Dream Static

by Robert S. Wilson

  Either way, he knows one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt. He won't let anything bad happen to her. With or without him, he'll make sure she is able to make the most of this second chance she’s been granted.

  Chapter 12

  It hadn't been easy, but Maddox had managed to call in a favor with another detective he had worked with several years ago in East Nashville. Joey Romano is a good cop and a good friend and about one of the only people Maddox can trust to watch out for Angela while he tracks down the hunch stirring in his gut. "Man, I can't thank you enough. After this, we're way more than square, old buddy."

  Joey takes a drag on his cigarette, grins with that knowing kind of smile and slaps Maddox on the back. "Got her hooks in you, eh, Maddie?"

  Maddox lets a small grin of his own loose from the otherwise tight features of his face and simply takes hold of Joey's arm and pulls his friend in for a hug. "Just remember, anybody goes up there, doesn't live there, doesn't check out, I don't care if they look like the fuckin' cable guy, I want you hot on their ass, you got me, pal?"

  "Yeah, yeah, Maddie, I got you just fine. And I'm gonna hold you to your word, you know. Square is square, asshole." He laughs as Maddox walks away, his grin doubled in size and uncontrollably still growing. He nods and then gets in his car and starts the engine. The last sliver of the sun glares into his rearview mirror. He puts the car in drive and watches the tall condominium shrink away behind him. Then, he's lost in a sea of traffic.

  ***

  Barely a footnote inside Johnson's file, Maddox happened upon a small but interesting detail. Back in the days of Earth Hope, Johnson had been in charge of maintenance on the foundation's headquarters, a small office building in downtown Nashville, just across from a couple of towering major bank skyscrapers. The building had since not been sold and continued to sit unkempt until about six months ago when it was officially listed as condemned. And as of yet, the city hasn't managed to get around to having the building demolished. Flipping through the digital pages, sitting in his car in a parking garage across the street from the old building, Maddox wonders why no one has bothered to look for Johnson in this place.

  Sure, it's highly possible that Johnson had gotten on the first plane to Nicaragua immediately after the last bombing, which was, conveniently within days of the filing of the official missing persons report with his name on it. And whose name was signed on that report? Noah Masterson's, of course. Maddox sighs. He pulls out his gun and makes sure it's fully loaded. Once he's reinserted the clip and put it back away, he gets out of the car and starts for the condemned building. The dissonant contrast between the dark shadows of the garage and the blinding neon lights outside in the streets of Nash Vegas is staggering. Maddox nearly walks out in front of oncoming traffic, the blur of phantom glow is so distracting to his vision.

  When he manages to get across the street in one piece, he slips around the side of the building down a tiny narrow alleyway. Trash and vomit and dead animals litter the small corridor as he makes his way toward the back of the building. He has no idea if there even is a back door, but he has a feeling there is. No one like Johnson would pick a place this out in the open if it didn't. When the side wall comes to an end at an adjacent alleyway, Maddox looks over and finds the way in he's been hoping for. He double checks that no one is behind him or hanging around behind the building before he goes any further. With no one else around, he decides now is as good a time as ever.

  He comes to the tall wooden dilapidated door and finds it easily willing to let him inside. He pulls it open and steps into the building. He can't see anything at first, but the loud echo of his solitary soft footstep tells him the place is mostly empty. He flips on his penlight and starts looking around. The place is mostly filled with more garbage. Graffiti litters the walls. If Johnson is here, he hasn't been the only tenant since the building's last official usage. Rats scurry around in the trash, squeaking and chewing and disappearing and reappearing at random. The elevator isn't taking anyone anywhere any time soon. Its doors barely stand, half open, two feet of gap beneath it. No matter how close Maddox gets with his penlight the depths of that gap are nothing more than black. He'll have to take the stairs. He staggers around the room in the dark, barely able to light his way until he finally finds the stairway on the far end of the building from the elevator.

  He steps in something slimy on the first step then struggles to wipe whatever it is off his shoe for more than halfway up that first level. When he comes to the second, he finds it in even more ruins than the first. There are more rooms up here, but they're just as empty with that same trace of garbage and rodents littering the floors. A nasal moaning, quiet at first, then louder, shoots out from one of the floors above. Maddox takes his penlight and shines it up the next flight of stairs as he makes his way toward them. The sound continues. Someone is in a great degree of pain up there. Maybe, just maybe, he's found what he was looking for.

  He steps up onto the first stair warily just in case there's another gob of goo waiting to encase his shoe again. When no such goo grabs hold of him, he steps upward. The echoing sound of the man's screeching cries sends chills up Maddox's spine as they became more and more pronounced, the voice more thick and obviously choking on something liquid. Blood probably, Maddox guesses. It isn't likely to be anything else with that kind of wail coming from a man.

  On the third floor, there isn't much different to find, and it's obvious the voice is still somewhere higher. Maddox takes a quick glance around the hallways and a split second peek into each of the rooms finding only more of the same. He continues onward up the next flight of steps. The voice is getting close now. He can tell by the angle and volume of its reflections that it's just around the corner at the top of the stairs. When he gets there, he finds a man, no younger than his early sixties, blood pooling around his body and spreading out. The man looks up at him with a pleading expression, hands trying to cover the gaping hole in his stomach gushing out more and more of the red liquid. He isn't Johnson though. Johnson is little over half this man's age at most. Maddox rummages around the room and finds a long dusty towel and brings it over to the man's body, wads it up as best he can and pushes it down into the man's abdomen. The man screams, blood spitting from his mouth and spattering Maddox's face.

  "I'm sorry, but I have to put pressure on it or you're going to bleed to death. What happened?"

  The man tries to answer between quick rhythmic successive breaths.

  "I"

  Breath.

  "Was"

  Breath.

  "Trying."

  Breath.

  "To"

  Breath.

  "Find."

  Breath.

  "A place."

  Breath.

  "To stay."

  Breath.

  "For the night."

  Breath.

  "Found this."

  Breath.

  "Place."

  Breath.

  "Curled up."

  Breath.

  "Went to sleep."

  Breath.

  "Woke up."

  Breath.

  "There were."

  Breath.

  "These guys."

  Breath.

  "Flashlights."

  Breath.

  "Guns."

  Breath.

  "Looking for something."

  Breath.

  "Shot me."

  Breath.

  "Left."

  The man's breathing speeds up at that point and before he can say another word his eyes roll in the back of his head and he begins to convulse. Foamy saliva curls up in a wave from his lips and he shakes violently for a quick moment and then just as quickly stops moving at all. Maddox gets up to his feet and takes one last long look at the man and then pulls out a handkerchief and wipes the blood off his hands the best he can. He sighs. The possibility that it could have been Johnson and some of his buddies crosses Maddox's mind and he almost gives up the search and leaves. Bu
t he isn't going to leave things like this. He has to try to find the man. He might be the only key to finding evidence against Masterson.

  Maddox calls in for the morgue to come and pick up the man lying on the floor and makes his way upstairs. He tries not to think about the fact that that man won't get the same second chance that Angela got. That most people get now a days. The thing that separates him from the ones who such a simple death would be recoverable from comes down to simple economics. The man is homeless and likely has no money to speak of. And so he will leave this world the same way. Homeless and penniless.

  The stink of death creeps into Maddox's nose and he knows it's far too soon for the man downstairs to have rotted enough to notice. He picks up his pace and follows the sweet thick overwhelming stench. It's so strong it would be easy now to literally follow his nose to find the source of it.

  At the end of a hallway on the fourth floor, Maddox finds what he was looking for. He can't make out the man's face from the amount of decay that's set in, but the Tennessee driver's license in the man's wallet gives it away. And the body, riddled with bullet holes, matches the height and other specifics he knows about Johnson enough so that Maddox is pretty sure a DNA test will only confirm what he already believes. He drops the wallet, license and all, on the dead man's chest and turns and walks away. He found what he was looking for and the hell if he was going to stay in this condemned building full of trash and death and rats. He calls in a homicide from his Synapath and starts back down the stairs. Whoever killed Johnson did it some time ago. Maybe not as long ago as Angela's death, but it's hard not to see some kind of connection now. Angela, Dawson, and this Johnson fellow had all apparently died to cover up the same thing.

  The Nashville city court bombings.

  ***

  A knock at the door sends a stiffness through Angela's body. She waits, still as stone for a long moment, worrying, wondering who could be at the door. She's just about to panic when a text comes through her Synapath. Angela, it's me, Maddox. We need to talk.

  She looks through the peephole and sure enough it's him, standing out there, a concerned and frustrated look on his face. She opens the door and welcomes him inside. He walks in and she closes the door behind him, locks it again.

  "I found Johnson. Dead as a doornail. Body was in the old Earth Hope building."

  Angela nods. "I'm not surprised. He would have been a liability, same as me and Dawson. Better to get us all out of the way and leave nothing to tie him to the bombings." She sobs then. "But Jordan..."

  Maddox steps closer to her, a hand out for her to take.

  "He didn't know anything. He didn't have to die." She takes Maddox's hand and squeezes. "His funeral is tomorrow. I hate to ask this... Especially after what I said last night... But do you think you could go with me?"

  Maddox nods. "Of course. Don't worry about it."

  "I still can't believe he's dead." Angela crumbles in place and Maddox moves closer still and the two embrace. Her arms pull his body close. It feels like a life jacket thrown in from the shore and her mouth, pressing against the side of his neck, finds it's way up in soft sensual kisses.

  "Are you sure this is what you want?"

  "Yes." She blurts the words out between wet hungry kisses up the side of his neck. More sure than anything else in this shitty godforsaken world.

  Chapter 13

  Rain falls in a soft mist over the graveyard. They stand in a crowd around the steel blue coffin raised up above the gaping hole in the ground where it will soon be set to rest forever. When the time comes and everyone seems to be in their places, the pastor begins to speak.

  "Brothers and sisters, we have come together today to remember before God the life of Jordan Chandler. To bless his body and commend him to God's keeping. We are also here in sympathy and love to comfort those he has left behind to mourn with a proclamation of hope. Through God's promise that dying in Christ, we may rise again in Christ to life eternal."

  Angela erupts into sobbing at the uttering of those words. Maddox tries to comfort her, but the floodgates have opened and now there will be no return for a time. The rest of the procession goes by in a blur and before long, she finds herself in front of an open grave dropping flowers down over Jordan's final resting place.

  She mouths the word, "Goodbye," and, as dirt is dropped down on the coffin by men Angela doesn't recognize, she turns and walks back to Maddox's side. When it's over, the two walk back to his car, slowly stepping their way through the graveyard as they go. In the car, they sit in silence for a long time before Maddox starts the engine and puts the vehicle in gear. As they turn out onto the road, there's a sound from the backseat and before Maddox can even manage to look over his shoulder, Angela gasps.

  In the rearview mirror, a man in a mask rises up from behind their seats, gun in hand, pointed directly at Angela's head. "You make any wrong moves and I'll blow her fucking brains all over your lovely leather interior. Hand me your gun, barrel pointed away from me."

  ***

  Maddox pulls the car into the lot of the old abandoned printing press where the man in the mask directed them to go. He parks behind the building, just as the man told him to and kills the engine and sits waiting.

  "Now, we're going to all get out of the car at the same time, do you both understand?"

  They nod.

  "Good. I'm going to count to three."

  Angela nods, a whimper escaping her. Maddox simply speaks under his breath, "Yes."

  "All right. Now, remember, I'm not stupid and I know neither are you. Don't treat me like I'm stupid and don't do anything stupid." The man waits for his words to sink in and then starts to count. "One..." Angela clenches her eyes shut. She's trembling. Memories from her murder flash into her mind. She takes a deep breath and exhales.

  "Two..." The stillness in the car is becoming a thing of its own weight and mass.

  "Three."

  All three car doors open and each of them take one step out onto the pavement and then follow with another step and, in an unexpected blur of movement, Maddox slams the back door into the man, knocking him against the side of the car and in one big loud crack, a shot goes off and Maddox falls to the ground. Angela cries out.

  "Shut the fuck up." She's breathing through her teeth now, trying to keep from screaming again. From her vantage point, she can't see Maddox and has no idea if he's alive or dead. She moans from behind clenched teeth and the man with the mask turns and points the gun at her. "I said shut. The fuck. Up."

  Angela fights to keep back the rage and terror trying to claw its way out of her mouth. She looks down at her feet and tries to clear her mind. As she stares at the ground there's a rustling and then her hands are pulled behind her back and roughly tied together. Without warning, something small and hard slams into the back of her head and darkness takes her.

  ***

  The world warps and bends around Angela's cold stiff body. Fog floats up from her lips and becomes ice crystals that fall down over her chin and freeze to her face. The sky above is a deep dark shade of crimson dotted with the pointed shapes of crows flapping their wings harder and harder as they fly overhead in slow motion. Beneath the sky, a building surrounds her broken body and she realizes there's no roof in existence in this place. Two worlds seem to be colliding before her. A man stands over her body. She knows that half of what she's experiencing is dream, but she's not sure about the other half. That other world. Is it the one where her body truly and physically exists? She isn't sure.

  A mirror floats above her, one long thick crack sliding down the middle reflecting her image back to her in two pieces cut long ways. One eye on one side is brown and human, the eye on the other side lights up in neon green and circuits spread out from it all across her body only on the one side of the mirror. There's a flash of lightning and then the man steps closer looking down over her body. He doesn't seem to recognize that she can see him. The black, hole-ripped mask covering his face looks like an old shirt or a ra
g. Someone else walks up then, from her inner world. He walks out of the red sky, as if he was made to float on it. Black wings, like leather, unfold and spread out from his body. She can see his face now and at the recognition of it, tears fall down the sides of her face and slide into her ears, tickling her flesh there.

  Maddox swoops down with a grace well beyond any he had in life. Again, she sobs at the realization that he's probably dead now. Dead just like Jordan. Just like Dawson. The other man seems to notice her now. He leans down in front of her and begins to speak.

  "I'm guessing that little tranquilizer I gave you is starting to wear off now. Welcome back to reality." He grins from behind the mask. "I know, I know. You probably really don't want to come back all things considered... I bet you're wishing you'd never come back at all the first time by now. And trust me... If I had my way, you wouldn't have either, let me tell you." He pulls off his mask then and stares at her long and hard, that same grin still on his lips. And as the red sky melts behind him, something inside Angela is screaming at the man, clawing out his eyes, though James Barton sits there none the worse for wear and at the recognition in her eyes, he lets out a good long hearty laugh.

  ***

  Barton pulls Angela up to a sitting position and drags her over to the wall. As her body skids against the concrete floor, she bumps into a pair of feet and looks over to find Maddox crumpled on the floor, blood leaking from his chest, eyes closed, and hands tied behind his back. She still can't quite tell if he's alive or dead but she lets hope wash over her. Clings to it with all she has. Barton notices where her eyes are pointed and he walks up to the body. "Oh, don't worry, Miss Bane, our friend Detective Maddox won't be interfering with our business at all. He might just still be alive by a slight margin, but only slight." He then kicks Maddox full on in the gut in a demonstration of how unresponsive he is. Maddox's body lurches with the kick but only involuntarily. Nothing in that movement spells out consciousness of any kind.