I blinked at her several times. Was she for real? If so, why wasn’t she famous, studies done on her, TV programs . . . Then it hit me. “It’s why you’re out here with us in the dark. Anywhere else and there are too many people. Too many variables. Here you can control it. Am I right?”
She nodded. “You’re pretty smart, Mister Hot Dog Man. Maybe you are Sherlock Holmes after all.” A hint of a smile slipped across her otherwise serious face. “I can’t stand the knowing. My mother had it, and she took her own life. So did her mother before her.”
“Can you see your own future?”
“No. And it’s both wonderful and frustrating.”
He remembered the look on her face when she’d gotten into the Caddie earlier and the pickup truck later. He’d thought of it as excitement, or sexual energy, but maybe it was a carefully held sense of wonder. “It’s the only thing that gives you excitement . . . the not knowing.”
She nodded again. “The not knowing is such a blessing.”
“Then you see the rest of us.” I shook my head. “You’re amazing, you know that?”
“Not me. I’m just a Girl in the Key of C.” Her eyes went wide. She pointed to the large trash bin a dozen feet behind my cart. “Over there. Hide! And whatever you do, don’t come out!”
I stared at her, dumbfounded.
“Now!” she screamed, slapping me across the face.
I ran and dove behind the bin just as three cars came screeching around the corner. One was the same lowrider which had come by earlier. Behind it was an immense boat of a gold Caddie with white rim tires and behind that was a candy-apple-red 1972 Cutlass Supreme. Bangers poured out of the cars and surrounded Frank’s trailer. Two of them separated and went to my hot dog cart. One of the bangers peered into the darkness after me, while the other got distracted by my cart and started to make himself a hot dog. I ducked my head and pulled my legs further into the shadows.
I heard a man scream, followed by the sickening sound of flesh on flesh.
Then I heard another scream, this one from a man in agony.
I spared a glance in time to see an immense cholo in a wifebeater and khakis climb out of the back-seat of the Caddie. He wore Doc Martins on his feet and enough gold chains around his neck to strangle a basketball team. He turned to the guy with the hot dog and told him to “Put it the fuck down,” giving me a perfect view of his face . . . the mole, the gold tooth, the scar . . . all good enough for me to identify in a lineup and testify in a court of law.
I shifted my position and peered around the other side of the bin.
I could see Edna kneeling behind the counter in her cart, shaking, her eyes closed, one hand holding her rosary to her lips, the other on a .38 Special.
I could also see the Girl . . . my girl . . . the Girl in the Key of C. They had her kneeling on the ground next to Frank. Both of them had their hands on their heads.
I wanted to rush out.
I wanted to save her.
Then her gaze found mine, and we locked eyes. She shook her head slightly as if she knew what I was thinking . . . of course she knew.
Fuck it, though. I couldn’t let her go out this way. Not her. God dammit, I didn’t even know her name.
I started to get to my feet, when the huge guy stepped up to the kneeling man. The gang leader was so big, he blocked out Frank in an eclipse of wifebeater white. I saw his arm raise high into the air, revealing a bat. Then I saw it come down.
Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
Each time it came down the sound was like a melon breaking.
Each time it came down, the Girl in the Key of C’s eyes became wider, the sense of wonder stoked by the fires of violence, a hint of a smile growing at the corners of her perfect elfin mouth.
When the gang leader backed away, Frank’s dead eyes stared into nothing.
And then the man brought out a pistol and shot my Girl in the Key of C through the head. She fell lifeless to the ground, eyes closed, smile slipping away.
Then I watched another man walk into Edna’s cart and take her pistol away from her. I was still shocked at what had happened to the girl, but struggled to rise. He must have heard me because he spun and saw me.
“Hey!” he yelled, pointing the pistol at me.
I ducked around the back of the bin with nowhere else to go. I wedged myself into molding cardboard remembering that bit of conversation. “You’re anything but normal,” I’d said. And she’d said, “If you say that, it means you’re so far away from normal that you can’t even recognize it.” I sobbed into the cardboard as I imagined the pistol to the back of my skull. Whatever happened, I didn’t want to see it coming.
I heard a series of shots.
I heard men running.
And then I heard sirens.
There was shouting, curses—and the sounds of engines revving, tires burning rubber, the cars taking off.
Los Angeles was the sort of town that if you aren’t watching television, you might not even know it was Christmas. What’s Christmas to a movie star who has a three-picture deal and graces every red carpet at the Kodak Theater, or to a homeless guy who just wants his next meal? What’s Christmas to a thirty-year-old midnight hot dog vendor whose life was going nowhere until a Girl in the Key of C came into it? She was the center. She was the normal we all sought. Then when I finally connected with her, I became that marble that soared free from this reality into a new one . . . a reality where everyone knew what Christmas was.
Of course, she knew that.
She knew what was going to happen. She’d played it all out in her head until she’d figured out how to save me.
Part of me thought that maybe I’d just been in the right place at the right time, an accidental beneficiary to her wanting an end to the constant knowing. But the part of me that figured out patterns, and the part that still wanted to touch her, kiss her, be with her, both thought that maybe it was something about me that made her do it. Some reason she chose me over Edna.
Because who’d have guessed, other than her, that I’d end up in the witness protection program, enrolled in a law enforcement program in No Name, USA? Who’d have guessed that her one and only Christmas present, this girl whose name I never knew, would push me at the FBI and open the door to a future? A future I can’t see, but that might give me the chance to save others. My Girl in the Key of C finally gave me normal—c.
Elementary, once you see the pattern.
THE GHOST OF THE LAKE
by Jamie Freveletti
Hester Regine tore herself away from an article on telomere strings and DNA strands to pull the screaming tea kettle off the flame. The weak October sun rose on a cold, Chicago day. She lived in a renovated three-story house with an expansive yard in a beautiful but deeply troubled Chicago neighborhood. Trouble didn’t scare Hester. She loved the neighborhood’s wide boulevards and stately brick and stone homes, many standing empty and built when the area was one of the finest in Chicago. She’d bought hers four years ago, restored it to its former glory, and spent her free time assisting in community service to help turn things around. A fence surrounded her property, hedge lined the fence’s perimeter, and a camera mounted at the home’s eaves scanned the yard for unauthorized movement. Just three hours before, an intruder had triggered her burglar alarm, and she was still tired from the broken sleep.
This latest would-be thief managed to climb the fence, fight through the hedge, and make his way halfway across the yard before he triggered the second line of defense. A spotlight high above bathed the yard with glare, the burglar alarm shrieking to life. The masked intruder froze to stare upward as a Gatling gun positioned on the roof rose noiselessly from behind a three-foot high stone parapet. The red LED tracking beam on the gun scythed through the dark sky above and then the lighted yard below as the internal eye sought the source of the vibration on the lawn. It began tracing a line along the ground toward where the man stood.
The gun roared int
o life, pounding rubber bullets into the dirt and creating divots in an ever advancing line of fire toward the intruder. The staccato sound of rapid gunfire, coupled with a cloud of billowing smoke from the rattling weapon and the shriek of the burglar alarm, usually sent the average thief screaming toward the hedge. Not so this one. He feinted at a tight, ninety-degree angle and then moved closer to the house, a clever tactic that allowed him to duck underneath the beam as it began a second sweep for the source of movement. The tall, thin figure jogged to the side hedge, shoved a boot into it at the place where the branches formed a perfect foothold, and vaulted up and over the fence. He landed on the other side, his knees bent and in a crouch to absorb the impact, then rose and ran away, his form and pace worthy of a trained sprinter.
Hester, woken from a sound sleep, had watched the entire performance on a house monitor. When it was over, she used an app to stop the rooftop gun, turn off the smoke machine that mimicked gunpowder, and silence the alarm. A second click reset the system.
The police knew not to bother to respond to an alarm at Hester’s address. Neighborhood thieves were well aware that the yard was booby-trapped in an endless number of ways and most gave the house a wide berth. This one was of a different sort, and she contemplated that fact as she fell back into bed.
She was still contemplating it now.
She took a chair at the kitchen bay window, allowing herself a moment to gaze at the beauty of a new day, and then flipped open her computer and accessed the latest news. SCORES VISIT SITE OF VIRGIN MARY PHENOMENON; POLICE STILL SEARCH FOR BOMB SUSPECTS. The headlines repeated on every news site. Two weeks ago, a city worker noticed that a water stain on the concrete wall of a Chicago underpass appeared to be an image of the Virgin Mary. He snapped a photo, uploaded it onto social media, and it went viral. In a city where the citizens still referred to their neighborhoods by their parish, the fascination with the image rose to a fever pitch within days.
Then the bombings began. Two in as many weeks, with rumors that Satan was creating the bombs, and the image was the Virgin Mary’s attempts to warn the city. People ran to their houses of worship and prayed. The city hummed with a low level of panic.
Hester rarely panicked. As a consultant for some of the most top-secret governmental agencies in the world, her days were spent almost entirely online or in the field, addressing some of the darker aspects of mankind’s inability to live in peace. Panic was a luxury she could not afford.
She dumped two heaping scoops of fragrant, dark coffee into the French press, added another of decaf, and stirred it together with a wooden spoon. As she pressed the timer that she’d affixed to the handle, her laptop played the beginning strains of Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana, O Fortuna.” She walked over to the table and tapped open the app.
Beatrix Walker’s face filled the screen. The banked intensity in her eyes relayed the seriousness behind her phone call—but then, Walker’s calls were always serious. As the head of the National Cyber Terrorist Security Agency, she intervened in some of the most heinous crimes perpetrated worldwide.
“Good morning. You look grim,” Hester said.
“And you look surprisingly chipper for a woman woken up at three o’clock in the morning.”
“NCTA watching my burglar alarm feed?”
“We do have a vested interest in keeping you alive. You’re our top analyst, after all. I’m told that last night’s intruder was a cut above the average. Outsmarted the tracking beam for an instant and calmly escaped. Not usual.”
Hester nodded. “I’ve been ruminating on it this morning. Deciding what to do.”
“I don’t envy him, whoever it is. If you need any assistance, let us know.”
“I will. But you didn’t call to discuss Chicago’s criminal population. What can I do for you?”
“I have a rather . . . unusual assignment.”
Hester shifted the computer so it would follow her as she stood and moved back into the kitchen. “Go ahead.”
“It’s a local matter. We’ve been asked to consult along with the FBI. It seems as though the nephew of the mayor of your fine city has gone missing.”
Hester took a coffee cup from the cabinet. “Sounds like a job for the Chicago police, not a federal agency.”
“Not when the nephew in question is an expert in particle physics and works on various secret federal projects.”
Hester turned to look at the computer. “George McPatrick has gone missing?”
“You know him?”
“He works at the University of Chicago. I’ve bumped into him at various scientific conferences.” The timer started beeping and she pressed the plunger down.
Walker tilted her head. “You time your coffee?”
“Absolutely. Four minutes, no more. Some prefer to steep six, but I find that to be overkill.” Hester poured the coffee into her mug and added some heavy cream. “How long has he been gone?”
“No one is quite sure. I guess he lives alone and spends most days and some nights in the lab. He has no wife, no kids, and the two colleagues that work in the same lab say he stays to himself. They described him as odd.”
Hester walked back to the table and sat down. “He’s weird as hell. Claims that one day he’ll prove parallel universes exist. What’s he working on for the feds?”
“That’s classified, even for someone with your clearance. But suffice to say it involves new ways to program and deploy missiles.”
Hester stopped with the cup halfway to her lips. “The very idea of McPatrick in control of anything involving the discharge of missiles is terrifying.”
“And yet, it’s true.” Hester’s email pinged with an incoming note. “That’s from me. I’ve attached a dossier prepared by the local FBI agent there, a . . . Karl Drake. You have an appointment with him this morning at ten.”
“That’s an hour from now.”
Walker raised an eyebrow. “Is that a problem?”
“I haven’t showered, you watched me make my first cup of the day, I usually drink two before even considering positive motion, and the federal building is thirty minutes from here by subway.”
Walker waved a hand. “For a woman of your talents, that’s nothing. Good luck.”
The screen went dark. Hester picked up her cup and took it to the master bedroom. Thirty minutes later she grabbed a jean jacket from a front hallway closet, filled her thermos with the rest of the coffee, and headed to the subway.
Hester stood in front of a seriously tall, late-thirty-something black man in a dark blue suit with the barest hint of a pinstripe and a muted blue tie with tiny red diamonds. His trimmed hair and clean-shaven face gave him the air of ex-military. His demeanor read current FBI agent. He took in her jean jacket, black pants, also jeans, and black combat boots.
“Dr. Regine? I’m Karl Drake. Pleased to meet you. Come on back to my office and we can talk.” Drake passed by the receptionist, a forbidding looking older woman in a wheelchair, and led Hester through a door and down a hall. Near the corridor’s end he waved her into a small office with a standard issue reddish wood desk and a bookshelf behind it. A framed certificate hung on the wall that recognized Drake for meritorious service. He waved her into a chair opposite the desk.
“I’ve been told that you’re on loan to the FBI, but only for a short while and undercover. I’m to introduce you by whatever name you give me, and pretend you’re an agent from another jurisdiction.”
“If that’s so then my cover’s already been blown, because your receptionist heard you refer to me by my real name.”
Drake took his own chair behind the desk and tilted back a bit.
“Marta is a trusted member of the team. Former Israeli military. And she keeps a nine millimeter in her right drawer at the ready, so not someone to mess with. You want to tell me the name I should use?”
“Agent Percy is fine.”
“All right, I’ll get some documentation for you.” He typed an email, then returned his attention to her.
“I read the dossier,” Hester said, “but it merely contained the statements of colleagues confirming that McPatrick was missing. Can you fill me in?”
Drake leaned back further and the chair creaked.
“They trashed his house. Stole equipment from his home office, and his PC is gone. Oddly enough, no one’s used his bank cards and his accounts remain untouched. We checked for strange withdrawals or payments in the weeks before and there are none.”
“So he isn’t running from debt collectors or blackmailers,” Hester said.
“Or the IRS,” Drake added.
“How common is that?”
A hint of humor crept into Drake’s eyes. “More common than you’d imagine. All sorts of people disappear. Or attempt to.”
“How successful are they?”
Drake shrugged. “I would think your organization knows as much as mine.”
“Perhaps, but I don’t work in that area. I’m have a Phd in chemical engineering and handle biochemical weapons and experimental chemistry. So if you get pricked by an umbrella and fall dead, or drink tea and die of a slow poison, then I’m your woman. If your credit card is hacked, not so much.”
“Got it. Well, fifteen years ago a civilian could manage it fairly easily. With current technology that’s no longer true. It takes real dedication.”
“Best places to go?”
“Foreign, not Europe, but also not a place where your skin is a different color or facial features unusual for the area.”
“Why not Europe?”
“Too many cameras. And you’d be surprised how many people can remain in the United States and still avoid scrutiny despite our technology. But the suburbs are better than a rural area. Small towns are just that, and everyone knows everybody else. A stranger sticks out.”
“McPatrick would stick out in a suburban area too.”
“You know him?”
“Only in a professional capacity. He believes in parallel universes and lectures extensively about them. He’s also a vocal member of a skeptic society.”
For the Sake of the Game Page 21
