts had been obvious.
"No," she replied, "I'm fine. Just ready for you, baby."
"Of course," he said, "Would you like a drink first?"
She shook her head. Not on the job. Booze and drugs on the job led to how hookers got robbed or beaten, and men like this john could get away with it. No one would trust a hooker over someone from Kilo Heights.
"Well, I need one," he said. "Come."
He led her past a white hallway, which was lined with holoart. She paused to glance at one piece. It hovered over an antique wooden table, and showed an abstract blue ripple dancing through a dark purple fountain of sparkling colors.
They soon arrived in the kitchen. It was magnificent – a curving wooden countertop of polished, smooth cherry wood snaked in a circle around integrated, top-shelf titanium appliances.
He called into the air, "Chardonnay, Bristol, 2128".
A cylindrical wine rack descended from the ceiling. The rack rotated, and a bottle was brought nearest him. A blue laser light shot from the ceiling and highlighted the bottle, and he'd drawn it almost as soon as the light touched the glass.
The cylinder hissed back up into the ceiling.
He tapped a drawer and it slid out; he grabbed a wine opener and uncorked the bottle.
A portion of the countertop had opened and four wine glasses had appeared, he grabbed one and filled it halfway. He gestured towards Yvanna.
As tempted as she was, she declined.
"My name's Robert," he said. He took a sip of the wine, and let out a satisfied exhalation. "I'm going to pay you very well."
Yvanna smiled. "I assumed that, you know, given the wine."
He nodded. "If you drew your conclusion based on your wine, you'd be only partially correct. Sure, a real bottle of Bristol from 2128 is worth a hundred thousand or so. But this is just a copy – rather, a recreation."
She cocked her head. "What, fake?"
He grinned. "Yes and no," he replied. "Let's just say it's the most realistic facsimile you'll ever see."
Yvanna stammered, then said, "You're a builder, aren't you? And you found a way to make more than just basic materials."
"Guilty as charged."
"You're not nervous telling me this?" she replied.
He shrugged. "You're a hooker...no offense. Just wanted you to know that, if you so chose, I could pay you in some raw goods. I have other things than wine that you might like, too."
She understood what he was implying.
"I never did that stuff."
"Oh, of course," he replied, in a tone that was a little more than patronizing. He took another swig. "But you could always sell it, and that's..."
He stopped. His eyes fell past her.
She turned, and there was a short, nervous-looking young man.
The young man was taller than Robert, and thinner. He had a full head of curly hair. His mouth hung open just slightly, so that his teeth could be seen just past his lips. His eyes avoided his father’s.
"Franklin," said Robert, "Go back to your room."
"I want to play with Pike," the young man replied softly.
"You can’t play with Pike," replied Robert. He stepped around the kitchen bar towards Franklin. As he passed by Yvanna, Robert issued a near-silent "Sorry" to her.
When he reached Robert, he placed his hands gently on the younger man’s shoulders, and led him away.
"Where’s Pike?" Franklin asked, as Robert led him into a hallway.
Yvanna heard the question asked again, once more. Then there was the sound of a door being closed.
She sat down at a stool at the kitchen bar, and crossed her legs. She stared out the one-way window, and saw the tops of the other nearby buildings. She watched as a small one-person micro jet –a rare craft these days – streaked around the apex of one of the buildings. The jet’s sides glinted in the sunlight.
"Beautiful, isn’t it?" asked Robert. He had emerged from the hallway to the left.
"Yes," replied Yvanna, "Every year it gets more and more blue."
"To think just a century ago," he added, "one could not see out that window because of the smog…By the way, sorry about Franklin. He has a disorder, you know."
"What’s wrong with him?"
It was the wrong set of words. Robert’s smile faded slightly.
"I’m sorry," she replied, "I didn’t mean it that way."
"It’s all right," replied Robert. "Franklin is autistic. He doesn’t normally cause anyone trouble. Sorry he disturbed us."
"Robert," she replied, "I need to discuss payment."
"Of course," said Robert, "The transaction before the deed to the land is given… I’m sure you won’t make me feel like a poor-soiler."
He followed this with a sly grin. Yvanna’s disgust did not displace her forced smile.
"Actually," she said, "I’m interested in a special payment."
"Came around after all?" said Robert, "Okay, perhaps a brick of xethamine? Or red rusher? You know, the teleport filters will report your position to the police if you try to use them with that on you, but there’s a service elevator you can use…"
"No, no," said Yvanna. "I want you to help me…I want you to help me get my husband and son here."
"Your family?" he asked. He folded his arms.
"Yes," she replied. "They haven’t been able to get out of the Serbian Combine. I came over here just after everything went to shit between the Republic of Western States and the Serbians."
"Yes…" said Robert. "I remember the fallout over the teleported goods tariff. So your family is stuck behind closed routes, and you can’t get them here…"
"But you can," replied Yvanna.
"You want the country code encryption broken?" asked Robert. He looked nervous for a just a moment, then it began to fade. The warm smile returned.
"Yes," she said. "Please…alter the route. I’ll do anything you want."
"Anything?" Robert asked.
Yvanna sensed it was time to seal the deal. She never got used to this – but she thought of Nicoli and Asim. Asim would be nearly three now…
She looked at Robert and smiled seductively. She undid the buttons on the back of her shirt, and the material slid down, falling first down her collar, then down her breasts, then finally to the floor.
The older man looked at her, pleased.
"I’ll get your family here," he said, "Right after we find out just how far your definition of ‘anything’ extends."
An hour later, Yvanna lay quiet on the mattress, bruised and sore. She crossed her legs, and hid her face in the satin pillow of Robert's large sleigh bed.
Neutral light fell in on her from the shaded windows. All around her were the trappings of extensive wealth – fine furniture, the smell of synthetic aromas as they were piped through the house's pressurized atmosphere system, and a large walk-in closet full of clothes.
Robert sang off-key as he showered in the master bathroom, which had been as equally impressive as any other room in the condominium.
Behind the gentle demeanor had been an aggressively sexual man; the vigor at which he'd attacked her suggested illegal stimulants. And he’d kept pounding away, even after she began to let out stifled cries. Even though she was used to rough handling, Yvanna was startled at just how vicious Robert had been.
If Yvanna hadn't been working for a cop, she might have even called the police.
She forced her thoughts away from her pain. Robert had a fee to pay; a promise to deliver on.
Robert stepped out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist.
She slowly sat up in the bed and forced another smile.
She asked, "So, honey, not to spoil the mood, but when do you think we can start?"
"Start?" he asked.
"Yes," she replied, twirling a finger in her hair, "When do you think we can try to get my family back?"
"Oh," said Robert. He paused. "Maybe after another session."
"'Session'? Are you a therapist?" Her smile soured; she added: "I'll take my payment as soon as you get cleaned up. Then we'll talk about another 'session'."
He was on her before she knew it; to the bed he ran; she raised her knees but not fast enough. He nailed her left cheek with a clenched fist; then he climbed on the bed and towered over her with another fist held back in the air, ready to descend like an artillery shell.
"Bitch," he hissed. He tore at the sheets with his free hand, and ripped them away from her body. "You'll do what I say, when I say it, in my house!"
Yvanna was terrified, but prepared. When he moved a knee to pull the sheets from under it, and away from her body, she was ready. Into his groin went her left knee.
He collapsed and moaned. She was off the bed in an instant. She ran to the door of the bedroom and snatched her clothes from the floor as she went. She had one shoe – she must have dropped the other accidentally.
"I'll kill you," he growled, as he rose again. Gone was any trace of the man that had met her at the door earlier in the morning, replaced by a beast.
He rushed at her again. Yvanna backed against the wall and bumped into it. In two heartbeats he would be on her, and he might make good with his promise. The death of a street whore would be something this shaper of the teleport routes could easily mask. He'd send molecules of the body into a hundred million different directions; the corpse would be reduced to scattered, untraceable mist.
To her right was a small shelf, and atop it was a glass vase, lit up by an accent lamp from above.
It was her only chance. She grabbed the vase and struck downward with it.
It connected with Robert's head; it shattered. The pieces of glass fell like broken illusions into a horrible reality. There was no turning back now. Either she killed him now, or the bastard would be back on her, and she wouldn’t get up next time.
He crumpled forward, and then she was on top of him. Feral anger and adrenaline gripped her. She felt as if her right hand was moving out of her control. It had found a shard of glass.
There was a blur of rage. She stabbed the shard into his chest, then his face, then his neck. Dots of blood and bits of flesh arched along the path of each upstroke; they fell to the carpeted floor, where they were swallowed up in an expanding smear of finality. She stabbed over and over and over...
A little while later she sat in the corner of the adjoining bathroom, crying, not only for herself, but for her family, thousands of miles away and ignorant of it all.
There would be no way home for them. And she'd waste away in a Republic prison.
She thought of Asim. The toddler was reaching the age where his natural tendency to explore would lead him from his father, so that even when Nicoli tried to keep the young child restrained he’d inevitably act out or rush away to something of interest.
She thought of some of the similar-aged children back in her home country. She remembered their stumps, where limbs once were, and the scars left on their mangled bodies, all from land mines and other traps.
Yvanna forced herself back into reality.
Her foot was cut from stumbling over the glass into the bathroom. She'd spent several minutes holding a rag against the sole, until the bleeding had stopped.
Robert's corpse lay in the bedroom, facedown; the last few trickles of crimson oozed out of his wounds onto the soaked carpet.
Orlando would come down on her the hardest, but maybe that was her chance. Maybe they could get this thrown out as a self-defense charge. The corrupt bastard owed it to her. He wouldn’t want one of his income sources taken away.
Then, she'd get slapped on the wrist for prostitution. Big deal; she'd been in jail for that once. Orlando got the judge to go easy on her. Maybe he could pull some strings this time....
There was a knock at the bedroom door.
She froze. Her eyes widened.
Another knock.
She rushed to put on her clothes; fumbled with a zipper on her miniskirt...eased it slowly, almost painfully up her sore hips. She fastened the button at the top of the miniskirt and, to her horror, it made a loud snap.
"I want to play with Pike, Dad," said the muffled voice from the other side of the door.
It was Robert's son. She'd forgotten about him.
She pulled on her shirt and walked over to the door. She brushed her hair with her hand.
"Franklin?" she asked, "Are you there?"
"I want to play with Pike," he replied.
"Uh..." she stammered. "I'll come out and then we'll play with Pike. Wait in the living room, though."
"Really? Okay," he replied, "Hurry up so I can play."
She heard his steps as he walked down the wooden-floored hallway towards the living room.
Yvanna ran into the bathroom one more time, collected her things, and her thoughts. She then carefully locked the bedroom door behind her and walked into the living room.
When she got there, Franklin was standing in the center of the room, looking past her, as if his mind was on a thousand other things.
The thought occurred to her: Had he heard the struggle?
"Your face," said Franklin.
Her skin went cold as she realized she was probably bruised.
"Oh, this?" she said, as she touched her cheek. "My makeup got smeared."
He nodded. "You wear it so dark…wear it so dark. Where’s Pike?"
"I don’t know," she said. She stepped past him. Now was her chance to get out of here; to call Orlando and explain everything.
God, her face hurt.
But as she walked by Franklin, she heard a whimper.
"Where you going?" he mumbled. He shot a half-glance at her, nervous.
"Home," she said.
"Out the telepod?" he asked, "Where Pike and Franklin used to live, across town?"
"Yeah," she replied.
"Don’t do that. The Pods are bad. Pike and Franklin used to play."
She turned around to face him fully.
"What do you mean, play?" She asked.
"I can’t play anymore," he said. "Dad said so. The doctors said so."
She shrugged and hurried back across the living room and towards the foyer. She felt a sudden wave of nausea. Had that bastard given her a concussion?
She reached the pod and swiped the plastic across the reader. Nothing.
Yvanna slowly dragged the plastic strip across one more time. Nothing.
She felt acid in her stomach. Again she swiped, then slammed her hand into the glass, leaving a slightly pink palm print.
Franklin walked up to her side.
"Pod Access," he mumbled.
The oak paneling on the pod pulled apart in one area, and out from it came a holo-emitter.
A projected keyboard appeared in the air.
He stepped up to the keyboard. He hesitated for a moment, then Yvanna watched in amazement as his fingers flew over the keys, and command after command was sent.
Three displays appeared in the air around him. He glanced at them rapidly, and executed more commands.
The glass door slid open.
The interior of the Pod was exposed.
But Yvanna didn’t enter.
She had gripped both of his shoulders and spun him to face her. Her eyes lit up; she smiled.
"You’re the one, aren’t you?" she asked, shaking him slightly.
He recoiled in fear.
She pulled her hands away.
"Franklin," she said, "I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. But…you’re the one that can change the routes. And you’re a builder, too, aren’t you?"
"Not a builder," said Franklin. He covered his ears and shook his head. "No, no, I’m not a builder anymore."
She raised her hands. "Calm down. Was Robert a builder?"
"I don’t like these questions," said Franklin. "Make Pike come play."
She lowered her voice. "Franklin," Yvanna asked, "Did Robert make you build?"
He nodded, hesitantly.
"And you don’t want to any more, right?"
He shook his head. "Playing is bad. Building is better. That’s what Dad said."
She said, "If you can change the routes one more time, I can help you. You’ll never have to build for Robert again." She suddenly felt less guilty for killing him.
She glanced on her wrist, and squeezed the sides of her watch.
That was the remote signal. Thousands of miles away, her husband and son would rush to a telepod as fast as they could.
"Franklin," she said, "If you change the routes you can play with Pike."
The kid was the one; the legendary Builder of the North side. He was the one that could change the routes as easily as a musician could tune an instrument, and could reshape matter streams into whatever he wanted. He was brilliant, but more importantly, her only chance.
So what was a little lying?
"Okay," said Franklin.
"Great," she replied. She took a deep breath, and then let it out slowly. "Franklin, do you know the Serbian Combine master route code?"
Franklin’s fingers launched into a blur of motion. Half the time he wasn’t even looking at the displays. One screen after another passed by; then there was a list: a projected database.
"Okay," said Franklin, "I’m in UNTR. UNTR tells Franklin three, seven, two, nine, five, pound."
Incredible! The kid had cracked the Unilateral Notated Tele-registry. All international routes were authenticated and authorized against its database.
Michael, her husband, had spent months trying to crack that database. He was an activist, interested in getting as many people out of the crumbling Combine as possible. Yvanna was the first one through when they thought they’d test their "infallible" code.
That’s when the UNTR picked up the rogue traffic and cut off the route right after her, which tossed her penniless, and alone, into the Republic.
"Franklin," said Yvanna, "You’re doing great. One more route. What’s the route code for this door-to-door pod your Dad uses?"
"Need Republic code and then pod prefix," he said. Furiously he went to work again.
"Republic code and pod prefix together is four, two, twelve, one, dash –"
Yvanna waved away the rest of the words. "Sure, sure," she said. "Now when I give you a telepod prefix in the Serbian Combine, can you…"
"I’ll make them play," said Franklin. He grinned, resembling his father for a moment. She shoved the thought away.
There was a flurry of typing by Franklin; a dash of keystrokes, a pause, then resumed typing.
One of the displays briefly projected an alert; a few keystrokes and it was gone.
Yvanna’s wrist transmitter beeped three times. Franklin let out a little yelp and jumped back from the displays.
"No, no," said Yvanna. "It’s okay. It’s just the prefix for the other pod." Then she added, with a smile, "It’s the one my family is at. The prefix is nine-seven-nine-three."
"Can I play with Pike?" asked Franklin. "Please, I want Pike!"
Yvanna replied, "Sure, sure. Okay. But let’s finish up the route and then you can play with Pike, all right?"
Franklin grinned; a gesture of happiness and innocence. In the back of her mind, Yvanna wondered: would this young man ever be able to even comprehend what she had to done to his father? Or, what his father had done to her?
He leapt back up to the displays and resumed his work. There were moments where he didn’t even glance at the displays.
Then he paused and said, "Done. Now, Pike can come."
Yvanna tapped some buttons on her watch.
The signal was sent to her husband, thousands of miles away: ENTER.
She placed a hand on Franklin’s shoulder, half to reassure him, half to comfort herself.
"Okay, Franklin," Yvanna said. "They’re coming. I can’t wait to see them…"
Her eyes watered. Tears rolled down her cheeks to dot the wooden floor beneath her pink high heels. After eight months of hell…finally, her family would be free of that frozen war zone. Finally, they could start a new life in the Republic. She could get back to being a wife and mother, and not this whore the crooked westerners would have her be.
She’d have to contact Orlando, work out the details…the defense. Keep her family out of the way while she did so.
In the back of her mind, though, she knew everything was going to be fine.
Franklin was typing furiously. He had a smile from ear to ear on his face.
"Franklin," she asked, "Are you all right?"
"Yeah!" he replied, "Now Pike is coming back. I can take the transfer grid record from his file and build him again! I can build Pike!"
Yvanna realized too late, with horror, what Franklin meant. In the moment before her hands struck Franklin’s away from the keyboard, the young man completed one last instruction set. The transmission was interrupted, corrupted and irreparable. The reassembly matrix was altered and replaced by a different design.
In the millisecond between the initialization that hopped across the illegal route, and the molecular reconstruction on the other side, the route subversion was detected and corrected by the UNTR. The pod in the frigid Serbian Combine was shut off; its doors latched remotely. There would be no return for the travelers – only a trace by the UNTR, which began immediately to find out where the rogue transmission was delivered.
But for Yvanna, the inevitable arrival of authorities didn’t matter anymore. She lay curled up in a ball in one corner, with her arms folded up around her head. She hadn’t been fast enough to stop Franklin. With her own words, she’d given Franklin, the gifted builder, all the permission the young man needed to instead become a destroyer.
In the pod were large perfectly-sided blocks of carbon, calcium, and other materials – leftovers from Franklin’s play time. A few small beads of iron, a tiny amount of copper and other metals were interspersed. A torrent of water had poured out onto the floor the moment the pod doors had opened. Now, Yvanna lay there in the puddle of water, and sobbed.
Oblivious, Franklin laughed from the living room. Around him danced a soaked, but otherwise healthy border collie.
"Let’s play, Pike!" Franklin said, as he laughed and rough-housed with his long lost friend. Pike leapt up and licked his hand – to the animal, it had only been a moment ago that it had been shoved into the telepod by Robert to be sent outside. The dog was very glad it wasn’t being sent outside after all.
"Boy, I missed you," said Franklin. "I’m so glad we can play!"
About the Author:
Jonathan C. Gillespie is a science fiction, fantasy, and horror writer living in Atlanta, GA. Readers can find some of his other works in Issue 14 of "Jupiter SF", Issue 4 of "OG's Speculative Fiction", or the upcoming first issue of "Murky Depths". Writing news, contact information, and his blog can be found at http:\\jgillespie.us.
She despised this city, and she hated the streets even more. The slums bordered the middle class and rich districts like a ring of scum along the edge of a porcelain tub. Each of the prior two districts were protected by surveillance cameras and a strong police presence.
But this place, and its residents, didn’t have these protections. Here, every vice could be found, the peddlers of the shadow economy scurried into the slums like sewer rats into a gutter. It was this reason alone that Yvanna worked the streets in this area. It was where the majority of her clients came, under auspices of anonymity.
A patrol vehicle hovered inches over the road as it came down the underused street. Its navy blue, egg shape was dotted with a multitude of sensors. It slowed as it neared Yvanna.
Mentally, she cringed, but on the surface she was all smiles. She ran a finger through her black hair and brushed it out of the way, and cast her brown eyes towards the vehicle.
The patrol vehicle’s driver-side window lowered slightly. Yvanna walked over to it. Her hips swayed just slightly as she approached. Her miniskirt was transparent, showing off the pink thong that clung to her voluptuous rear.
She bent down near the vehicle, which she knew exposed the faintest trace of her nipples to the man in the driver’s seat.
"Hey, pretty lady," said the officer inside, but the greeting was formal. He held one hand on the fly-by-wire control yoke; the other fell lazily his groin, and Yvanna realized he was hiding his arousal.
"What’s the take so far this week?" he asked.
"Twelve thousand," she replied.
"So that makes two thousand for me," he said. He nodded, satisfied. "Let’s take a ride."
She walked around the front of the vehicle, dragging a pink-tipped fingernail across the titanium hull, then stepped into the passenger side, and they were off.
*****
As they moved off and ascended to two thousand feet – about half the length of the tallest skyscrapers around them – she lost her patience.
"Damn it, Orlando," she said, "Picking me up in broad daylight? In your patrol car? If you want to get serviced that bad, we could have used my place."
"Shut up," he replied. His plump frame and gray hair belied his age. "You know I don’t ask that of my employees."
"Don’t romanticize it, Detective," she replied. "You’re not some company boss. I work with you because the protection you provide keeps me away from those scum-sucking pimp shitheads. But more importantly, you supposedly could find the Northside Builder…supposedly."
When she got mad, her accent came out. The Jersey shore overtones faded into a rich, vibrant inflection not unlike that of the Turkish.
"You’re the best," said Orlando, "And that’s why I‘m glad we have our arrangement. You pull down more than any of my other girls...more than any of the others." His face was grave.
"What’s wrong?" she asked.
"I have good news for you," he said, "And probably bad news for me. But a deal is a deal, so I’m honoring my part of it."
He handed her a single sliver of clear plastic.
"This is it?" she asked.
He nodded. "Got it off a poor-soiler, of all people. He works as a night shift janitor at one of the big high-rises downtown. You know, Kilo Heights."
…A high-rise so named because it was a kilometer high.
"So this is the one?" she asked, excited. "The one that knows how to over-ride the route codes? This is the Northside Builder?"
"How many times do I have to say it?" he snapped. "I'm dropping you at eighth street, near the public teleway. One of my officers has pre-arranged a camera malfunction for us, so I can drop you without any questions later on. You can work your way to eleventh street from eighth. The john is expecting you on floor 228.
"That access key is valid only for two hours, Yvanna. He doesn't know who you are, or that you know who he is. This is your chance to get them here."
He glanced over at her. Tears were running down her face. She really thought she had a chance. He decided the last favor he'd ever pay her is not breaking her illusions.
Yvanna clutched the piece of plastic like it was some magic ticket out of her tired world. But really, it wasn't her chance that she held. It was someone else's.
*****
Once, the wide strip at Pacific Boulevard had been vital as a hub of subway travel, car traffic, commerce, and pedestrians. Only its notoriety as a place of affluence and foot traffic remained intact. Very few bothered with the subway now, which was hopelessly slow. Even skycars were rare in this district.
The crowd around the public teleway was huge; this she welcomed. It would be easier to blend in and pass without any scrutiny from the cops that still held some semblance of honesty.
The teleway was really northing more than a circular array of large domes, each with entrances guarded by wireless currency account readers, and bored-looking security men in black uniforms.
There were ten yellow domes, and each was as large and wide as the dome of a water tower. These were inter-city transportation units. Many had graffiti and advertisements on their sides. Then there was another array of ten domes; smaller, blue, and crouched side by side. These were national domes.
Finally, three small domes in a dark red were where people disembarked to international routes; often those people would hop through several telepoints before reaching their destination, but sixteen seconds to reach Tokyo (according to the scrolling holotext above the nearest dome) wasn't too bad.
Each dome would fill to capacity with people, then red, bright plasma would descend in a microsecond behind the tinted glass entrances, and the people would blink out of existence, vaporized and transferred on through the route. A few seconds later, a different load of people would re-constitute in the dome, then exit through the gates before another load was allowed in. The rest of how the teleporters worked was very technical – which meant more than Yvanna cared to ever know. She remembered something about molecule mapping on a grid...or something like that.
Private domes had gotten affordable enough for the average family, but she still didn’t have one, primarily because her tiny, run-down apartment wasn’t quite large enough for one. If she had a house, she’d have torn her driveway out and placed her small single-person telenet dome there, but she couldn’t move from the city.
Not without them.
As she pushed her way through the throng of travelers someone bumped into her. She turned and the man extended a hand.
"What do you want?" Yvanna hissed.
He looked absolutely ragged, and when the wrinkled, skinny man smiled he showed only a few teeth in an otherwise bare mouth.
"Spare a little cash for a poor-soiler?" He asked.
"Oh really?" She folded her arms. "Where do you own land at?"
"Downtown Detroit. Used to be in the three hun -- eight hundred-thousand range per unit. I have an entire building full of empty condos. Help a guy out. I just want to eat."
"Then sell your property," snapped Yvanna. She tried to step by the man, but she stepped in front of him.
"No one's buying," he replied mournfully. "Argentina is all the rage. Austria…New Zealand. You know, green space. Convenience don't mean two shits now that everything's relative. Banks are after me; Republic Revenue is after me. I just want one meal in peace…"
She reached into her pocket and fished out a single bill, and dropped it in his hand.
He smiled again, but she turned and walked away.
She passed a group of people that had paused for a moment near a holodisplay. As she walked by, a news report played, and the image of a mountainside dotted with thousands of houses rotated in front of the onlookers.
"Congress met again," said the projected image of a news anchor, "to discuss the ongoing problems with implementing the act dubbed the 'Teton Tariff', after the range of mountains surrounding and comprising Grand Teton National Park. In this portion of the Grand Tetons, not protected by federal park space, single family homes have been built in such numbers that the wilderness itself has been affected."
As she left the crowd behind, she could hear another voice, from one of the protestors that had gathered in Washington to propose the Act.
"This act," said the woman, "Is nothing more than an attempt by Congress to artificially raise or lower land values. Senator Keller said himself that it would help the poor-soilers out. We know what’s going on here, and it’s lobbying. People are fed up with taking hits on their property values, so now they’re turning to their paid friends in positions of power. The poor-soilers don’t like the real estate market turning the table on them. It’s got to stop…"
Then the woman’s voice faded into all the others behind her, as Yvanna walked north, away from the busy teleway.
*****
Kilo Heights towered over her, a white angle drawn sharply against the sky.
The condominium was a rarity in this day and age, because Kilo Heights actually had a high number of residents. With the advent of affordable teleportation, the rush to far-flung green space had sucked huge numbers of residents from the major cities. The high-rises in the cities had to compete fiercely with each other for the remaining wealthy tenants whom enjoyed living in an urban environment.
Kilo Heights, renowned for being state-of-the-art and extremely luxurious, had managed to do just that.
Yvanna stepped around a fountain in the courtyard, then up to a pod that was sunk into the marble entrance. She flashed the plastic sliver in front of its reading strip. There was a chime, and then a glass door slid open. She stepped inside, and was greeted with a single red holographic scanning diode.
She was being recorded.
Her first impulse was to try to open the glass door again. But when she reached a hand out to the door, a voice stopped her.
"Mrs. Jasmine?" the voice asked.
Male. Not old, but not young.
"Yes?" Yvanna replied. She turned back to face the red diode.
"Orlando said you were beautiful," the voice replied. "I see that was not manufactured."
Great, a charmer, she thought. But he held the keys to the kingdom. That made him charming, suave, and as debonair as he wanted to be.
"Thank you," said Yvanna. She smiled, then raised an arm and tucked her index finger into her bottom lip, like she knew some men liked.
In truth, her mind was a thousand miles away.
Just do what he wants, she thought, and don't screw this up.
"I'll bring you up," said the voice.
There was a humming sound, then a burst of light, and for a fraction of a second Yvanna felt like she was a thousand feet tall.
But she instantly forgot the sensation.
As she blinked back into existence on the two hundred and third floor, her neurochemical transmissions – their molecular components – were reconstituted back to where they had been before she had ever been teleported. As such, to her mind no time or event had passed at all. She'd simply blinked and found herself looking out a glass door into an immaculate entrance way.
The door slid open, and a man stood there, with a hand outstretched. She took it and let him guide her into the foyer.
He was a somewhat short man, with unblemished, black skin, and a gentle look to his features. He did not appear strong, but he did appear at ease and relaxed. Were it not for his loafers, designer slacks, and white electropolymer sweater, he would have blended into a crowd of everyday normal people.
And yet, this was him. This was the one that could alter the paths, change the flow of routes, and circumvent the draconian security measures that stood between Yvanna and her goal.
She gripped her wrist. There, embedded in her watch, was a single transmitter, with a message she could send at any moment.
It was tuned to send an encrypted signal to a satellite, which would then pass the message to a watch just like it. The wearer of the other watch waited, five thousand miles away, for this message.
"Don't look so nervous," the john said.
She realized her displaced thoughts had been obvious.
"No," she replied, "I'm fine. Just ready for you, baby."
"Of course," he said, "Would you like a drink first?"
She shook her head. Not on the job. Booze and drugs on the job led to how hookers got robbed or beaten, and men like this john could get away with it. No one would trust a hooker over someone from Kilo Heights.
"Well, I need one," he said. "Come."
He led her past a white hallway, which was lined with holoart. She paused to glance at one piece. It hovered over an antique wooden table, and showed an abstract blue ripple dancing through a dark purple fountain of sparkling colors.
They soon arrived in the kitchen. It was magnificent – a curving wooden countertop of polished, smooth cherry wood snaked in a circle around integrated, top-shelf titanium appliances.
He called into the air, "Chardonnay, Bristol, 2128".
A cylindrical wine rack descended from the ceiling. The rack rotated, and a bottle was brought nearest him. A blue laser light shot from the ceiling and highlighted the bottle, and he'd drawn it almost as soon as the light touched the glass.
The cylinder hissed back up into the ceiling.
He tapped a drawer and it slid out; he grabbed a wine opener and uncorked the bottle.
A portion of the countertop had opened and four wine glasses had appeared, he grabbed one and filled it halfway. He gestured towards Yvanna.
As tempted as she was, she declined.
"My name's Robert," he said. He took a sip of the wine, and let out a satisfied exhalation. "I'm going to pay you very well."
Yvanna smiled. "I assumed that, you know, given the wine."
He nodded. "If you drew your conclusion based on your wine, you'd be only partially correct. Sure, a real bottle of Bristol from 2128 is worth a hundred thousand or so. But this is just a copy – rather, a recreation."
She cocked her head. "What, fake?"
He grinned. "Yes and no," he replied. "Let's just say it's the most realistic facsimile you'll ever see."
Yvanna stammered, then said, "You're a builder, aren't you? And you found a way to make more than just basic materials."
"Guilty as charged."
"You're not nervous telling me this?" she replied.
He shrugged. "You're a hooker...no offense. Just wanted you to know that, if you so chose, I could pay you in some raw goods. I have other things than wine that you might like, too."
She understood what he was implying.
"I never did that stuff."
"Oh, of course," he replied, in a tone that was a little more than patronizing. He took another swig. "But you could always sell it, and that's..."
He stopped. His eyes fell past her.
She turned, and there was a short, nervous-looking young man.
The young man was taller than Robert, and thinner. He had a full head of curly hair. His mouth hung open just slightly, so that his teeth could be seen just past his lips. His eyes avoided his father’s.
"Franklin," said Robert, "Go back to your room."
"I want to play with Pike," the young man replied softly.
"You can’t play with Pike," replied Robert. He stepped around the kitchen bar towards Franklin. As he passed by Yvanna, Robert issued a near-silent "Sorry" to her.
When he reached Robert, he placed his hands gently on the younger man’s shoulders, and led him away.
"Where’s Pike?" Franklin asked, as Robert led him into a hallway.
Yvanna heard the question asked again, once more. Then there was the sound of a door being closed.
She sat down at a stool at the kitchen bar, and crossed her legs. She stared out the one-way window, and saw the tops of the other nearby buildings. She watched as a small one-person micro jet –a rare craft these days – streaked around the apex of one of the buildings. The jet’s sides glinted in the sunlight.
"Beautiful, isn’t it?" asked Robert. He had emerged from the hallway to the left.
"Yes," replied Yvanna, "Every year it gets more and more blue."
"To think just a century ago," he added, "one could not see out that window because of the smog…By the way, sorry about Franklin. He has a disorder, you know."
"What’s wrong with him?"
It was the wrong set of words. Robert’s smile faded slightly.
"I’m sorry," she replied, "I didn’t mean it that way."
"It’s all right," replied Robert. "Franklin is autistic. He doesn’t normally cause anyone trouble. Sorry he disturbed us."
"Robert," she replied, "I need to discuss payment."
"Of course," said Robert, "The transaction before the deed to the land is given… I’m sure you won’t make me feel like a poor-soiler."
He followed this with a sly grin. Yvanna’s disgust did not displace her forced smile.
"Actually," she said, "I’m interested in a special payment."
"Came around after all?" said Robert, "Okay, perhaps a brick of xethamine? Or red rusher? You know, the teleport filters will report your position to the police if you try to use them with that on you, but there’s a service elevator you can use…"
"No, no," said Yvanna. "I want you to help me…I want you to help me get my husband and son here."
"Your family?" he asked. He folded his arms.
"Yes," she replied. "They haven’t been able to get out of the Serbian Combine. I came over here just after everything went to shit between the Republic of Western States and the Serbians."
"Yes…" said Robert. "I remember the fallout over the teleported goods tariff. So your family is stuck behind closed routes, and you can’t get them here…"
"But you can," replied Yvanna.
"You want the country code encryption broken?" asked Robert. He looked nervous for a just a moment, then it began to fade. The warm smile returned.
"Yes," she said. "Please…alter the route. I’ll do anything you want."
"Anything?" Robert asked.
Yvanna sensed it was time to seal the deal. She never got used to this – but she thought of Nicoli and Asim. Asim would be nearly three now…
She looked at Robert and smiled seductively. She undid the buttons on the back of her shirt, and the material slid down, falling first down her collar, then down her breasts, then finally to the floor.
The older man looked at her, pleased.
"I’ll get your family here," he said, "Right after we find out just how far your definition of ‘anything’ extends."
An hour later, Yvanna lay quiet on the mattress, bruised and sore. She crossed her legs, and hid her face in the satin pillow of Robert's large sleigh bed.
Neutral light fell in on her from the shaded windows. All around her were the trappings of extensive wealth – fine furniture, the smell of synthetic aromas as they were piped through the house's pressurized atmosphere system, and a large walk-in closet full of clothes.
Robert sang off-key as he showered in the master bathroom, which had been as equally impressive as any other room in the condominium.
Behind the gentle demeanor had been an aggressively sexual man; the vigor at which he'd attacked her suggested illegal stimulants. And he’d kept pounding away, even after she began to let out stifled cries. Even though she was used to rough handling, Yvanna was startled at just how vicious Robert had been.
If Yvanna hadn't been working for a cop, she might have even called the police.
She forced her thoughts away from her pain. Robert had a fee to pay; a promise to deliver on.
Robert stepped out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist.
She slowly sat up in the bed and forced another smile.
She asked, "So, honey, not to spoil the mood, but when do you think we can start?"
"Start?" he asked.
"Yes," she replied, twirling a finger in her hair, "When do you think we can try to get my family back?"
"Oh," said Robert. He paused. "Maybe after another session."
"'Session'? Are you a therapist?" Her smile soured; she added: "I'll take my payment as soon as you get cleaned up. Then we'll talk about another 'session'."
He was on her before she knew it; to the bed he ran; she raised her knees but not fast enough. He nailed her left cheek with a clenched fist; then he climbed on the bed and towered over her with another fist held back in the air, ready to descend like an artillery shell.
"Bitch," he hissed. He tore at the sheets with his free hand, and ripped them away from her body. "You'll do what I say, when I say it, in my house!"
Yvanna was terrified, but prepared. When he moved a knee to pull the sheets from under it, and away from her body, she was ready. Into his groin went her left knee.
He collapsed and moaned. She was off the bed in an instant. She ran to the door of the bedroom and snatched her clothes from the floor as she went. She had one shoe – she must have dropped the other accidentally.
"I'll kill you," he growled, as he rose again. Gone was any trace of the man that had met her at the door earlier in the morning, replaced by a beast.
He rushed at her again. Yvanna backed against the wall and bumped into it. In two heartbeats he would be on her, and he might make good with his promise. The death of a street whore would be something this shaper of the teleport routes could easily mask. He'd send molecules of the body into a hundred million different directions; the corpse would be reduced to scattered, untraceable mist.
To her right was a small shelf, and atop it was a glass vase, lit up by an accent lamp from above.
It was her only chance. She grabbed the vase and struck downward with it.
It connected with Robert's head; it shattered. The pieces of glass fell like broken illusions into a horrible reality. There was no turning back now. Either she killed him now, or the bastard would be back on her, and she wouldn’t get up next time.
He crumpled forward, and then she was on top of him. Feral anger and adrenaline gripped her. She felt as if her right hand was moving out of her control. It had found a shard of glass.
There was a blur of rage. She stabbed the shard into his chest, then his face, then his neck. Dots of blood and bits of flesh arched along the path of each upstroke; they fell to the carpeted floor, where they were swallowed up in an expanding smear of finality. She stabbed over and over and over...
*****
A little while later she sat in the corner of the adjoining bathroom, crying, not only for herself, but for her family, thousands of miles away and ignorant of it all.
There would be no way home for them. And she'd waste away in a Republic prison.
She thought of Asim. The toddler was reaching the age where his natural tendency to explore would lead him from his father, so that even when Nicoli tried to keep the young child restrained he’d inevitably act out or rush away to something of interest.
She thought of some of the similar-aged children back in her home country. She remembered their stumps, where limbs once were, and the scars left on their mangled bodies, all from land mines and other traps.
Yvanna forced herself back into reality.
Her foot was cut from stumbling over the glass into the bathroom. She'd spent several minutes holding a rag against the sole, until the bleeding had stopped.
Robert's corpse lay in the bedroom, facedown; the last few trickles of crimson oozed out of his wounds onto the soaked carpet.
Orlando would come down on her the hardest, but maybe that was her chance. Maybe they could get this thrown out as a self-defense charge. The corrupt bastard owed it to her. He wouldn’t want one of his income sources taken away.
Then, she'd get slapped on the wrist for prostitution. Big deal; she'd been in jail for that once. Orlando got the judge to go easy on her. Maybe he could pull some strings this time....
There was a knock at the bedroom door.
She froze. Her eyes widened.
Another knock.
She rushed to put on her clothes; fumbled with a zipper on her miniskirt...eased it slowly, almost painfully up her sore hips. She fastened the button at the top of the miniskirt and, to her horror, it made a loud snap.
"I want to play with Pike, Dad," said the muffled voice from the other side of the door.
It was Robert's son. She'd forgotten about him.
She pulled on her shirt and walked over to the door. She brushed her hair with her hand.
"Franklin?" she asked, "Are you there?"
"I want to play with Pike," he replied.
"Uh..." she stammered. "I'll come out and then we'll play with Pike. Wait in the living room, though."
"Really? Okay," he replied, "Hurry up so I can play."
She heard his steps as he walked down the wooden-floored hallway towards the living room.
Yvanna ran into the bathroom one more time, collected her things, and her thoughts. She then carefully locked the bedroom door behind her and walked into the living room.
When she got there, Franklin was standing in the center of the room, looking past her, as if his mind was on a thousand other things.
The thought occurred to her: Had he heard the struggle?
"Your face," said Franklin.
Her skin went cold as she realized she was probably bruised.
"Oh, this?" she said, as she touched her cheek. "My makeup got smeared."
He nodded. "You wear it so dark…wear it so dark. Where’s Pike?"
"I don’t know," she said. She stepped past him. Now was her chance to get out of here; to call Orlando and explain everything.
God, her face hurt.
But as she walked by Franklin, she heard a whimper.
"Where you going?" he mumbled. He shot a half-glance at her, nervous.
"Home," she said.
"Out the telepod?" he asked, "Where Pike and Franklin used to live, across town?"
"Yeah," she replied.
"Don’t do that. The Pods are bad. Pike and Franklin used to play."
She turned around to face him fully.
"What do you mean, play?" She asked.
"I can’t play anymore," he said. "Dad said so. The doctors said so."
She shrugged and hurried back across the living room and towards the foyer. She felt a sudden wave of nausea. Had that bastard given her a concussion?
She reached the pod and swiped the plastic across the reader. Nothing.
Yvanna slowly dragged the plastic strip across one more time. Nothing.
She felt acid in her stomach. Again she swiped, then slammed her hand into the glass, leaving a slightly pink palm print.
Franklin walked up to her side.
"Pod Access," he mumbled.
The oak paneling on the pod pulled apart in one area, and out from it came a holo-emitter.
A projected keyboard appeared in the air.
He stepped up to the keyboard. He hesitated for a moment, then Yvanna watched in amazement as his fingers flew over the keys, and command after command was sent.
Three displays appeared in the air around him. He glanced at them rapidly, and executed more commands.
The glass door slid open.
The interior of the Pod was exposed.
But Yvanna didn’t enter.
She had gripped both of his shoulders and spun him to face her. Her eyes lit up; she smiled.
"You’re the one, aren’t you?" she asked, shaking him slightly.
He recoiled in fear.
She pulled her hands away.
"Franklin," she said, "I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. But…you’re the one that can change the routes. And you’re a builder, too, aren’t you?"
"Not a builder," said Franklin. He covered his ears and shook his head. "No, no, I’m not a builder anymore."
She raised her hands. "Calm down. Was Robert a builder?"
"I don’t like these questions," said Franklin. "Make Pike come play."
She lowered her voice. "Franklin," Yvanna asked, "Did Robert make you build?"
He nodded, hesitantly.
"And you don’t want to any more, right?"
He shook his head. "Playing is bad. Building is better. That’s what Dad said."
She said, "If you can change the routes one more time, I can help you. You’ll never have to build for Robert again." She suddenly felt less guilty for killing him.
She glanced on her wrist, and squeezed the sides of her watch.
That was the remote signal. Thousands of miles away, her husband and son would rush to a telepod as fast as they could.
"Franklin," she said, "If you change the routes you can play with Pike."
The kid was the one; the legendary Builder of the North side. He was the one that could change the routes as easily as a musician could tune an instrument, and could reshape matter streams into whatever he wanted. He was brilliant, but more importantly, her only chance.
So what was a little lying?
"Okay," said Franklin.
"Great," she replied. She took a deep breath, and then let it out slowly. "Franklin, do you know the Serbian Combine master route code?"
Franklin’s fingers launched into a blur of motion. Half the time he wasn’t even looking at the displays. One screen after another passed by; then there was a list: a projected database.
"Okay," said Franklin, "I’m in UNTR. UNTR tells Franklin three, seven, two, nine, five, pound."
Incredible! The kid had cracked the Unilateral Notated Tele-registry. All international routes were authenticated and authorized against its database.
Michael, her husband, had spent months trying to crack that database. He was an activist, interested in getting as many people out of the crumbling Combine as possible. Yvanna was the first one through when they thought they’d test their "infallible" code.
That’s when the UNTR picked up the rogue traffic and cut off the route right after her, which tossed her penniless, and alone, into the Republic.
"Franklin," said Yvanna, "You’re doing great. One more route. What’s the route code for this door-to-door pod your Dad uses?"
"Need Republic code and then pod prefix," he said. Furiously he went to work again.
"Republic code and pod prefix together is four, two, twelve, one, dash –"
Yvanna waved away the rest of the words. "Sure, sure," she said. "Now when I give you a telepod prefix in the Serbian Combine, can you…"
"I’ll make them play," said Franklin. He grinned, resembling his father for a moment. She shoved the thought away.
There was a flurry of typing by Franklin; a dash of keystrokes, a pause, then resumed typing.
One of the displays briefly projected an alert; a few keystrokes and it was gone.
Yvanna’s wrist transmitter beeped three times. Franklin let out a little yelp and jumped back from the displays.
"No, no," said Yvanna. "It’s okay. It’s just the prefix for the other pod." Then she added, with a smile, "It’s the one my family is at. The prefix is nine-seven-nine-three."
"Can I play with Pike?" asked Franklin. "Please, I want Pike!"
Yvanna replied, "Sure, sure. Okay. But let’s finish up the route and then you can play with Pike, all right?"
Franklin grinned; a gesture of happiness and innocence. In the back of her mind, Yvanna wondered: would this young man ever be able to even comprehend what she had to done to his father? Or, what his father had done to her?
He leapt back up to the displays and resumed his work. There were moments where he didn’t even glance at the displays.
Then he paused and said, "Done. Now, Pike can come."
Yvanna tapped some buttons on her watch.
The signal was sent to her husband, thousands of miles away: ENTER.
She placed a hand on Franklin’s shoulder, half to reassure him, half to comfort herself.
"Okay, Franklin," Yvanna said. "They’re coming. I can’t wait to see them…"
Her eyes watered. Tears rolled down her cheeks to dot the wooden floor beneath her pink high heels. After eight months of hell…finally, her family would be free of that frozen war zone. Finally, they could start a new life in the Republic. She could get back to being a wife and mother, and not this whore the crooked westerners would have her be.
She’d have to contact Orlando, work out the details…the defense. Keep her family out of the way while she did so.
In the back of her mind, though, she knew everything was going to be fine.
Franklin was typing furiously. He had a smile from ear to ear on his face.
"Franklin," she asked, "Are you all right?"
"Yeah!" he replied, "Now Pike is coming back. I can take the transfer grid record from his file and build him again! I can build Pike!"
Yvanna realized too late, with horror, what Franklin meant. In the moment before her hands struck Franklin’s away from the keyboard, the young man completed one last instruction set. The transmission was interrupted, corrupted and irreparable. The reassembly matrix was altered and replaced by a different design.
In the millisecond between the initialization that hopped across the illegal route, and the molecular reconstruction on the other side, the route subversion was detected and corrected by the UNTR. The pod in the frigid Serbian Combine was shut off; its doors latched remotely. There would be no return for the travelers – only a trace by the UNTR, which began immediately to find out where the rogue transmission was delivered.
But for Yvanna, the inevitable arrival of authorities didn’t matter anymore. She lay curled up in a ball in one corner, with her arms folded up around her head. She hadn’t been fast enough to stop Franklin. With her own words, she’d given Franklin, the gifted builder, all the permission the young man needed to instead become a destroyer.
In the pod were large perfectly-sided blocks of carbon, calcium, and other materials – leftovers from Franklin’s play time. A few small beads of iron, a tiny amount of copper and other metals were interspersed. A torrent of water had poured out onto the floor the moment the pod doors had opened. Now, Yvanna lay there in the puddle of water, and sobbed.
Oblivious, Franklin laughed from the living room. Around him danced a soaked, but otherwise healthy border collie.
"Let’s play, Pike!" Franklin said, as he laughed and rough-housed with his long lost friend. Pike leapt up and licked his hand – to the animal, it had only been a moment ago that it had been shoved into the telepod by Robert to be sent outside. The dog was very glad it wasn’t being sent outside after all.
"Boy, I missed you," said Franklin. "I’m so glad we can play!"
About the Author:
Jonathan C. Gillespie is a science fiction, fantasy, and horror writer living in Atlanta, GA. Readers can find some of his other works in Issue 14 of "Jupiter SF", Issue 4 of "OG's Speculative Fiction", or the upcoming first issue of "Murky Depths". Writing news, contact information, and his blog can be found at http:\\jgillespie.us.
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Interview: Rick Mofina
Series, Standalones, Settings and Charting a Course For The Future: Rick Mofina on his move to MIRA, what he’s working on now, and how he became a writer
By Sandra Ruttan
Sandra: Your new book is just out, yes?
Rick: It’s launched away in Canada, it’ll be launched in September in the US… It’s been a busy year.
Sandra: There’s a lot of things that go into being an author that people don’t always think about starting out. You’ve got a family, a job, you’re doing all this traveling for promotion. How do you find time to write?
Rick: You do what you can. My family affords me the luxury of time. My wife goes beyond the call of duty. It’s just become part of our routine that I pretty much use most of the weekend. The mornings I’m locked away down here, and during the commute. I’m up very early so I’m making notes very early in the morning and by the time I wake up during the commute I’m making very coherent notes. And those notes are key points that lead to sentences that lead to paragraphs and the writing is done on the weekends.
Or sometimes in the morning if I’m sharp enough and the adrenaline’s going when I’m over the hill in a book. For me, it’s always a process. The foundation has to come. When I know that’s rock solid then I can accelerate things.
Sandra: Does that mean you’re one of those people that doesn’t pre-plot the book?
Rick: I have to. I outline because in my experience publishers buy the outline. They make the deal on the basis of the outline, and it can be anywhere from five pages to fifty pages. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to stick to it to the letter but it gives them a summary and a good idea of what you’re shooting for. So you pretty much have to have the whole book in your mind and an idea of what the characters are going through. That way, when you go to them and pitch it to them it’s an artist’s concept and then you go to town on it. So that helps you and you can take your little outline and stretch it into a detailed plan if you like and things will change. I just let my publisher be aware. There was something I wanted to change and we discussed it and they agreed. Just so they knew for planning purposes.
Sandra: Way back when, I think in one of the interviews I read with you, it said you wrote your first book when you were 18, was it?
Rick: Oh, yeah. That was not… Geez. I had hitchhiked to California and kept a journal and then thought I’d try my hand at my first novel. I wrote about the experience – it was loosely based on my experience – and went the distance, actually finished a dreadful first novel of wanderlust, just at the end of the hippie days. I sort of missed that period.
I went from Belleville Ontario, which is near Toronto, right across to Vancouver and down the coast to San Francisco. I wrote about it. There was no outline and the only person who liked it was my younger brother.
It promptly went in the drawer. It’s around here somewhere. It’s not bad. There’s actual sentences in there.
But the trip itself, and the fact I did the novel, I went alone and it’s a lonely trip and the book is a lonely enterprise.
I did plan the first book that was published and I had lots of time to work on that and then I had ideas for other books. I learned in my experience that outlining was what the publishers wanted. That’s how the other books came. They had to be planned.
Sandra: It always helps if that works for you.
Rick: That’s how the deals are done, in my experience. A multi-book deal without outlines might come for some writers.
Well, the current deal is a two-book deal and the first one was outlined and second one was to be named, but they’ll go forward based on the outline.
Sandra: When you negotiated this deal did you have your idea already for the second book?
Rick: No, but it was thrown open. Maybe I’ve told you Sandra, A Perfect Grave is the last book I’ll be doing with Pinnacle.
Sandra: I was aware of that. You’re moving over to MIRA.
Rick: Yeah, I’m moving to MIRA. Amy Moore-Benson, my agent, did a great job shopping it around. The plan was to write a standalone outline and I wrote two or three possibilities. It took a long time planning them. She had one from me that she felt was fine, perfect, but felt had been done by others so she said we should set that aside and I didn’t feel a fire for that one either. I had another idea, so I did another 50-page outline and it was a little different. She said, “This is the one” and I said, “Are you sure? It can be tricky in spots.” But she said it was the one. So she shopped that one. She took it to publishers and offered them that one and a second book to be named later and MIRA took the outline for the standalone, which I’m now working on. I’m 40% of the way through the first draft.
The second book, they want to be a series book. Now, the second book… I own the license to the Jason Wade series and they loved that series because they auditioned me when they were ready to go on the deal and read The Dying Hour and that was the clincher. They said we could either continue with Jason Wade or launch a whole new series. The decision was made just recently that we’ll launch a new series, so the second book will be the launch of a new reporter series and set Jason Wade aside, and Tom Reed again, who’s still on a long vacation.
Sandra: I was going to ask about that, whether or not this was going to be the end for Jason Wade.
Rick: I would describe it as putting him on the bench for a while, to sit beside Tom for a while. It’s a strong backlist, with five in one series and three in the other. It was really a split decision because marketing people and the editorial staff loved Jason Wade, very established and the perception is that he’s on his way up because he’s been well received, but the idea of something new won out. So I’ll introduce someone new into my fictional news world.
The down side is that I won’t be out in 2008, which makes me nervous, but we dealt with that. The publisher was going to try to bring me out in the latter part of 2008 but they weren’t comfortable with the positioning because their catalogue was pretty much locked up. They said they could do a better job bringing me out in 2009. When they explained it to me I said okay, but I had a concern and we were all talking there, so we talked about narrowing the gap, so we’ll have the standalone and the new series six months later.
In the back of my mind I’m creating this new series and I discussed a little seed of it with Amy and she likes it. It’s not going to be a grand departure. I mean, Jason Wade in many respects was not a grand departure from Tom Reed, they were the same but different. I get readers who still prefer the Tom Reed series to the Jason Wade series and I get other people who say just the opposite.
So, I’m satisfied with that, that it’s split that way, and I hope when I bring out this new person, whoever he or she may be, that it’ll be more of the same.
Sandra: Really, what you’re saying is that Jason is going on hiatus for a little while, and he could be back and he might not, at this point you don’t know, but this is the second time for you as an author where you’ve had a series come to that point, where it’s like putting the stew on the back burner and you’re going to let it simmer for a while and then you’ll go back and see whether there’s more there. Do you find that a little bit frightening to start off with something new, or is it invigorating?
Rick: It’s both. It’s frightening because you always think you’re going to lose readers, at least that’s what you fear, that they won’t come back and for you as an author you don’t know if you can hit it again. Tom Reed was never meant to be a series character. If Angels Fall, my first book, was a standalone and Cold Fear was supposed to be a standalone behind it. And they became continuing characters and that series didn’t really start until they hit me over the head with it. They wanted those guys back in the second book and I did it, and they said, “Keep them going indefinitely until further notice” and Blood of Others was the real series starter.
With The Dying Hour, that was planned to be a series. The story arc was built in, right from the get go. It was intimidating, thinking was I going to create a character – because I had five books that I thought were fairly well received and I liked those guys and I had planned a sixth one, even a seventh within that series – but they just set them aside and said (to) start something new.
It was daunting. And then it came together and I was taken aback by how well received Jason was, because he was pretty dark and I didn’t know how people would like the whole poor kid thing but it seemed to make him a little more real and people liked that. I made sure the next one wasn’t as dark. I was sort of angry myself when I wrote the first one, and it was a reflection on things. So the second book was not as graphic or gritty or evil, if you will. And the third book, too, I think is more of a psychological suspense. It has a little bit of everything in it, it’s got some procedural, some mystery, thriller aspect to it, a lot of backstory.
To answer the question, each time, as you get going and get to know these people, for me when you start a new guy that’s fine too, because you’re always looking for something fresh, but it’s tough because with series books you may have readers coming to you for the first time, so how you weave in some of the important elements so the story will still satisfy them is tricky. And then when you’re creating someone new in a standalone it’s a tough job because it’s all uncharted territory, so you’ve got a lot of trees to clear to build the road. With a series the road’s been cleared for you, and it’s a little easier in some respects, but I find that if people like you they will go back to your previous work. That’s what people are telling me. If they like you they’ll seek you out and read everything.
Sandra: I think that once you get to a certain point where your name is known enough that people trust the quality of your work as an author.
Rick: And I think this is a great opportunity with MIRA because I think they’re going to take me to a whole different audience as well, through their machinery, and build on what I do have and try to expand on that. They’ve got some plans and it’s exciting, especially when you have a big new wave of enthusiasm behind you.
Sandra: You won’t need to do as much traveling in 2008, so you’ll have more time for writing.
Rick: Well, I am going to travel to the major conferences. I think it’s important to fly your flag and be out there, but I don’t see it as being too different. As you know Sandra it’s great when you have a book to push, but I don’t see them as much as book pushing vehicles as the networking, the socializing and all of that stuff. But if I decide I don’t want to go to a conference, you’re right, there’ll be less pressure to go.
Sandra: It’s hard because it’s fun to go to the conventions and meet everybody and connect, but it can become a lot of traveling.
Rick: Yeah, this was a lot. I made a decision to do as much as I could because I didn’t know what the future held for me, because I knew A Perfect Grave was coming and I didn’t know what was happening with my publisher because I’d fulfilled the contract, and they did want two more. Turned out they wanted two more Jason Wade books, but we were shopping around. There was a lot of interest from a couple of other publishers and when the dust settled the deal that emerged was a two-book deal with MIRA.
Sandra: It’s exciting, though. I was going to ask you if it gets harder or easier the more books you write, but I think you’ve already pretty much nailed that…
Rick: Yeah.
Sandra: So, it does sound like with your new series, when you start it after the standalone, that it’s going to be another journalist.
Rick: They said, “It’s up to you” and they suggested a few things and I suggested a few things and it was quite relaxed. I said there was a whole subgenre with the journalist thing, and they said, “It’s not as big as you think” and they already have a couple of writers doing the journalist thing and there’s no shortage of things coming off their line, but they liked it and said for (me) they can do the ex-reporter thing for marketing. I don’t know how much it really comes into play but marketing liked that.
Sandra: It seems to give readers a sense of realism that’s added in.
Rick: I’m good either way with it. The book comes first. And then if I want to find out about them, if they don’t know a thing about it but it’s a great story, fine. I mean, did Frederick Forsythe have to be a national assassin? No, he didn’t have to be.
Sandra: Well, most of us write about murder and we aren’t killers, so…
Rick: Yeah. First and foremost it’s a good story. Whatever your story is, that’s your calling card. And if the other stuff follows through, fine….
But I was comfortable with the reporter thing, the dynamics of newsrooms and I’m just drawing on my own experiences that that’s a natural for me, and I don’t sweat that out too too much. The third series will be a reporter as well, I’m just going to play around with what his or her experience might be, because they all come from different worlds and different backgrounds.
Sandra: And they all work for different bosses.
Rick: Yeah, and Jason Wade’s certainly not Tom Reed, but in the end the story’s the story and the clock’s always ticking and I like that stuff anyways, so we’ll see how that goes.
The standalone is daunting for me because it’s totally new territory for me, and I’m taking my time and doing it really low gear. It’s starting to really chug along now. I’m starting to see where things are merging. It’s going to be really good.
Sandra: Well, that’s good to hear. The beginnings are always, at least for me, nerve-wracking. But it’s interesting talking to you about the journalism because one of the things I was thinking about as I was reading A Perfect Grave was the fact that there’s a strong perception that’s portrayed, especially I guess on TV, about the journalists are always these headline-seekers, they’re willing to do anything to get a story, they’re basically ruthless, almost evil in terms of how they are very stereotypically portrayed. You know, and I know, that that’s not the real world…
Rick: It’s true. I mean, the stereotype usually does emerge from some element of truth somewhere, or perception of it, and I have met people in the reporting world who fit the stereotype, but they were a minority. They were the characters that, even in real life, that would be the fuel for the barroom chats later…
There are elements that are there of the ruthlessness and perceived insensitivity. I think it’s there, but I think what we don’t see a more realistic portrayal of the anguish that goes with it from the real world. That’s not talked about too much and reporters retreat. It’s like cops with gallows humour. You can take those elements and over-dramatize them to the point where they become clichéd characters or you take them and carefully use them to your end to create a fuller picture.
Sandra: That’s actually what I feel you’ve done with Jason Wade. Here you’ve got this guy who actually does have integrity and he is very committed to his job but he doesn’t cross certain lines and that’s cost him in his job because he’s constantly under pressure from his boss. He’s getting yelled at because he doesn’t have a name, and it’s the name that everyone else ran in print and got wrong, but he knew the name of the person who’d been killed and didn’t run it because he didn’t have it confirmed. And this is a guy who, despite the fact that he’s under pressure and despite the fact that he’s at risk of losing his job, he’s still putting his principles ahead of tabloid hack journalism.
Rick: He’s adhering to the basic fundamental age-old tenant of getting it right and basically, a reporter is the face of the paper and how they conduct themselves is a reflection of that large corporate organization. They are the tip of the missile. It’s a lot of pressure, and a lot of their own personality and biases go into it and the competition can be fierce, especially in true competitive markets and most of the major cities, despite media concentration, are still major competitive markets and the pressure is enormous. I worked in the Toronto market and the pressure was unbearable, how not to get beat on a story and you see that in Edmonton, in Calgary… In just about every market you’ll see that.
There’s another side to the story, and it’s what I’m trying to bring to the readers. The reporters… they have families, they are not the insensitive morons that they’re portrayed as, and that takes me back to what led me to write this stuff. The unfair and inaccurate portrayal, even in commercial fiction, of what I did for a living. That’s what led me to choosing crime fiction as something to write about while I was working the night police desk. The stuff was just too good not to use and I was very philosophical about it at the time. I think in my years from what I’d experienced I had a large enough reservoir to draw from, and had heard enough in the tribal reporter camps from my travels to know that a lot of the beefs, a lot of the feelings, a lot of the challenges were pretty much universal. I met people at stand-offs in the US or at executions in the States and in the Middle East and you always shoot the breeze, talk shop when you can and I came to the conclusion that there’s pretty much a universal language from the reporter world so I put it to my own advantage.
Sandra: Do you ever get anybody giving you grief, that they don’t think it’s realistic because of the stereotypes?
Rick: Once or twice, the odd picky reader, but overall I’d say the answer’s no. The only concern I have, as an old-timer now, is to make sure that my people are in a realistic world. I have to remember that when I left we were just using the internet and not using camera phones and berrys and things, and the fact that there’s constant concern about erosion of readership and the actual print format is slowly melting like the ice caps and there’s concern. I mean, as they merge into the online source, that’s the other aspect. I have to make sure that that’s current. So in a way, maybe my guy’s a little romanticized, I’d be the first to say I could be accused of being a little out of date, but my reporter friends don’t take me to task on the minutiae of things. I think readers buy into it or accept it.
Sandra: In this day and age the media will buy photos, video, off of people who just happen to have been there…
Rick: That’s always been the case. There have been a number of historic news iconic photos that were taken by individuals. That’s the thing, it’s the image. News photographers are trained also, when there’s an event, to ask who’s got a camera, to ask, “Can I buy your film? You might have a better image and the professional photographer who has the pride and wants to take the picture for their organization… their primary responsibility with something that’s breaking is to come back with the best image, so if the child with the still camera beside you got the picture and you didn’t, well, your job is to purchase that photo off that child and run it with a photo credit. You’re right, I’m sort of getting off track there.
Sandra: Now, though, remember that hoax about a beheading, a film that was put online? Now, I find myself wondering… I can’t think of any scandal that’s come up just that way that’s hit the media, where they’ve taken something at face value, but in this era of digital photographs, of doctoring photographs, it adds this whole element.
Rick: It’s a great vulnerability, a great risk of being hoodwinked.
Sandra: I think if I was going to write about a reporter again, that would be an interesting thing to play around with.
Rick: Oh, absolutely. Well, that’s the whole thing. I think the reporter subgenre just offers so much. You can go either way with it. It lends itself to so much.
Sandra: I’m just wondering, because you’re writing what mainly gets classified as thrillers, do you think the reporter has a certain advantage over the cop in the sense that with the reporter there always is a constant deadline for the next issue to produce something, whereas with a cop if you get something at twelve or if you get something at one it doesn’t matter quite as much.
Rick: They’re definitely different worlds and I’ll tell you what cops told me when I was on the beat. They said, “You have a great freedom.” I said, “What do you mean?”. “If I’m a city police officer or I’m a federal police officer and I’m pursuing my case and I decide I need this or this in another jurisdiction, the further away it is the more complicated it gets for me to pursue my information, where you as a reporter can say, “Hey, I think this guy in Bagdad knows something, I’ll pick up the phone and call him,” and you can do that, you’re expected to do that. You don’t have to answer to anybody for doing that.”
There is a freedom that way, and there’s also, detectives would tell me, “You run something and you truly believe it’s true and your organization believes it’s true and the next day you find out it’s not, you run a correction, oops. Yeah, you may face a lawsuit, depending on what the error is. When we’re building our case, we’ve got to make sure it’s right all the way along because it could be pulled out on us in court and it could affect the prosecution side of things, so we have to build a very very solid house.”
We were more like gypsies, and to them, from their view, journalists didn’t have as much accountability. I would turn it on them and say, “Look, okay, I can call up people from around the world at any time and they can curse at me and hang up. But you can get a subpoena and you can get a court order and you can flash your badge and people are kinda, in a way, more inclined to have to talk to you, and you say, “I want to get that unlisted phone number” and you can get it.”
So we would joust that way, in terms of pursuit of information.
Sandra: You’re blending the best of both worlds by using a cop and a reporter.
Rick: Yeah, and there are times, and you can do this creatively in your fiction. There are times where they’re at odds and there are times they can serve each other’s purposes and it’s a delicate dance. I did this with Sydowski a little bit and Reed a little bit, but I probably did it more in real life. There was a little trade-off here and there. I come across something, they come across something and you work an understanding. “If you go down this street you won’t be sorry Rick” and okay, they never told me but I’d go for a drive down that street… Or I’d have something and say, “We’re going to run this on the front page. If you were me would you lose sleep over it or would you sleep well?” You were just going on that kind of cryptic stuff. You see this in Woodward and Bernstein, in the Nixon books, where they would play that game. “If we’re right be silent for ten seconds.” Just operating, at times, on just a lot of trust that’s being supported by a hair. Talk about stomach in knots when you got up the next morning.
Sandra: Going back over to that vulnerability.
Rick: And I lived that. Police lived that. And there were times I had something that I was not supposed to share and maybe I did and I was trusting a police source and it was a very interesting, dramatic time at times. I’m not saying it was always like that, but there were a lot of moments like that and you put them together tightly and you’ve got yourself a book and for me I can draw on that, I know what it’s like.
Sandra: To switch gears on you, you did an interview for Booked TV and in that you were asked about an influential location and you said that covering true crime in Calgary and the Rockies helped forge your fiction. What exactly is it about Calgary and the Rockies?
Rick: That’s where I cut my teeth on the crime desk, so all my reporter imaginings that you read about were forged with the Calgary Herald. And the Rockies are so beautiful and a lot of stuff took us out there. They weren’t always crime stories directly. Lost hikers, bear attacks, bodies found or so on… For me, almost everything I needed came from my days at the Calgary Herald crime desk… Homicides, abductions, everything. A montage of a lot of stuff. The Herald was a fairly well-off paper and when they wanted to chase a story they wanted their own eyes on something and they’d put you on a plane and off you’d go. I went to Columbine, I went to Texas, I went to California, the Caribbean… The Middle East.
The first stint was night cops, which I did not like at the outset. Time went by and then it was day police. Just a different shift, really. I mean, I knew everybody. And then year after year went by on the night side and I got to know cops on the night desk, because editors would tell me what to do, and other reporters would tell me what to do and I was green as could be. “When it’s quiet, go out and meet the guys, go out on ride-alongs, and I can’t remember how many cars I rode in, went to visit the units. They even arrested me and took me through the process, put me in jail and I’d talk with the homicide guys, the tac team and the Mounties started to open up. They were going through a change as well and it was with some of the senior police desk guys in Calgary and our cousins up north at the Edmonton Journal. We were at a time when the competition between the two markets, between the two papers, was fierce. Between the Sun chain in Edmonton and Calgary and the Herald and Edmonton Journal. Sports was the mainstay of the Sun chain, they were very good at sports, and the other was crime. We were on the broadsheets, the respected community newspapers, and we were invited into your homes whereas the tabs were the pick-up paper that you kept on the trains and at work but you didn’t bring them into your home. I’m exaggerating a bit, but that was the perception.
But they were very good at crime, so we got together with the Journal and decided, “Why don’t we share stories?” and when there’s a major story the crime desk should talk to each other, where there was mutual interest in a story. We started sharing. Then we thought the relationship with the police overall wasn’t the greatest, especially with the Mounties in Alberta, so we formed an unofficial association called the Alberta Crime Reporters Association… We started putting out an invite that we would meet in a hotel in Red Deer. Senior police officials and reporters from our two papers, the Journal and Herald, and we invited some TV, and the Suns were invited too, we put it wide open, and we were surprised when we got acceptance from very senior Mounties.
What we provided was totally off the record, sleeves rolled up, doors closed, everything we do that pisses you off and everything that you do that pisses us off. Nobody else involved, just the reporters and the senior cops. After the first one we had, they loved it, they said it was long overdue. There was a lot of finger-pointing and this and that, but we reaped a lot of goodwill from it, and things happened after that. There were some new directives given. We had understanding. We did it for about three or four years and that worked well for us.
So I was part of that and we were known to most of the police organization. That also helped my staying on the crime desk. They said, “Whenever you want to leave you can, you can do whatever you want, we don’t think people should stay on the desk too long” so then I became a senior crime features reporter. I’d had enough of the scanners in my ears. You had to live and die by the scanners. That’s why they’re so much of a prominent feature in my books, because I know that in newsrooms, I believe they still are the lifeblood of the organizations for the most part. The OJ Simpson chase was from a police scanner. How much bigger do you get than that?
I grew up with them. They’re a second language, you’ve got to learn the code. But after a while they drove me crazy.
Sandra: I live with an emergency services radio on broadcast.
Rick: You know what I’m talking about.
Sandra: Well, you grew up in Belleville, and I was going to talk to you about that, but I went to Loyalist College in Belleville, and even when I was in college for journalism, I remember there was a murder and it happened in proximity to where a number of journalism students happened to live and here you are, it’s a college paper, they got their asses kicked for not going over there and covering it. What you’re talking about is the reality that people live with, until you’ve lived in that world you don’t really understand.
Rick: Well as a student at the Star they put you in what they call the torture chamber, and Tom Reed, that radio room in the San Francisco Star actually was the Toronto Star’s torture chamber and they had so many scanners going constantly, they had a plexiglass thing on the floor like you do for some offices so your roller chair could really move around and you were locked in there and basically, they put you in there and said, “You miss anything, you’re fired.” You can bet the Toronto Star does not miss a thing and they’re listening to everything. The Globe to a lesser degree. You better not be turning on the TV and watching it unless you see a Star reporter being interviewed at the scene because he was there first. It was just hammered into you that you do not get beat. It was unacceptable.
In Calgary, I take pride in that I developed the tape system, where guys would be listening to these scanners, but they’d get the trail end or a crosstalk call and they would miss something. “What was that? Either two police officers are going for lunch or they’ve gone missing.” And they don’t like you calling up every time you’ve missed something. They get tired of you calling and they might not answer, so I said, “Why don’t we just run a tape recorder beside the radios and just rewind?” So the top city editor allowed the budget of buying tape recorder after tape recorder because every two or three months they’d just burn out. We’d just run them non-stop. Get a one-hour tape and just flip the tape, and set the counter. “What was that? Oh, he just spilled coffee on his pants, he didn’t get shot, he’s screaming because he got burned.”
Sandra: Those are the kind of things that could end up being evidence later, the exact time that a call came in.
Rick: I know it’s a little different now, some news organizations, because of the e-mails, so I am coming back to the point where I may have sort of aged-out myself from it, but I think I’m still relatively reflective of things. I suppose if I really wanted to I could do a week on a desk just to reacquaint myself with things, but I don’t know.
Sandra: Well, this is one of the things… I mean, by the time that a book comes out to some degree it is already outdated. You write a book, you hand it in, it’s usually a gap of anywhere from six months to a year and things are changing so fast right now. A couple years back I listened to a guy who’d worked at the Calgary Sun, John Gradon, talk about his years in journalism, and he was talking about the old days. When he cut his teeth it was in Glasgow and he was talking about phoning in your stories. You go from one thing to another thing. Now you wouldn’t be phoning in your stories, you’d be text messaging them in. Things are going to change and in some ways it’s impossible for books to keep up with that. So as long as it seems contemporary…
Rick: Yeah. As long as it’s representative, that’s what I’m aiming for. I’ll step back from that because I’m trying not to make that the story so much unless there’s an element that I need for whatever device, but it’s the person pursing the story, them as a character and what they’re going through, so when I do have to insert technical stuff for how they get a story I try to make sure I get it right or have some excuse. I remember a few years ago the computers went down at the Star and they said, “Bring out the typewriters,” they had to go digging out typewriters.
Sandra: Oh my gosh. Can you imagine the average person now?
Rick: Yeah, but if I had to, then one day that’s going to happen. I can remember filing in longhand and dictating over the phone, and there are computer glitches. It’s not the end of the world. If you can get to a phone that’s basically it, like John, phoning in the story, writing it down on hotel stationary, the old-fashioned way, three sentences to a page. Saves you a lot of rewriting. Shuffle it all around. I faxed in a 1500 word story once because the computer just would not work. My hand was awfully sore. I printed it. The whole thing had to be in block letters so they could read it.
Sandra: That would hurt to do.
Rick: It was painful.
Sandra: Now, going over to the fact that you grew up in Belleville, Belleville is an interesting place because the one thing I remember about going to college there was they talked about how they had built… Did you ever go out to Loyalist?
Rick: Not a lot. I took a night course there. I don’t think I could even name all the buildings.
Sandra: In the main building they had built in what was technically then the back a big entry area, and it was really nice. Glass doors that looked out to the field behind. The journalism instructors told us that at the time they had been building they had expected the city to grow out so they actually expected those to be the front doors.
Rick: And it didn’t quite happen that way.
Sandra: It hadn’t happened, not even when I was there. What I remember thinking, and this might also have been the fact it was Ontario in the recession, was Belleville is kind of the city that isn’t, because it’s between Peterborough and Kingston and Queen’s University and Sir Sandford Fleming College are so much better known and the one thing that seems to take people to Belleville is the photojournalism program, because they’ve got the major one in the country, but beyond that Belleville is sort of this netherworld tucked in there, and not a lot of people go to Belleville or know about it.
Rick: I call it a pee stop on the 401. Going from Toronto to Montreal, you’ve got to pee, do it in Belleville.
Sandra: There you go. I’m not offending you.
Rick: No. It’s a sleepy little town, and not too much happens there and maybe Black Diamond Cheese is.
Sandra: Well, in this day and age you’ve got the Wilkinson’s.
Rick: The Wilkinson’s, yeah, and proximity to Napanee.
Sandra: Yes.
Rick: And you’d have to go back to the 50s and the World Champion Belleville McFarlane’s Hockey Team but there aren’t too many people who remember that and those that do are all in Belleville.
Sandra: This leads to this theory I’ve got, that a lot of writers seem to be born out of smaller, quieter communities. Maybe it’s because we’re always imagining what’s going on somewhere else?
Rick: My wife and I bought our first house on Burton Street in Belleville. A block and a half behind us was Susanna Moody’s house. The Canadian literary roughing it in the bush. I would walk over there and go, “What was she complaining about? It’s not that far down to the river.” I know I was walking on paved sidewalks and she had to walk through trees and I think she was afraid of bears and stuff but it’s not that far to the river. Roughing it in the bush. Well, it’s Belleville. And Farley Mowatt claimed he was conceived in a canoe just off the shores of Belleville.
Sandra: Oh really!
Rick: So there’s our literary claims, right there.
Sandra: It’s kind of hard for me to conceive of people talking about Belleville being in the bush when I grew up in Gravenhurst.
Rick: Yeah. Well, I forget what era, was it 1830s or so? There was really not much going on there. I think Dickens rolled by in a steamer, kind of glanced at it.
You’re right, it was a small town, and for me it was my town and it was my mother who actually listened to a police scanner. I have to think back. It wasn’t an active police scanner, and she’d have it on and just liked to know what was going on in town. And maybe once a day you’d hear, “I’m going for lunch.”
Having stories read to me in grade school sort of got the imagination going and I was the only boy in my grade nine typing class because something told me I’d better take typing, I was going to need it, and it was kind of a girly thing to do. I remember other guys asked, “What are you doing?” and I thought I was going to need it. They had these old Olympian manuals... The teacher didn’t care that I was the only boy, I think she kind of liked it, so I learned to type and then I wrote short stories as a kid and I sent them out to magazines. I’d ride my bicycle down to the Reading and Greeting shop in downtown Belleville, which was beside the Reddick’s bakery and you could smell the baking bread and stuff, and the guy that owned it would allow me to stand there and he had this great collections of magazines and books and there was a magazine called The Writer and it was like angels singing. I couldn’t afford to buy it, so I stood there and read it, how to market your story and I’d read this thing and study it and take out my little notepad and write down addresses, type up my stories and lick the stamps and mail them off and I actually typed them at high school. I’d go in after class and use the typewriters there, all by myself, typing away, and mailing them off.
Then one day, you know I’d had rejection after rejection and I was just a kid, fourteen or fifteen, and one day a cheque came from New Jersey. For $60 US dollars and my dad was a construction worker and I showed it to him and he was just floored. “What’d you do?” I said, “You’ve got to cash it for me Dad.” I didn’t even have a bank account.
That was quite a moment. I think a few years later for my birthday I got the Writer’s Market. My mom gave it to me. It was a lifelong thing.
Sandra: You were pretty much born to be a writer.
Rick: I guess. I was always writing something. I liked writing little stories. I guess there’s sort of a hope attached to them, when you send them out. I liked the process. Here’s a little story, and I’d type it and make sure it’s all clean and didn’t show it to anybody and followed the format like in my magazines and they had great little “how to” articles. I learned so much. How to write the query letter. How to sell to this market, how to sell to that market. Maybe I wasn’t being that successful, but I was learning from them and I enjoyed it.
The idea of writing a book had never occurred to me, just stories. I was cutting my teeth, learning that part of the business. I think it was that first bit of success, knowing that it can be done, that got me going. I said, “All I’ve got to do is write something a hundred times longer and they’ll probably give me a hundred times more money” and my dad said, “Whatever” but my mom gave me the ribbons for my typewriter and I’d just type away.
Sandra: Well, there are far worse things you could have been doing.
Rick: Yeah. It took a while, after high school, and then university and putting it all together, and I look back and laugh at the memory of it. I had a big sack of all the early stories and all the early letters in my closet and I’d just started dating Barbara, who is my wife now, and I remember I got frustrated one day and I said, “I’m taking this sack and I’m throwing it out” and she said, ”I don’t think you should.” I said, “I know what I’m doing, it’s garbage.” She said, “You’re going to regret it one day,” and I think I do. There was a lot of good stuff in there and personal notes from legendary people that are long gone and I threw it away in frustration. Those were old days, I laugh at them now.
Sandra: We all go through those days. So let me ask you something controversial. How come you’re not setting books in Canada?
Rick: Well, I had intended that, to set my books in Canada. My first book was actually drafted to be set in Canada. It was my intention, at the time I had made up my mind, I felt I was a writer and I wanted to shape what I was doing into something worthwhile. It came to the point where it was going to be crime fiction, and I was a reporter. I was grappling with supernatural stuff, because I like that too.
What I was seeing on the crime desk, in my preliminary study of Canadian crime fiction, was not being reflected. I said, “It’s time for the next generation to take over. I’ve had it with Canadian police officers sounding like Brits on Canadian streets.” That’s not a shot at anyone in particular.
Or parlour room Canadian mysteries being played out in contemporary times when I’m dealing with families who’ve had loved ones murdered, and it’s happening across the country. This whole perception that Canada’s this quaint little pastoral community without cursing… it sure as heck isn’t. I wasn’t trying to emulate the US, I was trying to reflect what I saw, and thought it was time to take it to the next evolutionary step, so as an aspiring crime fiction writer, that was my intention, that I will be proudly Canadian and I will write my story and it will be a true story in terms that it will be honest to my experience. IF ANGELS FALL was going to be set in Toronto, even though I was a Calgary Herald reporter I contacted Metro back then and got a ride-along, spent a day with them and the climax was going to be set in the Thousand Islands, so I wrote letters and got a ride-along with the Canadian coast guard and told the boys on the boat what my plot was and they helped me, in the end, make my bad guy even better. They started showing me things. It was great.
Halfway through the book I had self doubt, I couldn’t finish the book, and though a long story there was a friend who was getting a book published, a true crime book. She had contacts in New York and one night I opened up and told her. I didn’t tell anyone I was writing crime fiction, not in the newsroom, nobody knew, just my wife and family and when I had to contact officials.
This friend said, “Why don’t I take what you’ve written to this person I know in New York and they’ll just give you a free assessment of it. They’ll just tell you if you’re right or wrong. I said sure. I went off to San Francisco to cover something, and the word got back that this person in NYC looked at it and said I should finish and I was on the right track, and called me and talked to me. Exchanged a letter or two. Very very nice, encouraging. The person’s name was Bill Thompson and it turned out to be the Bill Thompson that Stephen King mentions in the beginning of THE SHINING, the one who got CARRIE going, that Bill Thompson.
He said, “Is your goal to get published?” I said yeah, and keep in mind he’s just giving me advice, and he said, “I’ll make a suggestion. I think you should consider relocating it to the US because it’s hard enough for an unknown American writer to get published in the US, if your goal is to get published and reach the widest audience, I apologize for American egocentricity, but Americans love to read about American settings and things.” He thought my book lent itself to Mary Higgins Clark country, New England or some place like that. He said it was just a thought.
I said, “Okay, thank you.” I was just thrilled that he liked what I’d written and he gave it an assessment and it was after the fact that I discovered he was who he was and I was walking on air.
Having just come back from San Francisco, and having befriended a homicide detective there, I got thinking, “Hmm, I love that city.” I’d been there in my hitchhiking days, just been there as a crime reporter, so I chose to relocate the book to San Francisco. I asked the detective in California if he would read it for technical accuracy. I turned my back on that dream to be true-blue Canadian myself, no house set a condition upon me, no agent, no editor. Just me, to finish the book.
And then when it was finished I sought an agent and got one and she sold it to Pinnacle. And Pinnacle, at the time, I don’t even think knew I was Canadian.
I was thrilled to be published and I tried, but it was more of a delicate step, to set the next book in Alberta. Mountains are mountains. They said, “Well… we’d kind of like you to move a little south” and I said, “Okay, Montana,” and they said, “Oh great,” so it was set in Montana. That’s about the extent that I pushed it.
Then in BLOOD OF OTHERS I had a couple of chapters that were up in Canada, and brought the storyline back to the US, and they were good with that.
Then when they wanted me to create a new character in Jason Wade, they proposed a Northwest locale, Portland or Seattle, and said I could use Canadian threads. Keep the story in the US but they encouraged me to come more and more into Canada. With EVERY FEAR there’s a nod to Canada in terms of back story, and in A PERFECT GRAVE I took that trip into Alberta just for me. That’s really me waving at the Herald.
With the next book, it’s going to be international. This is a long answer to your question, but it was really me, and I guess the reason… I’m still torn. I’d still like to do something in Canada only, but there’s this fear.
You hear a lot of exceptions to the rule. Louise (Penny) is using and Giles to an extent, great writing aside, but they are fulfilling the stereotypical view the world has of Canada and if you write that way and you do it well, you get a thumbs up because people really think Canada’s always cold, or nothing but quaint villages, no one really is murdered in Canada and if they are they’re all shocked because, “You don’t own guns there, right? You just want to lay around and smoke pot and hug everybody regardless of gender and all of that, right?” And when you see beautiful writing that reinforces that stereotype, I’m exaggerating a bit, but that’s the kind of writing we expect out of Canada in crime fiction.
If you write something that tends to be a little more violent, you’re just American wannabes, because that doesn’t happen. Pickton aside, Montreal Massacre aside –“
Sandra: Paul Bernardo aside.
Rick: People say, “But this doesn’t happen in Canada.” Stop that. “This doesn’t happen in Scotland,” they said after Dunblane, and it happens, period, wherever we are. We have murders up in the north in isolated communities, we’re human beings, Cain and Abel, and I almost said to Elmore Leonard, “Well, we don’t really get murders, those cemeteries we have out there are all pretend, they don’t exist. We don’t feel any pain because we’re Canadian. We don’t suffer any violence because we’re Canadian.” Enough of that.
So, you have the perception that if you’re writing an urban, gritty type story, that you’re emulating other places that fulfill that stereotype. Los Angeles. I got off a plane and no gangster shot me. It’s New York and I didn’t get mugged. You can flip it.
Sandra: Don’t they sell ‘Gangster Shooting’ signs? We have ‘Wildlife Crossing’ signs…
Rick: I think we’re all guilty of our stereotypes in that way. And I’m not throwing or heaping criticism on anybody because I think a good story, it doesn’t matter. Tell a good story and that’s fine, but you want to be free to write what you want to write about, but I am torn because I know I had set out to do what I wanted to do and what would have happened? I don’t know. Would I have been able to be published?
Sandra: It’s hard to say.
Rick: I meet Canadian writer friends from all sides of the coin and they’re published now and they’re writing true Canadian stories, they’re true to their roots, but they can’t cross over into the US, they can’t get picked up, maybe have smaller publishers. They said, “Well, you’re doing it right and I’m told the next book, I have to set it in the US” and then you hear others who are true to the Canadian locale, getting picked up and sold everywhere.” I think there are exceptions to every rule.
Sandra: Times have changed somewhat, and it goes back to what we were saying earlier, about the internet and access to information and everything being out there. People, I think, are a little more aware now, and perceptions have changed. I certainly know that when I was trying to find an agent first time around the Americans told me to look for somebody in Canada and the Canadians were, “Well, this is dark.” They didn’t want to go anywhere near it. So, I was forced to put the first book in the States. And then the criticism that came up in reviews was, “I don’t know why this person felt the need to put their book in the States, they should have set it in Canada.” You can’t win.
Rick: No, you can’t win. My stuff is mass market, pulpy stuff, for want of a better term, and in the early days people would say, “Read your book, loved it, then I found out you’re Canadian.” And those were Canadian readers. It was always that way. And maybe one out of twenty-five would sort of shyly, respectfully say, “You ever think about setting a book in Canada?” It would come out. From American readers, nothing about where I was from. Just, “Read you book, it was great.”
But in the back of my mind I always came back to the original plan. Because it’s my back yard and I knew my stuff and I wanted to have my detectives going to a Flames game. I wanted Mounties. I wanted people to understand Mounties a little bit more.
Sandra: And right now, the media around the Mounties-
Rick: I know! They need a win and they’re putting the puck in their own net so many times, it’s pretty bad. If you’ve got a Mountie character emerging, I don’t know. And they’re protected. Everyone knows how they protected their image with Disney. That all emerged because the Mountie image was being besmirched. They moved to get parliament to protect their image and you had to get permission to use the image in any commercial venture. If they approve they get ten or fifteen percent and that money goes to help kids fight drugs.
So when it came to books I asked them, he said literary license you can have a Mountie character, like Mike Slade does in his books. But you can’t put the Mountie badge on the cover. The LAPD, NYPD, FBI you name it, but with RCMP they get a cut.
Sandra: I don’t know how they could do that, if the book was published in a different country, though.
Rick: Yeah, so you could have a Mountie character and that’s fine. They’re doing a pretty good job themselves of besmirching their own image, but you’d have to say to your publisher they can’t have red serge on the cover or anything.
Sandra: The Mounties I worked with were really good, read over scenes and phoned me up and told me what I got wrong and they’re good.
Rick: What made me want to be true to my Canadian roots in my books was the rapport I had with police and there was a new generation of Mounties coming up at the time. The old Mountie tradition, as far as media went, was to say nothing. May times what had happened, I was coming into the period where there were joint forces operations with the Calgary police or Edmonton police, and they all worked hard and were all on the team but when it came time for media attention, since the Mounties were told not to talk, it suddenly became a Calgary city operation. The Mounties tended to be forgotten because the senior administration said, “Don’t talk” and the younger guys were getting ticked off because pride of work and all of that, and slowly a new media relations policy emerged where they became more open and less of the ‘behind-closed-doors’ and more ‘let’s correct our problems here’ was part of that evolution. We started getting more access and the younger guys were sharp, wonderful guys, and it was great.
So I felt I’d maybe do a Mountie book, and stake out Alberta as my turf, like Hillerman did, and there’s the Native aspect. I spent a year in Brooks, and I got caught up in the prairie lore and the pioneer stuff and that’s Mountie turf and the mountains are Mountie turf. I was talking to people and I was told there would be interest in Germany, at least in terms of the Native lore stuff. That was a thought. It never came to be.
Sandra: Well, it still might.
Rick: Well, I’m not there. I thought the time would have been when I was there, with the guys. Most of them have retired and moved on. They’ve offered to help me out but we’ll see.
Sandra: Now, before we run out of time here, going back to that interview you did for Booked TV, here’s a fun one. You said that if you weren’t a writer you’d like to be a member of the E Street Band or back-up singer for Meatloaf.
Rick: Yeah, well Meatloaf during the good period.
Sandra: Are you actually capable of being a singer or musician?
Rick: No. It’s a fantasy.
Sandra: So it’s pure fantasy?
Rick: Yeah. There’s nothing like the energy you see at those concerts. It’s pure joy and fun. A party on the stage.
About the Interviewer:
Sandra Ruttan's novel, WHAT BURNS WITHIN, will be released by Dorchester in
May 2008, to be followed by THE FRAILTY OF FLESH November 2008. Ken Bruen declared her work "totally mesmerizing" while Clive Cussler concluded, "Ruttan has a spellbinding style." She is also an editor with Spinetingler Magazine. For more information, visit her website at www.sandraruttan.com
By Sandra Ruttan
Sandra: Your new book is just out, yes?
Rick: It’s launched away in Canada, it’ll be launched in September in the US… It’s been a busy year.
Sandra: There’s a lot of things that go into being an author that people don’t always think about starting out. You’ve got a family, a job, you’re doing all this traveling for promotion. How do you find time to write?
Rick: You do what you can. My family affords me the luxury of time. My wife goes beyond the call of duty. It’s just become part of our routine that I pretty much use most of the weekend. The mornings I’m locked away down here, and during the commute. I’m up very early so I’m making notes very early in the morning and by the time I wake up during the commute I’m making very coherent notes. And those notes are key points that lead to sentences that lead to paragraphs and the writing is done on the weekends.
Or sometimes in the morning if I’m sharp enough and the adrenaline’s going when I’m over the hill in a book. For me, it’s always a process. The foundation has to come. When I know that’s rock solid then I can accelerate things.
Sandra: Does that mean you’re one of those people that doesn’t pre-plot the book?
Rick: I have to. I outline because in my experience publishers buy the outline. They make the deal on the basis of the outline, and it can be anywhere from five pages to fifty pages. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to stick to it to the letter but it gives them a summary and a good idea of what you’re shooting for. So you pretty much have to have the whole book in your mind and an idea of what the characters are going through. That way, when you go to them and pitch it to them it’s an artist’s concept and then you go to town on it. So that helps you and you can take your little outline and stretch it into a detailed plan if you like and things will change. I just let my publisher be aware. There was something I wanted to change and we discussed it and they agreed. Just so they knew for planning purposes.
Sandra: Way back when, I think in one of the interviews I read with you, it said you wrote your first book when you were 18, was it?
Rick: Oh, yeah. That was not… Geez. I had hitchhiked to California and kept a journal and then thought I’d try my hand at my first novel. I wrote about the experience – it was loosely based on my experience – and went the distance, actually finished a dreadful first novel of wanderlust, just at the end of the hippie days. I sort of missed that period.
I went from Belleville Ontario, which is near Toronto, right across to Vancouver and down the coast to San Francisco. I wrote about it. There was no outline and the only person who liked it was my younger brother.
It promptly went in the drawer. It’s around here somewhere. It’s not bad. There’s actual sentences in there.
But the trip itself, and the fact I did the novel, I went alone and it’s a lonely trip and the book is a lonely enterprise.
I did plan the first book that was published and I had lots of time to work on that and then I had ideas for other books. I learned in my experience that outlining was what the publishers wanted. That’s how the other books came. They had to be planned.
Sandra: It always helps if that works for you.
Rick: That’s how the deals are done, in my experience. A multi-book deal without outlines might come for some writers.
Well, the current deal is a two-book deal and the first one was outlined and second one was to be named, but they’ll go forward based on the outline.
Sandra: When you negotiated this deal did you have your idea already for the second book?
Rick: No, but it was thrown open. Maybe I’ve told you Sandra, A Perfect Grave is the last book I’ll be doing with Pinnacle.
Sandra: I was aware of that. You’re moving over to MIRA.
Rick: Yeah, I’m moving to MIRA. Amy Moore-Benson, my agent, did a great job shopping it around. The plan was to write a standalone outline and I wrote two or three possibilities. It took a long time planning them. She had one from me that she felt was fine, perfect, but felt had been done by others so she said we should set that aside and I didn’t feel a fire for that one either. I had another idea, so I did another 50-page outline and it was a little different. She said, “This is the one” and I said, “Are you sure? It can be tricky in spots.” But she said it was the one. So she shopped that one. She took it to publishers and offered them that one and a second book to be named later and MIRA took the outline for the standalone, which I’m now working on. I’m 40% of the way through the first draft.
The second book, they want to be a series book. Now, the second book… I own the license to the Jason Wade series and they loved that series because they auditioned me when they were ready to go on the deal and read The Dying Hour and that was the clincher. They said we could either continue with Jason Wade or launch a whole new series. The decision was made just recently that we’ll launch a new series, so the second book will be the launch of a new reporter series and set Jason Wade aside, and Tom Reed again, who’s still on a long vacation.
Sandra: I was going to ask about that, whether or not this was going to be the end for Jason Wade.
Rick: I would describe it as putting him on the bench for a while, to sit beside Tom for a while. It’s a strong backlist, with five in one series and three in the other. It was really a split decision because marketing people and the editorial staff loved Jason Wade, very established and the perception is that he’s on his way up because he’s been well received, but the idea of something new won out. So I’ll introduce someone new into my fictional news world.
The down side is that I won’t be out in 2008, which makes me nervous, but we dealt with that. The publisher was going to try to bring me out in the latter part of 2008 but they weren’t comfortable with the positioning because their catalogue was pretty much locked up. They said they could do a better job bringing me out in 2009. When they explained it to me I said okay, but I had a concern and we were all talking there, so we talked about narrowing the gap, so we’ll have the standalone and the new series six months later.
In the back of my mind I’m creating this new series and I discussed a little seed of it with Amy and she likes it. It’s not going to be a grand departure. I mean, Jason Wade in many respects was not a grand departure from Tom Reed, they were the same but different. I get readers who still prefer the Tom Reed series to the Jason Wade series and I get other people who say just the opposite.
So, I’m satisfied with that, that it’s split that way, and I hope when I bring out this new person, whoever he or she may be, that it’ll be more of the same.
Sandra: Really, what you’re saying is that Jason is going on hiatus for a little while, and he could be back and he might not, at this point you don’t know, but this is the second time for you as an author where you’ve had a series come to that point, where it’s like putting the stew on the back burner and you’re going to let it simmer for a while and then you’ll go back and see whether there’s more there. Do you find that a little bit frightening to start off with something new, or is it invigorating?
Rick: It’s both. It’s frightening because you always think you’re going to lose readers, at least that’s what you fear, that they won’t come back and for you as an author you don’t know if you can hit it again. Tom Reed was never meant to be a series character. If Angels Fall, my first book, was a standalone and Cold Fear was supposed to be a standalone behind it. And they became continuing characters and that series didn’t really start until they hit me over the head with it. They wanted those guys back in the second book and I did it, and they said, “Keep them going indefinitely until further notice” and Blood of Others was the real series starter.
With The Dying Hour, that was planned to be a series. The story arc was built in, right from the get go. It was intimidating, thinking was I going to create a character – because I had five books that I thought were fairly well received and I liked those guys and I had planned a sixth one, even a seventh within that series – but they just set them aside and said (to) start something new.
It was daunting. And then it came together and I was taken aback by how well received Jason was, because he was pretty dark and I didn’t know how people would like the whole poor kid thing but it seemed to make him a little more real and people liked that. I made sure the next one wasn’t as dark. I was sort of angry myself when I wrote the first one, and it was a reflection on things. So the second book was not as graphic or gritty or evil, if you will. And the third book, too, I think is more of a psychological suspense. It has a little bit of everything in it, it’s got some procedural, some mystery, thriller aspect to it, a lot of backstory.
To answer the question, each time, as you get going and get to know these people, for me when you start a new guy that’s fine too, because you’re always looking for something fresh, but it’s tough because with series books you may have readers coming to you for the first time, so how you weave in some of the important elements so the story will still satisfy them is tricky. And then when you’re creating someone new in a standalone it’s a tough job because it’s all uncharted territory, so you’ve got a lot of trees to clear to build the road. With a series the road’s been cleared for you, and it’s a little easier in some respects, but I find that if people like you they will go back to your previous work. That’s what people are telling me. If they like you they’ll seek you out and read everything.
Sandra: I think that once you get to a certain point where your name is known enough that people trust the quality of your work as an author.
Rick: And I think this is a great opportunity with MIRA because I think they’re going to take me to a whole different audience as well, through their machinery, and build on what I do have and try to expand on that. They’ve got some plans and it’s exciting, especially when you have a big new wave of enthusiasm behind you.
Sandra: You won’t need to do as much traveling in 2008, so you’ll have more time for writing.
Rick: Well, I am going to travel to the major conferences. I think it’s important to fly your flag and be out there, but I don’t see it as being too different. As you know Sandra it’s great when you have a book to push, but I don’t see them as much as book pushing vehicles as the networking, the socializing and all of that stuff. But if I decide I don’t want to go to a conference, you’re right, there’ll be less pressure to go.
Sandra: It’s hard because it’s fun to go to the conventions and meet everybody and connect, but it can become a lot of traveling.
Rick: Yeah, this was a lot. I made a decision to do as much as I could because I didn’t know what the future held for me, because I knew A Perfect Grave was coming and I didn’t know what was happening with my publisher because I’d fulfilled the contract, and they did want two more. Turned out they wanted two more Jason Wade books, but we were shopping around. There was a lot of interest from a couple of other publishers and when the dust settled the deal that emerged was a two-book deal with MIRA.
Sandra: It’s exciting, though. I was going to ask you if it gets harder or easier the more books you write, but I think you’ve already pretty much nailed that…
Rick: Yeah.
Sandra: So, it does sound like with your new series, when you start it after the standalone, that it’s going to be another journalist.
Rick: They said, “It’s up to you” and they suggested a few things and I suggested a few things and it was quite relaxed. I said there was a whole subgenre with the journalist thing, and they said, “It’s not as big as you think” and they already have a couple of writers doing the journalist thing and there’s no shortage of things coming off their line, but they liked it and said for (me) they can do the ex-reporter thing for marketing. I don’t know how much it really comes into play but marketing liked that.
Sandra: It seems to give readers a sense of realism that’s added in.
Rick: I’m good either way with it. The book comes first. And then if I want to find out about them, if they don’t know a thing about it but it’s a great story, fine. I mean, did Frederick Forsythe have to be a national assassin? No, he didn’t have to be.
Sandra: Well, most of us write about murder and we aren’t killers, so…
Rick: Yeah. First and foremost it’s a good story. Whatever your story is, that’s your calling card. And if the other stuff follows through, fine….
But I was comfortable with the reporter thing, the dynamics of newsrooms and I’m just drawing on my own experiences that that’s a natural for me, and I don’t sweat that out too too much. The third series will be a reporter as well, I’m just going to play around with what his or her experience might be, because they all come from different worlds and different backgrounds.
Sandra: And they all work for different bosses.
Rick: Yeah, and Jason Wade’s certainly not Tom Reed, but in the end the story’s the story and the clock’s always ticking and I like that stuff anyways, so we’ll see how that goes.
The standalone is daunting for me because it’s totally new territory for me, and I’m taking my time and doing it really low gear. It’s starting to really chug along now. I’m starting to see where things are merging. It’s going to be really good.
Sandra: Well, that’s good to hear. The beginnings are always, at least for me, nerve-wracking. But it’s interesting talking to you about the journalism because one of the things I was thinking about as I was reading A Perfect Grave was the fact that there’s a strong perception that’s portrayed, especially I guess on TV, about the journalists are always these headline-seekers, they’re willing to do anything to get a story, they’re basically ruthless, almost evil in terms of how they are very stereotypically portrayed. You know, and I know, that that’s not the real world…
Rick: It’s true. I mean, the stereotype usually does emerge from some element of truth somewhere, or perception of it, and I have met people in the reporting world who fit the stereotype, but they were a minority. They were the characters that, even in real life, that would be the fuel for the barroom chats later…
There are elements that are there of the ruthlessness and perceived insensitivity. I think it’s there, but I think what we don’t see a more realistic portrayal of the anguish that goes with it from the real world. That’s not talked about too much and reporters retreat. It’s like cops with gallows humour. You can take those elements and over-dramatize them to the point where they become clichéd characters or you take them and carefully use them to your end to create a fuller picture.
Sandra: That’s actually what I feel you’ve done with Jason Wade. Here you’ve got this guy who actually does have integrity and he is very committed to his job but he doesn’t cross certain lines and that’s cost him in his job because he’s constantly under pressure from his boss. He’s getting yelled at because he doesn’t have a name, and it’s the name that everyone else ran in print and got wrong, but he knew the name of the person who’d been killed and didn’t run it because he didn’t have it confirmed. And this is a guy who, despite the fact that he’s under pressure and despite the fact that he’s at risk of losing his job, he’s still putting his principles ahead of tabloid hack journalism.
Rick: He’s adhering to the basic fundamental age-old tenant of getting it right and basically, a reporter is the face of the paper and how they conduct themselves is a reflection of that large corporate organization. They are the tip of the missile. It’s a lot of pressure, and a lot of their own personality and biases go into it and the competition can be fierce, especially in true competitive markets and most of the major cities, despite media concentration, are still major competitive markets and the pressure is enormous. I worked in the Toronto market and the pressure was unbearable, how not to get beat on a story and you see that in Edmonton, in Calgary… In just about every market you’ll see that.
There’s another side to the story, and it’s what I’m trying to bring to the readers. The reporters… they have families, they are not the insensitive morons that they’re portrayed as, and that takes me back to what led me to write this stuff. The unfair and inaccurate portrayal, even in commercial fiction, of what I did for a living. That’s what led me to choosing crime fiction as something to write about while I was working the night police desk. The stuff was just too good not to use and I was very philosophical about it at the time. I think in my years from what I’d experienced I had a large enough reservoir to draw from, and had heard enough in the tribal reporter camps from my travels to know that a lot of the beefs, a lot of the feelings, a lot of the challenges were pretty much universal. I met people at stand-offs in the US or at executions in the States and in the Middle East and you always shoot the breeze, talk shop when you can and I came to the conclusion that there’s pretty much a universal language from the reporter world so I put it to my own advantage.
Sandra: Do you ever get anybody giving you grief, that they don’t think it’s realistic because of the stereotypes?
Rick: Once or twice, the odd picky reader, but overall I’d say the answer’s no. The only concern I have, as an old-timer now, is to make sure that my people are in a realistic world. I have to remember that when I left we were just using the internet and not using camera phones and berrys and things, and the fact that there’s constant concern about erosion of readership and the actual print format is slowly melting like the ice caps and there’s concern. I mean, as they merge into the online source, that’s the other aspect. I have to make sure that that’s current. So in a way, maybe my guy’s a little romanticized, I’d be the first to say I could be accused of being a little out of date, but my reporter friends don’t take me to task on the minutiae of things. I think readers buy into it or accept it.
Sandra: In this day and age the media will buy photos, video, off of people who just happen to have been there…
Rick: That’s always been the case. There have been a number of historic news iconic photos that were taken by individuals. That’s the thing, it’s the image. News photographers are trained also, when there’s an event, to ask who’s got a camera, to ask, “Can I buy your film? You might have a better image and the professional photographer who has the pride and wants to take the picture for their organization… their primary responsibility with something that’s breaking is to come back with the best image, so if the child with the still camera beside you got the picture and you didn’t, well, your job is to purchase that photo off that child and run it with a photo credit. You’re right, I’m sort of getting off track there.
Sandra: Now, though, remember that hoax about a beheading, a film that was put online? Now, I find myself wondering… I can’t think of any scandal that’s come up just that way that’s hit the media, where they’ve taken something at face value, but in this era of digital photographs, of doctoring photographs, it adds this whole element.
Rick: It’s a great vulnerability, a great risk of being hoodwinked.
Sandra: I think if I was going to write about a reporter again, that would be an interesting thing to play around with.
Rick: Oh, absolutely. Well, that’s the whole thing. I think the reporter subgenre just offers so much. You can go either way with it. It lends itself to so much.
Sandra: I’m just wondering, because you’re writing what mainly gets classified as thrillers, do you think the reporter has a certain advantage over the cop in the sense that with the reporter there always is a constant deadline for the next issue to produce something, whereas with a cop if you get something at twelve or if you get something at one it doesn’t matter quite as much.
Rick: They’re definitely different worlds and I’ll tell you what cops told me when I was on the beat. They said, “You have a great freedom.” I said, “What do you mean?”. “If I’m a city police officer or I’m a federal police officer and I’m pursuing my case and I decide I need this or this in another jurisdiction, the further away it is the more complicated it gets for me to pursue my information, where you as a reporter can say, “Hey, I think this guy in Bagdad knows something, I’ll pick up the phone and call him,” and you can do that, you’re expected to do that. You don’t have to answer to anybody for doing that.”
There is a freedom that way, and there’s also, detectives would tell me, “You run something and you truly believe it’s true and your organization believes it’s true and the next day you find out it’s not, you run a correction, oops. Yeah, you may face a lawsuit, depending on what the error is. When we’re building our case, we’ve got to make sure it’s right all the way along because it could be pulled out on us in court and it could affect the prosecution side of things, so we have to build a very very solid house.”
We were more like gypsies, and to them, from their view, journalists didn’t have as much accountability. I would turn it on them and say, “Look, okay, I can call up people from around the world at any time and they can curse at me and hang up. But you can get a subpoena and you can get a court order and you can flash your badge and people are kinda, in a way, more inclined to have to talk to you, and you say, “I want to get that unlisted phone number” and you can get it.”
So we would joust that way, in terms of pursuit of information.
Sandra: You’re blending the best of both worlds by using a cop and a reporter.
Rick: Yeah, and there are times, and you can do this creatively in your fiction. There are times where they’re at odds and there are times they can serve each other’s purposes and it’s a delicate dance. I did this with Sydowski a little bit and Reed a little bit, but I probably did it more in real life. There was a little trade-off here and there. I come across something, they come across something and you work an understanding. “If you go down this street you won’t be sorry Rick” and okay, they never told me but I’d go for a drive down that street… Or I’d have something and say, “We’re going to run this on the front page. If you were me would you lose sleep over it or would you sleep well?” You were just going on that kind of cryptic stuff. You see this in Woodward and Bernstein, in the Nixon books, where they would play that game. “If we’re right be silent for ten seconds.” Just operating, at times, on just a lot of trust that’s being supported by a hair. Talk about stomach in knots when you got up the next morning.
Sandra: Going back over to that vulnerability.
Rick: And I lived that. Police lived that. And there were times I had something that I was not supposed to share and maybe I did and I was trusting a police source and it was a very interesting, dramatic time at times. I’m not saying it was always like that, but there were a lot of moments like that and you put them together tightly and you’ve got yourself a book and for me I can draw on that, I know what it’s like.
Sandra: To switch gears on you, you did an interview for Booked TV and in that you were asked about an influential location and you said that covering true crime in Calgary and the Rockies helped forge your fiction. What exactly is it about Calgary and the Rockies?
Rick: That’s where I cut my teeth on the crime desk, so all my reporter imaginings that you read about were forged with the Calgary Herald. And the Rockies are so beautiful and a lot of stuff took us out there. They weren’t always crime stories directly. Lost hikers, bear attacks, bodies found or so on… For me, almost everything I needed came from my days at the Calgary Herald crime desk… Homicides, abductions, everything. A montage of a lot of stuff. The Herald was a fairly well-off paper and when they wanted to chase a story they wanted their own eyes on something and they’d put you on a plane and off you’d go. I went to Columbine, I went to Texas, I went to California, the Caribbean… The Middle East.
The first stint was night cops, which I did not like at the outset. Time went by and then it was day police. Just a different shift, really. I mean, I knew everybody. And then year after year went by on the night side and I got to know cops on the night desk, because editors would tell me what to do, and other reporters would tell me what to do and I was green as could be. “When it’s quiet, go out and meet the guys, go out on ride-alongs, and I can’t remember how many cars I rode in, went to visit the units. They even arrested me and took me through the process, put me in jail and I’d talk with the homicide guys, the tac team and the Mounties started to open up. They were going through a change as well and it was with some of the senior police desk guys in Calgary and our cousins up north at the Edmonton Journal. We were at a time when the competition between the two markets, between the two papers, was fierce. Between the Sun chain in Edmonton and Calgary and the Herald and Edmonton Journal. Sports was the mainstay of the Sun chain, they were very good at sports, and the other was crime. We were on the broadsheets, the respected community newspapers, and we were invited into your homes whereas the tabs were the pick-up paper that you kept on the trains and at work but you didn’t bring them into your home. I’m exaggerating a bit, but that was the perception.
But they were very good at crime, so we got together with the Journal and decided, “Why don’t we share stories?” and when there’s a major story the crime desk should talk to each other, where there was mutual interest in a story. We started sharing. Then we thought the relationship with the police overall wasn’t the greatest, especially with the Mounties in Alberta, so we formed an unofficial association called the Alberta Crime Reporters Association… We started putting out an invite that we would meet in a hotel in Red Deer. Senior police officials and reporters from our two papers, the Journal and Herald, and we invited some TV, and the Suns were invited too, we put it wide open, and we were surprised when we got acceptance from very senior Mounties.
What we provided was totally off the record, sleeves rolled up, doors closed, everything we do that pisses you off and everything that you do that pisses us off. Nobody else involved, just the reporters and the senior cops. After the first one we had, they loved it, they said it was long overdue. There was a lot of finger-pointing and this and that, but we reaped a lot of goodwill from it, and things happened after that. There were some new directives given. We had understanding. We did it for about three or four years and that worked well for us.
So I was part of that and we were known to most of the police organization. That also helped my staying on the crime desk. They said, “Whenever you want to leave you can, you can do whatever you want, we don’t think people should stay on the desk too long” so then I became a senior crime features reporter. I’d had enough of the scanners in my ears. You had to live and die by the scanners. That’s why they’re so much of a prominent feature in my books, because I know that in newsrooms, I believe they still are the lifeblood of the organizations for the most part. The OJ Simpson chase was from a police scanner. How much bigger do you get than that?
I grew up with them. They’re a second language, you’ve got to learn the code. But after a while they drove me crazy.
Sandra: I live with an emergency services radio on broadcast.
Rick: You know what I’m talking about.
Sandra: Well, you grew up in Belleville, and I was going to talk to you about that, but I went to Loyalist College in Belleville, and even when I was in college for journalism, I remember there was a murder and it happened in proximity to where a number of journalism students happened to live and here you are, it’s a college paper, they got their asses kicked for not going over there and covering it. What you’re talking about is the reality that people live with, until you’ve lived in that world you don’t really understand.
Rick: Well as a student at the Star they put you in what they call the torture chamber, and Tom Reed, that radio room in the San Francisco Star actually was the Toronto Star’s torture chamber and they had so many scanners going constantly, they had a plexiglass thing on the floor like you do for some offices so your roller chair could really move around and you were locked in there and basically, they put you in there and said, “You miss anything, you’re fired.” You can bet the Toronto Star does not miss a thing and they’re listening to everything. The Globe to a lesser degree. You better not be turning on the TV and watching it unless you see a Star reporter being interviewed at the scene because he was there first. It was just hammered into you that you do not get beat. It was unacceptable.
In Calgary, I take pride in that I developed the tape system, where guys would be listening to these scanners, but they’d get the trail end or a crosstalk call and they would miss something. “What was that? Either two police officers are going for lunch or they’ve gone missing.” And they don’t like you calling up every time you’ve missed something. They get tired of you calling and they might not answer, so I said, “Why don’t we just run a tape recorder beside the radios and just rewind?” So the top city editor allowed the budget of buying tape recorder after tape recorder because every two or three months they’d just burn out. We’d just run them non-stop. Get a one-hour tape and just flip the tape, and set the counter. “What was that? Oh, he just spilled coffee on his pants, he didn’t get shot, he’s screaming because he got burned.”
Sandra: Those are the kind of things that could end up being evidence later, the exact time that a call came in.
Rick: I know it’s a little different now, some news organizations, because of the e-mails, so I am coming back to the point where I may have sort of aged-out myself from it, but I think I’m still relatively reflective of things. I suppose if I really wanted to I could do a week on a desk just to reacquaint myself with things, but I don’t know.
Sandra: Well, this is one of the things… I mean, by the time that a book comes out to some degree it is already outdated. You write a book, you hand it in, it’s usually a gap of anywhere from six months to a year and things are changing so fast right now. A couple years back I listened to a guy who’d worked at the Calgary Sun, John Gradon, talk about his years in journalism, and he was talking about the old days. When he cut his teeth it was in Glasgow and he was talking about phoning in your stories. You go from one thing to another thing. Now you wouldn’t be phoning in your stories, you’d be text messaging them in. Things are going to change and in some ways it’s impossible for books to keep up with that. So as long as it seems contemporary…
Rick: Yeah. As long as it’s representative, that’s what I’m aiming for. I’ll step back from that because I’m trying not to make that the story so much unless there’s an element that I need for whatever device, but it’s the person pursing the story, them as a character and what they’re going through, so when I do have to insert technical stuff for how they get a story I try to make sure I get it right or have some excuse. I remember a few years ago the computers went down at the Star and they said, “Bring out the typewriters,” they had to go digging out typewriters.
Sandra: Oh my gosh. Can you imagine the average person now?
Rick: Yeah, but if I had to, then one day that’s going to happen. I can remember filing in longhand and dictating over the phone, and there are computer glitches. It’s not the end of the world. If you can get to a phone that’s basically it, like John, phoning in the story, writing it down on hotel stationary, the old-fashioned way, three sentences to a page. Saves you a lot of rewriting. Shuffle it all around. I faxed in a 1500 word story once because the computer just would not work. My hand was awfully sore. I printed it. The whole thing had to be in block letters so they could read it.
Sandra: That would hurt to do.
Rick: It was painful.
Sandra: Now, going over to the fact that you grew up in Belleville, Belleville is an interesting place because the one thing I remember about going to college there was they talked about how they had built… Did you ever go out to Loyalist?
Rick: Not a lot. I took a night course there. I don’t think I could even name all the buildings.
Sandra: In the main building they had built in what was technically then the back a big entry area, and it was really nice. Glass doors that looked out to the field behind. The journalism instructors told us that at the time they had been building they had expected the city to grow out so they actually expected those to be the front doors.
Rick: And it didn’t quite happen that way.
Sandra: It hadn’t happened, not even when I was there. What I remember thinking, and this might also have been the fact it was Ontario in the recession, was Belleville is kind of the city that isn’t, because it’s between Peterborough and Kingston and Queen’s University and Sir Sandford Fleming College are so much better known and the one thing that seems to take people to Belleville is the photojournalism program, because they’ve got the major one in the country, but beyond that Belleville is sort of this netherworld tucked in there, and not a lot of people go to Belleville or know about it.
Rick: I call it a pee stop on the 401. Going from Toronto to Montreal, you’ve got to pee, do it in Belleville.
Sandra: There you go. I’m not offending you.
Rick: No. It’s a sleepy little town, and not too much happens there and maybe Black Diamond Cheese is.
Sandra: Well, in this day and age you’ve got the Wilkinson’s.
Rick: The Wilkinson’s, yeah, and proximity to Napanee.
Sandra: Yes.
Rick: And you’d have to go back to the 50s and the World Champion Belleville McFarlane’s Hockey Team but there aren’t too many people who remember that and those that do are all in Belleville.
Sandra: This leads to this theory I’ve got, that a lot of writers seem to be born out of smaller, quieter communities. Maybe it’s because we’re always imagining what’s going on somewhere else?
Rick: My wife and I bought our first house on Burton Street in Belleville. A block and a half behind us was Susanna Moody’s house. The Canadian literary roughing it in the bush. I would walk over there and go, “What was she complaining about? It’s not that far down to the river.” I know I was walking on paved sidewalks and she had to walk through trees and I think she was afraid of bears and stuff but it’s not that far to the river. Roughing it in the bush. Well, it’s Belleville. And Farley Mowatt claimed he was conceived in a canoe just off the shores of Belleville.
Sandra: Oh really!
Rick: So there’s our literary claims, right there.
Sandra: It’s kind of hard for me to conceive of people talking about Belleville being in the bush when I grew up in Gravenhurst.
Rick: Yeah. Well, I forget what era, was it 1830s or so? There was really not much going on there. I think Dickens rolled by in a steamer, kind of glanced at it.
You’re right, it was a small town, and for me it was my town and it was my mother who actually listened to a police scanner. I have to think back. It wasn’t an active police scanner, and she’d have it on and just liked to know what was going on in town. And maybe once a day you’d hear, “I’m going for lunch.”
Having stories read to me in grade school sort of got the imagination going and I was the only boy in my grade nine typing class because something told me I’d better take typing, I was going to need it, and it was kind of a girly thing to do. I remember other guys asked, “What are you doing?” and I thought I was going to need it. They had these old Olympian manuals... The teacher didn’t care that I was the only boy, I think she kind of liked it, so I learned to type and then I wrote short stories as a kid and I sent them out to magazines. I’d ride my bicycle down to the Reading and Greeting shop in downtown Belleville, which was beside the Reddick’s bakery and you could smell the baking bread and stuff, and the guy that owned it would allow me to stand there and he had this great collections of magazines and books and there was a magazine called The Writer and it was like angels singing. I couldn’t afford to buy it, so I stood there and read it, how to market your story and I’d read this thing and study it and take out my little notepad and write down addresses, type up my stories and lick the stamps and mail them off and I actually typed them at high school. I’d go in after class and use the typewriters there, all by myself, typing away, and mailing them off.
Then one day, you know I’d had rejection after rejection and I was just a kid, fourteen or fifteen, and one day a cheque came from New Jersey. For $60 US dollars and my dad was a construction worker and I showed it to him and he was just floored. “What’d you do?” I said, “You’ve got to cash it for me Dad.” I didn’t even have a bank account.
That was quite a moment. I think a few years later for my birthday I got the Writer’s Market. My mom gave it to me. It was a lifelong thing.
Sandra: You were pretty much born to be a writer.
Rick: I guess. I was always writing something. I liked writing little stories. I guess there’s sort of a hope attached to them, when you send them out. I liked the process. Here’s a little story, and I’d type it and make sure it’s all clean and didn’t show it to anybody and followed the format like in my magazines and they had great little “how to” articles. I learned so much. How to write the query letter. How to sell to this market, how to sell to that market. Maybe I wasn’t being that successful, but I was learning from them and I enjoyed it.
The idea of writing a book had never occurred to me, just stories. I was cutting my teeth, learning that part of the business. I think it was that first bit of success, knowing that it can be done, that got me going. I said, “All I’ve got to do is write something a hundred times longer and they’ll probably give me a hundred times more money” and my dad said, “Whatever” but my mom gave me the ribbons for my typewriter and I’d just type away.
Sandra: Well, there are far worse things you could have been doing.
Rick: Yeah. It took a while, after high school, and then university and putting it all together, and I look back and laugh at the memory of it. I had a big sack of all the early stories and all the early letters in my closet and I’d just started dating Barbara, who is my wife now, and I remember I got frustrated one day and I said, “I’m taking this sack and I’m throwing it out” and she said, ”I don’t think you should.” I said, “I know what I’m doing, it’s garbage.” She said, “You’re going to regret it one day,” and I think I do. There was a lot of good stuff in there and personal notes from legendary people that are long gone and I threw it away in frustration. Those were old days, I laugh at them now.
Sandra: We all go through those days. So let me ask you something controversial. How come you’re not setting books in Canada?
Rick: Well, I had intended that, to set my books in Canada. My first book was actually drafted to be set in Canada. It was my intention, at the time I had made up my mind, I felt I was a writer and I wanted to shape what I was doing into something worthwhile. It came to the point where it was going to be crime fiction, and I was a reporter. I was grappling with supernatural stuff, because I like that too.
What I was seeing on the crime desk, in my preliminary study of Canadian crime fiction, was not being reflected. I said, “It’s time for the next generation to take over. I’ve had it with Canadian police officers sounding like Brits on Canadian streets.” That’s not a shot at anyone in particular.
Or parlour room Canadian mysteries being played out in contemporary times when I’m dealing with families who’ve had loved ones murdered, and it’s happening across the country. This whole perception that Canada’s this quaint little pastoral community without cursing… it sure as heck isn’t. I wasn’t trying to emulate the US, I was trying to reflect what I saw, and thought it was time to take it to the next evolutionary step, so as an aspiring crime fiction writer, that was my intention, that I will be proudly Canadian and I will write my story and it will be a true story in terms that it will be honest to my experience. IF ANGELS FALL was going to be set in Toronto, even though I was a Calgary Herald reporter I contacted Metro back then and got a ride-along, spent a day with them and the climax was going to be set in the Thousand Islands, so I wrote letters and got a ride-along with the Canadian coast guard and told the boys on the boat what my plot was and they helped me, in the end, make my bad guy even better. They started showing me things. It was great.
Halfway through the book I had self doubt, I couldn’t finish the book, and though a long story there was a friend who was getting a book published, a true crime book. She had contacts in New York and one night I opened up and told her. I didn’t tell anyone I was writing crime fiction, not in the newsroom, nobody knew, just my wife and family and when I had to contact officials.
This friend said, “Why don’t I take what you’ve written to this person I know in New York and they’ll just give you a free assessment of it. They’ll just tell you if you’re right or wrong. I said sure. I went off to San Francisco to cover something, and the word got back that this person in NYC looked at it and said I should finish and I was on the right track, and called me and talked to me. Exchanged a letter or two. Very very nice, encouraging. The person’s name was Bill Thompson and it turned out to be the Bill Thompson that Stephen King mentions in the beginning of THE SHINING, the one who got CARRIE going, that Bill Thompson.
He said, “Is your goal to get published?” I said yeah, and keep in mind he’s just giving me advice, and he said, “I’ll make a suggestion. I think you should consider relocating it to the US because it’s hard enough for an unknown American writer to get published in the US, if your goal is to get published and reach the widest audience, I apologize for American egocentricity, but Americans love to read about American settings and things.” He thought my book lent itself to Mary Higgins Clark country, New England or some place like that. He said it was just a thought.
I said, “Okay, thank you.” I was just thrilled that he liked what I’d written and he gave it an assessment and it was after the fact that I discovered he was who he was and I was walking on air.
Having just come back from San Francisco, and having befriended a homicide detective there, I got thinking, “Hmm, I love that city.” I’d been there in my hitchhiking days, just been there as a crime reporter, so I chose to relocate the book to San Francisco. I asked the detective in California if he would read it for technical accuracy. I turned my back on that dream to be true-blue Canadian myself, no house set a condition upon me, no agent, no editor. Just me, to finish the book.
And then when it was finished I sought an agent and got one and she sold it to Pinnacle. And Pinnacle, at the time, I don’t even think knew I was Canadian.
I was thrilled to be published and I tried, but it was more of a delicate step, to set the next book in Alberta. Mountains are mountains. They said, “Well… we’d kind of like you to move a little south” and I said, “Okay, Montana,” and they said, “Oh great,” so it was set in Montana. That’s about the extent that I pushed it.
Then in BLOOD OF OTHERS I had a couple of chapters that were up in Canada, and brought the storyline back to the US, and they were good with that.
Then when they wanted me to create a new character in Jason Wade, they proposed a Northwest locale, Portland or Seattle, and said I could use Canadian threads. Keep the story in the US but they encouraged me to come more and more into Canada. With EVERY FEAR there’s a nod to Canada in terms of back story, and in A PERFECT GRAVE I took that trip into Alberta just for me. That’s really me waving at the Herald.
With the next book, it’s going to be international. This is a long answer to your question, but it was really me, and I guess the reason… I’m still torn. I’d still like to do something in Canada only, but there’s this fear.
You hear a lot of exceptions to the rule. Louise (Penny) is using and Giles to an extent, great writing aside, but they are fulfilling the stereotypical view the world has of Canada and if you write that way and you do it well, you get a thumbs up because people really think Canada’s always cold, or nothing but quaint villages, no one really is murdered in Canada and if they are they’re all shocked because, “You don’t own guns there, right? You just want to lay around and smoke pot and hug everybody regardless of gender and all of that, right?” And when you see beautiful writing that reinforces that stereotype, I’m exaggerating a bit, but that’s the kind of writing we expect out of Canada in crime fiction.
If you write something that tends to be a little more violent, you’re just American wannabes, because that doesn’t happen. Pickton aside, Montreal Massacre aside –“
Sandra: Paul Bernardo aside.
Rick: People say, “But this doesn’t happen in Canada.” Stop that. “This doesn’t happen in Scotland,” they said after Dunblane, and it happens, period, wherever we are. We have murders up in the north in isolated communities, we’re human beings, Cain and Abel, and I almost said to Elmore Leonard, “Well, we don’t really get murders, those cemeteries we have out there are all pretend, they don’t exist. We don’t feel any pain because we’re Canadian. We don’t suffer any violence because we’re Canadian.” Enough of that.
So, you have the perception that if you’re writing an urban, gritty type story, that you’re emulating other places that fulfill that stereotype. Los Angeles. I got off a plane and no gangster shot me. It’s New York and I didn’t get mugged. You can flip it.
Sandra: Don’t they sell ‘Gangster Shooting’ signs? We have ‘Wildlife Crossing’ signs…
Rick: I think we’re all guilty of our stereotypes in that way. And I’m not throwing or heaping criticism on anybody because I think a good story, it doesn’t matter. Tell a good story and that’s fine, but you want to be free to write what you want to write about, but I am torn because I know I had set out to do what I wanted to do and what would have happened? I don’t know. Would I have been able to be published?
Sandra: It’s hard to say.
Rick: I meet Canadian writer friends from all sides of the coin and they’re published now and they’re writing true Canadian stories, they’re true to their roots, but they can’t cross over into the US, they can’t get picked up, maybe have smaller publishers. They said, “Well, you’re doing it right and I’m told the next book, I have to set it in the US” and then you hear others who are true to the Canadian locale, getting picked up and sold everywhere.” I think there are exceptions to every rule.
Sandra: Times have changed somewhat, and it goes back to what we were saying earlier, about the internet and access to information and everything being out there. People, I think, are a little more aware now, and perceptions have changed. I certainly know that when I was trying to find an agent first time around the Americans told me to look for somebody in Canada and the Canadians were, “Well, this is dark.” They didn’t want to go anywhere near it. So, I was forced to put the first book in the States. And then the criticism that came up in reviews was, “I don’t know why this person felt the need to put their book in the States, they should have set it in Canada.” You can’t win.
Rick: No, you can’t win. My stuff is mass market, pulpy stuff, for want of a better term, and in the early days people would say, “Read your book, loved it, then I found out you’re Canadian.” And those were Canadian readers. It was always that way. And maybe one out of twenty-five would sort of shyly, respectfully say, “You ever think about setting a book in Canada?” It would come out. From American readers, nothing about where I was from. Just, “Read you book, it was great.”
But in the back of my mind I always came back to the original plan. Because it’s my back yard and I knew my stuff and I wanted to have my detectives going to a Flames game. I wanted Mounties. I wanted people to understand Mounties a little bit more.
Sandra: And right now, the media around the Mounties-
Rick: I know! They need a win and they’re putting the puck in their own net so many times, it’s pretty bad. If you’ve got a Mountie character emerging, I don’t know. And they’re protected. Everyone knows how they protected their image with Disney. That all emerged because the Mountie image was being besmirched. They moved to get parliament to protect their image and you had to get permission to use the image in any commercial venture. If they approve they get ten or fifteen percent and that money goes to help kids fight drugs.
So when it came to books I asked them, he said literary license you can have a Mountie character, like Mike Slade does in his books. But you can’t put the Mountie badge on the cover. The LAPD, NYPD, FBI you name it, but with RCMP they get a cut.
Sandra: I don’t know how they could do that, if the book was published in a different country, though.
Rick: Yeah, so you could have a Mountie character and that’s fine. They’re doing a pretty good job themselves of besmirching their own image, but you’d have to say to your publisher they can’t have red serge on the cover or anything.
Sandra: The Mounties I worked with were really good, read over scenes and phoned me up and told me what I got wrong and they’re good.
Rick: What made me want to be true to my Canadian roots in my books was the rapport I had with police and there was a new generation of Mounties coming up at the time. The old Mountie tradition, as far as media went, was to say nothing. May times what had happened, I was coming into the period where there were joint forces operations with the Calgary police or Edmonton police, and they all worked hard and were all on the team but when it came time for media attention, since the Mounties were told not to talk, it suddenly became a Calgary city operation. The Mounties tended to be forgotten because the senior administration said, “Don’t talk” and the younger guys were getting ticked off because pride of work and all of that, and slowly a new media relations policy emerged where they became more open and less of the ‘behind-closed-doors’ and more ‘let’s correct our problems here’ was part of that evolution. We started getting more access and the younger guys were sharp, wonderful guys, and it was great.
So I felt I’d maybe do a Mountie book, and stake out Alberta as my turf, like Hillerman did, and there’s the Native aspect. I spent a year in Brooks, and I got caught up in the prairie lore and the pioneer stuff and that’s Mountie turf and the mountains are Mountie turf. I was talking to people and I was told there would be interest in Germany, at least in terms of the Native lore stuff. That was a thought. It never came to be.
Sandra: Well, it still might.
Rick: Well, I’m not there. I thought the time would have been when I was there, with the guys. Most of them have retired and moved on. They’ve offered to help me out but we’ll see.
Sandra: Now, before we run out of time here, going back to that interview you did for Booked TV, here’s a fun one. You said that if you weren’t a writer you’d like to be a member of the E Street Band or back-up singer for Meatloaf.
Rick: Yeah, well Meatloaf during the good period.
Sandra: Are you actually capable of being a singer or musician?
Rick: No. It’s a fantasy.
Sandra: So it’s pure fantasy?
Rick: Yeah. There’s nothing like the energy you see at those concerts. It’s pure joy and fun. A party on the stage.
About the Interviewer:
Sandra Ruttan's novel, WHAT BURNS WITHIN, will be released by Dorchester in
May 2008, to be followed by THE FRAILTY OF FLESH November 2008. Ken Bruen declared her work "totally mesmerizing" while Clive Cussler concluded, "Ruttan has a spellbinding style." She is also an editor with Spinetingler Magazine. For more information, visit her website at www.sandraruttan.com
Two Interviews With Robert Fate For The Price Of One
This feature has been moved to the updated site and can be read here.
In Conversation with George Pelecanos
This feature has been moved to the updated site and can be read here.
Review: WHO IS CONRAD HIRST? by Kevin Wignall
Review by Sandra Ruttan
In WHO IS CONRAD HIRST?, the fourth book by Kevin Wignall, Conrad Hirst is a man in search of himself. As a younger man he experienced a tragedy that impacted him in a way he couldn’t foresee at the time. Now, years later, he’s starting to face the choices he’s made since that fateful day and is determined to walk away from his past.
Walking away from a life as a successful hitman, however, isn’t as easy as Hirst hopes.
In what little I’ve said about the plot here you might have the wrong idea about the type of book WHO IS CONRAD HIRST? is. It is not an action-packed, blood-soaked tale that follows a hitman from one violent confrontation to another, although there is tension and suspense throughout as Hirst tries to sever his ties to his past. It soon becomes evident that not even Hirst knows what he’s really been doing for years, and he’s forced to look over his shoulder while trying to separate the truth from the lies.
As compelling as that part of the storyline is, at its heart WHO IS CONRAD HIRST? is a story about loss and redemption. It is necessary to say that so that readers won’t have the wrong idea about the book, but it would also be a disservice to readers to say much more about the plot, because it would ultimately give too much about the story away.
A haunting story that flows at a hypnotic pace to a heart-wrenching conclusion, WHO IS CONRAD HIRST? is one of the most compelling books of the year. Wignall is an expert storyteller, an absolute must-read for fans of hardboiled crime fiction.
About the Reviewer
Sandra Ruttan's novel, WHAT BURNS WITHIN, will be released by Dorchester in May 2008, to be followed by THE FRAILTY OF FLESH November 2008. Ken Bruen declared her work "totally mesmerizing" while Clive Cussler concluded, "Ruttan has a spellbinding style." She is also an editor with Spinetingler Magazine. For more information, visit her website at www.sandraruttan.com
Kevin Wignall: Romantic In Search of Redemption?
This feature has been moved to the updated site and can be read here.
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