by C. S. Poe
All I heard was the faintest of breathing. Then I picked up the honk of a horn. A muffled voice. The static caused by wind hitting a microphone.
Outside.
“Forty-eight hours to find what skull? You’ve got to tell me that much,” I tried. “Let me speak to Calvin. I need—please. Is he okay?”
Still… no reply.
“I can’t stop the police from investigating,” I begged. “He’s a detective. They’re going to pull all of their resources to find him.” I gripped the phone. “You’ve kidnapped—Major Cases has jurisdiction, for Christ’s sake! I’ll play your game. I’ll solve whatever mystery you want. But this is between us. Right?”
The Collector chuckled. It was a faraway sound. Detail-less.
“Let me talk to Calvin,” I shouted, tears of rage rolling down my cheeks.
There was a loud clank through the connection, then a distorted plop.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
THE CITY was closing in on me as if I were stuck in a perpetual loop of the Vertigo Effect.
In the alley between Beth’s shop and mine, crouched against the brick wall, I closed my eyes and lowered my head. The sickening motion continued.
I was usually good at keeping calm.
It took a lot of turmoil to really shake me, to break me down.
I had a nearly perfect outer armor, a remnant from growing up. Because when you’re the weird kid, the awkward kid, the kid chosen last, or the kid sitting alone, you’ve got to protect yourself. That shell had been built out of intelligence and wit. History and words were my weapons.
If I couldn’t beat them physically, I’d beat them mentally.
And it’d worked. For a long time. Too long, really. Because I was still doing it as an adult.
Study the evidence, follow the clues, put together the puzzle, and prove I’m smart.
I’m useful.
I’m better than what I look to be.
The difference between then and now was that Calvin knew when I was acting. It was still frightening to be seen naked and for what I was. Because the leftovers of childhood were still with me, in a bag I couldn’t seem to release my grip on. Insecurities I didn’t want Calvin to see through the lens of bullies long since past. Insecurities I didn’t ever want him to feel or think about me.
But I’d had a complete meltdown in the Emporium. I hadn’t felt that raw and utterly obliterated inside since summer, when I’d briefly broken the dam in front of Pop. What had happened—the screaming, the crying—I couldn’t cope with an audience realizing that kind of terrifying intensity existed inside a grown man.
It was like standing onstage.
The house was full. Lights blazed down from the batten.
And I, the one-man show, had forgotten every word of my soliloquy.
“Sebastian?” The crunch of shoes on frozen ice and snow paused to my left.
I raised my head, took a deep breath, pushed my sunglasses up my nose, and glanced at the open alleyway.
Neil had entered. He continued forward, each step echoing through the enclosed space. He stopped beside me, tugged his trousers up a bit, and crouched against the wall in a similar fashion. He didn’t say anything.
“He laughed,” I whispered. My lower lip wouldn’t stop quivering. “The Collector….” I shook my head, took my sunglasses off, and passed a hand over my face.
“I talked to Max,” Neil said after a lengthy span of silence. “On a hunch.”
“What hunch?” I whispered.
“The Collector texted Beth.” Neil shifted and removed his own cell. “Max confirmed receiving the same message as her from Calvin.” He offered his phone.
I put my glasses on, hesitated, and took it. “What?”
“Look,” Neil murmured, nodding his chin at the device.
I brought the screen close and squinted.
Sender: Calvin Winter (Det.)
Back off.
I turned my head to Neil. “When did you get this?”
“9:11 a.m.” He took the phone back. “Same as Max and Beth.”
I knitted my brows together. “What does it mean?”
Neil tucked the phone into his pocket. “It means… this Collector is aware of who in Calvin’s list of contacts is considered a personal relation to both of you.” He stared at me once more. “Quinn got the same message as me.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Calvin’s address book is exhaustive. Beat cops, administrators, crime-scene crews, lab technicians, medical examiners—”
“I called your father,” Neil said, stopping me.
“You what?”
Neil was grimacing. “William received the same text.” He finished very quietly with “Like Max and Beth.”
I quickly pushed to my feet.
Neil stood too. “Sebastian—”
“No,” I said, louder for those in the goddamn back. “This is… it’s insane, Neil. The possibility of some batshit crazy motherfucker out there who—who’s kidnapped my fiancé off the streets of New York City as if he were some drifter, never to be missed.”
Neil looked down at the ground.
“And now they’ve sent threats and warnings to the closest people in my life?” I jabbed Neil hard in the chest. “Threats that if I don’t do this alone, if I seek police assistance like any rational citizen would, Calvin will… what? Die?”
“Seb.”
“Do you understand why I might not want to accept this as gospel?” I said, poking him harder as hot tears blurred my vision once more.
Neil grabbed my wrist and held it firmly. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want your goddamn apology! I don’t want sympathy. I—I want Calvin to answer his phone and tell me he’s okay!” I felt hollow. Like my soul had shattered from the cold after the fire inside was snuffed out of existence.
Neil turned, looked at the alleyway entrance, and then sighed. I don’t know what I was expecting from him. To tell me to buck up? Stop crying? Simply walk away from me? But he didn’t do any of those.
Instead… he hugged me.
Neil put his arms around my shoulders and pulled me into a rough and stiff embrace against his chest. I’d hugged him a lot, once upon a time. But it was different now. Neil wasn’t a lover. He was an awkward, closeted friend who simply wanted to make me feel better and didn’t know how to go about managing that.
I gripped the back of his coat as I quietly lost it for the second time.
“Do you know why I hated Calvin for so long?” he murmured, putting a hand on the back of my head.
I snorted. “God. This is a conversation I want to have.”
“It wasn’t because I felt stolen from. I’d lost your affection months before the two of you ever met. I was careless. I know that now.” He stroked my hair a few times. “It was because… he was never intimidated by you.”
“What?” I muttered against his thoroughly snotty and tearstained jacket.
“You’re the whole package, Sebastian. Romantic. Loyal. Brave. Calvin’s met you every step of the way. And this time last year, he was… like me. But he saw the stars in you, and he reached.” Neil pulled back. He put his cold hands on my face. “I never dared. I was—I still am—intimidated by you.”
“I’m a fucking mess,” I declared.
“You’re always a mess. Whether it’s not combing your hair for days on end, or….” He glanced down at the front of himself. “Covered in snot.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, wiping my nose with the sleeve of my coat.
“You’re smart,” Neil whispered. “Smarter than me. Smarter than Calvin. But he didn’t let that hold him back. He knew how to embrace all the wild shit you’ve got up here.” He tapped the side of my head before grabbing the collar of my coat and holding me tight. “Now it’s my turn.”
“The hell are you talking about?”
Neil reached one-handed into his coat and pulled out his badge. “See this?” He tossed it to the groun
d. “The Collector told me to back off. No cops. Fine. I’m not a cop.”
“Have you lost your mind?” I protested.
“Sebastian. The NYPD has no clue what’s going on. Fuck. There were guys reading CliffsNotes during the Nevermore case in order to keep up with you. We need you if we’re going to even pretend to reach Calvin within forty-eight hours.” Neil slowly released his grip on me. “No matter what, I’ll have your back this time. I promise you that.”
I… didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do.
Neil’s career had always been the most important part of his life. It was how he defined himself. How he found self-worth when I think he otherwise had a pretty shitty opinion of himself. And to see his badge tossed to the ground was particularly shocking.
“What’re you doing, Neil?” I asked, voice very quiet.
He squared his shoulders. “I’m being the man I wish I was.” In an even rarer move, Neil smiled—lopsided, a little boyish, but always handsome. He reached out and gave my chin one of those attaboy nudges with the knuckles of his fist.
The scrape of boots crunching on ice sounded from behind Neil. He bent and retrieved his badge as Quinn rounded the entrance and walked toward us.
She pointed a finger at me as she approached. “You’re upset. I get it.”
“I—”
“But I need you to count to ten or take a shot of gin or do whatever the hell it is that’ll calm you down.” Quinn paused and made a motion with her hand to indicate Neil and me. “Because you two are my brain trust now, and every second counts.”
“What do you expect me to do?” I asked.
Quinn snapped her fingers. “Do the damn thing you always do.”
“What thing?” I retorted.
“Tell us the origin of ‘brain trust,’” Neil quickly suggested.
“Ah… the phrase was originally patterned after the term used to describe economic consolidation in the latter half of the 1800s. It was associated with politics by the turn of the century and is most famously connected to the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration.”
“Great,” Quinn stated dryly, putting her hands on her hips. “Now I need facts relevant to our current crisis.”
Facts.
Focus on the facts.
Quinn was still talking. “Ms. Harrison has your dog. I sent Marc on his way. The ME is inside collecting the teeth. So let’s hear it.”
“Calvin left the hotel at 7:50 a.m.”
“Are you certain?” Quinn asked.
“Yes.” I nodded. “I left with Rossi a little after eight to come here.”
“Did you see Calvin’s car?”
Now that I thought about it, no. I hadn’t seen Calvin’s Ford Fusion parked anywhere on the hotel’s block. “No, but I don’t know how close he parked to the hotel after getting off work last night.”
Quinn was already on her phone. “ATL on a navy blue Ford Fusion, last seen around Thirty-Seventh and Eighth—might still be parked in the neighborhood.”
“You said the Collector laughed,” Neil continued. “This person called you?”
Quinn turned her head away from us as she concentrated on the call. “Yes, that’s correct. New York license. Plate number….”
“I phoned Calvin,” I corrected Neil as Quinn rattled off more information regarding Calvin’s car than I ever knew about myself. “The Collector never spoke.” I watched Quinn end her call and finished, “You need to track Calvin’s cell.”
“That was the first step I took,” she answered. “Hopefully this motherfucker hasn’t turned it off, so we can get an accurate ping on his location.”
“I think it might have been tossed,” I said. “But I can tell you the Collector was outside when they answered my call.”
“Outside doesn’t narrow the scope,” Quinn said sternly.
“All right, all right.” I closed my eyes and hyperfocused. I tried to catalog all of the clues I could, which wasn’t many, about that one-sided conversation, when all at once, a very simple thought occurred to me. “Calvin knows the Collector.”
“Excuse me?” Quinn asked.
I opened my eyes. “Think about it. This wasn’t some dark alley at two in the morning where he could have been jumped without a witness. Calvin’s a big guy—with military training, no less. Who could coerce someone as wide as a doorframe, during morning rush hour in Midtown, without drawing an audience? The only logical conclusion is he knows the Collector. He’d trust this person, was probably even asked to get into a car with them.”
“It makes sense,” Neil murmured, turning his attention to Quinn.
“It implies someone in law enforcement,” she hissed.
“So what?” I replied. “Dirty cops exist. Remember Brigg and Lowry? One tried to blow me up, and the other nearly had me swimming with the fishes.”
“Calvin knows too many people,” Quinn argued.
“We’d only need to consider those who also know Sebastian,” Neil corrected.
“Just about all of New York City knows about the NYPD’s tumor,” she said.
“I’m benign, thank you,” I retorted, crossing my arms.
“Max, Ms. Harrison next door, and Sebastian’s father all got texts in regard to keeping the police out of this,” Neil explained, ticking the names off his fingers.
Quinn’s eyes darted from Neil to me. “Anyone else?”
“I don’t like anyone else,” I answered.
“Calvin knows a lot of people,” Neil said. “And Sebastian is known by a lot of people, but because of these messages sent to non–law-enforcement individuals, we need to focus on who may be aware of the interpersonal relations shared by them both.”
Quinn narrowed her gaze at me, waiting not so patiently for an explanation.
I shrugged. “We have a strict no-work-talk rule at home. You would have a better idea than me.”
Quinn’s phone rang then, and she had it to her ear before the jingle could come to a full stop. “Lancaster.” She made a sudden about-face for the street. “The cell towers pinged the phone and got a triangulation!” she called over her shoulder. “Let’s go!”
THE FINANCIAL District.
I slammed shut the passenger door of Quinn’s car and raced after her on the sidewalk. Along with two police cruisers and vans from both the Crime Scene Unit and Department of Environmental Protection, we’d managed to completely block the thoroughfare of Nassau Street. Obnoxious honking came from behind us as drivers were forced to merge onto John Street, backing up traffic for several blocks. The area directly ahead was taped off to pedestrians, and more LEOs swarmed in by the minute.
It seemed word was officially out that one of their own was in trouble. If it hadn’t been for the warnings to keep the police out of the search, I’d have felt a hell of a lot more hopeful.
A second call for Quinn had come in while she’d been driving us from the East Village to the coordinates provided—Calvin’s car had been located. It was parked a block and a half from the hotel, with no indication that he’d ever reached it that morning.
“It makes no sense that Calvin would have been grabbed all the way down here,” I called after Quinn. I nearly plowed into a woman exiting a sandwich shop, skidded sideways, and not so gracefully managed to avoid crashing into a sidewalk sign advertising the nail salon next door.
“He wasn’t,” Quinn agreed. She flashed her badge at an officer, lifted the crime-scene tape, and impatiently shouted for me to follow. When she finally came to a stop, it was beside the DEP truck.
The air crackled with the radios of uniformed officers, communicating in jargon that hardly made sense even if one could decipher the conversation amongst all the static. Two city workers in hard-hats were pulling out crowbar-looking tools from their truck. I shielded my eyes from the glare of the midmorning sun as I scanned the rest of the scene. Neil had driven behind us from the Emporium in his CSU van, but just then, he’d hopped out of the open back doors in a full bodysuit.
&nbs
p; “What the—” I bit my tongue when the DEP guys hooked their tools to the grate of a catch basin beside the sidewalk and hoisted the heavy cast-iron frame up.
I leaned over for a look. The hole was about ten feet deep and at least half-full of dark, stagnant water. Runoff from the road no doubt included additives such as motor oil and human piss, dead leaves, cigarette butts, candy wrappers, soda bottles, and used condoms, to name a few of the more savory ingredients.
Neil approached me, tugging a hood down over his head.
I reached an arm out and slapped him square in the chest. “You’re not seriously climbing into the witches’ caldron, are you?”
“It’s one of the more exciting aspects of working CSU,” he answered before pulling a respiratory mask over his face.
“But wait,” I protested. “Why? I know dropping a waterlogged phone into a bag of rice can work wonders, but you should consider Calvin’s a lost cause.”
“We need it as evidence, Sebastian,” Quinn said firmly.
I made a face and glanced back at the hole. “Neil’s fingers are going to fall off if he touches that toxic waste.”
“Hence the sexy PPE,” Neil said, voice muffled by the mask, before he stepped onto the street.
Quinn was watching Neil climb into the basin as she said, “Calvin’s car never left Midtown, yet his phone was discarded in the Financial District. It gives us a few clues.”
“Like what?” I asked.
I had to not think of Calvin as Calvin. Merely… a puzzle to solve. It was the only way I could do this—the only way I could investigate and get my sleuthing ass caught up in more mayhem without having another emotional episode cripple me. I focused on the moment. The details. The… Christ… rancid smell coming from the water as Neil’s body distorted the contents and released odors.
“This close to the Brooklyn Bridge,” Quinn started, making a motion over her shoulder without looking up, “leads me to suspect the Collector wants to get out of Manhattan. And if I were them, I most certainly wouldn’t take the chance at having a kidnap victim in my vehicle when I pop out to make a few threatening text messages before ditching the phone.” I felt her eyes on me for a brief moment. “Right?”
