by B K Nault
“So far it’s only told the future.” Pepper observed.
Frank quipped, “Wish it had a Google search.”
“What about revisiting the scene of the crash?” Keith suggested. “Where did it happen?”
Harold studied the hot dog in his hand, the smell of mustard once again evoking a strong sensory memory of the crash.
“Son, that’s a brilliant idea.” Stan clapped him on the shoulder. “Everyone finish eating, we’re taking a field trip to the intersection of Sunset and Gower.”
****
Stan’s car was still awaiting repairs from the raid, so they piled in Keith and Frank’s SUV and headed for Hollywood.
“I thought some of the sights might trigger something,” Stan said. “Although this place is really cleaned up a lot in the past few years. Anything coming back yet, Harold?”
“Why were you driving around here?” Pepper wanted to know as they passed the famous sights. Grauman’s Chinese Theater, the Wax Museum.
He could only recall snippets, and repeated the information his grandmother had told him. “My mom had a job in the studio. I guess in one of the production offices. From what I was told, she usually worked, at least part time, since my dad never managed to hold down a real job.”
As Stan said, the area had changed since Harold was little, but the landmarks, the studio entrances, and RCA Records building were all familiar, although he didn’t know if it was just because they were icons anyone would recognize or if it was really something that had registered in his childhood brain. They crawled behind a tour bus and skidded to a stop for a group of pedestrians more focused on finding their favorite stars’ names along the Walk of Fame than observing crosswalk signals.
Harold’s nerves were raw, and the jolt set his teeth on edge.
“Something I read in an article said the first people who arrived on the scene heard the crash and ran outside to help.” Harold was impressed with how much Stan remembered despite his head wound.
Frank pulled into a parking spot across from the famous Sunset Gower studio, slid the car into park, and turned off the engine. They got out, and Stan pulled out a notebook with copies of the police report from the day of the accident.
“Your mom’s car was pulling out from this direction.” Stan pointed south. “And on the light change, she pulled out and was broadsided by your dad’s car coming from the west.” Stan scanned the details, flipping pages.
Harold replayed the same images he’d harbored since the day he said goodbye to his mom, then his dad. The angles seemed accurate. But he had been so little.
“Here it is.” Stan read from one of the reports. “Says here the first people on the scene were working inside soundstage number thirteen, came out and gave aid. They said they watched a man meeting your dad’s description get out and run off. Described him right here.” He ran a finger along the physical description. “Sounds like him.”
They watched the cars moving past, and Harold searched his memory for something, anything that might help illuminate the reason Walter had panicked after hitting his own wife’s car, his son riding in the back seat. “Maybe he was afraid for his own life?”
A tour group came out of the studio gate, and they listened to the chatter for a few minutes. An ambulance blared urgency that rose, then rapidly fell as it passed them.
“I used to work as a security guard here,” Keith told them when it was quiet again. “Was my first gig.”
Frank nodded. “Lots of history in there.” Its art deco sign diminutive compared to some of the more lavish studios, the Sunset Gower property, once known as being located in Poverty Row, might have been mistaken for any other office buildings except for the requisite guard house and camera cranes rolling alongside two of the cream-colored adobe structures.
“Something doesn’t seem right. Can I see that, Dad?”
Stan handed Keith the clipboard, and he studied it. “I know what’s wrong.” He raised the clipboard. “The eyewitnesses were either mistaken, or downright lying. I’ll never forget the word I repeated on every tour I gave. Triskaidekaphobia.”
“What is that?” Harold tried to catch a glimpse at the page flipping in the breeze.
“Superstition about the number thirteen. There is no soundstage thirteen in the Sunset Gower studio lot.”
****
Harold allowed the first spark of hope to flame up as they drove back to Van Nuys. If they could track down the alleged eyewitnesses and find out what they were hiding, he could solve the mystery surrounding his mother’s death.
“I have to know where he really was the night Mom died. If he had killed her, where did he go? And if it wasn’t him, where was he when the accident happened?” Harold faced forward, unable to focus on the buildings whizzing by. “Where is he now, Stan?”
“He’s here in LA.” Stan flicked a thumb indicating an exit ramp. “Take us to the city jail, son. They only allow one visitor at a time, and I think Harold has earned this chat with his dad.”
While they drove, Pepper squeezed Harold’s hand, but he barely noticed as he prepared what he was going to say.
The bell sounded, the doors opened, and several men in orange suits shambled into a large room. Instead of the small glass enclosures and filthy phones from the jailhouse in the mountain community, Harold was relieved to sit across a metal table from his dad. Walter’s flesh was sallow, but he’d gained a little weight and his hair had been trimmed.
Without preamble, Harold began his questioning. “I have to know where you were when Mom died. And if you weren’t driving the car, who was?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to piece together, son. And I’m fine, thanks.”
Harold shifted forward, attracting the attention of a guard, who watched him until he settled back. “We don’t have much time. There’s no question it was your car, I know that because I’ve had nightmares of it since then, and seeing it ram Stan’s car brought it all to the front again.” He tapped his forehead for emphasis. “But I am starting to believe you when you say you weren’t driving it.” He explained about the false testimony by the first witnesses to the scene. “So if you weren’t there, where were you?”
“I was…with someone else.”
“Look around. You’re incarcerated, wanted for murder, and there is no reason for them to believe otherwise, and you don’t want to tell me where you were and who you were with?” Harold considered the possibility Walter had been seeing another woman, but was about to lose his temper when the man checked over his shoulder, and turned back, lowering his voice.
“I was with a guy, he was a partner for a while…at the time he was working for the CIA, but not long after the crash I found out he was lured to the other side. He’d run up debt with his coke habit, and got himself in deep with a loan shark. He was my only alibi, but of course I couldn’t call an agent I suspected was working both sides and ask him to verify my whereabouts. And I didn’t go with him, so he would have wanted me dead rather than help me out.”
“Why? What?” Harold’s head spun.
“We were developing the algorithm together. He wanted me to give it to him so he could sell it. I told him I’d turn him in if he didn’t leave me alone. Pissed him off, so he told me he would find a way to persuade me.”
“What does that have to do with mom’s death?”
“He knew I had a drinking problem, and that your mom was at the end of her rope. I was a fool. Told him I was going to AA and invited him to come with me. He was already negotiating with someone who wanted very badly to have the technology. I was filing patents left and right to prevent him from stealing them all from me.”
“So he had mom killed to scare you off?”
“I’m not convinced he wanted to kill her. He thought I was driving the car. He was also pretty messed up from the drugs, son.”
“Why didn’t you go to the cops and tell them you weren’t the driver?”
“He was extracted, the eyewitnesses were on their pa
yroll, and the frame job was complete. I had no idea if they’d penetrated law enforcement agencies as well. I had to make my case at the same time as I was finishing my research. And if I ever visited you, son, they would have found you at your grandma’s, and used you as bait to lure me into the open.” He shifted his jaw, rubbing a hand across the spot Harold had slugged. “They stole portions of code, wiped my hard drive, and drugged me, dumped me in West Hollywood to die on the street. But a priest helping the street people during a cold snap found me. I started using an alias. That’s why I had to leave you and your grandma alone. Son, the older you got, the more danger you were in. If they ever suspected you could finger them, you would have been toast. But I was never far from you, your whole life. I slept in the park some nights, so I could see you pass by.”
“Why did you have the car at the cabin? How did you get it up there?”
“A couple years ago I made some connections and found out where they were keeping it in storage, and did some favors for one of the guards. I think I convinced him that no one cared about the car except me, and he felt sorry for me. He just thought I was some guy down on his luck. I was hoping to find some fingerprints, something the police overlooked since they were pinning it on me. If someone was being paid off in the system, then I couldn’t rely on their investigation. Always look to the inside when you suspect foul play, son. And besides, it was my car. Took me a couple weeks to get it started, and I had just gotten it running again so I could come down the mountain and find you when the raid happened. A couple of meth-heads passing my property got a hare-brained idea to try and outrun the law in it.”
“Wasn’t it wrecked…you know, from the first crash?”
“I banged out the fender and hood. Never found replacement headlights, but the engine wasn’t damaged.” Walter smiled. “I’m pretty good with tools, you know. Worked for years as a handyman for the diocese that saved my life.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? You could have mailed me, or emailed me.”
“I did mail you a letter, son.”
“To my apartment?”
“No, to your office building.”
“What do you want me to do with this?” Harold drew out the ’scope, and Walter started to reach for it, but a guard noticed.
“Do not give him anything.”
Harold held the Kaleidoscope as if it was a pen so the guard would back away. “I assume this isn’t what you told me it was.”
“Not exactly. There’s a microchip inside that holds the algorithms I completed before I left town. As they got closer to finding where I was living, and the church was scheduled to be torn down, I knew it was time to give it to you to keep safe. In case something happened to me. I mailed the last of the patents last week.”
“Church?” The odd sensation of heat from the tiny rod warmed his hand once again. “Why me, and why didn’t you tell me who you were in the cabin that day?”
“You brought people with you I couldn’t trust.” Walter leaned forward, his fingers drummed the metal table. “I had a room in St. Mark’s. On the corner across from the park.”
The knowledge that his dad had never been too far from him dawned on Harold. “You’ve watched me grow up?”
“They could remove me from your life, but they couldn’t keep me from watching over you.” Walter scratched his chin. “That chip doesn’t do anything by itself, but it has encryption software with the ability to adapt to cyber-attacks as they are launched. When combined with the diamond, well, it’s the marriage I’d been searching for, for years.”
A tingle went up Harold’s spine as he formed the words Leesa’s prophecy had exposed. “You mean artificial intelligence?”
“Yep. It holds the most forward thinking solutions to protecting our military systems, our electric grids, even down to our 9-1-1 infrastructure. In the wrong hands it could be World War III.”
“I’ve been trying to get rid of it ever since you gave it to me.” Harold turned it over. “But why do people see their future with it?”
Walter’s expression darkened. “I have no idea. Tell me what it’s done.”
Harold described the phenomenon.
Walter seemed to retreat somewhere in the recesses of his own thoughts. “I’ll have to study this more. My gut is to suppose because it has the ability to adapt to whoever is holding it. Harold, no one knows exactly how artificial intelligence will work. We’re on the cutting edge of this technology.”
“Like the power of suggestion?”
“People see what they need to, and it senses their moral dilemma.”
“So a terrorist, let’s say, might see the future and change his mind, not cause harm?”
“Not necessarily. Some people have no moral compass. They might see their intentions as beneficial and the ’scope would only verify that.”
“Is that something you knew would happen when you invented it?”
A beat passed. “I had no idea what it would be able to do. This one’s very crude, but let’s just say it’s a small indication of the potential in one with full blown powers.”
“No wonder so many people want it.” Other visitors were getting up to leave, and Harold rushed to ask another question before their time was up. “Why didn’t you tell me who you were when Pepper and I came to the cabin?”
“Son, you brought a man with you that I’ve been avoiding for decades.”
“Morrie? You probably recognized him from the park because he runs the coffee cart. He’s my best fr—”
“No, he’s not, son. He’s one of them. I’ve been keeping an eye out for him. If I let my guard down, or let on I knew you, my cover would have been blown and you would have been in danger as well.”
****
Harold spent the time on the drive home trying to explain all that Walter had told him. Stan had more questions, but Harold’s head hurt, so he begged them to let him out at his apartment, and Pepper rode back to Van Nuys to get her car.
The worst part was considering that Morrie, who he thought was a friend, only wanted to be near him to find his dad. Surely Walter was mistaken; the guy had been by his side for years. But he had to admit there was something about his “cousin” that seemed odd.
When Harold saw his apartment, he knew without a doubt what Walter had told him was true. The door hung open an inch and a half, the jamb at the bolt dented in, the lock busted. Harold knew he shouldn’t touch anything. Still, he shouldered the door open and almost hurled when he saw the destruction.
Chapter Twenty-One
“My-my apartment’s been tossed,” Harold told Stan on the phone.
“Don’t touch anything,” Stan cautioned. “We’ll be right back, we only made it a few blocks.” He could hear Stan asking Keith to turn around. “Did you call 9-1-1 yet? Call them, and get someplace safe until they give it the all clear. You should have let me go inside with you.”
“I’d rather not until you have a look,” Harold demurred. “I don’t know who to trust.”
When Stan arrived, he checked over the apartment. “Can you tell if anything’s missing?”
“I don’t think so.” Harold pulled out the ’scope. “They were searching for this, but I had it with me.”
“Give me some time to come up with a strategy. It’s high time we draw out the bad guys. And I believe you are holding the bait.”
****
Together with a few of the officers he could trust, Harold and Stan had cooked up a plan to lure out the very people Walter had been hiding from. If they were correct in their theories, very soon his dad’s name would be cleared, and Walter could once again walk a free man.
But first, Harold had to take another drastic step he never thought he would. He needed to cut off all ties to Georgia once and for all. Her wedding plans had fallen through, or were a ruse to make him take action, and she wanted him back. He picked up the phone when it indicated she was the caller.
“Please, Harold, let’s try again,” Georgia purred. “You complete me
.”
“I’ve moved on, Georgia. You never really loved me. Besides, I thought your new passion was saving the neighborhood from blight and demolition of historical places.” He was stirring a pot of spaghetti noodles, and heard the door open and close as Pepper came in. “I even have a pet now.”
“Oh, God, you didn’t get one of those smelly turtles, did you?”
“I got two. And I got a dog, too.” He winked at Pepper who breezed in smelling of fresh mown grass and the outdoors. “My…girlfriend’s.”
“Your wha…?” Georgia guffawed. “You don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Say hello to Georgia.” He held out the phone, but Pepper shook her head. “She’s a bit shy, but believe me, I’m in love with someone who gets me, Georgia. You should meet her. You’d like her.” He wrapped an arm around Pepper, who gave him a disapproving, but cheeky grin.
“Well, if she’s willing to put up with you, then you two must be a perfect match.” Georgia sounded resigned.
“Not sure what that says about you, but this is your final notice that you can’t make me feel bad for who I am any longer.” Harold was enjoying this. “Wait, though.” He considered what he was about to say, then went for it. “Pepper’s actually interested in something I think you two might have in common.”
Pepper mouthed, “What?”
“Georgia, are you still interested in trying to save St. Mark’s?”
“You know I am, that’s a beautiful building. It would be terrible if they tore it down to make a parking structure. The lot two blocks down is better for that—”
“I was just checking. Pepper’s got some skills your crusaders could use. I’ll have her call you. I think you two would be a good team.”
“What are you so busy doing, saving the world from cyber-viruses?” Georgia never had understood the very real threat of what hackers could do, given free rein.
“You could say that.” He told her he had to go, and hung up the phone. He grabbed Pepper into his arms. “See what I just did?”
“You put me in bed with your ex?” She nibbled his good ear and whispered into it. “We’d better hurry so we’re not late.” She thumped his chest. “We can talk about that bright idea later.”
