“Well, okay,” Barker said, pitching the folder into the waste bin beside his desk.
Psitticus stood by him for a moment longer and then sighed. “Just figure it out, Barker.”
Barker reached up instinctively to adjust his tie but found his hand instead rubbing his temples. That damn Vivian Herms.
3.
One bad thing about being the best detective in Urgway was that Barker didn’t get to take any time to himself. It was always case after case. So many files stacked with other files. Most of the time, Barker could thumb through and solve a case quite quickly. Other times, he would file them away and come to his own conclusions. Urgway didn’t always need answers, sometimes Urgway just needed to move on. Barker was there to help them with this.
This case was different. At least in the sense that someone was targeting the rich and powerful. Someone was scaring the pants off the Mayor of Urgway. This meant that Barker had to at least put on his best face about the situation, even if he didn’t give a lick about the case. The Mayor could make Barker’s life a lot more difficult. It was best to be on his good side.
So, while Barker wanted nothing more than to figure out the case of The Shock. He instead found himself strolling the crummy medical district of Urgway. While a million dollar allowance had been set aside for a new hospital complex on the west end of town, the rest of the medical world was still in the dark ages. Any building that wasn’t attached to the hospital was old and falling in on itself. This included Urgway’s psych unit; which was aptly named Concave Corporations.
“The reports are all the same, Mr. Barker…” the doctor called Doyle slammed the binders onto the desk, “read them if you want,” he finished. The good doctor didn’t seem too interested in the case. It wouldn’t get him a medal or any award. The man had clearly been an army doctor and had very little use for the mentally insane. “Druggies have no place in a psychiatry hospital,” he continued.
Barker wanted to zone him out, but the doctor had one of those painful screeching voices. The kind like nails on a chalkboard made even worse by Barker’s already pounding head.
“No changes since they arrived,” Barker didn’t bother to look at the files. He supposed the doctor told it straightforward, very boring case files. If this man couldn’t diagnose and figure it out, he would sweep it under the rug. It was a lot easier than looking incompetent.
“Honestly, I grew tired of them after the first day. We padded their rooms. It is rather archaic down there now. Most of them are in padded rooms, strapped to their beds, and dosed with the highest sedation I can prescribe without killing them..” the doctor tapped his thumb and forefinger together, “though, technically it would be a service to them if I just squashed the disease from them that way.”
Barker didn’t disagree. He wasn’t so respectful of life that he didn’t know when a rabid needed to be put down. This wasn’t his call, however. This was the call of the Mayor and he wanted these people back on the streets, not in coffins. It was a pity really, be a much easier case if the victims were already dead. Then, Barker could have focused on the case from Vivian Herms.
Not that he was so eager to help her. He was just eager to lose this beating in his brain. He reached up and pulled loose his collar. It was hard to presume decency when your head was splitting and your mind was about to bulge through your eyes.
“I presume you will want to speak with them, Detective?” the doctor asked. “It will be a sad waste of time, but I know how your type are.”
Barker didn’t have the energy to trade jabs with this white coat. He would let him have the day, because clearly if Barker couldn’t figure this out he would have just jumped to the number one suspect.
4.
The basements of these kinds of places were never clean. They smelled of cleaning product and ammonia – or urine – mostly urine. Then, there were the noises. People with debilitating disorders of the brain never seemed to stay quiet long. They had to make noises at all times. Even random noises, that didn’t make a lick of sense. They just couldn’t abide by the stillness without noise.
“I assume you’re Detective Barker?” asked a middle-aged otter in a purple lab suit. Her mouth and eyes were covered as if scared she may catch the crazies.
“Just point me in the direction of the face eaters,” Barker replied.
The lady tapped her pin on the clipboard. She knew where they were, but everyone was in theater these days. “They are the forth door down. Looks like they are all strapped and sedated. Won’t be getting much from them.”
Barker didn’t bother replying. He was getting even less from her than he would from the patients. He didn’t need their testimonial anyhow. He only wanted to see their reactions. Wanted to see if any semblance of who they were was left inside their hollowed minds.
Unsurprisingly, the answer was no. Sedated would have been one way of putting these former high standing citizens mental state. Another would have been to say their brains were flushed in an industrial sized toilet. The majority drooled down their cheeks. Their eyes were rolled into the back of their heads. Bodies were limp and unusable. Whatever they had these people on was the equivalent to death.
All except one, that is. One of the patients hadn’t even been fitted for their gown yet. His eyes were not alert in the sense of a normal person. However, he wasn’t drooling and bleary-eyed either. Whenever this patient had come into the unit, it had been recent enough that they hadn’t killed what was left of him yet.
Barker moved slowly towards the man. He was tied down, but better safe than sorry when it came to facing eating people. The man, who was a suit-wearing otter, stared blankly towards the wall. He showed no emotions at all as Barker stood ten feet back from his tied down body. Barker made to step a few feet closer. The man still sat as if he had no cares in the world to give. Barker moved a little closer and the man lunged forward. His eyes moved from nothingness to full on rage. His teeth clashed hard against one another, in what Barker would have thought was enough to break his jaw. The straps held, but Barker still stepped back. Barker's paw went up and readjusted his tie and then wiped the sweat from his brow.
With his heart pounding rapidly, Barker moved in a circle much slower and further away from the man. The otter had stopped pulling against his ties, but he continued following Barker with his eyes. The eyes that promised to rip Barker to shreds if he was given the chance. Barker wouldn’t get close enough for that.
“What did you do to yourself?” Barker didn’t expect an answer. He moved behind the patient and watched as the man turned back forward and went still again. It was almost as if the man had forgotten Barker was there. The man’s body went limp again and the tenseness fell from his muscles.
Barker moved quickly out in front of the man again and again the man lunged to try to attack. Barker jumped behind the stretchers and out of view and the man went slack again.
“So, it is all about sight,” Barker thought out loud.
Two nurses came into the room. One was carrying a large syringe filled with a yellow liquid. The other must have just been there for moral support. The man started to go rabid again as the nurses came into sight, but with a quick stick of the needle, he was gone from the worries of this world.
“Medication works quickly,” Barker said.
The nurses turned as if just noticing the detective was standing in the room. “It works quickly but doesn’t last as long as normal. Something about their state awakens them in only about an hour.”
Barker had presumed it was something strong. He doubted all of these people being lawyers, doctors, judges, and businessmen had found the same low life dealer. So, that just left the method of administration. How had each of these men and women gotten the same substance and suffered the same effects?
Barker followed the nurses out of the room. There was no need to bother with questioning the comatose corpses. He thought again about just pinning it on the doctor named Doyle but figured he would hold it off as a las
t resort. Then, he left the hospital. He had the names of the people; the next step was finding the cause.
5.
The best thing about the patients being immobilized and incapacitated was that their homes were now empty. This meant Barker wouldn’t have to go through all the extra work of getting a warrant to search them. He could just as easily walk up to the door, finagle the lock, and then walk in.
Like the people, the homes were rich and fancy; not at all the picture of man-eating habitats. The first home Barker visited belonged to a lawyer named Steve Honest. He doubted the last name was a good indicator of his nature.
The man lived in a two-story, blue home. He lived alone with a small pet fish. An odd choice for accommodation since the man’s cleaning skills indicated there would be no women coming over anytime soon.
Barker poked his nose into the front hallway and called out to make sure he hadn’t been wrong about anything. When no one gave a returning answer, he walked in further. Clothes littered the front room couch and chair. The television still blared some old western program. Barker didn’t bother walking into the room; clearly, the man wasn’t sitting in there often.
Barker made for the stairs, as it was likely that the man slept somewhere on the second story. Barker found the room easily enough and just like the living room, it turned out to be a mess. The pillows and blankets were strewn across the bed. Old cans of soda and beer littered the side table. A few prescription bottles laid on the edge of the dresser. None of them were interesting or would cause him to eat another man.
Barker rummaged through the drawers. Most of them were empty. The clothes were all down in the living room. A second doorway led into the bathroom, which smelt like day old death. Barker covered his nose and flushed the toilet a few times to disperse some of the smell. It didn’t work all that well.
Barker rummaged around on the counter. There was a soap bar with matted hair, a toothbrush that was well past its best by date and several mounds of change.
Nothing indicated that the man would soon be running full steam ahead off the deep end. Barker left the room and returned downstairs. He rummaged through a small pile of mail; which turned out to be boring. Then, he moved into the kitchen and rummaged through the bare cabinets. The only item of real food Barker found was a small takeout box of Chinese that had no logo or name. Barker threw it back into the fridge and closed the door. He left disappointed.
The second home was the home of a big-time corporate CEO. Her name was Lucile Goods and she was filthy rich it seemed. The home was so large that Barker could have camped in a room for several months and he doubted the woman would have even noticed.
It turned out this woman did have a husband, but the man was rarely home. Lucile didn’t look like the most hospitable person. This made it even stranger that she would purposely impose madness on herself.
Most of the pictures on the wall were of Lucile making some type of business deal. She was always dressed in a power suit and heels. Her face always screamed prune. The men in most of the pictures almost seemed cowed into making the deals with her. Even Barker felt like he was adjusting his tie more and all he had witnessed of the woman was pictures.
The rooms were a lot cleaner than that of Lawyer Honest. Barker presumed that Mrs. Goods had a maid or two to help her on that accord.
Barker rummaged through the living rooms and found nothing but expensive paintings, furniture, and china. He went through two rooms, as it seemed the happy couple didn’t bed together any longer. The rooms had plenty of gold, silver, and diamonds, but nothing that would induce people eating madness.
Barker double checked his notes. The husband had not gone mad, so whatever it was that had occurred the husband had not partaken. Barker moved through any room that seemed to show evidence of life. He found nothing at all interesting.
Like the home of Mr. Honest, he went to the kitchen last. It was least likely that the patrons would be doing their drug of choice in their eating area. But, at this point, Barker was getting a little hungry.
The cabinets had a lot of food, but Barker hadn’t heard of most of it. He moved to the refrigerator. Inside were the basic condiments and lunch meats. Barker flipped through the contents on the shelf and grabbed a plain white Chinese box. It had no logo or name, Barker opened it up and looked inside. It was just plain noodles, but he was hungry. Barker started to rummage through the drawers for a fork; he had never mastered the use of chopsticks.
He was almost ready to eat as he recalled the same strange box inside the home of Steve Honest. Barker lowered the box and looked it over again. There was nothing special about it. It was odd that a restaurant would send out a box without a logo or a name. Barker folded the box back up.
Barker found he wasn’t quite as hungry as he had believed.
Barker visited three more homes that day. In each of the homes, he found that same white Chinese box. The food wasn’t always the same, but wherever they had gotten the food from was clearly the same place. Barker took all the boxes and even doubled back to Mr. Honest’s house and grabbed the box his home.
The only way to know for sure was to take them home and do his own test.
6.
Barker didn’t fancy himself some super science man. However, he knew enough to get the job done most of the time. He hated using the lab at the police station. First off, it was old and out of date. Second, it meant dozens more people fiddling with your evidence and chancing it being bungled.
Barker had bought the instruments he owned slowly over time. There was no need to build a superstation. He mostly used it to manipulate the evidence, not test it. Evidence was easy to come by if you made it yourself. That was Barker’s little secret. One that Psitticus, Urgway, and Rescue need not know.
His paws released the container of cheap Chinese food onto the counter. He squeezed his eyes shut. The headache had returned about an hour before. It was about that time Vivian Herms had crawled her way back into his thoughts. Like a worm, she had planted an idea into his head and now it pounded at the walls to be free. Barker leaned back and let out a sigh.
The headache reached a pinnacle and Barker leaned over, vomiting into the trashcan beside him. He tried to blame it on the smell of chemicals in his mind, but it was hard to fool your own brain.
Barker reached forward and grabbed some water, swishing it around in his mouth. The taste of one’s old food was never a pleasant one. He had been working now for over two hours to split the compounds in the Chinese food. He had come up with the basic ingredients to Chinese noodles, orange chicken, and a couple other basic dishes.
Barker stood up and walked away from the container and back to his tools. The things Barker had left after the food was taken out were simple things really. Most were normal household wares. The only thing that stood out was a chemical found in a plant far to the south of Urgway, a plant that grew mostly in the high heat of the desert. Tily, it was commonly called. Tily had been attributed to a mass suicide hundreds of years ago. It was said to have convinced hundreds of people that the sun had set them on fire and they jumped from a high ledge into a shallow ravine to their deaths. It is unclear who lived to tell the story, but it did the job of scaring people away from the desert flower.
Barker was unsure how the flower had gotten into Urgway. It wouldn’t cause people to eat one another at least it never had those effects before. Something it had been paired with could have triggered a reaction, but Barker couldn’t figure out what that pairing could be.
He went through the tubes again and tried to match something to the Tily, but it was useless. Without trying it out on something, he really had no shot at figuring out what the combination was. The process was intriguing and doable, but it could take weeks to figure out. Barker didn’t have that kind of time with the Mayor breathing down this case’s neck.
Psitticus had already called his phone seven times in the last two hours. Barker hadn’t bothered picking it up. He had nothing to report and it made him feel
better that Psitticus was squirming in his seat. Nothing made Barker happier than putting a grimace on that bird beak.
Barker, instead, tried to figure out where he could buy that much of the desert flower. There had been several more people reported to have gone insane over the last day. The Mayor had been on television proclaiming that his men were well on their way to having it under control. It was a bold-faced lie. As far as Barker knew, he was the only man even looking for a solution.
No flower stores around the area claimed to sell Tily. It wasn’t a surprise, no one wanted to be associated with such a plant. That left Barker in a tougher situation, however. He tried miscellaneous shops, but none answered to the flowers either. Barker checked in with the local mail carriers. Someone had to have delivered the flowers.
That was when he hit the nail on the head. Maxwell District High School, Some small time arts high school in the center of the Maxwell district of Urgway.
Maxwell was a small time section of the city. It housed those who had mostly made their livings in the arts; painters, musicians, writers; all small time bits. Barker very rarely had to visit the district unless it was due to theft. Most of the time, it turned out to be nothing, no one really wanted to steal second-rate art.
Barker gathered up his files. He wouldn’t need them, but it was always better to look official. He threw on an overcoat, it wasn’t cold, but he liked the effect. Then, he shut the door on his apartment and started off towards the end of this case, and the beginning of being able to focus on this Shock business.
7.
Barker remembered why he hated the Maxwell district before he even had to enter the suburb. It smelled oddly of disappointment and failure. The trees were all imported and looked fake, surrounded by the highlights of the city in the background. Even the grass was fake with an extra spring when you stepped.
The Canes Files Page 13
