Found Objects
Page 3
“You have a cat,” Martin said to his boss.
His boss looked up and blinked. “What?”
“You have a cat,” Martin said. “I can tell from the bits of fur on your tie.”
“Martin,” his boss said. “We’re discussing your performance review.”
“Okay.”
“You’re smart but too easily distracted. You need to focus so you can improve your output.”
“It’s a calico, isn’t it? Your cat, I mean. I like calico cats.”
“Martin.” His boss sighed. “Can you please sign this and then go back to your cubicle.”
After it all ended, he called Angie.
“I’m so sorry you lost your job, Martin.”
“It’s okay. Right? That’s what I’m supposed to say?”
“Only if it really is okay.”
“But you told me sometimes you should say that even if it’s not. Sometimes that’s all people want to hear.”
“Martin. I told you some things I shouldn’t have, back then. That’s why I’m not your caseworker anymore.”
“But I really like using the things you taught me. They’re so useful. Like when they fired me.”
“What do you mean?” Angie said.
“They asked me to come into the director’s office. The director was there, along with my boss and a woman from the HR department. And there was another man there, but he wasn’t in the room. He was sitting in a chair outside the office. Reading a newspaper. And he was wearing a jacket.”
“So?”
“So I remember you taught me that. That you don’t wear a jacket in the summer. That’s why I noticed him. That’s how I knew he was a policeman.”
“Oh no.”
“So the HR woman was reading to me from a form. I think it was about unemployment benefits. But I knew all that already, I had memorized everything on the HR website when I was hired. So I asked about the cop. I said “Why is there a policeman sitting outside pretending to read a newspaper?’ ”
“Oh, god, Martin…”
“Everybody got really quiet. The HR woman’s face got really red, too. So I remember you taught me when that happens that it’s usually because people don’t know what to say. So I started talking about all the police shows I used to watch.”
“Martin…”
“There was one I liked called ‘Homicide.’ I told them about my favorite episode. A man was killed. They thought it was his wife but it turned out it was one of his employees.”
“Oh my god. You told them this?”
“Yes. And so all of a sudden they told me they wanted me to leave the building. I wanted to say hello to the cop on the way out but they wouldn’t even let me do that.”
“And so what happened?”
“I… had an accident.”
“You mean you melted down? Right there, in front of a policeman, after talking about people murdering their bosses?”
“Yes.”
“Martin?”
“Yes, Angie?”
“You really need to stop calling me.”
“It’s okay.”
He noticed so many things. The shoes of the person sitting across from him were worn differently then most people’s. She must have a spinal deformity. Maybe he should tell her. He noticed sounds, too. Like the sounds of the train. This train sounded slightly different than other trains. The sound was vaguely familiar. He traced the memory back to high school, where against his wishes he was enrolled in a metal-shop class. He found it painfully dreary to make ashtrays and ball-peen hammers, until one day the teacher brought in a computer-controlled lathe. Instructions went into it in the form of numbers, and out of it would come precisely-machined artifacts. And the sound of the tool carving away at the metal was just like the sound he was hearing now.
When the noise ratcheted up to an ear-splitting shriek, followed by a brittle fracturing sound and then a horrible grinding, Martin was the only one not surprised. He had already braced himself. The car lurched and shook, and some people fell to the floor. The lights flickered and died, and by the time the grinding noise stopped and the train ceased shimmying, there was the sharp smell of smoke and hot metal in the air.
Martin liked watching people in strange situations. What he saw now was really fascinating. Most of the passengers went with either hysteria or catatonia. While the man sitting next to Martin stared glassy-eyed, the woman with the uneven shoes began screaming and running down the aisle, stumbling on and trampling those who had fallen. He was really impressed with how agile she was, considering her spinal deformity.
The train conductor, it turned out, was neither catatonic nor hysterical. After the emergency lights fluttered on, his voice crackled over the intercom. ”Ladies and gentlemen, we appear to have had a malfunction. Remain calm. Please open the doors using the emergency latch, exit the train, and walk to the nearest platform. We have deactivated the third rail, but still be careful in the dark. I’m going to turn on the emergency lights now.” A reddish glow suffused the train as battery-powered backup lights fluttered on. Martin promptly stood, walked to the door with only one stumble over a misplaced shin, and pulled the emergency latch to slide the door open. The other passengers picked themselves up and followed him out of the car, coughing on the growing volume of smoke.
They stood in the cramped area between the train car and the wall of the tunnel. A woman said “Which way do we go?”
“We should go back,” someone said. People were coughing more as the smoke grew denser, and no one seemed inclined to argue much. But then Martin spoke up.
“No,” he said. “We should keep going forward.” People turned to him.
“Why?” the woman said, “We don’t know how far it is.”
“Yes we do,” Martin said. “From Driscoll station to Amherst station there are two hundred and forty seams in the rail. After we left Driscoll, we had gone past one hundred seventy-three before the train stopped. We’re much closer to the Amherst station.” He looked around, expecting them to agree; it was so clear to him. Instead, he was rewarded with blank stares. “Besides,” he continued, “Amherst is deeper. There are seventy-six steps on the staircase in Driscoll, but there are ninety-four in Amherst. That means the smoke will drift up towards Driscoll. Come on.”
He started walking down the tunnel in the train’s direction of travel, not really caring that the others had begun to follow him. He was back to counting. One hundred seventy-three seams, plus about four more while the train was grinding along the track. Sixty-three to go. Each rail was about twenty-two feet long, meaning that they were about one thousand, three hundred and eighty-six feet from the next station. If each pace was about two feet long, that meant six hundred ninety-three paces to the exit.
After he passed the front of the train, it grew terribly dark, so he ran his hand along the rough cement wall of the tunnel for guidance as he counted off his steps. The air was stale and damp, but at least there was no smoke. At four hundred paces he began to see a faint glow around the curve ahead, and by five hundred he could make out the details of the train platform.
He stepped on the utility stair leading up to the platform at Amherst station at pace number six hundred fifty-four. As he passed firefighters and paramedics racing the other way, he reflected that a five-point-nine percent margin of error was not bad, considering the circumstances.
He couldn’t wait to tell Angie.
Novel Excerpt: BURST
The command post had been set up in a manner that was simultaneously ad-hoc and well rehearsed, Charlie thought. Something like a jazz performance done in lethal tones. A nylon fly, standing amid scattered vehicles in a parking lot, shaded a folding plastic table from the early autumn sun. Six years in San Francisco and he still couldn’t get used to how October was the hottest month of the year. Around the table, the regular assortment of law enforcement types clustered in small groups, conferring over checklists or scribbling onto a portable whiteboard. The table itself was what caught
Charlie’s eye, though.
It must have been remaindered from some corporate function. Blintzes, canapés, dainty-looking pastries, delicately-rolled sliced meats, and other assorted delectables were arranged haphazardly. At one end, the obligatory carafe of coffee stood, and it was before that Charlie saw Ray standing, staring head down into a Styrofoam cup clenched in both hands.
“Hey, man, what’s up?” Charlie said, clapping Ray on the shoulder in what he hoped was a friendly gesture.
Ray flinched, startled, his cold blue eyes snapping up to meet Charlie’s. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said.
“You know, it was a little lame the way you ditched me back there at the crackhouse.”
“I didn’t ditch you. I left you in charge of the scene. You’re supposed to be handling it.”
“No, you’re supposed to be handling it. At least, that’s what Bossman was saying. He said a lot more but most of it was pretty unintelligible, what with all the yelling. Between him and the local cops they seemed to have it covered. So I figured I would head over here, see if you needed any help.”
“How did you get here? I took the car.”
“Yes you did, and in a big hurry too. I had to get creative.”
“You didn’t steal a car from a crime scene again, did you?”
“Hey, that was just once. And it was an emergency.”
“So?”
“So,” Charlie said, shrugging, “I took the bus.”
“You took the bus across Oakland?”
“What, does the FBI have any rules about its agents not taking the bus?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, it does; at least when they’re dressed like that.”
Ray gestured to Charlie’s class-III tactical ballistic vest, navy blue with “FBI” stenciled across the front and back in six-inch-high neon yellow letters. Charlie looked down and shrugged. “It was a pretty quiet ride.”
“How did you get through the police line? They declared this a closed scene five minutes after I got here.”
“I told them I’m an FBI agent with special training in hostage negotiation.”
Ray shook his head. “You took an online course three years ago.”
“It still counts. So, tell me what’s going on. Hostage situation? That’s what they said on the radio. In a school, too. Bad scene.”
“Go home, Charlie. You can’t help me on this.”
Charlie raised both hands to his head and clenched his eyes shut. “I, the great Zamboni, will attempt to use my mystical powers of deduction to profile our perp for today.” He bobbled his head before continuing. “White male, early twenties. Comes from an upper-middle-class family.”
“That’s enough.”
“Am I close? Hey I’m just getting rolling. History of minor mental health issues, nothing serious to raise any flags. Maybe bipolar, or something on the Autism spectrum.”
“Charlie-“
“How am I doing? No priors. Nice guy. Quiet and shy. Never would think he’d do something so awful as to take a school full of developmentally disabled kids hostage. But interestingly enough, never had any pets. At least, not after he tortured and killed one when he was five, or maybe six.”
“Cut it out.”
“Come on, throw me a bone, will you? All right now for the big finish. Parent issues. Either estranged from one or both parents, or might as well be. Never really loved-“
“It’s my son.”
They stood there for a time, both staring off into the middle distance, listening as the low mutter of the cops around them was punctuated by the staccato-shriek of radio call signals.
“Oh.” That was all Charlie could manage to say. Ray nodded weakly and continued staring into the coffee. “Fuck.”
“Yes.” Said Ray.
Charlie looked around. Another ambulance pulled up, its powerful diesel engine growling as it parked alongside the five others already positioned in the lot. Just past it, a SWAT team stood outside their panel van, checking their M-4 carbines. “So what now?” he asked.
Ray looked up with a gaunt face. Charlie couldn’t help but think that no man should have to wear a face like that outside their coffin. “Are you ready to kill him?” Ray said. “Because that’s exactly what everyone here is preparing to do.”
Charlie’s stomach twisted up on itself. Glancing back at the food spread out before him, he suddenly found it repulsive. A fly circled a garishly pink pile of lox, looking for the best place to lay its eggs.
“I told you not to come here.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Boehm has been writing and reading aggressively since elementary school. He is the author of numerous short works and is currently developing his first full-length novel, BURST. He lives in Pacifica, California, with his wife, daughter, and two cats.
Table of Contents
Copyright
IN GOOD TIME
MAESTRO
WHEEZE
MARGIN OF ERROR
Novel Excerpt: BURST
ABOUT THE AUTHOR