by Guy Riessen
“Sounds like someone fell asleep and lost their place.”
“Might’ve happened.”
“C’mon, send the data to your printer so you can look at it while we go grab something to eat.” Howard handed Derrick his tablet computer.
“Sweet,” Derrick said, flipping open the tablet and pulling up some of the data charts on the tablet, sending the raw numbers to the printer in his office. Tucking the tablet under his arm, he turned his phone on.
As they moved through the rotating interior door, Howard asked, “Isn’t that going to mess up the data when you used your tablet?”
“Nope, that’s what the six hours were for—but turning on the phone will spike the emissions and give me a baseline and max signal at the end of the session.”
Derrick and Howard stepped out into the hall.
“Booyah! Taco truck time?” Derrick held the phone out for Howard to see.
“Oh yeah!” Howard said, looking at the weather forecast. “Sixty-eight degrees. With that kind of weather, we can grab the sticks from my office and hit up the batting cages after we eat.”
Derrick sighed, “OK. I suppose Jesus’ tacos are worth it.” He hated the batting cages, but Howard loved them, and the Jesus Taco Truck parked in the lot of the abandoned gas station next to the Viking Golf Fun Center where the batting cages were.
“C’mon, the sun will do you good. Get a little vitamin D going for you. Put a little color in those wan cheeks.”
“‘Wan’ is my favorite color, and I carefully cultivate and protect my glorious skin tones.”
Howard locked the EMRARS then used a different key to open a switchbox on the wall. He turned off the main power switch and the light, locked the box and pocketed the keys.
Derrick’s stomach growled as they walked down the hall. “We gotta get some tacos in me before I faint. Smokey get her new timing belt yet?”
“Not yet, still garaged. They’re supposed to be putting it in today.”
Derrick was looking at his phone, scrolling through delayed messages that were coming in as he hobbled along. His crutch clacked loudly in the narrow corridor. “Sarah texted earlier that my insurance agent dropped off my rental car. She had them park it in my spot. Uhm ... white Isuzu ... keys are uhm, let’s see ... in my desk drawer. We can grab them when we pick up the printouts from my office.”
“Sounds like a plan, Stan.”
“You cool with driving an SUV? Doctor says I can’t drive until next week at the earliest.”
“Yeah, I got it, no problem.” Howard glanced at Derrick. “Why wouldn’t I be cool with it?”
“An SUV, Howard? Not afraid of looking like a soccer mom?” Derrick chuckled.
“Nope, I’m totally on top of it. You know why?” Howard asked.
“Why?”
“This ain’t my first Rodeo, Buckaroo.”
“Wha ...” Derrick sputtered, “You did NOT just say that.”
Howard grinned and pointed finger guns at him. “Dang right I did, Pardner.”
“You should know,” Derrick said, shaking his head, “that you’re causing me to strongly reconsider the whole ‘going to the batting cages after tacos’ thing.”
“Why? Just ‘cause I hit that one out of the park?”
“Oh my god. Can you stop?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THEY SAT AT A FOLDING heavy-duty plastic picnic table covered with a red, white, and green plastic tablecloth that flapped in the light breeze. The sound of sizzling carne asada and the smell of freshly fried tortilla chips hung in the air around the panel van painted with a fanciful Mexican beach scene mural. In the middle of the beach, Jesus was painted in pose identical to the Jesus behind the football stadium at Notre Dame University. In each of his upraised hands he held a taco. A colorful Corona umbrella cast shade on most of the table. Howard kept shifting on the bench, trying to stay in the sun.
Derrick stayed in the shade, eyes squinting at the stack of pages in front of him, with the furrowed brow look he always got when he was deep in analysis. He stuffed the last of his sixth taco into his mouth, as he flipped through the printouts again. Gulping down the last of his large horchata agua fresca, he held the thirty-two-ounce cup out toward Howard without looking up.
“Damn, Derrick, I’ve heard of being ‘on fire,’” Howard quipped, “but this is ridiculous.”
Howard got up and went back to the taco truck’s order window and paid for another large horchata. Mary had previously run tests on Derrick when his brain was going flat out like this. His caloric consumption was through the roof, easily four or five times Howard’s resting burn-rate, and Howard had at least thirty kilos of muscle mass on Derrick. If Derrick didn’t keep drinking iced fluids, he could easily overheat and pass out.
The taco truck owner-slash-cook leaned an elbow on the edge of the pick-up window. His name was Jesus, and he had a thin black mustache, a dark complexion, and a strong Mexican accent when he spoke English. Howard always spoke to him in Spanish and, considering how few people spoke Spanish here in Massachusetts, Jesus would always have a huge grin whenever he saw them walk up to his truck. “Your friend has quite the appetite, Howard!” Jesus said, speaking Spanish.
“Yeah, you know it, Jesus! Better have some more chips and salsa while I’m up. Eh, throw in another taco too.” Howard automatically spoke with the same central Mexico inflections that Jesus did.
“How about for you, my friend? You’re not keeping up with the skinny guy.” Jesus laughed deep and loud, stepping aside to pile more carne asada on the grill.
From the aluminum shelf attached to the window ledge, Howard picked up the cup of horchata and said, “Ha! No more for me, Jesus. Four of your muy grande tacos and I’m downright bursting.”
Jesus laughed a little longer, then started whistling a tune as Howard turned and stepped back over to the picnic table.
Howard set the basket of chips on the table and put the giant cup of horchata in front of Derrick. Sitting back down on the sunny side of the table, Howard said, “So, what’s the scoop, Peter Parker?”
Derrick flopped the pages back in a stack and grabbed a handful of chips. Looking up at Howard as he ate the chips one by one, he said, “I always fancied myself more of a Clark Kent.”
“No glasses,” Howard said, shrugging. “Besides what’s Clark Kent gonna do in a world without phone booths.”
“Hmm. Point taken. Perhaps I’m more of a Great Gazoo.” Derrick wiped his hands on the small white paper napkin tucked into the front of his shirt.
“A great what?”
“Gazoo.”
Howard stared at him.
“Someone needs a Flintstones marathon.”
“D, there ain’t no one that needs a Flintstones marathon,” Howard said in a pained voice. “Anything come up in the data?”
Derrick laid a hand on the stack of papers. “Zip.”
“Nothing?”
“Nada. Not so much as a digital burp. No fluctuations on any EMR wavelengths.”
“Well, shit.”
“Yeah.”
“You moved the foot around too, right?”
“Its name’s Petey. And yeah, aside from reading, there wasn’t really anything else to do. I rotated Petey. Positioned it like I was sleeping. Hobbled around the room with it, mimicking a walk motion. You know, swinging it back and forth. I tickled it, rubbed it, massaged it.” Derrick pulled a black dress sock from his pocket and waved it. “Even dressed it up, all formal-like. And ... nothing.”
“But the scarab has got to be related in some way. You never had an itch in your heel before we went to the Haunt, right?”
“Nope. It was definitely planted when I was kidnapped.”
“How ‘bout you take it apart?” Howard asked.
“I may end up doing that, but there’s no clear reason to, yet. And once I do, whoever is monitoring the bug will undoubtedly know their information source has been compromised, unless I can find a way to fool the scarab itself.”
Derrick drummed his fingers, it was loud on the plastic table top. “There has got to be a way that the information about our location is being leaked. Even magic can’t break all the rules. If information is going out, there must be energy of some sort going out. Period.”
“Frustrating.”
“You said it.” Derrick paused then looked at Howard suddenly, “Don’t suppose you could grab me another carne asada taco?”
At that moment, Jesus leaned out the window of the truck and called out that the carne asada taco was ready. Surprise flashed across Derrick’s face, and Howard said, “What? You think I don’t know you, D?”
DERRICK HAD JUST FINISHED stuffing the seventh taco into his mouth, wiping the spicy grease dripping from his fingers onto his napkin, when both his phone and Howard’s beeped the triple tone that indicated an urgent coded message from the DCV servers. Derrick pulled his phone from his pocket and entered his code. His straw slurped at the bottom of the cup as he finished off the last of his horchata. He looked at Howard. “You get the same thing? Break-in at the freaking EMRARS?”
Howard nodded. “Yep.”
“Then let’s head back,” Derrick said, swinging his legs over the bench seat and reaching for his crutch. “That seals it, man. Nothing in there to even mess up ... all the sensor equipment is in the walls, floor, and ceiling, but the tracking is freaking obvious—a break-in less than two hours after Petey and I spend a half-day there? What the heck? How’s it work though? That’s the twenty-five-thousand-dollar question.”
“I’ve got nothing, dude—unless it’s languages, I’m the dumb guy in our duo.”
Derrick got the crutch under his arm as Howard dumped their paper plates, napkins, and cups into the oil barrel trashcan at the front of the taco truck.
“Yeah, I keep trying to tell you that,” Derrick said.
“Gracias, Jesus!” Howard called over his shoulder as he pressed the button on the key fob, unlocking the SUV doors. He climbed in to the driver’s seat and started the engine.
Derrick opened the rear passenger door and tossed his crutch onto the back seat. The awning on the taco truck was flapping insistently as the breeze picked up. Overhead the sky was still clear and the sun bright but getting low, just kissing the tops of the clouds building on the horizon.
Derrick slid into the front passenger seat and used his arms to help lift his bad leg in. He fastened his seatbelt while Howard was backing out of the parking spot. Derrick pulled his phone out and flicked it on again.
His thumb hovered over the weather app icon when an electric flood of realization washed over him. “Holy crud, H. It’s the weather.”
“Yeah, it’s looking like something’s coming in alright. I saw the clouds to the east. What’s the weather say? There a storm coming in?”
“No. I mean ... maybe.” His voice trailing off, Derrick pulled the parakeet cage up from the floor next to his legs and yanked the black cover off. Petey’s toes twitched.
Howard looked at Derrick as he put the SUV in drive. Derrick was wide-eyed. “What I mean,” Derrick said, “is the weather app is the missing puzzle piece. Each time I’ve used the weather app, that location is hit sometime after.”
“You’re saying the weather app is broadcasting your position? How’s that work when you’ve got a new phone?” Howard pulled out of the parking lot and onto the Arkham streets. Traffic was light.
“Yeah. Hmm. I haven’t figured out the ‘how’ yet, but that’s the one consistency between each of the Black Djinn hits. The weather app uses location data. So that data is being broadcast.” Derrick frowned. “But how, with no EMR going out? The signals picked up when I turned on the phone at the EMRARS was bog-standard, nothing unusual.”
“Yeah, and with factory-fresh hardware, you’ve got to be using the legit weather app. It can’t be a hacked version ...well unless the bad guys have a mole working as a security-cleared programmer on the weather app itself.” Howard took a left and coasted toward the next intersection’s red light.
“A mole seems like a huge stretch. And again, that just begs the question why was there a scarab in my heel. If they can get my location data from the weather app, just use the weather app, right?”
Howard looked over at the foot sitting on Derrick’s lap while they were waiting at the stoplight.
“Regardless though, man,” Derrick said, “Sarah texted the break-in using the DCV servers ...”
“Yeah?” Howard said.
“Well, we know there’s nothing in the EMRARS room anyway, right? So, there’s a much bigger problem.”
“What’s that?” Howard sped forward as the light turned green.
“We stopped by your office to drop those paperbacks off, and you checked your email and wrote a couple replies to your students.”
“So?”
“So, I pulled up Yelp to make sure Jesus was parked in the usual spot and open even though it was four p.m.”
Derrick could see Howard’s knuckles whiten as he gripped the steering wheel tighter, and the Isuzu accelerated. Howard swallowed hard, “I’ve still got relics in my office for analysis. And those tomes from the Restricted Research Library.”
“Yeah, dude, I know—I saw them there on the table,” Derrick said, tapping at his phone. “I’m texting Sarah right now ...”
“If she shoots the shit out of my office, I’m going to be pissed. You know how she can be.”
“Yeah, exactly like another shoot-first, research-later guy I know whose name starts with ‘H’ and ends with ‘OWARD.’”
“Sending a text requesting no shoot-em-up.” Derrick paused a moment, rubbing his forehead. “Ah!” he exclaimed.
“What?”
He typed away furiously on the cell phone. “Looping in Mary and telling them both to grab some of those big halogen light stands we use on expeditions. You know the ones we use to light tombs and whatnot ... they have two of those big square five hundred watt halogen heads on each stand.”
“What the fuck would we ... oh! Gotcha.”
“Yeah, we throw enough light in there and we should be able to isolate the shadows, literally trap the Black Djinn by surrounding it in light.”
“Brilliant.”
“I see what you did there,” Derrick said, nodding his appreciation.
Derrick pulled the hood back over Petey’s cage as the Trooper bumped up into the MU campus drive. Students were just getting out of classes for the evening and crossing the small access road to get to the parking garage or to the east-side campus buildings. It took painfully long to reach the Anthropology and Physical Science professor’s parking lot, but Howard finally pulled into Derrick’s current handicapped spot.
“Howard, you get straight up to your office. I’ll swing through the museum specimen long-term storage on the way. I know they have one of those light stands in there too.” Howard slammed the door as Derrick was rolling his leg out of the passenger-side door. He called out loudly, “Meetcha up there, man!”
Howard broke into a run, dashing across the quad.
Derrick stepped out, hanging on to the Isuzu’s roof and shouted, “Be careful! You know those things are tough.”
Derrick pulled his crutch out of the back and grabbed Petey off the seat in front. He moved as quickly as he could across the lawn and into the Natural History Museum building. The wait for the elevator down to the long-term storage felt like it took forever. But, less than five minutes later he had Petey in the same hand he was using to hold the crutch handle, and a two-head halogen light stand in the other. He made his way as quickly as he could across the quad to the professors’ building, hoping he wouldn’t be too late.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
DERRICK WAS TAPPING the foot of his crutch against the marble floor when Sarah and Mary burst through the main entrance doors. They both held light stands like Derrick’s.
“Y’all made it here faster than green grass through a goose, Derrick,” Mary said, her breath huffing. Tiny beads of sweat, scattered am
ong the freckles, caught the light from the window. She leaned against her light stand and pushed her glasses up.
“Yeah, man, we gotta get up there quick.” Derrick said, knuckling sweat from his brow.
Sarah sounded like she was just out for a stroll, “Howard up there?” She jabbed a thumb toward the ceiling, then, light stand in the crook of her elbow, leaned forward and quickly tugged her hair back into a ponytail.
“I think so,” Derrick said, “I haven’t heard anything from him yet, but he ran straight to his office while I ducked into the museum for the light.” He held up his own light stand.
“OK. You and Mary take the elevator up. I’m taking the stairs,” Sarah said over her shoulder as she ran across the lobby area and shoved her way through the heavy stairwell door.
Mary said between breaths, “Y’ever get the feeling the two of them are getting kickbacks from the MU Gym to show off?”
“Always. Still, gotta admit they’re kinda hot,” Derrick said, staring after Sarah.
Mary whooshed out a big breath, leaning over with her hands on her knees, and smiled up at Derrick over the top of her glasses.
The elevator dinged and Professor Gilmore, standing inside the car, slid the cage doors open. “Oh, pardon me,” he said, turning sideways to get past them. He held his worn leather attaché case high to avoid tangling with the light stands and Derrick’s crutch. “Putting on a light show?”
“Something like that,” Mary said as she squeezed into the back of the elevator cab and stood the light stand up. Derrick went in after her, situating his stand, crutch, and Petey’s cage.
Professor Gilmore chuckled. “And you brought the parakeet. Good show!”
“Yeah, nothing Petey loves more than a good show,” Derrick said as he yanked the two elevator doors closed and pushed the button for the fourth floor. As they rose out of sight, Professor Gilmore walked toward the building’s front door, tossing a wave over his shoulder.
The elevator creaked to a stop on the second floor.
