Lessek's Key

by Rob Scott; Jay Gordon

  Without looking back she walked out into Miner Street and the brilliant, snow-blinding morning.

  ‘Myrna?’ Howard called from his office. He leaned to one side to see if he could catch a glimpse of the young teller without getting out of his chair. ‘Myrna?’ he shouted again, listening in vain for the sound of her footsteps, or the soft hum of a receipt gliding through her desktop computer. Nothing.

  ‘Shit, Myrna, you’re supposed to tell me before you go to the can.’ As he got up to attend the teller window he glanced along the narrow hall, past Steven’s silent office. The bathroom door was open and the light switched off. ‘Where the hell did she go?’ he growled. ‘Goddamnit, if I’ve told—’

  Howard’s gaze fell on the broken section of pine countertop outside Myrna’s slatted window. Reaching through to feel the fractured edge, he felt wetness: a shallow pool of what appeared to be dark blood.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ he breathed, and hustled through the connecting door, stopping abruptly as the sight of the dead body of the Charleston City Police Officer. Kneeling beside the young man, Howard searched for a pulse, and, feeling nothing, tried a few uncertain thumps where he thought the breastbone was. Still nothing.

  He looked up and screamed through the empty bank, ‘Myrna!’

  Steven picked his way hurriedly to Howard Griffin’s house on Fourteenth Street, north of Miner, but close to the city centre and the First National Bank of Idaho Springs. He estimated the time at nearly 9.00 a.m. on Friday; even at his most tardy, Howard would be at the bank by now. Avoiding the front door he made his way to the back and used the spare key stashed beneath a loose plank in the deck to open the patio door. Cautiously, he stepped in.

  He waited a full minute, counting down the seconds while listening for sounds: his boss preparing breakfast, or showering, or hefting his not inconsiderable bulk up the Mt Griffin Stairmaster. After sixty seconds or so he moved quickly through the laundry alcove and into the old bachelor’s rarely used kitchen. There, taped to the refrigerator like a gallery of child’s art, were a series of newspaper articles chronicling the story of Steven and Mark’s disappearance and the ensuing weeks of investigation and recovery efforts along the Decatur Peak trail. He stood transfixed by the headlines. The Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, Clear Creek County Gazette – even the Washington Post and New York Times – there were cuttings from all of these, affixed to Howard’s refrigerator, a yellowing testament to the missing roommates. Steven collected them all and folded them carefully in his back pocket. Right now he didn’t care that Howard would know someone had been in his house: he and Mark needed to know what had gone on.

  The house was well-heated, even with Howard out at work all day, and Steven was finding it too hot to breathe. He unravelled the wool scarf from around his face and as he tossed it over the back of a chair he noticed a small cork board hanging on the wall in the breakfast nook. More newspaper features were displayed there, and Steven hastened around the table to retrieve these as well.

  He unpinned the first and glanced at the headline. These were different. The first, clipped from an October issue of the Rocky Mountain News, was headlined Denver Woman Listed Among Springs Missing. His hands began to shake and he rubbed his palms roughly against his denimed thigh. He was certain he could feel the staff’s magic again, that familiar slowing of time and the tickling sensation of its power dancing along beneath his skin.

  Shaking his head, he said, ‘No. No. Stop it. It’s too far away. You’re just upset. Get hold of yourself. This just confirms it. That’s all. This is nothing new.’ He sat down, his heart racing, until his pulse slowed and the dizziness passed.

  Upstairs, he stole a nylon backpack from the hallway closet. In the bedroom, he took several pairs of wool socks, two neutral-coloured sweaters, as many pairs of gloves as he could find, two cigarette lighters from the bedside table and a lined Gore-tex jacket. Over one arm he carried a second jacket for Mark. They had used their stolen silver to outfit themselves in Orindale, and the sailboat Mark and Brynne had repaired was well stocked with essentials, but socks and coats from home would be welcome, for Mark too.

  He struggled into the backpack and ran down the stairs, stopping short at the bottom. ‘A watch, damn it,’ he cursed and pushed past the door into the living room. Apart from a large recliner that Howard always treated with all the deference of a holy relic, the room looked like a bomb had hit it. Books, newspapers, dirty dishes, an errant shoe, orphan socks – even a pair of forgotten boxer shorts – lay scattered about. There was a teetering pile of out-of-date TV Guides against one wall. Steven whistled. ‘Holy Vicksburg,’ he said, ‘Howard, how the hell do you live in this?’

  Ignoring the mess, Steven bravely ploughed his way towards the baby grand piano, which was decorated with a half-empty bottle of beer and a gnawed pizza crust atop a wrinkled dishcloth. Behind, on the large bookshelf, was Steven’s prize: an old wristwatch lying forgotten on a pile of creased paperbacks.

  He grabbed it: off by an hour, so it had obviously been up there since before the clocks had gone back some months before, but the second hand was sweeping round inexorably. ‘Okay, 9.22,’ he said, adjusting the watch back sixty minutes. ‘Now it really is time to get going—’ He stopped, remembering a promise he had made months earlier, then peered around, grinning as he appropriated one final item from Howard Griffin’s living room. ‘Vicksburg,’ he said softly.

  His stomach growled, but Howard’s refrigerator offered only beer, a suspicious-smelling bottle of milk and a box of muesli bars. Howard was the only person Steven knew who would follow a healthy breakfast of orange juice, dry wheat toast and a healthy grain and dried fruit bar with a three-beer-grilled-beef-and-onion-ring lunch and think he was eating well. He grinned in remembrance as he stuffed a handful of the bars into his pack, followed by several cans of beer. In the freezer he found a full can of ground French roast coffee, which he appropriated, together with a packet of filters lying on the counter.

  ‘That ought to do it,’ he murmured. ‘Thanks, Howard. I’ll pay you back.’ Steven carefully wrapped the scarf around his face, pulled up his collar and left the house, relocking the door and stashing the key where he’d found it.

  The city dump was a long way out, so Steven decided to borrow Howard’s dilapidated 1977 Thunderbird, a powder-blue, long-nosed sedan the size of a small whale. It sat rusting in the driveway with the keys dangling from the ignition, exactly where he expected them to be.

  ‘No one’s going to steal my car, are they?’ Howard had laughed when Steven had borrowed the behemoth once before, ‘their family and friends might see them in it!’

  And now, a year or more later, there they still were, hanging by the steering wheel. Steven was almost shocked when the engine immediately roared into life. Thank you, Howard, he thought as he backed out of the drive. I really will pay you back one day.

  He turned towards Chicago Creek Road and the Idaho Springs City Dump.

  Nerak tossed the gun onto the passenger seat of David Mantegna’s car, then extracted a large pinch of chewing tobacco from the red, white and blue packet and pushed it into his mouth – and gagged violently, spitting the wad onto the floor. He swore: the girl had apparently not developed any taste for tobacco.

  ‘Too bad, my dear,’ Nerak said silkily, his voice a sinister echo in Myrna’s dying mind. ‘You’ll just have to get used to it.’ He retrieved the clump of tobacco, then, ignoring the bits of dirt that had stuck to it, popped it back into his – Myrna’s – mouth. ‘I love this stuff,’ he told the dying spirit, glad of Mantegna’s nicotine addiction; he so enjoyed that warm buzz. ‘If I had more time in this tired old world, I might harvest a season’s worth.’

  He glanced over at the pistol and grinned. He had enjoyed that too – in fact, the carnage had almost made this annoying side-trip worthwhile.

  Nerak could have made Idaho Springs from Charleston in eighteen hours if he had driven Mantegna’s Mustang nonstop at top speed, but he had taken some unpl
anned – most entertaining – detours. Somewhere in Kentucky he had stopped to refuel and to satisfy his – and Mantegna’s – craving for tobacco. When the hapless clerk demanded payment for the fuel and the distinctively coloured pouches of Confederate Son, Mantegna’s favourite, Nerak shot him. What an ingenious invention, Nerak told Mantegna; much easier to handle than his first guns, more than a hundred years before, and so much more efficient than the unwieldy weapons in Eldarn.

  He turned from the bloody remains of the clerk and squeezed the trigger again, this time firing into the glass doors of the cool cabinets, and bottles shattered, spilling multi-coloured liquids onto the floor. The cash register was next, then a beer advertisement hanging on the back wall, where several half-naked women were playing a game in the sand – volleyball, the word appeared in his mind. Nerak fired once through the ball and once through the broad forehead of a muscular young man watching, a beer bottle dangling from one hand.

  Finally, curious, Nerak fired into Mantegna’s hand, his own hand, just to experience the weapon himself – and as the bullet blew most of it off, an excruciating arrow of white-hot pain raced up his arm. ‘Outstanding!’ Nerak screamed as his ruined hand dripped gore.

  Nerak collected his chewing tobacco, stopped the blood spurting from his wound with a thought and stepped outside to continue his journey. Three fingers and half of his palm lay abandoned on the floor behind him.

  As he crossed the parking lot, the dark prince waved his hand and changed the car from blue to red, jumped in and sped off, laughing hysterically. He drove at breakneck speed through Missouri, chasing the fleeing sun and taking pot-shots out the window at anything that took his fancy – passing cars, livestock, backpackers he spotted outside St Louis. The police officer had been an enthusiastic member of the NRA and Nerak found three boxes of ammunition beneath the front seat. He turned the car yellow, the colour of pus, to celebrate.

  Kansas had been the highlight of his journey as he’d cruised across the flatlands at one hundred and thirty miles per hour, pursued by the regional militia, or state troopers, in Mantegna’s lexicon of law enforcement. They had come after him on two-wheeled motorised vehicles of some sort – motorcycles, Mantegna interjected dully – and two-tone, heavy-bodied sedans with clamorous sirens and sparkling red and blue lights whirling about overhead. Best of all, they had tracked him with a wonderful flying helichopper-copter-whirlybird thing. Mantegna had so many words for this glorious contraption that Nerak was not sure which was the common term.

  With a wave of his hand he had flattened the front tyres of the motorised cycles, chuckling in high good humour as the riders had spun off into the air.

  The helichopper-copter had reacted aggressively, dropping from the sky to force Nerak off the road. It scraped the side of the Mustang with one of its landing rails, and though he could have crashed the whirlybird with a gesture, instead, relishing the challenge, he had taken aim and fired Mantegna’s weapon several times into the shining belly. The helichopper-copter reeled away, banking like a frightened plover in a gale and Nerak watched the man inside wrestling with some sort of control, trying to save the giant bird’s life.

  It was too low, though, and the great blades slashed the ground, sending up sparks as the metal hit the roadway’s stone surface. One of the chasing sedans was caught by the whirling scimitars, which sliced off the car’s nose and sent the helichopper-copter spinning over a harvested corn field where it crashed, tail-first, and exploded so powerfully that it almost drove Nerak’s car into a ditch.

  Kansas had been enjoyable.

  Nerak slipped a fresh clip into the 9mm and returned the weapon to his waistband, then grinned and spat a mouthful of foul brown juice out the window. He wasn’t surprised to find the house he was seeking had been razed to the ground: Myrna had known, so Nerak learned of the disaster moments after taking the young woman’s soul. But it wasn’t the house he was interested in; he got out and strode confidently across the vacant lot, casting a magic net aloft to search for the stone. He was a few paces across the level expanse of frozen ground that had been Steven and Mark’s front porch before he saw footprints in the snow.

  Nerak bent to touch a print. Splaying Myrna’s fingers, he murmured, ‘You have been here this morning, Steven Taylor.’ He closed the woman’s eyes and reached out again for the stone key. Nothing. It was gone.

  ‘Where is he?’ he asked Myrna, but she was dead now and didn’t respond – no matter, the Eldarni dictator knew everything she had ever known. He concentrated for a moment, then smiled. ‘The city dump. Won’t that be lovely this morning?’ He shook his head, a gesture that was faintly reminiscent of Myrna. For a minute he considered incinerating the rest of Idaho Springs, sending a tidal wave of fire rolling from peak to peak across the canyon. That would teach the meddling foreigner a lesson.

  ‘Anyone you love live here, Steven Taylor?’ Nerak spat a stream of tobacco juice at a grey squirrel that had wandered too close and added, No … no need. I know where you’ve gone.’

  Instead of returning to Mantegna’s battered car, Nerak sat down, cross-legged, on the snow, facing south through Clear Creek Canyon. He pulled out the pistol and placed it at his side. ‘Are you up there, my young sorcerer? Digging in the mud and shit for my keystone? Gilmour is far away, Steven, and you will spend a very long time regretting this little journey.’ The dark prince closed his eyes and began searching the distant canyon.

  The Idaho Springs City Dump was located south of town on Chicago Creek Road, a two-lane highway that wound its leisurely course through the Arapahoe National Forest towards Juniper Pass and the Mt Evans Wilderness. Steven looked up at Devil’s Nose on his left and Alps Mountain on his right, feeling intimidated, as though he were driving beneath the twin shoulder blades of a sleeping god.

  He parked Howard’s Thunderbird beside a chain-link fence with a large green sign on the locked gate reading:

  City of Idaho Springs Landfill and Recycle Facility

  Hours of operation: Tues. – Thurs. 6 a.m. – 6 p.m.

  Sat. & Sun. 6 a.m. – 12 noon.

  Or by Appointment

  A phone number at the bottom had the words leave message after it in small block capitals crookedly affixed, the kind often stuck onto mailboxes.

  Steven looked around to make sure he was alone, then leaped as high as he could and grabbed the chain-link fence. He hung there for a moment, then pulled himself up and over, landing hard on the other side. Huffing from the exertion, he muttered, ‘Man, you need to get back into shape!’ He brushed the snow off his legs and started up the unmade road to the landfill site, checking signposted turnings to the right and left: Plastic Recyclables, Aluminium Recyclables and Paper Recyclables respectively. As he jogged past Appliances And Used Tyres he saw a rickety overhead arch bearing the words Idaho Springs City Dump – obviously erected in less politically correct times, he grinned to himself.

  He stepped over a knee-high chain that ran across the road and heard the thin wail of a siren echoing up the canyon. ‘God, I hope I’m right,’ he said under his breath. The dump stretched out before him: a mountainous landscape in miniature. The rolling hills of rubbish might have looked tiny next to the Rockies that towered overhead, but Steven felt his heart sink: the tapestry – and Lessek’s key, of course – could be anywhere … and there was a hell of a lot of anywhere to search.

  He needed a strategy. Mel Fisher’s discovery of the treasure ship Atocha in the 1970s had fascinated him: Fisher had used a grid to map the ocean floor around the wreck … the mathematician in Steven took over and he altered his perspective, looking at the garbage hills as a topographical calculus problem.

  There were three hummocks in the foreground about thirty feet shorter than the six or seven hills flanking them. This dump had served Idaho Springs for as long as he could remember, and the fact that there were only ten or eleven hills in the entire valley meant either the landfill was much deeper than it looked, or it took the city a long time to generate a
two-hundred-foot-high mountain of trash. But whichever assumption was true, the end result was the same: something dumped as recently as October would be close by.

  ‘Close by is, of course, entirely relative,’ he grumbled. ‘I bet everything else since October is sitting on top of my house right now and I’m about to spend the better part of the next five years digging around in here looking for a rock. And I didn’t even have the sense to steal a shovel. Am I quite mad? There has to be a better way.’

  Nothing immediately sprang to mind so he decided to root around until he found some dates: franked letters, maybe, or old utility bills. Using those as a guide, he could chart a rudimentary map through the mountains based on the passage of time. If he ignored areas where the rubbish came from before October 15, or after the previous week, he hoped to zero in on the final resting place of his and Mark’s charred possessions.

  ‘Let’s get going!’ Steven said briskly. He took a few steps towards the hill on his left when his toe caught on something solid beneath the snow and he cursed and flailed his arms in a desperate effort to regain his balance. ‘Speed bumps?’ he yelled, ‘Why the hell do we need speed bumps at the damned—’ As his foot landed he felt a shock of pain fire through his leg and he tumbled to the ground. Ah, shit, my knee,’ he groaned, and rolled onto his back, clutching it with both hands.

  Anticipating the dull throb of soft tissue damage, he sat up and gingerly straightened his right leg, the one that had nearly been bitten off by the injured grettan in the Blackstone Mountains south of Meyers’ Vale. But though he expected another blast of pain, Steven found to his surprise that he was able to flex and extend his leg with no problem.

  ‘Huh,’ he said, his voice bright with relief, ‘I must have come down on it crooked or something.’ He stood up carefully, putting a little weight through the leg until he was certain there were no injuries. ‘Thank God! I’d be flat-out screwed, trapped here with a blown knee.’