Brain Trust

by A W Hartoin

  “How’s your memory?” he asked.

  Mom lying on the bricks flashed in my mind. “Too good.”

  “Excellent. Remember this.” He tilted his head down to conceal his mouth from the cameras. “G&T Bank and Trust.”

  I nodded, my stomach in a knot.

  He gave me another safe deposit box in Hannibal, but I’d need a court order to get into it. That wouldn’t be any help with Dad. The FBI would get whatever was inside and I wouldn’t.

  “How does that help if I can’t get at it?” I asked.

  “You can.”

  He could be sending me off to Hannibal to make me look like a fool or maybe it was real. I couldn’t tell. The blank expression was back in a big way.

  “I guess I don’t have to eat this stew then,” I said.

  “What’s in the other container?”

  “It’s no use to you. I’ll like it.”

  “Open it.”

  I opened the toast container and he sniffed the air like a hound trailing a fox.

  “Lemon?” he asked.

  “Looks like it.”

  “Garlic?”

  “Yep, but don’t ask me what else. I didn’t make it,” I said.

  He shifted slightly in the restraints. “Eat one.”

  I eyed him suspiciously but went ahead. I didn’t draw it out like one of those stupid Carl’s Junior commercials. First of all, it’s hard to be sexy in an EMT uniform that’s restricting blood flow to the lower half of your body. And second, I didn’t want to, not even to get more information out of him.

  I just stuffed a whole toast round in my mouth and chewed noisily.

  Blankenship fixated on my lips and when I went to wipe away the buttery fabulousness off my lips, he said, “No.”

  My hand froze. I knew he was up to something. “No?”

  “Kiss me,” he mouthed.

  “Ew. No.”

  He did the crocodile thing again and the packet was on the tip of his tongue.

  “Mercy,” Shelley said. “Time’s up.”

  “One more minute, please,” I said.

  There was a pause where the guards must’ve been conferring.

  “Thirty seconds.”

  I had to decide. Did I want that packet or not?

  “Is it worth it?” I asked, knowing the answer, but I couldn’t think what else to do.

  “For both of us. Tommy Watts will want it. The FBI will want it,” he mouthed.

  Shit!

  “If it isn’t good, I’ll never come back.”

  He smiled and I shivered.

  “I’m not worried. You’ll definitely be back.”

  “Fifteen seconds,” said Shelley and I heard the door creak.

  That cinched it. I didn’t think. I just did it. If I had thought, I would’ve known what would happen. But as it was, I jumped out of my chair and ran around the table and I did it. I laid a kiss on a psycho. The packet slid into my mouth and the bastard bit my lower lip. I screamed, feeling his teeth cut into my flesh and Shelley was there. She tased him and he released me. I fell backward and landed on my rump. Two guards grabbed me and hauled me back toward the door. Blankenship shook violently, but his eyes were on me. My blood ran down his chin and a smear of gremolata butter was on his upper lip. He managed to lick them both, sucking in my blood and the butter with a twisted smile that was more like a grimace.

  Out in the hall, the door to the Fishbowl slammed and Shelley screamed. “What the hell was that?”

  I put my hand to my lip and came away with a good amount of blood and the packet, which I palmed. “I’m okay,” I said.

  “You’re okay? Shit!”

  I struggled to my feet and leaned against the wall, catching my breath and dabbing at my lip with a tissue one of the other guards offered. Shelley paced with wild hand gestures and cussing I didn’t think she had in her. Wilson Cleves ran down the hall, his normally jolly face sweaty and red.

  “Mercy, are you alright?” He bent over, gasping.

  I rubbed his heaving shoulder. “I’m okay.”

  He stood up. “Why would you do it? This is an incident. We have to write it up. And Tommy, what will he say? He trusted me to keep you safe.”

  “I am safe and, more importantly, I got what I needed.”

  “What could be worth kissing that creature?” he asked.

  “I’m going to go find out.”

  He threw up his hands. “You mean, you don’t know? Christ, Mercy. He might be playing you for a fool.”

  “He might, but he wants me back. Anybody can see that.”

  Cleves and the guards got quiet and nodded.

  “He does. God help you,” said Shelley. “It’s not a good thing.”

  “But it might do some good.” I lowered the tissue. “How bad is it?”

  Shelley took a close look. “He got you good. A couple of stitches to close it up.”

  “We’ll probably just butterfly it,” I said.

  “I think he almost went all the way through.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I felt it, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  I thought about it. “Right now? Desperate.”

  “He took advantage of that desperation,” said Cleves. “You shouldn’t come back. The department may bar you anyway.”

  “I doubt it,” I said.

  They walked me out and I had to concentrate to walk a straight line. My head was light and the feeling of exhaustion was overwhelming.

  Shelley got me an ice pack and a towel for my lip. She wasn’t cussing anymore, but the anger and fear were still written all over her.

  “It won’t happen again,” I said.

  “You can’t guarantee that,” she said.

  “I guess not, but I’d only do it if I thought I had to. Eat the stew. I’m sure you’ll love it. The toast is fantastic.”

  She smiled. “I guess there’s that.”

  “Always a bright side.”

  We high-fived and I joined Aaron in the empty waiting room. He was buzzing with excitement, rubbing his hands and bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet.

  A wave of unexpected guilt came over me. I didn’t eat the stew. He wanted me to eat it. He lived to make me eat food that I hated in the hopes that I wouldn’t hate it. Failure was not a deterrent to Aaron. He just kept trying.

  “The toast was amazing,” I said through the ice pack.

  He stopped bouncing.

  “Sorry. I didn’t eat the stew.”

  I expected his shoulders to slump. Instead, he pulled down the ice pack, took one look, and put it back up. Then he hustled me out to the truck, where Fats was leaning on the hood with Wallace sitting on one of her enormous feet. The pug hadn’t peed on her. Thank goodness.

  She lowered her book and said, “Ah, crap! What happened to you?”

  “He bit me.” I got in and she stared at me for a second before picking up Wallace and going to the driver’s side.

  She got in and gave me the pug, who sniffed my face and growled.

  “My feelings exactly,” said Fats. “Why in the hell were you that close? What about the glass?”

  “There’s no glass.”

  “Why isn’t there glass?”

  “Beats me. But there is a table.”

  “How did he get over the table without them stopping him? Isn’t he chained up or something?”

  I looked at the towel. The bleeding had pretty much stopped, but it was starting to hurt. It was kind of like having a sprained ankle on your face. That kind of burning. “He was in a straitjacket and chained to a chair,” I said.

  “You went to him? What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked. “When Calpurnia hears about this…shit!”

  We drove out of Hunt and once we got back on the highway, I held out the packet.

  Fats glanced at me. “What is that?”

  “What I got bitten for,” I said.

  Aaron asked from the back, “You hungry?�
��

  “I’m not going to be eating anything solid until the swelling goes down,” I said.

  Fats took the packet from me and held it up to the light. “There’s folded up paper inside with something written on it.” She gave it back. “Open it.”

  “I will when I have tweezers and an evidence bag. We’ve got other stuff to do.”

  “There’s more?”

  “There’s always more. How long will it take to get to Hannibal?”

  “What’s in Hannibal besides Mark Twain stuff?”

  I shifted in my seat and smiled before yelping in pain. “A safe deposit box with our names on it.”

  Fats grinned. “Hannibal, it is.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE BANK MANAGER watched me like I might have rabies. Considering who bit me, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. Hopefully, crazy wasn’t catching.

  Mr. Thompson walked us back to the safe deposit box area inside the vault and rechecked my signature and passport photo for a third time. I don’t know why he bothered. He recognized me the moment I took off my Cardinal’s cap and that’s with an ice pack on my face.

  “Can I get you anything?” he asked me.

  “Got any Motrin?”

  “I’m sure I do. Can I ask what happened?” Mr. Thompson flicked a glance at Fats, who was standing there, looking menacing, but I don’t think she meant to. She couldn’t help it.

  “Sorry. I can’t say,” I said. “Where’s the box?”

  He went down the rows of boxes and surprised me by unlocking a larger one. It was thin but wide, about two feet across. Mr. Thompson set it on the table and hovered.

  “Thanks,” I said, waiting for him to beat it, but he didn’t leave.

  “Miss Watts, I don’t remember you ever coming in here before,” he said.

  Fats crossed her arms. “Sometimes, she blends.”

  He looked doubtful. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “It’s my box,” I said. Convincingly, I think, because he left to get me some Motrin.

  Fats and I gathered around the table and looked at the box.

  “What do you suppose is in there?” she asked.

  “At this point, I’m just hoping it’s not a body part,” I said.

  “You think that’s a possibility?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past the Unsubs.” I put my ice pack on the table and took a deep breath. “Here we go.”

  There wasn’t a body part in the box. There was a laptop and only a laptop. No cord or anything else. I took it out and opened it. Dead, of course. I flipped it over, looking for any clue as to what it contained, but it was just a cheap, run-of-the-mill laptop.

  “We need a cord,” said Fats. “I don’t have this kind. Do you?”

  “No, but I know someone with every kind of cord in the world.”

  She smiled. “Morton Van Der Hoof?”

  “He practically collects them.” I closed the box as Mr. Thompson came back with Motrin and a cup of water.

  He glanced at the laptop, but he was more interested in my face. “You need to go to the ER. It’s five minutes away.”

  “I’m okay,” I said, carefully placing the pills in my mouth and taking a sip of water. I dribbled because I couldn’t fully close my mouth. Mr. Thompson cringed and Fats gave me my towel and ice pack. “I think he might be right,” she said.

  “I’ll get it looked at when we get back to St. Louis,” I said. “Thanks, Mr. Thompson. Have a nice day.”

  “Please go to the ER,” he said.

  “Please don’t tell anyone I was here.”

  He shuffled his feet. “The word is already out. My assistant called her mother. She has 20,000 Twitter followers.”

  “What does she do?” asked Fats.

  “Sex therapist.”

  I looked at the ceiling. “That’s what I need. A sex therapist tweeting about me.”

  Fats laughed. “That is so your life.”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  We took off and thanks to the radar detector, we made it to Uncle Morty’s apartment before he did. But there was vacuuming happening. Nikki was in residence, sterilizing the joint, as she did weekly. I knocked and she answered, took one look at me and dragged me off to the bathroom, leaving Fats, Wallace, and Aaron in the living room.

  “I’ll go to the hospital,” I said when she pulled my ice pack down.

  Nikki snorted. “Hospital. You don’t need a hospital. I’ll take care of it.” She pointed at the toilet. “Sit down.”

  I obeyed, perching on the toilet lid and enduring Nikki’s painful ministrations. She flushed the wound several times and decided to butterfly the outside since I said it was a human bite. She didn’t ask how a human bit me on the face. She took it totally in stride, saying, “You’ll need antibiotics.”

  “Are you a nurse?” I asked.

  “I was. I left to pursue my real passion.” Nikki dug out some steri strips and had me tilt up my chin.

  “What’s your real passion?”

  “Library science.”

  I thought she might be joking, but she wasn’t. Nikki had a passion for the Dewey Decimal System and mourned the demise of microfiche. I’m pretty sure she was the only one. I’d only seen it on reruns of The X-Files and it seemed like a huge pain in the ass.

  She stood back and admired her handiwork. “You’ll still need a strong antibiotic. Get that old boyfriend of yours to write you a script and you’ll have to keep flushing it. I’ll do it, if you like.”

  “Thanks. I might take you up on that,” I said, happily escaping the bathroom to find Fats in Uncle Morty’s second bedroom. At least, I thought it was the second bedroom. It was so neat and organized I wasn’t sure.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Nikki.

  Fats held out the laptop. “A cord for this.”

  “Ah, a Dell. What year do you think it is?”

  Uncle Morty stomped into the room. “It’s five years old or maybe six. I got a universal cord that’ll work.” He looked at me. “You look like crap. What’d you do?”

  I tried to frown, but it hurt too much. Instead, I held up the packet. “I got this.”

  “Who’d you get it from? A shark?”

  “Close. Blankenship.”

  “Jesus. That’s just great. Tommy is going to freak.”

  “Only if we can get him a ticket home with this.” I tapped the laptop.

  “Blankenship gave it to you?” he asked.

  I told him about the trip to Hunt—light on the bite details—and he got more interested in the laptop. “So Blankenship put it in that safe deposit box with your name on it.”

  “Mine and his.”

  “The signatures matched?”

  “Perfectly, but the manager noted that I’d never been there before. Whoever did the signing for me didn’t bother to fake my face.”

  “Nobody could fake your face,” said Fats. “He probably strolled in with another Unsub and did it.”

  “A female Unsub,” I said. That was disturbing. Women didn’t usually commit the kind of crimes that the group prided themselves in.

  “Did you check the date on the last time it was opened?” asked Nikki.

  We all looked at her and she patted her curly hair. “They keep a record of that kind of thing, don’t they?”

  “They do,” I said. “It was only opened on the date rented. December twentieth.”

  Uncle Morty found the cord and fired up the laptop. “You’ll have to go back and interview witnesses. Maybe someone was awake and will remember the Tulio shooter coming in for a box.”

  “I doubt it. Blankenship is pretty generic and if they recognized him, they probably would’ve called the cops when Tulio happened.”

  “You might have to jog their memories.” Fats cracked her knuckles and Nikki gave her a wide berth on her way to get me some milk. It was the only thing in the house that wouldn’t sting my mouth.

  “They might have surveillance footage,” said Uncle Mo
rty, staring at the scene as the laptop went through its startup routine.

  “That was almost eight months ago,” I said. “I doubt they keep it that long, but I’ll check.”

  The screensaver came on and we all recoiled.

  “Does anyone else want something?” called out Nikki from the kitchen. “I have Coke and lemonade.”

  “Don’t come in here!” yelled Uncle Morty. “Close the damn door!”

  Fats slammed the door and we stared at the screen. The screensaver was a photo of a body, partially nude, on the ground with rocks and tree roots around it.

  “I’m going to be sick,” I said.

  “Don’t throw up,” said Fats. “Your mouth can’t take it.”

  I stood up and went to Uncle Morty’s newly organized bookshelves, leaning on them with my head down.

  “Do you know who she is?” asked Uncle Morty.

  “Cassidy Huff,” said Fats. “There was a picture in the file.”

  Nikki knocked on the door. “What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t come in here,” said Uncle Morty. “I don’t want you to see this.” Then he muttered under his breath, “I don’t want anyone to see this.”

  “So this is Blankenship’s laptop,” said Fats.

  “Or Shill’s,” I said.

  “No,” said Uncle Morty. “It’s not.”

  I reluctantly turned around. The screensaver was down and he was in the computer’s files. An encrypted file came up. There was a certain pattern to the encryption. I mean, it was all gobbledygook, but there was symmetry and spacing that was familiar.

  “It kinda looks like a chat,” I said.

  “Yes, it does,” said Uncle Morty. “Let’s see what else we got.”

  He pulled up file after file. Most had the look of chats, but some were probably emails or photos. The picture of Cassidy’s body was the only thing on it that wasn’t encrypted.

  Fats sat on the edge of the desk, making it creak. “I think it’s Unsub chats and the proof of their victories.”

  “Can you break it?” I asked.

  He snorted. “I’ll break it.”

  “Soon?”

  “It’s tight, but I’ll get it.” He pointed to several different parts of one particular file. “He used different encryption on different sections, but he forgot or meant to leave unencrypted the dates that each file was created. What’s the last date you gave me?”