Red and Black

by Nancy O'Toole Meservier

“Hmm…real bad?”

  She nodded, and I paused, feeling my face shift into a frown. Which seemed…odd. She had seemed comfortable enough talking about her father’s death, even if she had admitted that was mostly due to the fact that it had happened years ago. What could be so bad that she didn’t even want to think about it?

  “Next!”

  We both jumped a little at the shout from the attendant in the window. The couple in front of us was long gone.

  “Well,” I said. “Do you know what you’d like? My treat.”

  “Anything chocolate,” Dawn said.

  We made our orders, and I handed my money to the cashier, a pimply-faced teenager with chunky hipster frames, a large nose, and limp, greasy hair. As he came back with our food, I notice his attention linger over Dawn’s face, much like the waiter at Antigoni’s had.

  “Hey!” he said, staring straight at Dawn. “It’s you!”

  Dawn froze. I frowned. That was odd. Maybe he knew her because of her mom’s writing?

  “I saw you out of the corner of my eye and thought, could it be? But then…it really is you. The kidnapped girl.”

  I blinked, and for a moment could only look back and forth between the two of them, at Dawn’s rapidly reddening face, and the cashier’s widening grin.

  “Why haven’t you been on the news? Everyone’ dying to know what happened. My mom…she read all the articles. Talked about what a nice girl you seemed to be and how unfair it all was.” He leaned forward. “I always assumed it was the boyfriend, you know. But the news hasn’t said anything about finding him.”

  Dawn shifted, her eyes cast down. It didn’t take a genius to see that this line of questioning was making her uncomfortable, but the kid continued. I reached for the gelatos, then turned to Dawn.

  “Hey,” I said. “I know a good place to sit.”

  She nodded, and I led her away from the gelato guy. His cries of protest eventually turned from the fact that we were leaving to the fact that he had yet to give me my change. I hesitated for a moment. It had been a few weeks since the Hamilton job, but the benefit was close enough that I knew I would have plenty of money coming in. Still, as someone who had never said the words “keep the change,” leaving even a couple dollars behind felt wrong.

  I led Dawn toward the Bailey City Aquarium. It had just closed for the day, so the only people around were a couple of teenagers pressing their faces against a tank holding a trio of fat seals. We walked around the building to a surprisingly empty stretch of the pier. We found a well-lit park bench, looking out over the darkening waters. I handed Dawn her gelato.

  “Thank you,” she said, but didn’t eat it.

  “You don’t have to answer this,” I said after we had taken our seats, “but I think I have an idea of what you’re not comfortable discussing with Sunshine.”

  Dawn winced before speaking.

  “That obvious?”

  “Just a hunch.”

  She shook her head, stirring the gelato around with a spoon.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Sunshine thinks it’s unhealthy that I’m not…facing up to certain things, but how is lingering over something that upsets me supposed to help?”

  “It helped me to talk about my mom with you.”

  Dawn frowned.

  “You mean back at the Cupcake Factory? We didn’t talk for very long.”

  “Dawn, that was the first time I had talked about my mom with someone who wasn’t one of my sisters, a doctor, or involved with the funeral arrangements. It didn’t have to be a lengthy dialogue to be helpful.” I shook my head. “To be honest, I didn’t even realize I could talk about it without getting angry.”

  “You don’t seem like an angry person.”

  Well, what could I say to that?

  “So…” Dawn said after a few seconds. “I guess you’re saying that you should linger over things that upset you?”

  “I guess I’m saying it depends. Like…when I broke up with my last girlfriend. For weeks, all I could do was think about her, how awful things had ended, and all the things I could have done differently. I ended up digging a bit of a hole for myself. It wasn’t until I was able to move on to other things that I could be myself again.”

  Dawn nodded.

  “Now, I think there’s a difference between choosing to move on from something and choosing to ignore a wound and let it fester,” I continued. “Once I was able to come to terms with how things had ended with my ex, seeing her on the street, while awkward, was bearable. On the other hand, if the sight of seeing an ex on the street sends you into a panic attack, then you clearly have some issues you might want to deal with.”

  “It sounds so simple when you put it like that,” Dawn said. “But…it doesn’t feel simple. And now things aren’t right between me and Sunshine, who’s always been there for me. And I really mean always. And she never really asks for anything in return.”

  “Except for chicken from Antigoni’s?”

  “Well…there are always exceptions,” Dawn said with a chuckle, shaking her head. Then her face grew serious. “And here I am, getting all anxious because she cares about me. The moment she ventured into a topic that made me uncomfortable…I just shut her out. That…well, I don’t know if that was entirely fair of me.”

  Dawn shook her head, clearly lost in thought. I gave her a moment to speak again, then sighed and leaned back.

  “Well, Dawn,” I said. “You said you weren’t really sure what to do, but I feel like you already know.”

  Dawn looked up, a small smile twitching on her face.

  “Is this your way of telling me that I had the power to go home all along?” she asked.

  “Tap your heels together three times.”

  “So…talk to Sunshine,” Dawn said, taking in a deep breath.

  “I think the key word there is ‘talk’,” I replied. “If you truly aren’t up to laying your soul bare, just let her know that. Tell her you appreciate how much she cares, but there are some things you just don’t want to talk about.”

  “I guess I could tell her the stuff about Mark,” Dawn said. “She was never really big on me dating him.”

  “Do I have any competition?”

  “Ah…no. He went missing the same day I did. Only they never found him.” She shook her head. “It’s weird. Our last moments together were…not great, but he didn’t deserve that.” She paused before speaking again. “You know, one of the first things that struck me about you was the fact that you didn’t know about it. I mean, over the summer it felt like whenever someone took the time to look me in the face, all they could see was my picture from the news.”

  “I…uh…had a pretty involved summer. Kinda shut out the rest of the world. I take it scenes like the one with the gelato guy weren’t so uncommon?”

  “Well, he was more direct then most,” Dawn replied before taking a bite of her food. “Hey…this is good.”

  “I told you!”

  I ate some of mine, but found that it didn’t taste quite as good as I remembered. And you didn’t need to be a shrink to figure out why. Here I was, comforting Dawn about the emotional scars left behind from being abducted, and what did I do in my spare time? Snatched lawyers from their offices. IT guys from back alleys. And that was nothing compared to what I was going to do at the benefit.

  Dana Peterson, Arthur Hamilton, Johanna St. Pierre, Edison Kent, and Sylvie Bouchard. Over the past couple of weeks, I had spent countless hours thinking about the benefit. Had I spent any of that time really thinking about the people we were going after? Or were they just “targets”?

  Dawn and I talked for a little while, the streetlight above cutting us off from the rest of the world. We talked about good places to eat on the Coastline. Mariah’s upcoming internship. A school project Dawn was working on. Things we should have been able to talk about on our date, had everything not been ruined by the appearance of Peterson and that Red and Black Woman. The empty gelato cups and their long, flat spoons lay
forgotten on the park bench.

  “I should probably get going,” Dawn said. “I do have plans.”

  I agreed and rose to my feet, stretching out a hand to her to help pull her up. Dawn stood tall, clearly ending up closer to me than she had intended. For a couple of seconds, I could feel warmth radiating off of her, from her breath to the heat of her hand in mine. I realized too late that it would have been a perfect opportunity to kiss her.

  Dawn pulled back slightly, turning her head away from me, the moment lost.

  But she didn’t remove her hand.

  I wanted to kiss her before seeing her off at the tram, but couldn’t find the right moment. Instead, I asked if I could call her after this week. I didn’t mention anything about the benefit, of course. Just said I had a “bunch of extra hours at Colossus.” She agreed, the smile on her face suggesting that she had probably forgiven me for the whole botched first date.

  As I watched her walk into the station, I knew I had to figure out a way to make things work. Dammit, I liked Dawn. And it went beyond mere attraction, although that was a big part of it. She was clearly a good person. She cared a lot about her friend, after all. Not to mention that once you got past her shyness, she was just so easy to talk to. I bet I could spend hours with her and not even realize it. And to go through what she had been through and still be able to face the day…that took strength. Strength she might not even recognize she had.

  Even if it clearly wasn’t going to be the pure “simple and fun” I had been banking on, there was just something about being with her. It was like all the weight and bitterness I normally carried around with me drifted away, even when discussing serious stuff. How was I going to balance it with everything going on with Calypso? And what if my cover was blown at the benefit? I doubted Dawn, with all her superhero comics, would have any interest in dating Faultline.

  But I still had to try. Life was more apt to screw you over than anything else. When it gave you something good, you’d be a moron not to take it. So even if Dawn and I were doomed to fall apart thanks to my second life, it didn’t mean I wasn’t going to go for it.

  I just needed to wait until after the benefit. It was only four days away, after all.

  15

  Dawn

  “Do you see the house?”

  Dana’s voice buzzed in my ear. I jumped, having forgotten he was even there. I guess it was easier in the movies, with the camera constantly cutting back and forth between the hero and the hacker. Now it felt like some creeper was sitting just slightly to my left.

  When Dana had mentioned that he had a couple of things he wanted to pick up before meeting, I honestly hadn’t given it much thought. Then he had handed me the earpiece and the microphone, and it had taken all my willpower not to let out a very unheroic squeak. Forget police scanners in false-bottomed boxes. If there was anything that was gonna make me feel like a spy, it was whispering into an earpiece while on a covert mission. What was the dialogue they tended to use in this situation? Copy that? Roger? Five-by-five?

  “Yeah,” I finally settled on, my focus on the building in front of me.

  Surprise, surprise, Arthur Hamilton lived east of the river. This had led me to cross almost the entirety of Bailey City to get to Dana before heading all the way back to my home turf, which seemed awfully inefficient. Ah well. At least I had gotten to stop in to see Steve on the way. And then there had been Alex. My mind swam in memory of our conversation, and the feeling of his hand in mine. I pushed it back down. I could indulge in all my warm and fuzzy thoughts later. For now, I had to break into a house.

  Like me, Mr. Hamilton lived in an upper-class attached house with a river view, but there was a little more “upper” and probably “class” to the Hamilton abode. This three-story structure was painted a clean white with black trim. The front door, lit by a duo of lamps, was a friendly cranberry red. There was even a small front lawn of fresh green grass, a rarity in Bailey City. The entire property was surrounded by a black metal fence with pointy spikes at the top. If there wasn’t at least one camera as part of the security system, I would eat my hat. Or maybe my mask, as I never wore hats. Of course, it was impossible to take off my mask…

  Anyway. Back to work.

  “So…am I gonna end up on Candid Camera or something?” I said from my position in a maple tree across the street.

  “You’re too young to get that reference,” Dana replied.

  “This is a disguise, Peterson. For all you know, I’m old enough to be your grandma.”

  “Isn’t that disturbing. But if you’re worried about security cameras, they’re controlled by the alarm system. I can show you how to take care of that.”

  “That won’t alert the alarm company?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Think so?”

  “What, don’t want the wide world to know you’ve committed a B&E?”

  “Would you?”

  “Eh…probably not. Just let me know when you’re at the door. I know the code.”

  I jumped, soaring over the fence easily and landing a few paces away from the door. I jogged to the entrance.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m here.”

  “Do you see the panel?” Dana asked. “Should be just below eye level to your right.”

  “Umm…yes! I see it!” I turned to where a white keypad had been placed right next to the door.

  “Okay, your numbers are 8-4-1-5-3. Ironically, that also happens to be Martha Hamilton’s birthday.”

  I nodded, entering the numbers, then listened to Dana as he talked me through disabling the cameras. The system let out a peppy string of beeps, and I reached for the door handle.

  It wouldn’t budge.

  “Dana, it’s still locked.”

  “Ah, right. I guess you still need a key.”

  “You guess?”

  “Yeah, well, aren’t you like, crazy strong anyway?”

  “This is the last time I let you take the lead,” I said, rolling my eyes. I reached for the doorknob and yanked it downward. There was a loud snap and suddenly, the door was a lot more cooperative.

  I stepped inside a somewhat generic entryway. A staircase with a curled railing led to a second floor. Doors stood on either side, opening into large, well-furnished rooms. To the front, a short hall continued to the back of the house. Next to the entryway stood a coatrack. It held one men’s dress coat, a single umbrella (black, of course), and a pair of those little rubber thingies you slip over dress shoes so they don’t get ruined when it rains.

  “Looks like he lives alone,” I said in a hushed tone.

  I took a few steps forward. Near the base of the stairs was a small table. A loose wire connected to a plug-in phone jack, suggesting that the table probably once held some sort of archaic phone/answering machine combo. Likely, the police had taken it with them. Next to it was a pad of paper and a pencil. I felt a tiny thrill as I reached for the pencil, repeating a process I had seen dozens of times on cop shows, rubbing the flat of the pencil across the page, looking for signs of a previous message.

  I came up with nothing but a big smudge of lead.

  Ah well, who even called landlines nowadays? I looked up to the nearby wall. Multiple pictures were arranged in a diamond-shaped display.

  “Hmm,” I said, reaching for the flashlight I had tucked in my armpit. Ugh. What I wouldn’t give for a couple pockets in this thing.

  “Hmm?” Dana repeated in my ears.

  “Photographs,” I said, clicking the light on. “In the entryway.”

  “Of who?”

  “Martha,” I replied. “They’re all of Martha. Although she’s a lot younger in them. Like high school age, college.”

  My light drifted from image to image. A couple showed a younger Martha in a cheerleader’s uniform, her teeth set in a bright, white smile. Another had been taken during some sort of formal dance. She, and a tall, gangly boy had been placed in the classic prom pose. A more candid photo showed her on hands and knee
s in front of a garden, a middle-aged woman crouched nearby. The others were pretty similar, the middle-aged woman showing up multiple times. I thought back to the articles I had looked over after Mr. Hamilton’s abduction. They had mentioned that he was a widower. Maybe this had been his wife, and Martha’s mother?

  Interestingly, Mr. Hamilton didn’t show up in any of the pictures. Perhaps he preferred to play photographer?

  I described the display to Dana.

  “How could the police have missed that?” he asked, tone flat.

  “This isn’t a case of incompetence.” I shook my head. “They’re deliberately covering up this relationship. Someone at the BCPD is in league with this Mistress.”

  “So much for the sterling reputation of Bailey’s finest.”

  I made my way down the short hallway which emptied out in two directions. One led to a large, showroom-worthy kitchen, the other to an office furnished similarly to Mr. Hamilton’s place at the Commerce Center, paneled in some expensive type of wood. Apparently, if you were going to be a fancy-pants lawyer, you asked for the most cliché fancy-pants lawyer décor.

  “In all honesty, I’m kind of surprised you agreed to this,” Dana added. “No offense, but you seem a little more…law-abiding.”

  I raised an eyebrow, which, of course, the little voice in my ear could not see.

  “I’m a masked vigilante. What about that seems law-abiding?” I asked.

  “Point taken. You just seem like someone who respects rules.”

  “Is this because I wouldn’t let you kick the crap out of that guy who tried to kidnap you?”

  “Um, clearly.”

  As we spoke, I made my way around to the office. I immediately noticed several telltale squares in the dust. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that’s where his computer and other devices had sat.

  “In all honesty, I normally like rules,” I replied. “And yes, I know that sounds lame. But a lot of them make sense. Don’t drive too fast because you might hurt someone. Don’t take something that doesn’t belong to you. Etc. Etc.”

  “Yet you’re clearly breaking a big one by putting on that mask.”