Dead East

by Steve Winshel

  Silent sky, quiet desert, nothing breathing but one man,

  Laying alone, unseen, unknown, unconnected.

  Waiting. Time stopped, but not the world,

  Which passed slowly by, not knowing, not seeing, not caring.

  Until his finger slowly squeezed, barely moving, just far enough.

  And a bullet streaked through the unbroken canvas that painted their lives,

  Tearing a hole, ripping through flesh, starting a torrent of blood. Ending a life,

  Starting another wait. Ambivalence.

  The last word was underlined.

  Jarvis recognized the bad poem. It was his. He walked quickly to his bedroom and pulled out the composition notebook. He looked at the first entry, dated almost a year ago. It wasn’t in this book. He went to the closet and pulled out a small box. It was filled with the same kind of notebook, black and white covers neatly arranged in two stacks. Jarvis took a handful out and began to check the dates printed on the front. He quickly found the one he wanted, from three years earlier. Flipping through the pages, he found the entry. Written in his own hand, much sloppier than what Brin had printed and laminated, was the same poem.

  Every night, before closing his eyes and falling into deep dream sleep for the single hour that was all he needed, all he ever got, Jarvis jotted down a few lines of something. Maybe a poem, or an idea for a movie-of-the-week. A novel or a short story. When he was feeling adventurous it might be the lyrics to a song. It was just a way to release his mind, to exercise a part of his brain that seemed to accumulate thoughts during the day but never had expression. It was never to be read by someone else, any more than the quiet confessions to a psychiatrist should ever be shared outside the sanctity of the therapist’s couch. Brin had been here, reading from this book.

  At the bottom of this fragment of poem Jarvis had scratched out in the middle of the night years earlier, one inspired by memories of Brin who had visited that week three years ago, was a line in Brin’s same handwriting. It was a website address.

  Jarvis went to the iPad lying carelessly on some clothes atop his dresser and flicked the screen on. He typed in the address and the screen quickly filled with a black background. In the center were two white boxes, one labeled Username and the other Password. Across the top of the page was just one line: Secure storage. There were no links, nothing that said what the site did or how to sign up or who ran it. It was clearly for people who already knew what it was. Jarvis had thought Brin too paranoid to be on the grid, to use websites or anything online. But this must have been a very, very secure environment. He stared at the empty spaces that waited for him to type something. Brin had made it very difficult for anyone to find the clues – the truck mirror, a private journal only he and Jarvis knew about with an entry that would only have been meaningful to the two of them, and an ultra-secure website. He wouldn’t have made it hard to get in if he’d trusted how difficult he’d made finding the clues. Jarvis looked at the slip of laminated paper still in his hand and slowly typed in the string of digits and randomly capitalized and lower-case letters interspersed. That had to be the password. He pondered the username for a moment and then it was obvious. He typed in Ambivalence. It was one of the few times he’d done anything that resembled titling one of his bits of writing before drifting into brief slumber.

  There was no button to indicate logging in or going to the next step so he just hit the Return button. Nothing happened for a moment, and then the screen switched to a white background and in the center was an icon of a folder. Nothing special, the same icon used by every computer operating system in the world – yellow folder with a small tab. It sat alone, no markings, no label, no explanation of where it came from or what it held. Jarvis clicked twice on it by tapping the screen. It opened instantly. Jarvis stood and stared at a list of documents. They had dates, but no names. The first one was created almost seven years ago. This was Brin’s history. And Jarvis understood instantly it was how his friend was going to help him find whoever had put him near death.

  Chapter Ten

  Jarvis clicked a document dated a couple months ago. It opened on a page with half a dozen lines of notes. Brin was as meticulous in his electronic record-keeping as he was in stalking a target. Despite the fact the words were standard fonts appearing on a computer screen, they seemed to carry his concise, tight handwriting. Jarvis read short, functional sentences: where Brin had been, who he had seen, why he’d been following them. As he scrolled through the half dozen pages, he began to formulate a picture of the life Brin had been leading. There was no mention of where he lived, or shopped, or what he ate. It was all business. But from his description of tailing a motorcycle through city streets, to staking out a restaurant downtown for three straight nights, to being paid in tobacco and raw steaks by a client, Jarvis imagined his friend moving through life. Zig-zagging, never in one place too long, but always with the same theme. He was like Jarvis, helping people in tough spots, only he didn’t have a license or live in a place with an address. Or get paid in American currency.

  Jarvis closed the document and opened another. Same rhythm. He read quickly through the half dozen pages covering a week, then opened another. Nothing interesting, nothing relevant. Another, and another. Finally he clicked on the document dated one week earlier. This was a long entry, written all on the same day. Brin was following someone, a young man. There was no mention of why he was pursuing him. There was a log of the man’s daily activities. Home, work, gym. How fast he drove, what route he took. If Jarvis didn’t know better he’d think this was prep work for an assassination. But something was different. Brin made reference to his tours in the Middle East. The young man reminded him of soldiers he’d seen or killed. Brin was cautious but fascinated by his quarry. The final entry on the last page made Jarvis shiver. It was just two words: Made contact.

  He went back and re-read the entire document, word for word, looking for clues. He moved to the bed and jotted down notes on a white legal pad. Opened the document dated just prior to the last one and searched for any other tidbits. After half an hour he had one page of writing. There was a story there, but it didn’t jump out at him. Not yet. What he had was a location, a description of a young man, some odd behavior by Brin and the man he followed, and a poisoning. Good thing he was a detective. Jarvis rubbed his eyes and looked out the bedroom window to the ocean. It was mid-day and the waves were too gentle for the real surfers. Just a few kids wading in the breakers. He went into the kitchen and made the breakfast he’d skipped when the call had come from the cop Rayford. He absently downed the eggs, cheese, onions and capers and stood at the sink drinking strong black tea while he washed the frying pan. His mind was playing out the last couple days, but from Brin’s perspective. Something had to have been off for him to be the victim instead of the hunter. Something had distracted him, or convinced him to let down his guard. Jarvis went to the hall closet and took out the Glock he used for serious business. It cut into his hip when he drove, but he ignored the twinge as he headed out onto PCH and toward the suburbs of the San Fernando Valley where Brin had started to follow his target.

  Jarvis got halfway up the 405 freeway to Mulholland when his phone rang. He ignored the California law and put the cell against his ear.

  “Yeah.”

  Rayford skipped the pleasantries. “Find anything?”

  “Nothing,” Jarvis lied. The bimmer picked up speed as the road steepened and other cars were slowed by gravity. “You?”

  The detective sighed audibly despite the lousy signal. “I suppose. Some old woman at the grocery store tipped over and now she’s in a coma.” He paused. “Kinda like your friend.”

  Jarvis cut across three lanes of traffic and was on the Getty Center off ramp before the yelling from the other cars had died down. “Where are you?”

  “The Ralph’s at Pico and Century City.”

  He didn’t have to ask where it was or why a major crimes detective had been called in for a slip-and-
fall in the produce section. Brin’s condition was no accident and the cops had their eyes peeled. They’d been right to do so. Jarvis was in the parking lot in ten minutes, clocking an average speed of 83 mph and instigating a lot of raised middle fingers.

  Rayford must have gotten to the scene within minutes of the woman collapsing and called Jarvis as he was walking in the door because Jarvis passed the gurney being wheeled out by paramedics. The old lady must’ve been in her 70s but looked as if she hadn’t missed a meal in any of those years. There was a smear of something yellow and sticky on her face and it bubbled slightly with her shallow breaths. She looked like she’d fallen asleep while eating a bowl of scalloped potatoes and fallen face-first into it. She also looked like she probably wouldn’t be waking up soon. Jarvis followed the line of gawkers to the spot where a couple of uniformed cops were putting up a barrier of yellow tape, brighter than the smears of food on the woman’s face. They wrapped it around a stand with loaves of fresh bread and then across twenty feet of linoleum to hook on a stand holding bottles of wine, eventually creating a hexagon around an area that included a row of hot-food trays protected by a massive sneeze guard, a cheese sample stand, and a rotating display of sunglasses. Jarvis could see a mess on the floor near the ready-to-eat stand. Scalloped potatoes, heavy on the cheese. He’d guessed right.

  A guy wearing a white button-up shirt and sporting an ID card clipped to the pocket was obviously the store manager. He was gesticulating to Rayford, who didn’t bother pretending to write down the tirade. As Jarvis got closer he picked up the gist. Sales were being lost, customers leaving, flow to the aisles disrupted. Rayford kept a dead look on his face and waited for the manager to take a breath.

  “Would you like me to shut the place down for a week while we do a full investigation?”

  The manager’s mouth opened and then stopped. He wasn’t dumb, just limited.

  Rayford turned to Jarvis and ducked under the freshly-wrapped tape to meet him near an open olive bar with a much smaller sneeze guard.

  “I’m guessing she didn’t slip on the potatoes and break a hip?”

  Rayford wasn’t in the mood for repartee. “Pupils dilated, breathing shallow, and pulse thready. Looks a lot like your buddy Brin and she didn’t have a stroke either.” He looked around at the crowd. “The woman’s a regular, roams around the store leaning on a cart like it’s a walker. Puts a few things in the basket, but mostly grazes.”

  He looked through a few pages on his notebook. “Half a dozen people saw her fall, like a sack of potatoes, then convulse a little. No one wanted to do mouth-to-mouth. We tracked her path through the store. Some grapes in produce, free sample of pizza down aisle four, couple of cheese squares over there,” he pointed with the notebook, “and then the main course at the hot food bar.”

  The cart the woman had been pushing was still there, angled into the long trough of food. Main dishes, vegetables, desserts, all separated into metal bins and all with some variation of coagulation covering them. A plastic container with half a spoonful of three or four undistinguishable foodstuffs rested in the front of her cart. A spoon was on the floor next to the cart.

  “She’d been working her way down the line, smorgasbord style.”

  A tech arrived from behind them. He had half a dozen plastic evidence bags containing grapes, cheese cubes, and something that might have been bits of microwaved pizza.

  “Brin wouldn’t have hung around if he’d been feeling like crap. Whatever it is works fast. Probably in the hot food.”

  Rayford nodded. “Probably, but can’t take any chances. We’ll have to shut down the place until we’ve run tests.” He said it loudly enough for the manager to hear and the reaction was an audible, unintelligible choking sound. Rayford gave a barely perceptible shake of the head to Jarvis – they’d only need to confiscate the areas the woman had used as a movable feast.

  “You know the shit storm this is going to cause?”

  This time Rayford closed his eyes and shook his head. “Serial poisoner? Yeah, a lot of paperwork.”

  Jarvis laughed and pointed to the floor. “Stay away from the scalloped potatoes. I’ll give you a ring later to hear what you found.”

  “Really? Sure you don’t just want me to send you a copy of the report?”

  Jarvis turned to head back out. “Don’t worry, it’ll be a trade. I should know something by then.”

  He pushed past the gathering crowd and headed to the parking lot to resume his trip to a house in the San Fernando Valley.

  Chapter Eleven

  In the late fall, twenty degrees can separate the air in Beverly Hills from the ambient temperature of the flatlands of Tarzana along Ventura Blvd. Jarvis watched the gauge climb into the seventies and then low eighties as he waited for lights to turn green and cars to slowly accelerate for half a block until another red forced the line to a full halt again. Turning north on Reseda Blvd and passing half a dozen strip malls that were progressively less cared for, eventually bordering on dilapidated, he came to the side street named in Brin’s ledger. Magnolia Ave had neither magnolias nor the grandeur of an avenue. He rolled past trees that seemed kin to the strip malls a couple blocks away and noted the increasing prevalence of chain link fences, dearth of actual grass, and greater density of pickup trucks. 19438 was better kept than the others, but only because there were no Beware of Dog signs or chipped paint adorning sagging external walls. He slowed but did not stop then made a U-turn a couple blocks further on and came back. Stopping in front of what was either an abandoned one-bedroom home or the residence of someone who had died weeks ago and not yet been discovered, Jarvis pulled over and looked more carefully at the house Brin had targeted.

  There was no garage so the empty driveway suggested no one was home. Brin had probably observed from this same spot the four times he’d written about his surveillance. Though there was an interesting pall over the neighborhood, nothing special stood out. That convinced Jarvis there must be something insidious to have kept Brin’s attention. He killed the engine, settled back in his seat, and waited. The temperature quickly climbed half a dozen degrees, but the trees blocked enough sun that he knew it would be bearable for as long as he had to wait. The iPhone connected to the sound system continued to gently play.

  Four hours passed and the sun was close enough to dusk that long shadows stretched across the street in front of the car. The temperature inside was down to 73. Jarvis had composed half a dozen post-slumber snippets, none of which would make it into the journal late that evening. He started making a grocery list in his mind and got as far as toilet paper when a late model Hyundai coming down the street toward him turned into the driveway. It idled for a moment before the engine cut and the driver-side door opened.

  The young man wearing a white short-sleeved dress shirt was overtly middle Eastern. He was slim and the briefcase he pulled from the passenger seat strained his slender muscles. Jarvis watched him fumble with keys and use a remote to lock the car then softly walk up the path to the newly painted front door and fumble again getting it open. He was unable to see past the young man into the house and the drawn curtains restricted any following of his movements once inside. Jarvis started his engine and drove slowly past the house, noting the license plate number on the Hyundai and debating whether to call Rayford for the trace or use a friend who had unrestricted and completely illegal access to the DMV registry. He needed the license plate; doing a search on the address would only give the owner and he had no way to know if the fellow Brin had been following was the owner, a renter, a squatter, or what. Unprepared for an unnecessary all-night vigil, he headed back to the Westside. Turning onto Reseda Blvd where the cell reception would be better, he dialed his friend Peter, hoping Peter’s mom wouldn’t answer. She often tried to listen in on her son’s calls, figuring that providing a private basement dwelling to her 41-year-old boy bought her certain privileges. Particularly with all the computer equipment and electronics he kept putting on the credit card sh
e gave him that was supposed to be used for gas and incidentals. This time, Peter picked up.

  “Dude, whaddaya need?”

  Jarvis didn’t bother asking how the recluse knew it was him despite the block Jarvis had on his cell phone.

  “I’ve got a license plate. You ready?”

  “Always ready, man. You carryin’?”

  Jarvis laughed to himself. “Yup. How about two all-access passes in San Diego next month?” He could hear Peter’s heart beat faster. That kind of pass to ComiCon meant he’d be able to go behind the scenes and maybe catch a glimpse of some of the booth babes – or, god forbid, some trampy B-movie chick – getting changed into alien garb or superhero costume.

  Peter spit out a name, address, and social security number almost before Jarvis had finished giving him the last number of the plate.

  “Can you text that, Peter? I’m driving.”

  “Sure, man, just make sure to get in the right lane and take Sepulveda in 100 feet – it’s stop-and-go a mile up at Santa Monica.” It didn’t occur to Peter that it might freak someone out for them to know he could pinpoint their location based on a 30 second phone call.

  “Say hi to your mom. I’ll put the tickets in the mail.” Jarvis disconnected before the boy-man could object to such an old-fashioned delivery mode.

  He dialed another number. “Hey, Rayford. Another old lady drop?”

  “No, just this one. Out of a coma. And dead.”

  Jarvis’ mind went to Brin. Rayford felt the pause. “You got anything to tell me, you know, on the investigative front?”

  A long pause. “Maybe. I’ll let you know.” He disconnected and took the next exit. He needed some quiet time. There was a wired Starbucks a mile further along Mulholland. He was there in forty seconds. Another minute and he was sitting in a quiet corner with just a couple of high school girls giggling as they waited for their order keeping him company on the other side of the café. He propped his iPad on the small table and pulled up a browser. It didn’t take more than a couple minutes to get a picture of Azad Hekmatiar, the name Peter provided. The kid was on every social networking site Jarvis could think of and even though there wasn’t much info on any of them, it was enough to tell a story. Facebook had him with twenty friends, light by the standards of anyone under thirty. His status was single and he didn’t waste a lot of time listing his favorite movies and music. LinkedIn was a little more interesting, listing his current job as assistant store manager at Forever21. He’d fit right in with the teens buying low-end but cool clothes and knick-knacks. Azad named a high school and a local college as his alma maters. Nothing special to separate him from the hundreds of thousands of young men and women of Arabic descent living in the greater Los Angeles neighborhood.