by Riley Mason
Chapter 34
ATAP stood at the corner of 42nd street, a seventy-five-story building standing nearest the NYPD substation that stood at the center of one of the biggest tourist areas in Manhattan. I hated being around the many tourists. People wandering around and snapping pictures, no idea how the rest of us were being forced to live.
I enjoy the chaos because it puts a crowd around me and the denser the crowd the less likelihood I’ll be discovered. Tourists make a very adaptable camouflage.
I go into the secretary and announce myself and who I’m there to see. The man’s name is Jeffrey Melon when she calls up I already know the answer before she puts the phone back into the receiver.
“Mr. Melon will see you now,” she says politely.
“Thank you,” I say back to her and take the elevator up to his floor.
He’s there to meet me with a hand out like that’s all he wants. I entertain him and smile back and take his hand and shake it. “It’s so good to see you,” he says to me, that sleazy grin marks a face that’s old enough to be my father’s. I can see he’s hidden thick glasses in the breast pocket of his blazer and he’s added water to his hair to shine it up.
“Good to see you too,” I reply less than enthusiastically but I know my smile is convincing enough, it wouldn’t take much.
He ushered me into his corner office overlooking the chaos on the ground level at Times Square. I take my seat, sit back, and cross my legs as he takes his place behind his enormous mahogany desk. Conveniently, there’s no pictures of the wife and kids that I know he has there from time to time.
“What can I help you with, it’s not often there are requests from you to me?” he asks me.
“I know,” I say. “I’m in the middle of a research dossier on BRDS Holdings, specifically their CEO.”
“Gabriel?” he asks, they’re on a first name basis I see.
“Yes.”
“What do you need to know?” he asks me, there is change in his face, it's no longer the hidden lust and game, it's as if I’ve pushed him into a board meeting where he’s about to be exiled.
“Standard, business practices, locations, hobbies, habits, any kind of habits,” I say.
“And what makes you think that I have information like that?”
I look at him, our eyes lock but it's the game that the two of us just started playing. “As CFO of ATAP the forensic analysis of his finances would’ve seen you overlooking the process. Seeing the books and I know if I wasn’t employed as the researcher, someone was assigned. I’ve done enough work for ATAP to know that you don’t get in bed with anyone that you don’t know.”
“But someone wants you to do the research on BRDS?” he asked me, his hands closed around themselves. “To find out something on the holdings company.”
“More specifically their CEO,” I revise his talk track. “ATAP is the door not the central focus, my agreement with this company forbid that kind of disclosure.”
“But you’re a smart girl,” he says now when the smile forms on his face it’s not me that's controlling it, it's the sick and twisted corporate asshole that’s pulling the strings up there.
“A smart girl who wants that information,” I say, not entertaining the route that I know he’s trying to take this.
“BRDS Holdings and ATAP never got to the point in the negotiations where the financial summaries had to be analyzed. It was a talk track that never really got into anything, I’m sorry that you were under any differing impressions honey.”
Honey I think he is a piece of shit. “The merger went to government level for approval, it was approved at a board meeting which took place in secret January 23rd, 2019 where the executive levels ironed out details before it went to the public forum.”
“And how would you know that?”
Now it’s my turn to leak a smile with tainted intentions. “I’m very good at my research which is why ATAP keeps me on retainer even when I’m not actually performing that research.”
“And what if that were to stop. Your retainer checks are salary value, we don’t like someone slipping through our dirty laundry for another company to get the kind of shit we pay you to find.”
“ATAP is my priority,” I lie.
“I’m very inclined to tell you to go fuck yourself and get the hell out of my office,” Melon says to me. The smile is gone and his eyes have gone cold. I can see that there are two motivations tying themselves off. Gabriel and the protection of ATAP as a whole.
“Then I think that we need to change pace in this conversation,” I say leaning over and opening my messenger bag, sliding open a slot where the files are being kept. I take them out and put them on the table.
“Your CEO the one that approves those checks that have your impressions on them asked me to run my specialized research on his executive board, the terms of that research where in a contract that stand between him and I exclusively. I’m going to show you what the results of my work are,” I tell him and I can see the stone in his face begin to crack.
“Including in this file are pictures of you with two nineteen year old girls, friends of your daughter, a girl name Angela Brown and another name Morgan Payne, the pictures document your relationship with them over the course of six months which is so good I’m sure Discovery channel can turn out a full on mini-series from the content, that or one of the porn sites out there. There’s also five pictures of you soliciting prostitutes in the Hunts Point area of the Bronx, nothing like paying for it is there?
“Lastly there is a copy of the gag-order you had those girls and their families sign with a promise of a million dollars to keep this silent. Five bank deposits totaling seventy-seven thousand dollars each have been extracted from their bank accounts with your signature, the real one too, not the stamp you use for mine imprinted on them.”
I see him skim over the paperwork. His face doesn’t change but the beads of sweat on his forehead tell me that everything he sees is ringing bells in his head. “So now I want to have a new arrangement, off the record and with ATAP free and clear, tell me what the fuck you know about Gabriel or else all this and all the drives and backups make it to every single news outlet in the northeast, your wife, your family, and the SEC.”
Chapter 35
Melon paid up, I’m glad he did. I had no problem getting the information to the public eye but that would’ve done little for me if he didn’t give me the information. Without the leverage to keep him quiet, there was nothing from stopping him from reaching out to Gabriel. Melon knew more but I couldn’t pressure him too much, despite his impatience, men in his line of work under those types of stresses are prone to suicide, the last thing I needed was for him to put a bullet in his mouth before I was done with him.
On the way out, the secretary that I had passed on the way in and stopped me. She hadn’t said much but she did say, “This is for you,” it was an envelope with a key inside of it.
Melon was specific to one person, a person that could’ve stepped into the middle of the merger deal if it were brought out. BRDS had their own dirty laundry, it was enough to make ATAP look like angelic by comparison.
He mentioned to me a man named Lucas Dodson, CTO for BRDS umbrella. Lucas had killed his entire family with a meat cleaver and claimed that he had heard voices that had told him to do it. The story never made the news, it was the first time that I was hearing about it myself. I don't typically monitor Connecticut bands or news but something that big would have trickled over the border.
I decided that I had to see him before the story was even finished. Voices was an area of business that I was in. At this point, the situation was growing and I was determined to stay proactive, the line that I respected between human and occult seemed to be thinning and it wasn’t much of a surprise to me that I really didn’t care how long that line stood its ground.
A cab takes me to Grand Central where I board a Connecticut line to Bridgeport where Lucas is being held. I only hope that I get to Lucas befo
re anyone else has, there’s no telling if other Chaser’s had tried to take him out or what else is protecting or infecting someone possessed.
While I’m on the train, there are a lot of thoughts moving in my head and some of them are moving faster than they can make sense to me. Most of my attention has been on Gabriel and I haven’t focused as much as I needed to on the wraith. It's out there and I have no idea if I have what it takes to put it down and send it back. My hope is that that answer lies with Lucas and that the voices that he heard can tell me something.
My hand moves through my bag, I need to take something to get my system in order. Next to the pills was the envelope, the one that the secretary handed me. I spun the top and took three of the mixed pills, I didn’t even really care what they were. I put them on my tongue and use some water to swallow them but when I put the water back, I take out the envelope, run my finger through it and cut it open.
When I look into it, there are only two things. The key that I pull out is five inches long and cut into an intricate pattern of teeth that look almost like a thick syringe rather than a key. The second thing in there was a card that had coordinates written on it. I can’t be bothered with that right now as much as I’m curious, it’s just not sticking to my attention. My case, the act that I’m about to put on, that’s the center of my focus.
I stand up and go to the bathroom, locking the door, I look into the mirror. I’m fine dealing with the sway of the train as it bounces over the track around turns. I can see the stare that my blue eyes have and a small scar on my neck that I usually trace with my hand when I’m tired and actually get some sleep for the night.
I look at myself now because I don’t know how I’m going to make it out of this. There are a lot less people in this fight then there were before. A lot of them killed themselves, that’s at least what Jesse had always told me. That a lot of the Chasers never were able to adapt back to normal life. A lot of them overdosed, most of them did enough damage to themselves that they wanted what eventually happened to them.
There is anger and resentment in the reflection looking back at me and it's not for myself internally but rather the woman that's trapped in the reflection. I don’t like her, I don’t like what she represents, who she is or what she’s becoming. That woman in there is lost and all she’s doing is digging herself deeper rather than doing anything to try and drag herself out. The one fortune she has is the death that’s always hunting her. The shadows in the corner that are always watching her. I ball up my fist and slam my elbow hard into the mirror casting this alternate version of me until it shatters. It’s not just once, I can’t just hit it once. I do it five times until whatever isn’t laying in the sink looks like powder.
I want some part of me dead but I want to know what that part is before I kill it. Somehow, I think that there's so much more to me and that my mind is hiding an entire lifetime from me.
Chapter 36
A cab lets me out at the entrance to the prison. It’s bigger than I’d imagine but I also never heard of it. From what I could find on my phone this prison was more specialized and it didn’t house general populations despite having the space for it. This was for the more extreme but more elite criminal.
I step through and before I can speak to anyone they have me routed through a security station. This time it’s fine, I have no weapons with me of any kind, just some files, a set of keys, and a phone that they can examine if they want too. The man at the security checkpoint smiles at me and then winks. I smile back at him, it’s forced but he can’t tell the difference, I doubt he’s seen my face once since I walked in.
It almost feels like they have me on a carousel as I walk through here. My credentials are for a California ADA from Los Angeles, my accent is stiff but it’s passable and after a few phrases becomes genuine enough.
“I’m here to discuss evidence presented against Lucas Dodson, my office was to call ahead and clear that conversation,” I say with a grouchy demeanor, all the ADA’s that I’ve ever spoken to never sound happy or pleased about anything. I figure it’s a personality trait at this point.
It works because they let me in without any prior vetting process.
I’m escorted to a wide rectangular room with grey walls, so loud that my footsteps echo around me even after my heels are done scraping the floor and I sit down. The table my hands are on is thin and cold, it’s all fully stainless steel and its bolted to the floor.
A vast mirror overlooks me but I ignore it, I try to count how many people are probably curious why Lucas Dodson is about to be interviewed by the ADA of someone from California, I can only guess how many sets of people are on the other side of the mirror or how many are monitoring the surveillance.
The door opens and I stand, not out of fear or being startled, but professional etiquettes take over. I watch as the guard wheel Lucas into the room like he’s nothing more than a caged and rabid animal that bit once and they won’t even dare chance it again.
A mask wraps around his face with a small breathing junction at the front, it keeps his face facing in one direction, I can’t even see his eyes wander around to see who called this meeting.
His chest has another restraint on it from his neck down to his torso with his bindings for his wrist attached to his chest so that nothing on his upper body moves freely or deliberately without moving something else that’s already restrained. His legs are tied off in four places, two at thigh, one at the knee, and another at the ankles. All of those are also tied to the hand truck that’s pushing him across the floor to me.
As the guard angles Lucas so that he’s looking down at me from his slanted angle, the guard is thanked and dismissed.
“I’m sure he’s well trained enough,” I say and the guard leaves. “I need the surveillance equipment deactivated, I need to disclose privileged information to him.”
“I’m not sure…” the guard starts.
“Now,” I project and that seems to be enough to convince him to shut it all down.
There are four cameras that I counted in the room. Within seconds all four red lights dim and die.
“Mr. Dodson, I’m Amy Hennessey, ADA California Southern District out of Los Angeles, I need to discuss your case with you in detail, is that something that you can do for me?”
He says nothing but he doesn’t object, I can see eyes as piercing and blue as mine looking down at me but there’s no acknowledgement to what I’ve said.
“Is that clear to you?” I ask again.
“Yes,” he says, his voice sounds muffled.
Chapter 37
“On the night of September 7th, 2018, you are convicted of killing five members of your family, wife, two daughters, son, and grandfather,” I say looking up at him.
“Yes,” he replies.
“Murder weapon was a meat cleaver?” I say with dry tones as if I’m reciting a dossier verbatim.
“Yes.”
“They said in a statement, that you were found with pieces of all your family, some of which was dragged into the basement where you intended to start a fire. Your quoted as saying that you needed to send these pieces of them to the abyss.”
“Correct.”
“What abyss were you referring to?”
“The darkness,” he answered.
“What inspired you for these killings. Prior to this you had no past mental health issues. There are none that run in your family. Why would you do this to the people that you loved?”
“I replied,” he said.
“Replied to what?”
“The voice that asked me to do it.”
“Did you act alone or in the accomplice of anything else?”
“No.”
“In your statement you said that you were possessed, that the voices were the thing that told you to kill your family in the style of savagery and the acts that it had asked of you. What voice do you believe that to be?”
“It’s a servant's voice that asked me. They communicate for it becaus
e humans can’t get his voice.”
“And why would the servant want you to kill your whole family on its orders?” I ask him, I can see that the same docile look is still smothering his face. It’s not an enjoyment but it’s an ease, a passiveness that has no part in the story that he’s confirming.
“Because it wanted a sacrifice. It asked me for this and I gave it exactly what it wanted from me.”
“Do you feel remorse now?” I ask, there are signs there that I’m looking for and some of them are springing up so fast and loud that they mine as well have lights on them spiraling. I have my feeling and I know what my gut and my heart is telling me.
“No, I don’t.”
“And why not?”
“Because it doesn’t need me too. I gave what I gave so that I could enjoy the paradise I wanted and it won’t let me suffer, not for what it asked for.”
I look at him in the eyes. My suspicions all but confirmed. The only blank I have is the extent of how far it was going to go and how much was leftover. As I look at him, I can see something happen in his eyes, for a second, a brief one, they turn a black so dark that it doesn’t take in the light from the room around it. Then they return to the familiar blue.
“It’s still in there,” I say more to myself then to him.
“It’s not going anywhere love,” he says back to me but the voice doesn’t touch my ears, it plays in my head like I song that I’m remembering.
“What role did Gabriel play in this?” I ask, I don't feel the need for restraint anymore. I know there’s a demon living inside this man, I know because I can see the tell-tale signs while the people outside write this up as a man who snapped and became insane overnight. It’s deeper than that and far more complex.
“Every role,” the voice said back in her head.
“Give Lucas Dodson his life back before this over,” I warn him.
“Darling before this is over, one of mine while be living inside that pretty body,” he said with Lucas voice and I could see his eyes bend and curve with a smile that I can’t see on his face. “You have no fucking idea what he did to you do you? What you did for him?” a harsh, guttural laugh followed.
