by C. S. Poe
“Teenagers? No, not that I remember.”
“What about a guy named Lee Straus?”
“I’m not on a first-name basis with lookie-loos,” Greg retorted.
I rolled my eyes behind my sunglasses, removed my phone, and did a quick and hopeful search of Sunrise Film Academy’s website. Sure enough, there was Lee on the faculty page. He’d begun teaching at the Academy this year, had a diploma from NYU’s continuing education school, and a few production crew credits on some indie-as-fuck-sounding projects.
“Well?” Greg asked, a touch of impatience in his tone.
I turned the phone around. “This guy. Do you remember him?” I squinted and studied Greg’s face.
He reached back and ran his fingers through his ponytail while staring at the screen. “Actually… yes. He was in my store last week. He bought a Bolex camera and told me something about teaching his students to load film rolls in the dark.”
“Did you realize the revolver was missing by the weekend?”
“I realized the next day—Friday,” Greg corrected. “I guess I was too busy prepping for the fair to notice it’d been missing the same day.” He looked embarrassed to have admitted such a fault and cast his eyes downward.
I furrowed my brow and tucked the phone into my back pocket again. “What day did Pete come by Oddities to pick up your things for the fair?”
“Thursday,” Greg confirmed.
We were both quiet. After a moment of thought, if I didn’t know better, I’d have said the color had drained from Greg’s face. He opened his mouth the same time my phone jingled, which I was barely able to hear over the noise of the hall.
“Sebastian… you don’t think…?” Greg murmured.
“I’m getting whiplash from how quickly this is all changing,” I said, retrieving my phone. I answered the call, put the cell to my ear, and covered my other to block out the commotion. “Cal? Hang on a minute. I can’t hear you.” I looked at Greg. “Do you know where the bathrooms are?”
He turned to the left and pointed. “All the way at the end. They’re not hardly as busy as the ones near the escalator.”
“Thanks,” I replied. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I grabbed on to the rope barrier once again and jogged down the length of the hall. The west side was significantly less crowded, which was unfortunate for those dealers and sponsors, but it was still relatively early in the day. The attendees would eventually branch off and realize there was untouched real estate on this end.
“Calvin?” I said into the phone as I rushed into the men’s room, a bit out of breath.
“Where are you?” he asked, sounding as if he was on speaker phone.
“I’m at the Javits Center. I have a name for the second teenager,” I said quickly, pushing open each stall door to assure I was alone. I reached the last one, took a deep breath, and said, “JD Malory. He was Casey’s classmate. He’s here working at the fair.”
“Are you alone?” Calvin demanded.
“I came with Neil. He went after JD.”
“Where are you?”
“In the bathroom so I can hear you. It’s a madhouse here.”
“I’m on my way there.”
“Calvin, what’s wrong?”
“James Robert had his throat cut, just like his grandson. CSU found a knife under a chair in the parlor with a bloody fingerprint on the handle,” he explained.
My heart skipped a beat and then slugged hard against my chest.
“I got Casey Robert’s transcript from the academy,” Calvin continued.
“Lee?” I whispered, but… I knew.
“Lee took over his class last week when the original teacher was fired for misconduct and unapproved absences.”
I swallowed, and it sounded thunderous in my ears.
“It’s Pete White,” Calvin said. “His fingerprints are on record from when he was hired at the school. I had forensics do a preliminary comparison to what was on the weapon—you need to find Millett. Don’t leave his side until I get there.”
I felt like the blood had left my body. I shivered convulsively.
Pete White?
Creepy, awkward, flip-flop-wearing Pete White, who I’d concluded early on was simply too dumb or lazy to manage anything even close to robbery—let alone a double homicide—was behind it all?
Neil was right.
I had wanted it to be Lee. And the clues had worked in his favor, which made it even easier to accept.
But there was no denying how bizarre it had been on Tuesday when Pete wouldn’t stop pestering me about the Kinetoscope footage. He must have been trying to obtain it without having to resort to dangerous measures….
“Baby,” Calvin said in his cop voice.
“Wh-what? Yes, find Neil.”
“Quinn and I are almost there,” he answered. “Are you downstairs?”
“Yes.”
“Two minutes. Maybe less.”
“I know what he was after,” I said as the bathroom door opened and the racket of the fair followed someone inside. “Original documents. Inventions by Dickson. They’d be worth millions—”
Pete White came around the corner. He smiled that huge, stupid smile, waved, and went to the sink. He held his hand under the soap dispenser and started lathering them together under a strong stream of water. He had those damn flip-flops on, cargo shorts, and a zipped-up hoodie.
He looked harmless.
Dorky and so unassuming.
And yet Calvin had tangible, physical, forensic proof that this man had literal blood on his hands.
“Sebastian?” Calvin said to my silence.
“Ah… yup. Okay. I’ll let you go, then,” I answered, keeping one eye on Pete. I was at the opposite end from the door. I’d have to pass the row of sinks to reach it.
“What? No, don’t hang up,” he ordered.
“Oh, my boyfriend is waiting for me,” I answered, making up a conversation that I hoped would keep Pete at bay.
I heard Quinn murmur something in the following silence.
“Is he there with you?” Calvin finally asked.
“Uh-huh,” I answered, trying to not sound nervous.
I took a step forward as Pete flicked his hands dry and reached for a paper towel from the motion-sensor machine. I felt so strange inside. Afraid, because I’d seen what had been done to Casey, but that emotion felt misplaced when I assigned it to fucking Pete.
I took a few more steps.
Four stalls.
Three.
Two.
“Hey, Snow,” Pete called.
I halted midstep and turned my head.
Pete made eye contact in the mirror. “Got a second?”
“Sebastian,” Calvin said into my ear. There was a sound like wind—he was out of the car and moving. “Where downstairs are you?”
Pete kept staring at me.
I felt my underarms begin to sweat.
“All right, buddy,” I said to Calvin. “I really do have to go. I’m at the ass-end of the hall and it’ll take me forever to get back to the front.” I gave Pete a smile.
He returned it.
“I’ll see you later,” I finished. I lowered the phone and stuffed it into my pocket without ending the call. “Hey, Pete.”
“I thought you weren’t coming until this afternoon?” Pete asked, tossing his paper towel and turning around.
“Oh. Yeah, I guess I kind of wanted to see the place in action after all. It’s an incredible turnout.”
“About ten thousand total,” Pete said with a bit of a chest puff.
“Who’d have thought this many folks liked old junk?” I joked, taking one step closer to the door.
“I told you, it’s all about enticing the younger generation. I used to teach—did I mention that?”
I scratched my arm nervously. “Yeah, vaguely.”
Pete nodded. “Sometimes you’re lucky to get through to one or two out of a class of thirty.”
Would that have been Casey and JD?
“I better get going,” I answered, moving past the last stall.
“Snow, come on,” he drawled.
I glanced over my shoulder and Pete pulled what I figured was the stolen Colt Walker revolver out of his sweatshirt. I froze.
Pete scratched his beard with his free hand. “I’ve only got two rounds left. Don’t make me use them, okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered. I slowly put my hands up.
“You found the Dickson drafts?” he asked.
I nodded.
“How? Was there a fourth film?”
I frowned. “No. What do you mean?”
“All the research I’ve been doing… it all pointed at needing the films to uncover where Dickson hid his inventions. I got those films from you—”
“JD did,” I corrected.
“Well, if you dangle a million dollars in front of an eighteen-year-old from a low-income family, you can get them to agree to the craziest things.”
“That’s cruel, Pete,” I said quietly. “Come on. Put the gun down.”
“So if I have all the films,” he continued without missing a beat, “and none of them show the hiding spot, how did you find the documents?”
I didn’t respond.
Pete cocked the hammer back on the revolver.
“It was dumb luck,” I said quickly.
“Bullshit.”
“The clue that was most important was that the assistant, Tom Howard, said the films and Kinetoscope had to be kept safe. The movies simply put to rest the tragedy of Albert Martin.”
“Who gives a shit about some 120-year-old dead guy?”
“B-but the movies also laid out the facts of Dickson’s final months at Black Maria. One film shows a man in the background, crouched in front of a Kinetoscope.”
Pete used his free hand to make a motion, like, speed it up.
“Dickson’s paperwork was stashed inside the frame of the cabinet,” I said in haste. “Pete—”
“Oh man!” He laughed and shook his head in disbelief. “That’s… wow. Okay, I gotta hand it to you, Snow.” Pete pointed at me. “Smart. This is why I like you!”
“Lucky me,” I whispered.
“I’ve been searching for those inventions my entire adult life,” Pete said with an almost sweet expression. “Even joined this waste-of-time convention committee in the hopes of expanding my reach. Then I come to find one of my film students, his fucking grandpa owned the Kinetoscope with the Tom Howard story. Casey and I tried to get the guy to let us put the Kinetoscope in the show. That way we could access the films, find where the documents were, and return them with him none the wiser.”
“But he thought his grandson was going to steal it,” I finished.
“Well, the old guy refused to put it in the show. After it went MIA, Casey checked his grandpa’s computer history and found your shop in the search engine. I honestly could have cared less about the bizarre and morbid shit you sell, it was obvious in the beginning that you weren’t relevant to my search—but when Casey confirmed the Kinetoscope ended up in your store….” Pete smiled in an odd manner, his lips pulled thin over his teeth, and shrugged, like, there was no alternative.
“And there you were,” I said.
How much longer would it take Calvin to reach the west-end bathrooms?
Could I keep Pete’s finger off the trigger for one more minute?
“Why’d you kill Casey?”
Pete lowered the revolver a bit. “Look. No one was supposed to die.”
“But they did! Pete, he was a kid!”
“After the second time he broke into the Emporium to get the film reel back, Casey wanted out. He was going to tell his grandpa and—those documents are worth millions to the right buyer, Snow. Millions!”
“And James? He was ninety. Did you have to kill him too?”
“I couldn’t figure out the documents’ location. I thought he had a fourth reel kept stashed in that museum he lived in.”
My heart was pounding hard and fast.
Adrenaline sped through my veins.
If he would lower the revolver a bit more, it could allow me just enough time to hurl myself through the door….
“You stole Greg’s gun,” I stated.
Pete glanced at the Colt Walker, then nodded. “Yup. Sure scared the shit out of you yesterday, didn’t it? I wasn’t trying to kill you, if it makes you feel better. But you needed to understand how serious I was about the Kinetoscope—that we weren’t going to stop until you gave up the film.”
“O-okay, but why that gun? Because ballistics would have a harder time with a lead ball and black powder?”
He smiled wryly and scratched his beard again. “No…. I stole it because it’s a million-dollar weapon. And you call yourself a dealer.”
“You can’t sell it,” I protested. “He knows you stole it. It’s being reported to the FBI.”
“I can’t sell it through legal channels,” Pete corrected. “For the record, I stole that knife too.”
“You left it at the crime scene! With your fingerprints in James’s blood! The cops are going to prove you killed Casey with it too.”
“And you know all that because you’re fucking the redhead. Who’s a cop, I’ve learned.” Pete raised the revolver to be even with my head.
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck.
“Give me the documents. Then I won’t have to shoot you. I’ll take off for an exotic foreign country, and we’ll never have to see each other again. Sound good?”
“You have a buyer in that country?” I asked.
“There’s always a buyer,” Pete agreed.
“I don’t have the documents,” I said, voice catching.
Pete shook his head. “Don’t yank my chain.”
“I don’t!” I protested, looking down at myself briefly. “Th-they’re at the Emporium.” I swallowed, and it hurt. “Someone is going to hear the gun go off.”
He gave me that oh well sort of expression again. “Bet you wished you’d given me a shot now, huh? Maybe then I wouldn’t have to give you one.”
There was a burst of smoke from the revolver as the powder was ignited, a delay—then the last stall door I’d managed to walk past seemed to explode.
“Goddamn it!” Pete swore.
He’d missed.
Holy fuck—!
Thank God for mechanical inaccuracies!
I leaped toward the door, slamming hard into it before realizing Pete had thrown the dead bolt upon first entering. My hands were shaking as I grabbed the lock, turned it, and fell through the doorway.
The flip-flop, flip-flop, flip-flop of Pete charged after me.
I bumped into an attendee as I ran onto the showroom floor, stumbled forward, and as I tried to right myself and ended up falling sideways, a second crack fired.
It echoed through the event hall.
People cried out in fear and confusion.
I spun and crashed to the hard floor. A searing, white-hot pain like nothing I’d ever experienced in my entire life blossomed from my right side. A wet warmth pooled underneath me.
Everything was out of focus.
It was too loud.
But… the madness eventually settled.
And sound grew distorted, as if the world were encased in a fishbowl.
I felt adrift in a cloud of gray.
Somewhere far away.
And no one I loved was with me.
“Sebastian!”
Calvin….
Chapter Sixteen
I WASN’T certain if it was a dream.
Or if I was awake.
There was an out-of-body feel to it all, really. A sense of not quite belonging.
Like… this trauma wasn’t mine. This deep, soul-reaching ache dulled by a nauseating cocktail of chemicals wasn’t mine.
This dying wasn’t mine.
Although—if not mine, then whose?
The beep of a tired heart lit up the darkness. A beacon jus
t past the horizon promising safe passage in uncharted territory.
I let the sluggish but constant sound lull me back to nothing for just a bit longer.
I WAS aware of my own consciousness for a while. I’m not sure how long. I just sort of… realized I was awake. With that sense of self came pain that nearly overwhelmed me—nearly sent me into a tailspin. I was ready to cry. Ready to scream for someone, anyone, to help me.
But it occurred to me, in a very drug-induced state of mind, that this pain was my anchor to the present. I couldn’t be dead if everything hurt.
Right?
I tried to get my bearings by what senses were available. Cataloging. One by one.
It was silent and still.
It smelled clean, but in the way that chemicals do.
It felt… warm.
Scratchy.
It felt like life, and that if I could only bear opening my eyes….
Dark.
Gray.
Blurry.
But I instinctively knew that was my dad asleep in the chair to my left. And I knew this was Calvin holding my hand, on my right. He was nearly falling out of his own seat, head resting against my arm on the bed.
I didn’t do anything, but Calvin woke with a start. He turned his head, like stretching out a kink in his neck. He rubbed at the overgrown stubble on his jaw. He looked at me, and I could feel his shock at seeing I was awake.
“Sebastian,” he whispered. Calvin was out of the chair. He leaned over me, still holding my hand tightly in his own. He pressed our foreheads together.
I realized I couldn’t speak. Something in my mouth was prohibiting it. But it was okay. I reached up with my free hand and shakily touched Calvin’s face. He kissed the inside of my wrist.
“Welcome back,” he said.
Everything was going to be okay now.
Chapter Seventeen
BEING SHOT sucked.
Being shot with a lead ball that flattened upon impact, lodged into my side, and transferred its kinetic energy to my body for absorption sucked even more.
I’d almost died in May. No two ways around it.
