by Erik Carter
Water consumed Dale’s vision, and he was engulfed in sloshing underwater semi-silence that provided him a moment’s reprieve from the chaotic situation he’d found himself in. The momentum from Guy’s blow pushed him backwards along the tiled surface of the bottom of the fountain. He felt pennies dragging against his back through his T-shirt.
Dale pushed his hands into the base of the fountain and stood up. Water cascaded down his chest. His dark brown hair was plastered over his eyes. He flung his head to the side, flopping the hair out of his face. He got out of the fountain and took off after Guy again, who was halfway down the hall, which ended in an open area showcasing the entrance to one of the mall’s anchor stores: a large department store with a sign that read Diamond’s. Guy entered the store, and moments later Dale followed.
The makeup counters greeted Dale with the smell of powders and perfumes and lipstick. Guy was just a few feet ahead of Dale, to his right. He looked over his shoulder for a moment, locking eyes with Dale. Dale reached out and grabbed at his shirt, and Guy twisted around to fight him off. Dale got his arms around him, and in another incredibly acrobatic move, Guy slipped out of his grasp, sending Dale stumbling forward.
Dale gritted his teeth.
He resumed the chase. They were in the women’s department now, and Guy began throwing mannequins down in Dale’s path, one after another after another. Dale hurdled the first couple, finally catching his foot on one of them and tumbling to the floor.
There was an escalator ahead, and Guy ran up it, taking multiple steps at a time. By the time Dale scrambled to his feet, he was several feet behind. He ran up the escalator, taking a few steps at a time like Guy had.
Guy reached the top of the escalator and hung a right. Moments later, when Dale reached the top, he turned and saw Guy run through an employees’ door at the far side of the store.
Dale sprinted to the door and ran into a back room. Harsh fluorescent lights. Cinder block walls. Cardboard boxes full of inventory. Startled employees pointed toward a swinging door. Dale followed their directions across the room, through the door, and into a cement stairwell, echoey and musty smelling.
He looked up. One flight of stairs above him, Guy was going through yet another door, and as he did, bright sunlight flooded the stairwell. Dale took the steps up and exited the stairwell onto the mall’s rooftop.
The light burned Dale’s eyes. He shielded them with a hand before quickly throwing on his aviator sunglasses, which he’d stowed in his pocket. The rooftop was a vast, gravel-covered expanse. A three-foot parapet outlined the edge. Camelback Mountain lay a short distance away, looming over the mall, its rugged red-brown contours standing out sharply against a bright blue, cloudless sky.
Guy stood at the edge of the roof, about twenty feet away. He held the jar over the side of the building with his outstretched right arm. Dale kept his gun pointed down and slowly approached him.
“I’d tell you to drop it, Guy, but neither one of us want that.”
“Toss your gun,” Guy said. “I’ll do it, god dammit.”
Guy extended his reach further over the edge of the building.
“No, you won’t,” Dale said and took another step forward. “You need it. It’s the last part of your little group’s ritual. Praying to the dead or whatever it is you’re doing.”
“Try me. If you bring me in, we’ll never finish the ritual. And no one is going to have this jar but us.”
“Even Hohokam Pima National Monument?”
There had been sincerity in Guy’s tone, and Dale knew that Guy genuinely thought that no one deserved the jar but his group. But Dale also wagered that the thought of breaking the jar—and thus losing the possibility of completing their ritual—would be too much for him. Dale called his bluff and took another couple steps toward him.
Guy shook the jar menacingly.
“Stop! Drop the gun!”
Okay. Guy wasn’t bluffing after all, Dale could tell. He stopped walking and put his hands up.
“Alright, alright,” Dale said. “I’ll holster it. I don’t know what you have in those pockets.”
Dale slowly reached around his back and holstered the gun, keeping his other hand up where Guy could see it.
He then took a few steps toward the roof edge—while casually working himself a bit closer to Guy—and looked down. It was a two-floor drop to the ground. There was a dumpster a few feet behind where Guy was standing.
The dumpster. Dale kept himself from smiling. He looked at the jar then to Guy.
“I’m unarmed now,” Dale said. “Can we discuss this like rational adults? Maybe just drop all the talk about haunted ceramics and death rituals?”
“This doesn’t belong to the federal government,” Guy said and shook the jar again.
“No, it doesn’t. But we protect it as a part of a national monument. And the Gila River Indians own the property. Any way you look at it, it doesn’t belong to you.”
“It belongs to Snaketown. Everyone thinks the Hohokam are a great mystery, that no one knows what happened to them. But we do. And that’s why we took all this pottery. For our ceremonies.”
These nut-jobs he chased down utterly confused Dale sometimes. Why would Guy think that the jar belonged to him? He was talking about the Hohokam as though he was a descendant, but the man was as white as a bicuspid floating in a glass of milk in the middle of a snowstorm.
Dale inched toward Guy. He looked over the ledge again. Two floors didn’t sound like much, but it sure looked like a long way down.
“And that’s why you’re going to use them as part of your rituals?”
“That’s right. And that’s why we’ll transcend. Stay put!”
Dale stopped moving toward Guy. He was about ten feet away from him.
“You do know,” Dale said, “that the jar you’re holding—that you so unceremoniously unearthed—could lead archaeologists to the true reason the Hohokam disappeared. That is, if you and your little death cult will just hand it over.”
“The archaeologists reburied the site. If my ‘little death cult’ hadn’t trespassed and dug on our own then—”
Dale suddenly lunged toward Guy, driving his shoulder into Guy’s gut. The two men’s feet shuffled in the gravel, and then they hit the parapet.
Then they fell off the roof.
Dale’s stomach dropped as he felt the sensation of free-falling—a sensation that had become all too familiar during his time as a BEI agent. The bright blue sky. The cement below. And the dumpster. Dale had gauged the force with which he struck Guy, the distance to the dumpster, and the angle. If he had done his pseudo-math right, they should land on the dumpster.
Pseudo-math, don’t fail me now.
He had a grasp on Guy’s shirt. Guy’s hand squeezed hard into Dale’s neck, fingernails digging in. Dale looked to Guy’s other hand. The jar. He reached for it. Guy’s hold on the jar lessened. Just the tips of Guy’s fingers remained on the jar. Then it floated out of his grasp. It hovered in the air, twisting from top to bottom. Dale reached, stretched toward it. Closer. His fingers brushed it. He got one finger inside the rim and squeezed, got a hold of it.
And then the two men smashed into the dumpster.
Crash.
The angled metal doors of the dumpster bent upon the impact of the men’s combined weight. An awful screeching sound. The bent doors created a funnel that sent the men into the belly of the beast and onto a pile of plastic trash bags and crumpled cardboard boxes. They collided into the mess with a solid thud that made both men groan aloud.
The trash had absorbed the blow for the most part, but Dale had hit something hard with his back, and now it was digging into the ribs on his left side. He reached behind him and found the culprit: the pointed breasts of a mannequin torso. He tossed it aside then looked at the jar in his hand. It was intact.
Beside him, Guy was breathing hard, looking straight up into the sky through a gap in the dumpster’s mangled doors.
“You ok
ay?” Dale said.
Guy paused before answering, a bewildered look on his face. “Yeah.”
“Good. You’re under arrest.”
Dale slapped handcuffs on Guy’s wrist.
Chapter 3
Dale stepped out of the dumpster, pulling Guy behind him. He put Guy’s arms behind his back and clamped down the second handcuff.
A car pulled up. The driver-side door opened, and out breezed Jamison Zane. He was tall with slicked-back hair and a chiseled jaw above which rested a casual smile that was almost as playful as Dale’s notoriously bemused grin. He was a special agent with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He was one-eighth Navajo with black hair and a bronze complexion. He wore an expensive, well-tailored suit—the jacket in his hand—and a pair of dark sunglasses. Zane looked at Dale and shook his head, grinned.
From the passenger side emerged Walter Taft, Special Agent In Charge of the Bureau of Esoteric Investigation, the covert branch of the DOJ of which Dale was an agent. Taft was in his fifties with a physique that was mostly past its prime and a head that had gone mostly bald with what hair remained being mostly gray and partly red. His temperament was mostly grouchy. As he walked toward Dale, he looked frazzled, like a man at the end of his wits, a man who was one misfiled report away from his second heart attack. In other words, he looked just as he always did.
Zane strode over to Dale with that big grin on his face, his polished Italian shoes tapping on the cement. Taft followed. Zane extended a hand and gave Dale a strong handshake.
“Need any help?” he said with a chuckle.
“It’s a little late now,” Dale said and turned to Taft. “Sir.”
“Well done, Conley.”
Dale pushed Guy toward Zane, who took hold of Guy’s handcuffs.
“He’s all yours,” Dale said.
Zane was Dale’s liaison agent for the assignment. While some BEI cases were handled strictly within the Bureau, most of them began with a request from another federal agency to use the services of the BEI agents, a collection of geniuses in eccentric fields. Dale’s specialty was in history and puzzles. At the beginning of a case, the liaison agent headed the investigation until the BEI agent determined whether the case qualified for the use of the Bureau’s limited manpower. If it did, the BEI agent took the lead. At the conclusion of the case, due to the covert nature of the BEI, all references to its agent were expunged from the record, and the liaison agent was given credit for the assignment.
With this setup, Dale had worked with a revolving door of liaison agents from an array of federal agencies. A BEI agent and his liaison worked in close unison for the duration of the case under stressful, chaotic, and dangerous conditions. They were partners. Short-term partners, Dale liked to call them. Dale’s powerful personality often rubbed his partners the wrong way, resulting in friction. But occasionally he and a liaison meshed well together, and a brotherhood would form. These were the types of liaison agents that Dale enjoyed working with most.
Jamison Zane was such a liaison agent. Dale admired the guy. He saw a lot of himself in Zane: handsome, confident, charming. What wasn’t to like? Dale admired Zane’s tenacity and his intelligence, different as it might have been from Dale’s. The truth was, Dale was going to miss Jamison Zane.
Zane pushed Guy into the passenger seat of the car and shut the door then turned back to Dale. “Seems a shame that you did the lion’s share of the work on this case, and I’ll be the one getting the credit.”
“That’s how the BEI works.” Dale looked at Taft. “Unless you want to give me the credit I deserve for once, sir.”
Taft grumbled.
Zane smacked Dale on the shoulder. “Been a real honor working with you. Truly. Stay in touch.”
“Sure thing.”
Zane shook hands with Taft then circled around to the front of his car and got back in the driver side. He nodded at Dale and took off. Guy scowled at Dale from the passenger side as the car rolled past.
Taft opened his briefcase and handed Dale a manila folder and an ink pen. “Let’s make this official.”
Dale opened the folder. Inside was BEI32A9, the form that gave the consent to remove his name from all records of the case. Dale signed. Once again he didn’t exist. There was a second folder beneath the first.
“What’s this?” Dale said and put the second folder on top.
“No rest for the wicked, pretty boy. It’s your next assignment.”
Dale paused momentarily, a rare instance of words escaping him. “Is this a joke?”
“You ever known me to kid around, Conley?”
“Good point.”
Dale sighed. Usually he had a week or two between assignments, getting some much needed recuperation time before going back to training and development. Sometimes there was only a matter of days between assignments. On rare occasions he’d only gotten hours or even minutes between jobs. But he’d never been handed an assignment immediately upon finishing another.
“Before you look at it, Conley, there’s something you should know about this case. Your liaison isn’t going to be a federal agent.”
“A foreign agent?”
“Not an agent all. Not even law enforcement, as a matter of fact.”
“I beg your pardon? Sir, are you about to use me for another one of your experiments?”
Dale did his best not to be hotheaded, but inside he felt the distant, rumbling thunder of an approaching anger storm. The BEI operating instructions were very clear that any interagency investigation was to be handled by a BEI agent and a liaison agent. Taft had a history of experimenting on Dale with new BEI protocols, and it pissed Dale off. He had a sinking feeling that he was about to be duped into something.
Taft took a piece of paper out of the briefcase and handed it to Dale. “FBI employee. An expert in serial killers.”
Dale read over the paper for a moment. “Gillian Spiro. Forensic psychologist working for the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit.” He looked at Taft. “A civilian.”
“That’s right,” Taft said, clearly sensing Dale’s building frustration. “Deal with it.”
Then the anger storm broke.
“This is a travesty! This goes against the very basic tenets of the BEI operating instructions,” Dale said and pointed at the briefcase. “You’ve got a copy in there. I know you do. You don’t go anywhere without it.”
Dale snatched the briefcase from Taft’s hand.
“Hey!” Taft said.
Dale found Taft’s copy of the Bureau of Esoteric Investigation Operating Instructions—a well-worn, four-inch stack of office paper, comb-bound. He quickly flipped to the appropriate page, knowing exactly where to find it.
Dale stabbed a finger at the page. “Every interagency case begins with a liaison agent escorting the BEI agent. This woman, this Gillian Spiro,” he said and held up the sheet of paper Taft had given him, “is not an agent of any kind. I don’t want to be lugging her around for days on end while you’re using me as your guinea pig.”
Taft stepped closer to Dale. The two most stubborn men in the BEI. Their faces were a foot apart. Both with red cheeks, both with a little bit of sweat on the brow. Whereas Dale was sweaty from his anger and the desert heat, Taft was always kind of sweaty.
“I don’t give a damn what you think, Conley,” he said. “She’s an FBI psychologist, and that’s good enough for me as the director of this organization.”
“But, sir, this is not by the book,” Dale said and shook the rulebook in his hand again.
“Fine,” Taft said and snatched the manual out of Dale’s hand. “I’m the one who wrote the damn thing anyway.” He grabbed a pencil from his briefcase, flipped a few pages into the manual, and started writing. He spoke aloud as he scribbled furiously. “The position of liaison agent can be filled by a non-agent employee of a federal agency if deemed necessary by the SAC. The employee is granted temporary status as a federal agent for the duration of the assignment. W.T.” He shoved the manual at Dale.
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? I wrote the book, and I’ll change it the way I want.” Taft waved the pencil in Dale’s face. “And I wrote it in pencil. At the end of this case, I’ll erase it, and everything will go back to the way it was.”
“Unbelievable.”
“What, Conley? Worried about working under female authority until you make the case determination?”
Dale crossed his arms. “Oh, give me a break, sir. I worked with that ATF girl, Agent Bissell.”
“And she hates you now.”
“I worked with Agent Kitzmiller from the FAA.”
“And you two ended up dating.”
Dale paused. “And she hates me now too. The point is, I have no problem working with a woman, even under her authority until I make case determination, and you damn well know it. And by the end of this case—”
“Conley, cool it. Just take a look at the file, would ya? Might lend some perspective.”
Dale took a deep breath, looked at Taft, and opened the folder. “Oh my god.”
“Thought that might shut you up.”
Inside the folder was a stack of photos and papers, and on top was a crime scene photo of a man whose head was twisted to the side with a wide gash across his neck. Lips curled back. Eyes squeezed tight. A grimacing expression. The man’s left sleeve had been rolled up, and there were crude scribble marks across the inside of his forearm.
“What is this?” Dale said.
