Black Box Inc.

by Jake Bible

  He held up a small evidence bag. Inside was a bit of Dim. A key.

  “This was found on her body,” Willitz said. “That’s why it’s my case.”

  “That is not evidence of murder,” Sharon said, fetching her phone from her pocket as the troopers marched me toward the door.

  “No, but her dying words are,” Willitz said. “If you are calling your lawyers, Ms. Spaglioni, then have them meet me at my office. I’ll be waiting.”

  I looked over my shoulder and locked eyes with Harper, then Lassa, and finally Sharon. She frowned at me, then began talking fast as someone from our lawyer’s office picked up on the other end of her phone.

  Then I was outside the loft for the first time that morning and being led downstairs to a waiting police cruiser. Willitz didn’t say a word to me except to read me my rights. I didn’t say a word to him except to acknowledge those rights.

  Not my first time in cuffs.

  Willitz grumbled about me getting blood all over his car, but that didn’t stop him from shoving me into the back seat, a state trooper taking a position on either side of me. My hands were cuffed behind my back, so it wasn’t like I was going to be effective working the Dim or anything.

  But with what the world had become, I didn’t exactly fault them for the overabundance of caution, so I didn’t argue, only leaned my head back and closed my eyes. What a morning . . .

  4

  WILLITZ TOSSED a damp towel at me. Now with hands cuffed in front, I barely caught it and gladly wiped at the blood on my face. Nothing to be done about the pants or rest of me, but it was good to have the blood off. And the burger grease, too.

  “You’re not going to answer my questions, are you?” Willitz asked, sitting down for another useless round of question and no answer.

  “No,” I replied. “Gotta lawyer up, pal. Sharon would rip me a new one if I started talking.”

  “Well, I guess if you have something to hide . . .”

  I didn’t take the bait, simply leaned back in my chair and gave Willitz a blank stare as I let the soiled towel fall to the floor.

  “I could go for some snacks,” I said after a few silent seconds. “I saw that snack machine in the hall. I’ll take five bags of chips, at least four candy bars, a soda, no, three sodas, and maybe an apple if you have one that isn’t mushy. If the apple is mushy, then a banana will do. But not a mushy banana, either.”

  I raised my cuffed hands.

  “I can write it down if you undo these,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere and we’ve known each other long enough that you know I’m not a threat, Willitz.”

  “Shut up, you’re not getting anything to eat, Lawter,” Willitz replied.

  “Come on, pal,” I whined. I didn’t mean to whine, but I was goddamn hungry. “Working the Dim makes me famished and apparently I worked it hard last night.”

  “Did you, now?” Willitz asked as he leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table that separated us in the interrogation room. “Tell me more about last night.”

  I made a zip-the-lip motion and went back to the blank stare.

  “Fine, then tell me about the Dim,” he continued.

  “Pal, we’ve had this conversation,” I said. “You know all . . . about . . .”

  I stared at the one-way glass behind him, the mirrored side facing into the room, of course. Like no one knows they’re being watched.

  “Who’s in there? You got your boss here today? Brass breathing down your neck so you have to get me to do my song and dance to show you’re in the know?”

  “You love talking about yourself. So talk about yourself.”

  “I don’t love talking about myself.”

  “But you love talking about that Dim shit.”

  I wouldn’t say love was the right word. I talked about the Dim because discussion gave me a chance to work everything through my brain. The whys and hows were still a complete mystery, even to me. All I know is that after the extradimensional happening, I could reach into the Dim.

  As far as I know, I’m the only person that can. I haven’t heard of anyone else being able to manipulate Dim. It was sure as hell a surprise to me when it happened.

  Things were a little chaotic when the portals opened. People were freaking out before some semblance of order and understanding was restored. The Grand Hex was great for those who didn’t live in the Asheville area, but for the rest of us, it was hard times. The world outside the vortex points could live in ignorance, but we had to live with nightmares come to life.

  Walking home one night, possibly a little too tipsy for my own good, I was stopped by what I now know was a troll. A troll who was even drunker than me. He shouted something in drunk trollspeak. I shouted something in drunk Chasespeak. He lunged. I shot Dim from my hands and wrapped him in black.

  We both sobered up fast.

  He talked me down before I could accidentally hurt him and said he knew someone who might be able to help. I took a few deep breaths, and the Dim dissipated until it was gone. We exchanged info, which was a trippy thing to do in and of itself, and I sought him out after I had a couple days to think.

  He pointed me in the direction of a being who had a more than passing knowledge about how the portals and dimensions worked. With Harper in tow, I found the being and picked his brain. He had never heard of anyone able to manipulate the Dim before, but he at least knew what Dim was. Despite the mystery origin, I learned to control the Dim, and drunk trolls no longer had to worry about accidentally being sent into limbo without hope of return if I freaked out.

  “Come on, Lawter,” Willitz pressed. “What harm can it do? It’s nothing you haven’t explained before.”

  “But I’m not a fan of making bureaucratic jackholes happy,” I said and nodded at the one-way glass. “Ten to one there’s a whole bunch of bureaucratic jackholes in there.”

  The look on his face said I was right. The look on his face also said he couldn’t let it drop.

  Not that I didn’t sympathize. I wasn’t a Willitz fan, but the guy had a shitty job. And it was a shitty job that he couldn’t talk about to anyone who wasn’t authorized to have knowledge of the Grand Hex or the vortex points. Not that anyone would believe him if he started jabbering about portals and extradimensional beings.

  “The Dim. The space between the dimensions.” I started with what I thought was the most obvious definition.

  “Space between dimensions?” Willitz asked. “How is that possible?”

  I rolled my eyes, but decided to play along. He obviously needed me to get into the details, and brownie points with a cop never hurt anyone.

  He cocked his head back, gesturing at the one-way glass, and waited for me to expand the definition. “Not a space. More like negative space,” I said. “There are few beings who can describe it properly in scientific terms, I’m not one of them. I guess you could say it’s like two blankets lying on top of each other. The blankets are dimensions and the space between them is the Dim.”

  “You’ve been there?” Willitz asked.

  Despite his cool detective act, he was struggling to not look over his shoulder. Whoever was watching us was giving him the creeps. That meant it wasn’t only some state police bureaucratic jackholes standing behind that one-way glass.

  My guess was that Feds were in there. Possibly a senator or congressperson come to Asheville to witness the weird. Despite the obvious initial panic that would occur, I was all for letting the cat out of the bag and having the world see exactly what was going on. But, first the truth had to go through ten subcommittees in Washington, DC, so the big reveal wasn’t happening anytime soon.

  Willitz glared when I didn’t answer. “Have you been there, Lawter? Simple question.”

  “The Dim isn’t really a there.”

  “That’s not an a
nswer.”

  “It’s the one you’re getting.”

  “Okay, smart-ass, what do you have to do with the Dim?”

  I scrunched up my face in thought. It was mostly for show, but I wasn’t being completely disingenuous. That was a good question. That part was still a mystery to me.

  “Somehow, and no one, I mean no one, can say why, but somehow I can manipulate the Dim,” I said. “Trust me, I’ve asked a lot of people and beings. Wizards, witches, demons, an angel-looking chick, faeries—don’t get me started on faeries—elves, which are not the same as faeries, what I think was a vampire, but could have been a guy with a Kool-Aid fetish and stained teeth, three werewolves, a hot little—”

  “I get it, move on,” Willitz grumbled. “How do you manipulate the Dim?”

  “I draw it out and shape it into whatever I want,” I said. “Turns out I’m really good at making boxes. So I make boxes, mostly. But you—all of you—know this.” I glared at the one-way glass. “Or you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Why boxes?”

  “Anything can go in a box,” I said. He started to grumble some more, and I shook my head to stop the next question. “Then the boxes go back in the Dim until I pull them out again.”

  He held up the evidence bag that contained the piece of the Dim.

  “So you made this? This is your handy work?”

  “I’m not commenting on evidence that could be used against me, pal.”

  “But you do create these, what are they? Keys?” Willitz asked. “How are they keys?”

  “In order to keep track of the boxes, I tear off a piece of each. Each piece is unique to a specific box. If a client hands me a key, I can use the piece to retrieve their box and voilà, job done. It’s a simple business model. Ask Sharon the details about billing and all that. I only make the boxes, pal.”

  “That’s it?” Willitz asked. “You make the boxes?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. I make the boxes. And doing that makes me really goddamn hungry,” I replied as my stomach growled. “Working the Dim ups my metabolism like a thousand percent. If I don’t replenish the calories, then I die.”

  “You aren’t going to die,” Willitz said.

  “I could and it would be your fault. Ethical treatment of prisoners with special needs. Look it up,” I said. “Seriously, Willitz, I’m goddamn starving here.” I mouthed “police brutality” at the one-way glass.

  “You’d been wolfing down burgers when I walked in on you in that loft,” Willitz said.

  I looked at my wrist, which did not have a watch on it.

  “That was two hours ago,” I said. “I have no idea what happened last night, and I say that freely because it’s true, but it’s left me so hungry I could eat a dozen dragon eggs.”

  “Jesus, Lawter, don’t say that,” Willitz snapped. He instinctively looked up. “Last thing we need is a dragon problem here in North Carolina.”

  I would have told him that there was already a dragon problem up by Mars Hill, but I didn’t want to ruin his good mood. And screw him—he and his Fed buddies could find out on their own the hard way.

  “Tell you what,” I said as I leaned forward. He didn’t shrink back, so points to him. “Get me something to eat and I will answer any question you ask me.”

  The door to the interrogation room opened, and in walked my lawyer. Or floated. She floated into the room. Well, not really floated. Hard to describe exactly how banshees move. My lawyer’s a banshee.

  She tossed her briefcase onto the table in front of me, then executed a series of hand gestures. She must have been busy all morning if she was only then performing the hexes promised to other clients. Not good. She hated it when my drama interrupted her other clients’ cases. Also, sometimes when she opened her mouth, a banshee-wail accidentally slipped out that could burst eardrums, so I was grateful she remembered to perform the hexes when coming to see me.

  Carefully she opened her mouth and said, “Mr. Lawter, I hope you haven’t been answering any questions.”

  One thing you didn’t want in my line of work was your lawyer annoyed with you. They tended to let you sit in jail cells longer than needed when annoyed.

  “Nope. Haven’t answered a damn thing about the case,” I said. “Although, I was going to answer one question if Willitz got me something to eat.”

  “What would you like?” she asked.

  “Everything,” I replied.

  “Ms. Sullivan, please,” Willitz said as my lawyer, Ms. Teresa Sullivan, pulled out her phone and began texting furiously. I couldn’t even track the speed of her fingers. “Ms. Sullivan?”

  She held up a hand that constantly straddled the realm of ethereal and corporeal. Banshees were strange ones. Willitz growled, then leaned back in his chair.

  The sound of a text being sent whooshed, and Teresa looked at me.

  “Four large pizzas are on the way,” she said. “I assume there are sodas in a vending machine here?”

  “There are,” I said. “I saw them. Detective Willitz refused to get me one. He’s mean.”

  “Don’t be cheeky, Mr. Lawter,” Teresa said. She smiled at Willitz. “What did I miss? I hear you would like to charge my client with the murder of Iris Penn? Is this true?”

  “It is,” Willitz replied, but his voice didn’t sound too confident.

  “I see. May I see the indictment?” Teresa asked.

  “We are still working the evidence,” Willitz replied.

  She began to text again. Another whoosh.

  “What was that?” Willitz asked.

  “I changed the delivery location to the Black Box Inc. offices,” Teresa said. “My client is leaving. You are dropping the charges. Chase Lawter is a free man who is about to enjoy some piping hot pizza.”

  “Mmm, piping hot,” I said. “Hear that, Willitz? The pizza is piping hot, pal. Yum.”

  “Mr. Lawter? No more cheek,” Teresa said.

  “I have twenty-four hours to hold Mr. Lawter,” Willitz said. “You care to tell me how you got around that?”

  “Care to tell me how you thought you’d get away with arresting my client without any substantial evidence?” Teresa replied.

  “This is substantial—”

  He started to lift up the evidence bag with the key, but Teresa interrupted him and turned her eyes to the one-way glass. “No. It is circumstantial and you are well aware of that, Detective. Anyone involved should be well aware of that.”

  There was a knock at the door. Willitz glared as an officer came in and handed the detective a sheet of paper. Willitz’s skin turned from olive to red as he struggled to keep his anger under control. Slowly, he balled up the paper and nodded at me.

  “Banshees,” Willitz said to me. “They always know a judge.”

  “Good lawyers always know a judge, Detective,” Teresa said, returning her attention to Willitz. “No need to bring race into this.”

  She picked her briefcase up off the table and snapped her less-than-corporeal, but more-than-ethereal fingers. The handcuffs around my wrists fell away and clattered to the floor.

  “Come on,” Willitz protested. “Don’t do that. We have keys for those things.”

  “I hardly see why it matters,” Teresa said as she float-walked back to the door, then out into the hallway. She was laying it on thick.

  I stood up and followed.

  “See ya soon, Detective,” I said.

  “Why do you say soon, Lawter?” Willitz asked.

  “Uh, because Iris is dead and I want to know who killed her,” I replied. “Even if I have to find the asshole myself.”

  “Mr. Lawter!” Teresa yelled from the hallway. “Stop talking!”

  I glanced at the one-way glass and flipped off whoever was behind there. “Tell your boss,
and the other Peeping Toms, that next time I want to see him or her or them face-to-face. The hiding behind glass thing is chickenshit, pal.”

  “Mr. Lawter!” Teresa yelled again, and both Willitz and I winced.

  “Ouch,” I said as I stuck a finger in my ear and wiggled it. “I better go before she really turns up the volume.”