by Dean Kutzler
Just as he started to roll back over and try another attempt at sleeping, he heard something other than his bed creaking in the darkness. He lay still mid-roll, holding his breath and straining to listen through the earplugs he always wore to bed. It wasn’t loud, but it was there where it hadn’t been before. A slight, high pitched whining sound. Did it just start or was it already there? He wasn’t sure. At first, he thought it was just that sound that happens sometimes from using earplugs, like white noise or tinnitus.
He listened for another second as the ambient sound continued and decided to roll back over until he heard the small, but distinct tinkling of glass breaking. He reached from under the covers and yanked out the ear plugs, willing his senses to cut through the darkness and identify the source. The whining sound was coming from downstairs and it was not tinnitus.
Why does it sound familiar?
He quietly rose from the bed and fished his toe about the floor until he found the shorts he’d left there last night. Using his toes like fingers, in one swift action he gripped the shorts, tossed them into his hand, and inched them over his hips. Just as the right synapses fired to life in his brain, he realized the source of the sound.
The entry alarm!
He’d forgotten to set the security system to HOME status. Someone must have broken in through the front door and since they failed to enter the code, it was only a matter of minutes before the burglar alarm tripped. Panic set in as Jack frantically searched the dark bedroom for a weapon. He feared turning on a light would alert the intruder to his presence upstairs. He hadn’t left the brownstone in over a week. They must have assumed the place was empty since his uncle’s death.
Feeling his way about, panic drove his mind to a blank. He couldn’t recall the contents of the room when it had been daylight. Then a tiny spark on the wall, like the glint of a diamond facet, winked at him. He’d bumped into the drapes causing them to open a crack, letting the city night lights in for a fraction of a second.
The bowling trophy!
He quickly tip-toed towards the wall, wincing at the creak in the floorboards that betrayed his stealth. Being careful not to knock the chair into the desk, he reached his hand out in front of him like a blind person. Cautiously, he ran his hand up the wall and over the shelf until he grasped a firm hold on the top of the heavy trophy.
Another frightening thought occurred to him as he hefted the trophy in his hand, testing its weight and wielding it like a warrior. This probably wasn’t a random burglar that had cased an empty house. In his panic and fogginess from lack of sleep, he assumed it was just a thief praying on a dead man’s treasures, but it was more likely someone from the organization he and Father Alazar had spoken about, looking for the key. If that were the case they would’ve known the house wasn’t empty. He really wished he hadn’t left his cell phone plugged in downstairs.
He softly shuffled his feet along the floor to lessen any more creaking from the boards beneath, and worked his way over to the door. As a habit from childhood, mainly because of the scary closet, he’d always left his bedroom door open at least a crack, if not more. Luckily old habits are hard to break. He quietly squeezed his body through the crack, forcing the hand wielding the weapon to stop shaking, as he pulled it out into the hallway with him. Holding his breath once more, listening, sending out his senses, he waited to hear signs of anyone moving about downstairs. He inched closer to the banister, still nothing but the continuous beep. Peering downstairs, the city lights that shone throughout the brownstone remained unbroken, proving that no one was walking around the vicinity, at least from what he could glimpse over the railing.
As best he could to be quiet, he shuffled down the hallway along the banister, to the top of the stairs. Hefting the trophy again and forcing the shakes from his hand, he took the stairs one at a time, carefully creeping down each stair, toe touching down first, slowly followed by the heel to evenly distribute the weight. Just as he was about midway down the staircase, a loud siren began ringing throughout the brownstone like Big Red racing to a 5-alarm. He almost shit his pants!
The entry alarm allowed two minutes for deactivation before the burglar alarm was tripped. With no more reason for stealth, he dashed down the stairs and flipped on the light switch, bringing the trophy high over his head. Bright light exploded from the wall sconces, filling the darkness with a false sense of safety. Quickly scanning the room in a glance he saw the splintered wood, like pointy spikes, jutting from the doorframe where the lock had been forced open. Glass from a shattered picture frame littered the floor around the half table nestled against the wall by the basement door. Both doors were left ajar.
His mind raced as the incessant alarm threatened to rob him of his sanity. Eyeing the broken shards, he feared within the short time since the entry alarm was tripped, until the full-blown pandemic cry of the burglar alarm, that the intruders must still be in the house. He stood still, looking back and forth between the front door and the basement door. Sucking in a deep breath—trophy weapon solid in hand—he lunged for the basement. He grabbed the doorknob and stopped short.
What if this was just a trick?
He turned from the door and stared down at the carelessly broken picture frame. Fear and indecision gripped his feet in place like an action still frame. What if this was a bait-and-switch tactic, where the basement door was left ajar tricking him into searching the basement first, while the intruder silently sat waiting and watching from a hiding place upstairs?
Jack was still holding the doorknob when it hit him mid-thought. He’d been too smart for his own good and unfortunately smarter than the intruder. Like a linebacker, a ski mask-clad man burst through the basement door, wrenching the knob from Jack’s hand and barreled over him. With the wind knocked from his lungs, Jack dropped the trophy as he tumbled to the floor with the intruder on top of him. Struggling to catch his breath, Jack fought like a cornered animal, pounding and clawing his fists into the man’s face and chest, splitting his lip and forcing him to roll off.
As the intruder scrambled to get to his feet, he slipped on splattered drops of blood from his own lip and accidentally kicked the trophy. The moment it hit the wall after sailing through the broken glass, both sets of eyes locked onto the weapon; Jack winded from below, the man dripping from above.
Jack realized the advantage the intruder had over him in reaching the trophy first. He’d never get to it in time, so he pulled a bait-and-switch of his own. When the man’s eyes unlocked from the trophy and cut Jack like two daggers, he flinched like he was going for the trophy.
He bought the bait…
The intruder lunged towards the weapon, hips first followed by the rest, like someone had zapped him with a cattle prod. Jack waited for the right moment and used the weight of his upper body to swing his legs around, pivoting on his butt and extending his foot out in a clothesline maneuver.
The expression on the intruder’s face changed from brutal determination to a pallid look of surprise as Jack’s foot hooked the man’s right leg like a seesaw fulcrum, effectively toppling him over and planting him face-first into the broken glass. Jack completed the spin, sitting up Indian style and used his hands to launch himself into a standing position.
The man let out a guttural bellow when his face hit the floor, scratching the wood beneath from the momentum of the maneuver. Shaking it off in anger, he wasted no time on recovery as he forced his body into a squatting position, then up on his feet. Glass tinkled to the floor, falling from the intruder’s ski mask and leather coat. He swiped the black mask off his head and used it to dig out the remaining glass, then quickly replaced it before Jack could see his face.
In the meantime, Jack dove for the trophy like it was home plate, bases loaded. Landing on his chest and sliding the rest of the way across the floor, he grabbed the weapon in both hands.
What was he thinking? It wasn’t a gun.
Despite the bait-and-switch maneuver, the man still had the standing advantage. In
stead of overreacting, Jack should have remained topside, he realized from the vibration of boots pounding across the floor.
Blood dotted the man’s skin around the holes of his ski mask and his eyes betrayed a savage intensity Jack’s only seen on rabid animals. A sick grin formed in the mouth hole of the mask and he cranked his leg back to kick Jack’s head. Seeing this from the corner of his eye, Jack rolled over and swung the trophy. He used the opposing force from his swinging leg as a pivot and cracked the man’s kneecap dead-on with the heavy marble end of the trophy. It was like a bone-meets-marble head-on collision.
The intruder released another bellow when the trophy made contact, producing a loud popping sound, like air in a plastic bag squeezed past its limit. Clutching his knee with both hands and hopping backwards, the man bounced up and down screaming foreign obscenities, giving Jack time to get to his feet and charge at him.
Watching through blood-filled eyes he saw Jack coming, waving the trophy over his head like a mad man. He blinked away the blood and his jaw set in determination. He’d been trained not to act irrationally like the man charging him, but he’d had enough. Once Jack was too close to stop from momentum, the man squatted down into a ball.
Jack had blindly let rage take over. Seeing the man’s maneuver through a futile moment of clarity, his face blanched in terror for he knew he couldn’t stop. His legs hit the hump of the man’s back first, and the rest of his body toppled over him like a medicine ball.
Misdirecting the raging blow of the trophy, Jack helplessly smashed it full force into the wooden floor, separating the heavy marble base from the metallic bowling pin. At the same time, the man used the momentum to stand up and fling Jack up against the wall.
Jack did a handstand—minus the hands—then his body slumped down the wall, hitting headfirst before he tumbled over, dazed. He pulled the useless bowling pin close in front of his blurry eyes in an attempt to defend himself.
During the entire struggle, they had both been too occupied to notice the incessant ringing of the telephone. The man balled his fists and turned heel towards Jack’s limp form, laying stunned on the floor. The blurry figure in Jack’s vision grew in size, limping its way toward him as he helplessly jabbed at it with the busted bowling pin still firm in his grasp, like a broken bottle in a barroom fight. The man stepped up with his good leg, kicking the broken trophy out of his hand and sending it down the basement stairs. Jack cried out, pulling his hand back and cradling it. A smile of triumph upturned the bloody corners of the man’s lips inside the ski mask hole. He pulled his good leg back again to finish what he started when the phone went abruptly silent.
His leg froze mid-air as he looked at the phone, then realization struck him like a hard slap. The ringing phone had been the alarm company call center, calling as standard procedure before dispatching the authorities. Since no one answered to provide the correct password, they would immediately put the danger risk on high alert and send the police. In this rich neighborhood it wouldn’t take them long to respond.
Looking down at Jack cradling his wounded hand like a bird with a broken wing, he decided it wasn’t worth getting caught. He didn’t have enough time for revenge and glancing in the direction of the basement, he knew there wasn’t time to get what he’d come for.
Jack’s body groaned a sigh of relief at the sight of the blurry figure limping its way out the front door. Before he was gone, Jack had glimpsed the fuzzy shape of a star-like tattoo peeking out beneath his sleeve. He’d never been in an altercation such as this in his entire life, not even a childhood fight.
He shook his head to clear the fuzziness. Not bad for a first time he thought as he sat up. He clenched his teeth while he rubbed at a headache developing below the bump that was forming on top of the last bump from the hospital. He wouldn’t be as foolish a second time in forgetting to change the alarm status to HOME. He’d been lucky enough in not breaking his neck in that crafty wall-slam-dunk trick.
He sat still for a moment until his eyes fully focused, then couldn’t bear the sound of the alarm anymore. Leaning forward with his arms out for support, he carefully pushed himself up to a standing position, favoring the hand that got kicked, and crossed the room to shut the blasted alarm off.
He dialed 911 and informed them of the break-in. While he waited on the line, they confirmed the call-in from the alarm company and radioed the patrol unit that was almost at the brownstone and apprised them of the status. With that done, he would be able to search the basement without fear of getting shot when they arrived to take his statement.
He placed the phone back on the cradle and carefully stepped around broken glass to the basement door. Strange, he thought, flipping the switch on and lighting up the dark basement downstairs. Why start with the basement in search of the key? The intruder should’ve known the alarm was going to sound after he broke in and passed the beeping panel. Anybody would know that. A more likely place to find anything of value like a jewelry box would’ve been in one of the bedrooms. That only confirmed it had to be a member of the organization. With that thought in mind, he descended the basement steps.
He crossed his arms over his bare chest as he shivered in his shorts from the dankness of the old basement. Shadows crept everywhere from a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. Looking around, he was unsure if anything had been taken since this was his first visit. Not even as a kid when he stayed with his uncle, had he ever ventured into the basement. The scary closet in his parent’s house had cured him of any curiosity as to what lurks within the depths of this room with its damp dirt floor.
The basement was old and probably in its original state since construction, unlike the remodeled fashion above. Antique furniture covered with dusty sheets lined the walls to the right of the basement and on the left was an old workbench. The bench was stained black from ancient grime and filled with tools so old and rusty that Jack was at a loss as to what their purpose had been during their useful days. In front of the work area sat a new wheelbarrow filled with bright red bricks—a used trowel left abandoned amongst the bricks like a fallen soldier. The workbench ran halfway down the length of the room until the wall cut left around the corner into another open area filled with more relics of the past, covered by more dusty sheets.
His sinuses screamed from breathing in the dank scent of the dirt floor under his bare feet, as he aimlessly searched around for fifteen minutes, until he heard voices calling out up above. Running back upstairs, he failed to notice the fresh boot prints leading around to the back of the staircase.
The two officers met him at the top of the stairs with their guns drawn for precaution. After about a half hour they had a full report. Jack told them the events of the evening and gave as much a detailed description of the intruder as he could, leaving out his theory of who and why in hopes it didn’t reach Detective Scanlin. The situation was getting stickier and stickier for the time when he needed to come clean with the detective, but he first needed to discover the nature of his uncle’s involvement.
The forensics team was just about finished taking pictures, scouring the place for fingerprints and gathering a sample of the intruder’s blood from the floor. Jack shook his head. They were wasting their time. If the organization was as connected as Father Angeli had hinted at with his dying words about the pawns in the justice system, they would make sure any hits on the evidence would be squashed before reaching the light of day. Angeli had been right. No one was to be trusted, but Jack had no choice. The police had already been on their way. Canceling the alarm call might have only alerted the organization to his knowledge of their existence, if they didn’t already know.
When the last of the forensics team left, he cleaned the broken glass and secured the front door as best he could until the locksmith opened and he could phone in the repair. Rubbing at his head, a chill coursed through his body. He came too close to getting more than just a bump on his head. He needed an action plan and soon. Playing sitting duck was a dangerous game he d
idn’t care to play.
With the door secured and mess cleaned, there was nothing left to do until morning and being tossed on his head had made him a little woozy. He needed to try and get some sleep. Before making the same mistake twice, he ran into the office to get his cell phone before going back upstairs to bed.
TWO NEW MESSAGES flashed on the screen when he unplugged the phone from the charger. He could see by the caller ID that the second message was from the alarm monitoring company. When no one answered the house phone during the struggle, they’d tried his cell phone. The lawyer must have given the company Jack’s personal cell. He deleted the message without listening to it.
The first message was the one he’d been waiting for all week. Moe called while he’d been sleeping. It was about time. Hopefully he had some concrete information, he thought, tapping the PLAY button and taking the stairs two at a time back to his bedroom.
‘Hey Jack, it’s Moe. Sorry so late, man. Duty called if ya—eh, know what I mean. Or I should say that redhead. Ha-haa! Anyway, I just finished recovering the data on your unc’s computer. Dude—sorry I peeked, I swear—I didn’t look at all of it, but there’s some really freaky religious shit on that…oh, yeah, sorry—my condolences on your loss, bro. Really man, that’s just messed up—your dad and uncle. Man, I’d go crazy. I’m here if you need bro, seriously. Anyway, I emailed you a zipped file with all the documents from the hard drive—what a whopper it was for just documents. I converted everything into PDFs to cut down on size and I put it all in order of what was recently opened. I figured that would help, if not, it’s easy enough to sort. This is going to sound unbelievable, but there was one file that I couldn’t crack. I know, cray-cray, huh? It’s highly password encrypted and I don’t have enough CPU power to crack it, so I guess you could say I could crack it. There! I’m still da man! Sorry, tee hee. I’ve got to hang onto my image here. Anyway, there is a password hint when you pull it up that I think was meant for you, so maybe you’ll be able to figure it out. You’ll know what I mean when you see it. Your uncle must’ve thought you’d end up with his computer. If not, it could take years, seriously, before I could open it. Oh, and it’s also the most recent file on the computer. Good luck with it, sorry I couldn’t open it and I hope you’re not mad I peeked—you know how I am. I’ve unlocked the password on it and I’ll ship it back on Monday. If you have any trouble opening the zipped file give me a buzz. Oh and Jack? One other thing you should know. Be careful. I don’t know what this is all about, but I found a major backdoor on that computer. Oh yeah forgot, techy terms, sorry. What I mean is, someone who really, really knew their shit—don’t worry, not more than me—hacked into this computer and created a backdoor, or think of it as a way in—to be able to access this computer at anytime from anywhere. They had access to any and all personal info. Whatever’s goin’ on, they’ve seen every megabyte on that baby. They installed a really crafty bug that sends a signal to them every time the computer is even turned on. The backdoor log has more hits than the actual user of this computer. It’s a good thing you couldn’t get on, but don’t worry, it’s safe now. Just be careful’s all I’m sayin’. Take care man. Holla if you need anything else bro and again, my condolences.’
