by David Clark
“Of course, but has anyone been around asking about her since she disappeared? I have seen a few cases in the past where a friend that was involved in the disappearance kept hanging around the family to seem really concerned. Anything like that going on?”
“Just one, her best friend Amy, but she was always over here before. When Darlene disappeared, she was over here that day, upset. They had been the closest of friends since they were eight. After that, a call here and there to ask if we had heard anything.”
“And that morning when she left in the Autoride was the last time you saw her?”
“No. It was the night before, when I headed up for bed, I think. I usually left for work before she was up in the morning. It was the same that day.”
“What about you?” Lynch asked and let the question remain open as he looked right at Daniel, and that deer was now caught in the headlights.
He started to answer and then stopped. This continued a few times. Several uncomfortable shifts in his chair. His stare searched around Lynch for something to focus on. “Me?” he finally croaked.
“Yes, sir. You are the owner and face of a large company. A target in some people’s minds. Any bad business dealings? Threats against you? Anyone you can think of that might want to harm her to get to you?”
“Oh, um. No.”
Lynch waited for more of an answer, but it never arrived, creating the second uncomfortable silence of their conversation. He let it linger as Daniel sat across from him, looking like the cat that ate the canary, but he wouldn’t open his mouth to show the bird feathers in his teeth. “I have only one question left to ask.”
“Okay,” Daniel said. His body relaxed, and he sat back in his chair.
“It’s one I always enjoy, especially with all the crime books and movies. Everyone wants to play armchair detective. If you were me, where would you start in this investigation?”
His arms went out wide away from him, and his mouth hung open before he responded. “To be honest. I am one of those that loves those books and movies.” Daniel reached behind and produced the book he was reading when Lynch walked up. It was one of the most popular crime series, “Brown Shoe Sleuth”. Lynch had tried to read the first book once, but found it too steeped in the nostalgia of the 1920s for his liking. “As much as I would like to be able to give you the crack for the case, I have no clue.”
“That’s okay. Like I said, it’s a question I like to ask everyone. I have my leads, and I am closing in.”
Daniel’s body jerked to a stop mid turn as he attempted to return the book to the seat behind him. “Detective? I wasn’t aware there had been any breaks in the case.”
Lynch took the moment when Daniel turned away to slip away himself for just a second. What he saw from this vantage point was what he’d expected. The dark tunnel ran through the house, out the front, and away from the home. Daniel was not as nice or innocent as those around him might believe, but he wasn’t the worst Lynch had seen, which agreed with the bit of remorse he detected in his body language. The butler up on the patio and the trophy wife in the pool were both as clean as the newly fallen snow. He returned before Daniel had turned toward him. This was the fastest Lynch had ever slipped out and back. The throbbing of his head felt none the worse for wear for his trip. As he stood up, he said, “There have been several. Mr. Tolson, I want to thank you for your time, I am sure someone will be in contact with you soon about your daughter.”
Daniel stood up tentatively, warily. Each movement appeared to require a confirmation inside before the body completed it. He took Lynch’s hand and shook it. There was no thanks for coming, or any other response as Lynch walked back up to the patio where he was escorted back through the house and out the front door.
Once in his car, he pulled out the Scroll, hit a number, and waited for a voice on the other end to say anything. He didn’t wait to hear what the voice said, and interrupted with, “He is all yours.” Lucas only replied with, “Okay”.
According to the display, he had missed two calls from his home. He returned the call, impressed with the speed at which Totter completed the research. Gina answered the call and asked, “Did you find Darlene?”
“Yep, the question is, did Totter find anything.”
“He found a ton, and not just on Tolson Transportation. Guess what just broke in the news?”
“Are you really going to make me guess?” he asked, starting up his car and putting it in drive.
“Guess not. Devon Hines is the new owner of his top three competitors in media news. It seems he was on the board of directors for each, just like their owners were on his. That seems shady to me, but anyways… the other owners have been involved in several sex scandals and other unbecoming activities over the last couple of months. Each say they are untrue, but you know how that goes. They were voted out and forced to sell their shares to Devon, at a heavy discount of course.”
Lynch slammed on the brakes, bringing his car to another squealing stop. He sat for a moment. A thought crept into his head, one he couldn’t believe would be true, but it seemed to add up, at least in these cases. He took his foot off the brake and started rolling up the driveway again and then back on the road. “Now that is interesting.”
28
Lynch sat at his desk through the late night hours. Less than his normal quantity of scotch accompanied his review of the treasure trove Totter had found for him, just based on the simple question. Gina offered to stay and help, but Lynch knew it had been a long couple of days for them and he knew she felt it as much as he did, even if she didn’t want to admit it. He insisted she head home for a hot shower and a good night’s sleep. Her normally stubborn attitude resisted. A well-placed kiss on the forehead, something Lynch hadn’t done for years, and awkwardly performed this time, melted it away and convinced her to get in to the Autoride he called for her.
Even with the more than a day’s worth of sleep he’d just had, a good night’s sleep sounded good to Lynch as well. The headache from the day’s activities was still hammering itself into the foundation of his brain. The scotch he was drinking did little to make it go away, but helped him forget about it ever so slightly. It didn’t take long before his reading pushed it further to the back.
It was odd how Tolson Transportation’s closest competitors went years with no accidents or safety violations. Not just years, decades in some instances. Giving them a cleaner record than Daniel’s own company, which had a spotted record at best. Which included a few high profile incidents in the last year alone. One where a conductor was smashed between two trains at the same train yard Lynch was at today.
Now, each of his competitors had major issues that had started in the last six months. Small things like messed up or lost paperwork, resulting in regulatory fines, which barely ever made the news. A few internal accidents, resulting in expensive insurance claims to repair damaged equipment. While that isn’t something the public would ever know about, Lynch didn’t have a hard time understanding how this could start to create waves inside the corporate leadership and the board of directors. The bigger the financial impact, the bigger the waves. In those circles, money made the world go round.
Over the span of the last three months, each of the top two competitors, Lewiston Railways and Jacob Transportation, suffered huge derailments. The one by Jacob Transportation sent chemical tankers through a neighborhood of residential homes, killing seven. The image of a single tanker, with the Jacob logo painted on it, sitting in a bedroom with a baby’s crib next to it was media fodder for a week. Lynch couldn’t believe he had forgotten about that. The National Transportation Safety Board Investigation found Jacob in violation of over two hundred individual safety violations. From operating at unsafe speeds, operating defective equipment, and operating under the influence. The last was the most surprising of all. In the official reports, none of the crew tested positive for anything, not even a small dose of cold medicine. The news footage, and several dozen eyewitnesses, showed crew me
mbers that appeared to be as high as teenagers listening to a Grateful Dead song.
Hidden among all the details and reports of accidents was what Lynch wanted. A simple article in the finance section of the news, which no one ever reads. Daniel Tolson recently made a very generous pitch to the board of directors to take over Jacob Transportation for mere pennies on the dollar. As part of the buyout, he would take responsibility of the fines and legal claims. The board of directors were set to meet on it yesterday, but no rumors of the outcome had leaked yet. If they had, they hadn’t been reported. The official announcements weren’t permitted until the official ownership change happened. Lynch had to imagine the paperwork on such a thing would take a bit. You can’t even buy a house nowadays without weeks of paperwork and checks, but he would bet the one he owned that the vote yesterday went Daniel’s way.
Lynch jumped into the latest breaking news with another fresh scotch in hand. Totter fixed it without any snide comment or objection, a first. This one he felt himself blush a little as he read through the fresh off the press tabloid reports, all with scathing pictures included. The news directors and owners of Hughes News, World Telecom, and Global Media were all caught in a sexual, well, tryst, with their blonde eye-candy on-screen anchors. Each picture, with blurred out body parts, which Lynch was thankful for, showed the faces of those involved to avoid any confusion of their identification. There was something about the pictures that bothered Lynch, besides the stomach turning images of seventy-year-old men with skin hanging everywhere draped over the tight and toned bodies of twenty somethings. In each picture, their heads were contorted at unnatural angles to ensure dead-on shots of their face. Too perfect, too purposeful. He watched one of the videos from the evening news. One of the women, Helen Heathers, stood outside her home with her husband, who shifted back and forth behind her. She denied the accusations, using strong phrases like forgery, fake, and setup while standing there as solid as granite answering every question her counterparts at other networks threw at her. Each denial or answer was short and to the point. She had never been with Everett Hughes and, in fact, had never been around him outside the office. Lynch believed her.
He queued up searches around the businesses of the other families and kicked back with what remained of his third scotch in his hand. A quick click over to the sports brought a grumble from inside him. Another disappointing loss, if a 30 point defeat could be categorized as such. Maybe it was how it compared to the others throughout the New Metro’s season that kept the devastating label from applying to it. There were a couple of games on. Each with west coast teams that he didn’t care much about, but it was better than silence.
Another grumble inside sent him meandering into the kitchen. “T, did you save any of the leftovers?”
“Yes, third shelf. I thought you said it was barely edible.”
“True, but I am still hungry, and beggars can’t be choosers.” Lynch loved the taste of the roast pork Totter cooked. The cut up apples under it gave it just a tad of a sweet flavor. A flavor that Lynch now believed would go great with his spicy mustard, melted jack cheese, a few onions, between two large slices of sourdough bread. His future self would cuss him out later when his old friend heartburn paid him a visit.
The sound of him in the kitchen brought a nervous look, if a machine could have a look, from Totter through the kitchen door. Yes, Lynch was in there fixing something. Yes, it was something he didn’t do often, or ever. He also never cleaned, which drew the second look when he ran the water to wash up the knife he used to fix his snack. He considered pouring another scotch to chase it down, but with his hand on the bottle he pulled it back and then pulled out a bottle of beer from the door of his refrigerator and went back in to watch and wait.
He found the sandwich, the beer, and the game rather enjoyable. It was a unique experience; it had been a while since he watched a game where both teams knew what they were doing on the court. Usually, it was just one against his clueless New Metro club. There would be another manager change this year for sure. This would be the fifth new general manager in twelve years. The speech when the next unknown is hired will match those of their predecessor. It is always the same, with the same buzz words. “New era”. “Changing the culture”. “Ushering in a standard of quality”. Lynch felt he could get behind a guy who stood up there and said, “You know what, we suck. Our talent sucks. Our coach sucks. I am going to fire them all and see what we can do.”
There was still a little over two minutes left in the game when the search chimed its completion and a long list of articles popped to life in front of him. When he left, he had cleaned the space a bit, and now only had the list of names and pictures of each of the girls on one screen suspended in front of him, the game, which he motioned with his left hand to throw it away, and now the search results. Looking at the list, he wished he had provided a more refined date range than the last three years. The remaining families were politicians and defense contractors. Two professions that are never missing from the news.
Lynch was deep into his scanning of the headlines, with a few possible items tagged for further reading, when his Scroll went off. At first he ignored it, at this time of night it probably was a wrong number or something that could wait. On the third ding, he said, “Answer.”
Before he could say hello, he heard Gina’s voice, very hushed. “Lynch, someone’s here.” Those three words shook as they struck like daggers in his body.
“Hurry,” was the only word she said before it disconnected. His instincts stopped himself mid-command to ask his Scroll to call her back. If she was hidden, nothing would give her location away like a ringing Scroll. There was no pause. No time to decide what to do. Not even a word to Totter on where he was going. Lynch was out the door with his duster.
29
Traffic laws weren’t even the second or third thought in Lynch’s mind as he sped through the empty nighttime streets. Sure, his brakes squealed when he tapped them when he rounded a corner, and the tires chatted with him as they struggled to hold their grip on the road, but he wasn’t listening to any of their objections. He wasn’t listening to the sounds of crunching metal behind him as several Autorides swerved into each other, trying to avoid him as he blew through a red traffic signal. None of that mattered to him. Every synapse, and every chemical combination, in his brain that formed thoughts were focused on what he was going to do to the person that was in Gina’s apartment.
He pulled up outside her apartment teetering on the brink between sanity and full outrage and slammed his car door as he hurried to her front steps. A voice in his head reminded him of his training as a police officer on how to approach a location where a perpetrator may still be inside. The protocol for assessing the situation before rushing in was thrown out the window as he summoned some of his ability to yank her front door off its hinges. It crashed to the ground behind him, startling a few stray cats who knocked over a pair of trash cans in their haste to get away. Lynch could feel the lights coming on in the windows across the street as he rushed inside.
Gina’s living room was dark and quiet. He looked around the room and the connected dining room, and then really looked, letting himself slip out of that world just long enough to spot her up on the second floor, to the left, in what he remembered was her bedroom. She appeared to be lying down. Another shape, dark grey, ran out the door on the second floor and down the stairs.
On instinct, Lynch turned to follow, but hesitated. He looked up to where Gina laid. She hadn’t moved. Her attacker was getting further away by the second, and he knew it. His mind was keeping track of that distance as his foot stepped up on the bottom step. Skipping two steps at a time, Lynch reached the open door of Gina’s bedroom. The room was a wreck, and she was in even worse shape, laying across her bed. The single white t-shirt with a yellow smiley face she wore was spotted with blood. The same blood was caked in her hair and smeared across her face. A quick check found no gunshot or stab wounds, but they had worked over h
er head and face pretty good. The best part, she was still breathing, but each breath gurgled from the blood she had swallowed. Lynch turned her over on her side to try to help. She coughed and moaned, but those were the only other signs of life. Seeing her like that added to his rage, and the room shook around him.
He searched the room for her Scroll with hands that could barely contain themselves. The desire to hurt someone, hurt someone badly, coursed through his veins stronger than any blood in his system. When he found it, he placed a single call and threw it on the bed beside her as an operator pleaded for someone to respond. There was a single glance back at Gina before Lynch pulled the brim of his hat lower over his eyes and ran out of the room and down the hallway. He didn’t stop at the door her attacker went out. Nor did he use the stairs. He went through the door with an explosion and landed on the broken concrete driveway below. The tails of his duster flowed behind him like some great black cape.
“I am calling the cops!” a neighbor yelled from their window.
Lynch responded with a middle finger as if to encourage them to do just that. He ran after her attacker, but didn’t directly follow. Alleyways and cross streets, combined with his ability to see the world that only he could see, allowed him to see through blocks of buildings and gave him an advantage. The stupidity of the assailant, who had slowed to a walk, gave him another. That allowed Lynch to get ahead of him and pick where he wanted to confront him. A tight alley used by refuse bots to collect the trash from two strips of stores seemed both perfect and prophetic to Lynch. He intended to take the trash out.
The high walls of the strip malls kept the alley shrouded in shadows, which was perfect for Lynch. He neither needed, nor wanted, any light around for what he needed to do. An evil smile spread across his terse lips as he waited and watched. He knew what this guy was thinking. His body was starting to relax from the adrenaline rush after the attack and the escape. Thoughts of freedom and satisfaction of a job well done were roaming through his head. Which added to the satisfaction Lynch felt himself as his big right hand reached out and grabbed the man’s throat and spun him around into the brick wall of the alley. Both the brick and the skull of the man cracked on impact, but he remained conscious and dazed.
