The Fifth Descent of Lexi Montaigne

by R. S. Darling

  Sincerely, Howard R Hughes Jr.

  Lexi ran to the kitchen and retrieved a letter addressed to Gramps. She had canceled all of Gramps’ subscriptions and changed his bills over to her name, so she had assumed the letter from HHC Inc. was junk mail. She tore it open and discovered a check for $200.

  The Excedrin went down smoothly. The glass however almost shattered when the phone chirped and Lexi dropped it. “What?”

  “Lexi,” there was buoyancy in Simon’s voice. “Come down to the station, I want you to see the guy who killed Linnux while we process him. I’m going there now . . . Shut Up! . . . Sorry about that. Listen, he’s in the back, I got to go. See you in twenty?”

  The world outside the Dakota passed by in a whirl of pale colors, a living Pacula canvas. Lexi’s stomach churned. She flipped on Beethoven to soothe her nerves. Nothing felt right anymore. The words DON’T TRUST ANYONE seemed to be everywhere these days.

  “Howard Hughes,” she mused to Beethoven. “Doesn’t prove anything, he was just as mad as Gramps, maybe even more so. Do two madmen make one sane idea?” She laughed and started at the sudden gruff sound. You’re cracking. “Shut up.”

  A memory broke through: Her friend, Marie Keegan. She had been a confidante and a great comfort during Lexi’s training to enter the force. When did I last see her? She couldn’t recall, maybe during basic training just before she failed the interview, when that arrogant Lieutenant Pascal had praised her for graduating in the top third of her class, for her analytical ability, poise and appearance, adaptability and health.

  She’d sliced herself ragged that night after Pascal failed her for ‘Lacking communication skills. Sorry.’

  Three years of training and investigative experience in the Department down the toilet just because she didn’t know how to properly respond to people. It wasn’t long after this dark time that she started psychology classes and diagnosed herself with Schizoid Personality Disorder. The tapestry of scars on her thighs in mutated tic-tac-toe patterns attested to her frustration, but she had adapted—in her own way.

  She decided to visit Marie Keegan after the station.

  “That’s the guy who stabbed Linnux?” she asked Simon behind the one-way glass fifteen minutes later.

  “That’s the scumbag.” He cracked his knuckles and continued to stare at Freddy Cooper. “Misner and Crawford nabbed him trying to jack a liquor store. What a clichéd dumbass.”

  Lexi’s eyes hopped from Freddy to Simon, wondering what the determining factor was that had set them on divergent paths. Was it how they were raised? Their genes? Maybe it had been Freddy’s desire to take by force and Simon’s desire to take by legalities and manipulation.

  Either way it had landed them on opposite sides of the law. For some inexplicable reason this amused her. Lexi giggled.

  “What’s so funny?”

  The hilarity dissipated as quickly as it had arrived. A decidedly depressing mood settled over her and she thought Bipolar Disorder, which was ridiculous, of course. “I think I’m just tired,” Lexi offered. “I’m going to go home and sleep awhile. Thank you for this, though. I feel better knowing he’s behind bars.”

  When Simon stooped to kiss her, his heavy dose of Hush slapped her awake. She crinkled her nose and turned before he noticed. How long had she hated his cologne?

  Driving down Main later, her mind swirled with images, fragments of half-remembered dreams and impressions. She forgot about Marie Keegan. On the way past Pontillo’s Pizzeria, she was confronted with one especially potent recollection: There used to be four chests.

  She spent the remainder of the day trying and failing, to complete the next chapter of her book: When Family Frightens.The night was spent rummaging through the remaining chests, scanning archaic documents and deciphering messages from Silas. Though materials in the chests ranged in years from 1933-1986, all correspondence with Silas seemed to have stopped after 1951, with the exception of one enigmatic, terse note written in 1954: ‘He found me. Everything we know about him is wrong.’

  At 11:00 p.m. the phone rang, interrupting a particularly moving portion of Beethoven.

  “I’m coming over, see you in twenty.”

  “No!” Lexi ordered. Then, regretting her none-too-subtle tone, added, “That is, I don’t think I’m well. You shouldn’t come.”

  “Nonsense. You shouldn’t be alone when you’re sick. I’ll bring chicken soup and crackers.”

  “I’m not going to argue. Sometimes a woman just needs to be alone!” She limped back to the chests, narrowly avoiding trampling the implacable Satan. He hissed and ran off. She rubbed her leg, tensing as pain coursed up and down.

  Lowering her jeans, Lexi discovered large, florid welts covering the front portion of her thigh. “Oh yeah,” she muttered. The inevitable side effects of self-mutilation.

  Chapter 17

  Fear always seems to metastasize at night. It was especially fat that night as Lexi lay fully clothed on the mattress with the evidence of growing madness strewn about.

  Sleep came—and so did night terrors. She saw a room split by light and darkness, crowded with men and women who were sitting and sweating in anger and frustration. A man fell in her dream, and she watched as he was dragged away, a fedora tumbling in his wake. Then she too fell and, catching herself, jerked to sudden wakefulness.

  Lexi woke in a musty room. She could feel the dream fleeing as reality rushed to replace her thoughts in its absence. Through sheer force of will Lexi managed to retain it.

  “That wasn’t a dream.”

  Soaked in cold sweat, she got up and opened the window—a mighty effort; decades of paint had effectively glued it in place. The chirping of little birds overcame the whispering wind, which in turn was conquered by the caws of crows.

  A breeze whisked right through her. Lexi shivered and slammed the window shut.

  In the shower her fingers traced scar ridges as water trickled over everything. “You are a cold fish, Lexi,” she said, repeating the words of her peers in school. But she thought she did care, as much or perhaps even more than most. She’d just never developed the ability to express her emotions, which was one of the symptoms of the schizoid personality.

  After the shower she called Marie Keegan.

  “Alexis?” Marie said. “God, I haven’t heard from you in what, six, seven years? How are you, what you been doing?”

  Lexi hesitated as the words DON’T TRUST ANYONE flashed like a neon billboard in her mind. “I ah, I was hoping I could see you. You’re still on the force, right?” It’s amazing how a question can seem a lie.

  “Yeah, but I’m more of a consultant now. Actually, I’m not supposed to talk about it, but if you want to meet, how about you come over. I’m off today. I was going to do some shopping. You know, get in touch with my inner teen. God, that sounds pathetic. Ha.”

  “Where do you live?” Lexi asked as the finale to the Ninth erupted. Her breath quickened as Marie told her that she lived on Bank Street Road. How many times have I passed her house? “I’ll be there at eleven. Thanks Marie.” She hung up and popped two Excedrin.

  Shuffling through the mess that was Gramps’ desk, she found her Nikon Coolpix digital camera and spent the next two hours laying out the contents of Gramps’ chests to digitize them. Hours later each decayed newspaper and every enigmatic letter was transferred. She smiled, pleased to be thinking clear enough again to have foresight.

  After feeding and watering the cats (who promptly fought over the dish of IAMS) Lexi stuffed the memory card in her pocket and threw on a tan Full Tilt jacket.

  The morning had dissolved to overcast. Lexi imbibed the breezy undertones of the Lakes and the soft swill of pine in the air during her walk to the Dakota. The pills were taking affect and with the refreshing scents of a New York autumn mixing with the brass of the Third Movement, things were finally going her way.

  The familiar drive to Bank Street was interrupted by a procession of police cruisers burning rubber and running si
rens. A fire engine and an ambulance were playing catch-up.

  As they screamed off into the gray horizon, Lexi settled back into the tones of the Ninth. Two minutes later a white Caprice appeared in her rear view, a ding in the hood, just like in Linnux’s. For a moment she had to remind herself that he was dead. It is strange how we must remind ourselves of the hardest truths.

  Despite the rude proximity of the Caprice, Lexi could not make out its driver. A pageant of police strobes stretched out a mile ahead. Risking pissing of Mr. H.R. Tailgater, Lexi slowed to get a better look at what was going down.

  The Caprice sped up, swerved out of its lane and zoomed past. The gap between them widened to two hundred feet before the Caprice slammed to a stop. Lexi braked hard. The Dakota shuttered and the brakes uttered a few pig-like squeals, but caught in time, preventing any serious damage. Even so, bumpers struck.

  Lexi felt the impact through the steering wheel—and in her teeth—and the sensation sent a cold shiver up her spine. Threw the truck into reverse; the melded metals shrieked. Lexi followed this with her own startled cry as a black man under a fedora appeared at her window.

  He held his empty hands up in an expression of mimed innocence. He remained where he was while she reversed a few more yards. “What am I doing? I just hit the guys’ car, jeez.”

  She pulled forward and lowered the window. “I’m sorry, my brakes are—”

  “We have to leave, Miss Montaigne! Let me in, we don’t have much time. They’re probably here already.” He ran around to the passenger door and knocked on the window. “Come on, they’ll kill us both!” His eyes, rimmed in shadows under the wrinkled black fedora, wandered nervously. He continued pounding on the window.

  Despite his linebacker physique, Lexi saw real fear in the man’s eyes. As she moved to unlock the door his gaze summoned a memory. “Do I know you?”

  “Yes,” the man under the fedora said. “We were both manipulated by Dorl, and his people will take us both if we don’t leave this second. Open the fucking door!”

  She was shaking now, but still managed to notice that he was wearing only one glove; a black leather driving glove on his right hand. That’s odd. She shook and hesitated as the man pleaded, then, ignoring her better judgment, spluttered, “Ooooh,” and reached over to unlock the door. The man under the fedora jumped in and ordered her to step on it.

  The Dakota veered left to avoid the defunct Caprice and sped forward, west down Bank. Moments later it slowed to avoid striking a directing cop standing in the road, flanked by flares.

  With racing heart Lexi eased the truck past the scene. It was as she feared. Flames shot up from Marie Keegan’s house, immune to the drizzling rain in the quest to lick the steel-gray clouds overhead. The ambulance Lexi had spotted earlier was just leaving the scene.

  “Oh my God, I have to go. That’s my friend.”

  “You can’t!” the man boomed like a drill sergeant, taking the wheel. “Why do you think the house is on fire? They knew you were going to her. Probably figured you told her something.”

  “What?” Lexi squeaked. “But why, I could have just been visiting a friend.” It’s your fault. This will cost you. As they passed the house and the flashing lights, the drizzle softened to globules of sugary snow. She felt like one of those stupid waving fools in a snow globe.

  “Don’t worry,” the man under the fedora intoned in deep whispered words. “Dorl’s men wouldn’t kill her. Merely injected her with Lot 111 so she’d forget you, most like.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” she flipped on the wipers, transforming sparkly snowflakes into dreary smears.

  “You remember me, but you don’t know how, right?” he asked. Lexi nodded. “Well that’s what they do. Killing would culminate in investigations, but fucking with people’s memories leads people away from the Tower’s trail. How you think Dorl has been able to elude the authorities for so long?”

  The man set the fedora on his knee and cradled his gloved hand, moaning and mumbling. Lexi cranked the volume on electronic Beethoven and proceeded to stare straight ahead, trying not to blink for all the fat flakes slapping the windshield. The man looked over at her and reached his hand out to finger the volume control. She slapped it away.

  “Hey!” he surprised her. “You mind? I got a frigging migraine and this crap ain’t helping.” He flinched, repositioning his right hand. “Get on to the 219 and head for Ashford Hollow.”

  “First of all, don’t mess with Beethoven,” Lexi jabbed the air with her finger. “And second, I have no intention of going anywhere but home. Alone.”

  “That would be fucking retarded. You can never go home. We need to go see a man in Ashford Hollow. He’ll help us interpret the intelligence I gathered at the factory.”

  “What factory?” gripping the wheel harder. “Scratch that. I don’t care. And I’m not going anywhere with you. I’m dropping you off at the station on my way home. I remember enough to know that you have something to do with my memory lapses.”

  “You don’t get it!” his deep voice reverberated in her chest. “You can’t trust the police, you can’t trust anyone. Dorl has contacts everywhere.” He sighed. “This is a frigging pisser.”

  Who was this man who had stormed into her truck making demands?

  “Why should I trust you, then?”

  “Because I am the only one with intelligence on both the Tower and the government. I’m the FBI Agent in Charge of Buffalo and this is proof of the Tower’s crimes against humanity!”

  He’s lying. His eyes squirmed left, did you see?

  But as the black man spoke, he removed the glove, exposing an amalgam of mangled flesh and metal. Lexi slowed to a stop as she stared at it, the stainless steel sheen of mechanical fingers and bionic muscles attached with exposed wires and servo gears and bio-engineered filaments to natural muscles and ligaments. The parts that were not steel were either crimson or black, and the hand itself seemed too large even for his thick wrist.

  The fingers remained unbowed but he managed to bend the hand at the wrist. He winced as he replaced the glove. “They didn’t kill me because they were experimenting. As an agent and not a civilian, I could be written off and disappeared and the public would never hear about it. But you were lucky. Apparently the Tower—Dorl—was content to simply get you off his back. So he gave you Lot 111.”

  Lexi realized she had been holding her breath and so she slowly rectified this mishap. The man under the fedora reached out and put the truck in gear. “My mentor in Ashford Hollow is retired, but he is still the best and he’ll know how to use this to expose Dorl.”

  “But that . . . hand doesn’t prove Dorl did it,” Lexi said as she turned around.

  “No,” he removed a dossier from inside his jacket. “But this does. I swiped it from a table when I escaped. Only . . . I can’t be sure it’s authentic.”

  She offered a cursory glance, drove on. Snow fell thick as clouds and the Dakota hummed.

  “I think it was planted in order to fool me,” the agent explained. “They might even have let me escape. I don’t know what to think, but—” He dropped the dossier and clutched his head, letting out a strident screech.

  “What? What is it?” she drove faster, looking for the Station. The world whipped past in a white blur. The agent made a gasping sound before dropping his hand, his head going just as limp as he slumped forward in his seat belt. The dossier fell open at his feet, spilling its CONFIDENTIAL guts. Lexi thought back on the agent’s words and his facial language. Most of what he had said had seemed genuine, at least, as far as she could tell.

  And then Lexi realized with a shiver that she had no idea why she was out here near the thruway. In this mental fog she decided to trust her instincts . . . and drove home.

  She spent twenty minutes (concealed under a storm of fat flakes) pulling the nameless agent out of her truck and dragging him inside. Maybe he had the answers she sought.

  Chapter 18

  She dropped him.
“Screw the couch. You can sleep on the floor,” wrinkling her nose at the stench of his sweat filling the room. It was 4 o’clock and a wave of fatigue and hunger crested, making her desperate to wash away the ick of the day and of the nameless agent.

  In addition to the lock, Lexi stuffed a rolled up towel underneath the door. It didn’t seem likely the man under the fedora would wake anytime soon—and with only a single good hand how much harm could he really do? But he was twice her size and she had no intention of playing the distressed damsel.

  After a twenty minute shower and slipping into black jeans and a white long sleeve camisole, she tiptoed out to the living room where the agent lay snoring. She grabbed the throw rug underneath him and slowly—grunting the entire way—dragged him into the spare bedroom, taking one of Gramps’ old rusty keyed locks from the garage to keep him there.

  She took the memory card, along with the check from HHC Inc. and placed them in the console of the Dakota before digging out Gramps’ animal carrier. Breath clouds puffed out as she shoved aside some junk in the garage. Lexi smiled. The human clouds reminded her of how Gramps used to take each Plato with them on his mysterious road trips.

  “I have to say goodbye, Gramps. I don’t know who I can trust, so I’m going to do what you always said and trust my instincts.” She thought of how she’d always wanted to go to Maine.