Severed

by Corey Brown

  “What’re you saying?” Derek asks. “Someone was using his computer earlier today?”

  “That’s what I thought at first, but I could tell the document was something Carlson was writing.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Directory and file structure,” Dan says. “By the way he managed his documents. That, and the file name, it’s called ‘The Destroyer’.”

  “You open it?”

  “Uh-huh. But it’s not a screenplay. I think it’s a manuscript, a book, and a fairly new one, too.”

  “Still doesn’t mean it was Carlson,” Derek says. “Maybe he’s got a roommate, who knows?”

  “I doubt it. Everything points to him.”

  “Come on, how can you be sure?”

  Dan clears his throat. “Two ways,” he says. “First, I did a little background check on him, through the agency and using the tabloids. Nothing indicates he has any kind of ‘significant other’ in his life, except his sister, Suzanne Carlson, and she has a permanent address thirty miles away. Second, documents created with his word processing software have metadata encoded in them.”

  “Metadata?” Derek said. “What the hell is that?”

  “Metadata is data about data. In other words, it’s information about the file itself. Things like creation date and who modified the file, when they modified it, that kind of stuff. The metadata for this document gives no indication that anyone other than Carlson had edited it.”

  Derek shifts in the car seat, the air conditioning just now starting to lower the temperature of the vehicle’s interior.

  “How would the word processing software know if it was Carlson or someone else working on the document?” Derek asks.

  “You don’t understand,” Dan says. “The operating system requires all users log in with an ID and password before using the computer. The operating system also creates a unique profile for each ID and there was only one profile, Carlson’s profile, registered on this computer. That same user information is captured in the metadata of any document created on that machine.”

  “So?” Derek says. “He gave his ID and password to his sister or his friend or whoever. You can’t prove it was Carlson editing the file.”

  “True. But I have no doubt it’s him. Look, I checked into Carlson’s activities over the last few days. Several nights ago he won an Oscar for Best Screenplay. That same night he went home with Loren Everwood. A real hottie, but not a real name, just a wannabe. Anyway, they left the ceremonies together and had, I quote, ‘very passionate sex’. She ended up in the hospital and Carlson spent most of the night in the Beverly Hills PD. They wanted him for battery, maybe even rape but in the end, Everwood declined to press charges. The next day, yesterday, he’s in New Orleans and by two AM this morning, he’s dead.”

  Sweat is trailing down Derek’s spine. He adjusts the car’s vents, pushing more cool air onto his face.

  “What’s your point?” Derek says.

  “This document has been edited periodically since the night of the Oscars. Edited at times when I know Carlson was not home, including times after he was pronounced dead at the hospital. Why would his roommate, or whoever, be modifying his work? Not just reading, writing. Why, especially after Carlson was dead?”

  “Good question,” Derek says. “But that’s not proof. Maybe he collaborates with his sister, maybe she was working on it that night.”

  “Negative. She booked a five o’clock flight out of LAX, it was delayed but she was in the air by eight in the morning. The document was edited at nine-fifty this morning and again at one-seventeen in the afternoon. Suzanne Carlson was either in flight or in New Orleans at those times.”

  Derek sighs, the air feels heavy in his lungs. “Okay, I’ll grant you that’s a little strange but so what? Why do we care?”

  “Because whoever’s been editing that document has been writing about us.”

  “I don’t follow,” Derek says. “Us? As in you and me?”

  “Yeah. You and me.”

  “Why do you think someone was writing about us?”

  Derek hears papers rustling.

  “Hold on,” Dan says. “Let me read you a few paragraphs, toward the end.”

  More shuffling sounds then Dan says, “Keep in mind the last time this file was edited was six hours and nineteen minutes ago, not long before you asked me to snoop around. Ready?”

  “And waiting, let’s hear it.”

  Dan does not offer any other preface. He clears his throat and begins reading: Agent Simmons just stared. He felt a mix of frustration and anxiety with Thompson. He wanted this thing done and wanted it done now, but Dan’s reluctance to break the law engendered a sense of respect. “Okay, I understand,” Simmons said. “Thanks.” “Wait,” Nicolai said, “I’m insulated, right?” “Absolutely,” Simmons replied. “You were simply following orders. I told you he was part of the operation, you had no reason to believe I was lying.”

  Dan stops reading. “Sound familiar?”

  “You’re making this up, right?”

  “Jesus, I wish.”

  “Our names were in this thing?” Derek says.

  “Yup. Yours and mine. There’s more. He goes on to write about how I broke into the network and found my way to his PC. Almost exactly the way I did it.”

  “Are you sure you had the right box?” Derek says. “Maybe you connected to the wrong computer and somebody figured out who you were.”

  “Not possible.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Are you going to make me explain it or are you just reaching?”

  Derek sighs. “Never mind. I---- ”

  “Besides,” Dan says, interrupting. “Even if I had hacked the wrong machine, which I didn’t, and even if they figured out someone was in—which they couldn’t, how would they know who I was?”

  Derek’s mind races. How is that possible? Obviously, Carlson wasn’t dead, he was in gruesome shape but not dead. So maybe his death was faked, but that still didn’t explain how he, or anyone, knew Dan was going to snoop around his computer. Did Carlson know? How could he? They had never met. Even excluding what appeared to be creepy, other-world knowledge of Derek’s plans, faking his own death seemed preposterous. Doctor Robiere certainly thought Carlson had died. Why would Carlson go to such lengths to pull this kind of a scam? Especially after winning an Oscar. And no one would fake their own death if the result was having your body shredded the way Carlson’s had been.

  Unless…

  Derek lets his imagination take over, unless Cody was right and Carlson is somehow involved with drug trafficking and with those women’s deaths. Maybe Carlson was working with Murdock.

  “Derek, you still there?” Dan says.

  “Uh, yeah. Sorry I was just thinking about all of this. Tell me, did you find anything connecting Murdock to Carlson?”

  “I wish.”

  “Shit. That would’ve been convenient.”

  Derek hears a sharp exhale, hears Dan say. “You sure Carlson is dead?”

  Then Derek remembers something Cody had talked about earlier, at the bar. ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ Cody had said. ‘It’s like our personal experience of the present happened at different times, but they over-lapped or something.’

  Could that be it? Were different experiences at different times converging, over-lapping? Could a document that was edited sometime in the future or the past, be appearing in Dan’s personal experience of the present? For that matter, had three places in time overlapped as to include Dan and himself and whoever edited the document?

  “If this isn’t a joke,” Dan says, breaking into Derek’s thoughts. “How the hell did Carlson know our names?”

  «»

  Except for the illumination of a small, under-cabinet florescent fixture, everything is dark and solitary. Sterile light spreads across a short Formica countertop then washes away into the corners of this small hospital room. The bitter-flat smell of antiseptic and floor wax clings to
the air like a spider’s web.

  Suzanne Carlson is a few yards away keeping her eyes on David. They are on the fourth floor and Cody stands next to the window, arms folded, watching a trolley lumber past on Saint Charles Avenue. A hundred thoughts are going through his mind but one in particular keeps rising above the others. It isn’t as much a thought as it is a question about something Derek said just before leaving.

  Derek had been on the phone talking about someone and it nagged at Cody. But why? What had Derek said, who had he been talking about? Things had happened fast, conversations, feelings—everything was beginning to blur.

  Oppressive heat still plagues New Orleans and Cody feels that warmth radiating through the window. But the room itself is cold. Without realizing it, Cody leans closer, leans toward the late afternoon heat pulsing through the glass. He looks at Suzanne just as she shivers and hugs herself, rubbing upper arms for warmth. For a moment, Cody has the odd thought of bringing her to the window, closer to the heat.

  Suzanne shivers not only from the cool, cold air of the hospital room, but from the emotional strain of the last twenty-four hours. Her face is gaunt, the California tan seems pale, making her appear sickly. So much has happened, none of it making sense. She stares absently at the sheeted outline of her brother.

  Cody shifts his attention to David, who is laying stock-still, his body masked beneath the bloody sheet. David’s chest barely expands as shallow breaths fill his lungs. An odd thought skitters through Cody’s mind. The sight reminds him of the story of Christ’s internment, how Jesus was wrapped in linen and placed inside a cave. David is covered, as it were, in linen and lays in a small, cave-like room.

  And where did that come from? Cody didn’t read the Bible even back when he was going to church, he was a text-book heathen. But just a little while ago he was quoting John Three-Sixteen, and is now considering Biblical themes from the Book of Luke. Fabulous.

  Cody looks at Suzanne; she is standing close to David, her posture communicating both reticence and concern. Trailing his recollection of Luke’s burial description, Cody remembers something about women attending Jesus, about women in Christ’s tomb. Why not? Cody thinks. Suzanne completes the picture.

  Cody sighs, shakes his head, and wonders what is happening. He wonders why David is still alive, how is he still living? Cody’s mind flashes to Jamie and Gus and Marion. Is Marion conscious yet? And Todd, where is he? Is he safe, is he even alive?

  Cody scowls. Screw this, he thinks. I should be down in the ER, out on the street, anywhere but here. I should be doing something.

  The heavy wooden door clicks shut, almost soundlessly. Cody looks up, Doctor Robiere is gone, ushered away by the man who is not a doctor, the friend to Suzanne, Jamie’s savior, the stranger. Cody wonders why Doctor Robiere has been excluded but at the same time understands that she is not a part of it.

  Part of it? A part of what? And what is it?

  “I must attend to something,” the stranger says. “I will return shortly.” There is a subtle confidence in his voice, as if world events hinge upon his exit but he doesn’t really care.

  The man steps toward the door, he reaches for the knob and vanishes. His disappearance is somewhere between obvious and what the hell? It was a visible act, or was it? He turned, walked toward the door then just didn’t exist. Cody squints, trying to make sense of it.

  Just below the level of conscious thought, Cody is asking how the guy did that, wondering where in the world he went, but without knowing it Cody has accepted the stranger’s sudden disappearance as being perfectly natural. For an extemporaneous second the process of wondering begins to percolate, tries to work its way up to cognition and Cody begins to suspect he’s had these experiences before. Then the idea washes away like the receding tide and he turns his attention to Suzanne.

  “David is your brother?” Cody says, studying her. For the first time, he notices Suzanne’s unassuming beauty; he also sees the strain mapped across her face.

  Suzanne nods, her eyes fixed upon her brother’s form. “Yes, he is.”

  Strangely, confirmation of a fact he already knows sparks new questions. Cody draws a hand across his chin, feels the stubble of new whiskers.

  “Are you guys close?”

  Suzanne nods again, this time pursing her lips, this time fingertips suppressing a swell of tears.

  “Why was David in New Orleans, business?”

  “No, not….that.” Suzanne says, still fighting the tears. She looks at Cody and sniffs, the act is physical, her nose is running, but psychological, too; she is telling Cody to tread lightly. “It was a personal trip,” Suzanne says. “We don’t live here, but we’re from New Orleans, more or less.”

  “More or less?” Cody says. “What does that mean?”

  Suzanne squints at Cody, all at once feeling wary. “You’re a policeman?”

  “Uh-huh,” Cody says, “Detective out of District One, I cover the Mid-City area.”

  “Mid-City,” Suzanne says, thoughtfully. “That’s District One? You guys had the largest over- all drop in crime last year.” She looks at Cody more closely. “You’re him, aren’t you? That cop they call the Hit Man?”

  Acknowledging the truth of Suzanne’s words, Cody nods and says, “You must read the Times-Picayune. Yeah, I’m the Hit Man and, no, I’m not personally responsible for the twelve percent drop in crime up there in Mid City.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t be talking to you,” Suzanne says. “Maybe my lawyer should be here.”

  Cody half shrugs, half flexes one shoulder. “It’s your call. But you’re not a suspect in any crime that I know of so, unless you’re going to confess to one, you probably don’t need an attorney. Besides, with all that’s happened in the last few hours…” He sweeps his hand toward David. “I think we’re beyond the twilight zone, let alone the legal system.”

  Suzanne considers that for a moment, looking back at her brother. He is still breathing. The bloody sheet covering his body still rises and falls rhythmically, weakly.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Suzanne says. She waits a long moment before speaking again. “David and I live in California, but our roots are in New Orleans. We grew up here.”

  “But you’re not from here, you’re not New Orleans, not Louisiana. I can tell.”

  Suzanne cuts her eyes toward Cody, but doesn’t quite look at him. “My father accepted a partnership in New Orleans,” she says. “I was very young.”

  “A partnership?” Cody asks. “Is he a lawyer?”

  Suzanne shakes her head. “Oh, no, my father was, well, I guess you’d call him an investor. He started in downtown Chicago. On LaSalle Street, I think. That’s where I was born, Chicago, a western suburb actually. But when I was little, the firm offered him a senior partnership if he relocated to New Orleans. He ran the Gulf Coast office.”

  Suzanne folds her arms across her chest. Ordinarily, the move wouldn’t mean much, or rather, ordinarily Cody wouldn’t care but he reads the body language, catches the look on Suzanne’s face. The posture says, wait, don’t talk. Cody wants to ask a question but doesn’t. Instead, he remains silent.

  After a few moments Suzanne says, “My father is dead. Mom, too.”

  Cody nods, somehow he’d expected this, knew it. “I’m sorry. I know what that’s like.”

  “Your parents are dead?” Suzanne says, a hint of surprise registering in her voice.

  “Kind of. Well, I don’t know if they are dead but they’re gone. Have been since I was eight.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “David was born in New Orleans?” Cody says, clumsily redirecting the conversation.

  Catching the shift, Suzanne pauses, doesn’t answer right away. She studies Cody, wants to ask him what happened to his parents, wants to know exactly why he cares where David was born. She thinks about what to say next then looks back at David and says, “I don’t know. David is not… he’s not a blood relation, he was adopted. I don’t know anything about his biological pa
rents.”

  “Adopted?” Cody blurts. Even though he was genuinely surprised, Cody knows he’d spoken too quickly. The bright, suddenness of his question sounds intrusive.

  “Yes,” Suzanne says, the word hisses from her mouth. “David was adopted, so what? Who cares?”

  Cody holds up a hand, taking in a slow, silent breath. “I didn’t mean to sound,” he says, “well, how I sounded. I apologize. You’re right, David was adopted, so what?” But then Cody’s face grows puzzled, he is working out a surprise recollection. “Hang on,” Cody says. “Was Benjamin Carlson your father?”

  Suzanne nods. “Yes. He was killed in a car accident last year. My mother, too.”

  Cody thinks about Ben Carlson’s death, it was big news twelve months ago. The one car accident was particularly brutal, the vehicle’s roof had been crushed into next week. Cody nods to himself, the motion is slow, measured. “I remember,” he says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were related.”

  Suzanne looks at the NOPD detective, wonders what kind of man he is, wonders if his condolences are sincere. She shrugs then says, “Thank you.”

  Benjamin Carlson, the lead moniker of Carlson, Stouts and Weaver. The company was nothing short of a financial powerhouse, affecting the movement of money from Iowa to Virginia Beach, from Miami to Boston while holding prime real estate in several big cities including Chicago, Atlanta, Orlando and Houston, not to mention a serious chunk of Canal Street in New Orleans.

  What did Suzanne say her father was, an investor? Benjamin Carlson was hardly just an investor. He was one of the biggest names in arbitrage from Missouri to New York.