by Neal Goldy
“Yes.”
“Everything?” he asked.
The mouthpiece crackled, which meant something. “Don’t waste my time, Deed. Like I said, there’s going to be someone working with you on the fifth search through McDermott’s apartment.”
“Yes, I remember you saying that,” Lincoln said, “but what was his name? I didn’t get a chance to hear it with all that . . . racket.”
“Racket, eh? More like you weren’t paying attention to what I’m saying!”
Lincoln muttered sorry so low not even Big Hands could hear it, and he stood six inches away from him. “When do you expect he’ll be here?”
“When he gets the job, maybe he’ll be there in about a half hour at most. So, on another note, have any of you found anything new in the apartment?”
“There’s nothing new, unfortunately.” Lincoln glanced off, seeing Big Hands was smiling; they both knew what that meant. He growled but Big Hands kept on grinning. “We searched the usual rooms and there’s nothing there.” Big Hands still grinned, getting under Lincoln’s nerves. “Actually, I did find something.”
A big hand wiped off the big grin on Big Hands’ face. That was surely something to laugh at.
“What did you find?” asked the chief.
Lincoln’s eyes went everywhere finding anything that could be labeled as evidence, anything. The phone shook in his hands and he was afraid it might crash if he wavered just a little. A second and his eyes matched a small Polaroid photograph.
“Deed, you there?”
“Uh-huh. I found a picture of something . . . I’m trying to figure out what it is.” As he spoke, Lincoln made his way across the room, reaching for the Polaroid. He knew those white borders anywhere: the only camera he ever used was a Polaroid.
“What do you see?”
“I see . . .” With his other hand Lincoln tried to get a good light on the picture. Next to him Big Hands did nothing but stare. “I see something like a younger McDermott. It could be him, I don’t know, but it looks like a little boy.” He turned to Big Hands, mouthing “Have you seen this before?” while he tugged at the Polaroid. But Big Hands, despite his size and subliminal superiority, shrugged. He never saw that photo before, Lincoln supposed. “Uh, a schoolboy, perhaps . . . the uniform looks like a sailor suit . . . any records?”
“Records of what, Deed?” the chief inquired. “A photo of a little boy won’t show up for anything!”
“I’m not talking about the little boy, chief, I meant the photo as a piece of evidence.”
He heard typing on the other end, but the chief did not speak. All he heard were grunts and some finger tapping, but nothing else. It wasn’t until much later when the chief finally returned to the line: “Nope, nothing about this photo from any search from what I can see.”
If Lincoln could give the finger to Big Hands, he’d be glad to do it now if both his hands weren’t busy with a photograph and a Polaroid. Maybe if he tucked the photograph away . . . nah, he couldn’t make it without dropping the phone.
“So, what do you think, chief?”
Chief Advert grunted. “When the detective shows up, I want you to present the photograph to him. He’ll know what to do.”
“Gotcha.” He hung up without saying goodbye.
Big Hands snatched the phone before Lincoln gave it back. “Some kind of smart-ass, are ya?” he teased.
“Is there a problem with something you could never find in five years?”
“That’s not a problem to me. You were there, too, when we searched in that dingy apartment.”
“I was?” He forgot about that.
“Yes, you were. Not so smart about yourself, are you?”
“C’mon, you’re being a little exaggerated.”
Big Hands didn’t smile when he affirmed that he never exaggerated. He left with no other words to give to Officer Lincoln Deed, leaving the door open. Typical of Big Hands to have things done for others rather than do it himself; they might call him careless, but he always gave it as a favor all the more. Not really stuck inside this sardine-box room since there’s an open door--it was like Big Hands to instead leave it to someone else--Lincoln needed to wait and keep busy. He adored talking but with no one to talk to, it was a hard task. Well, he could stare at meaningless things to pass the time. Oh, look, a lamp without a bulb to brighten the room. It harnessed a total opposite effect than the other parts of the apartment. Really, it might be lair for vicious plotting. Lincoln leaned against a wall that, when moved, eased long-stretched creaks like a violin’s extended note. Ccccccrrreeeeaaaakk, the wall went as if the plaster were alive. Piddles of water outside meant more rain was coming from the more-than-stormy sky. Lincoln heard the drips shooting down onto the pavement pinging on the fire escape’s metal railing. He went back to the phone call, where Chief Advert spoke about the detective coming. Who could the man (or woman) be? He may sound like a rookie, but most of the information from the chief seemed cryptic and interlocked with the inner vagueness of a void. He would have to show the Polaroid, of course. What the detective would think about it, he did not know. The usual cases had the police investigators finishing up work around the same time of approximately two weeks, maybe three but no more than the end of a month. This case proved far more difficult that Lincoln was surprised to hear that the chief would bring in Darren Will to patch it up. Darren Will . . . the man received awards for the cases he’d completed, some of them in pure gold (don’t ask who had the time and the income to do something like that). How someone could lose their life so easily questioned Lincoln’s intelligence and his doubts, too. One of the greatest detectives of their city, and all city investigators who proved that crime could easily be scrubbed off the streets into peace, had died, and from what?
Off in another room were footsteps. Voices of men layered each other. One of them said welcome, maybe. Had the detective come over without his notice?
“Is he here?” he asked without making sure if anyone was there to hear him.
The door opened. But wait, when Big Hands left, he had left the door open. And now it’s closed, so someone opened it and…
“Officer Deed?” an officer called. “The detective’s here.”
Nodding, Lincoln got to his feet. He brushed off the dust that had collected over his uniform. When he got close to a mirror on his way out, he noticed the dust was all over his face, too, powdering him like an English lady. How distraught.
Everyone got to meet the detective introduced into the case involving the wealthy McDermott. In the living room they all sat, some officers smoking while others stood and leaned on walls hearing what the detective had for them. Officer Lincoln Deed learned that the detective hired for the case – which, he noticed, had resumed its search beyond the once yearly tedious search through an apartment that held no answers – had an initial for a name.
D.
He thought it quite a curious name, if people even considered it a name. “What does it stand for, the letter?” Lincoln asked the detective.
“Nothing,” the detective answered. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m certain that there is no meaning. I chose a letter, that’s all.”
Who chooses a letter for their name? In fact, wasn’t it the parents who chose their children's names? Lincoln also noticed the age of the detective, but that didn’t matter; Darren Will wasn’t that young, either. “Have you heard of the Endless Maze case before?”
D. shook his head. “Today is the day I found out. Chief Advert called me earlier and offered me the case.”
“So you never heard of it before? Not even mentioned?”
“Not once.”
Lincoln played with his fingers. “Did, did the chief tell you about the backstory, what happened to McDermott?”
D.’s leg bounced hard in nervousness. His forehead was drenched in sweat. “He never spoke of it. When I met him in his office – after the phone call – he seemed scared. A
verted eyes, shaken-up voice, and he kept his distance very far. Mostly, he gave me some folder regarding the case of McDermott’s disappearance.”
This was news. Chief Advert was scared, of all people? Lincoln met the chief at the police department whenever he was needed (which included the annual search of McDermott’s apartment) and, in his opinion, if Big Hands appeared intimidating, then Chief Advert was your beautiful nightmare to lavish in terror. The chief would never back down from opposing forces, all officers knew that. Even the governor respected Chief Advert's ideal efforts in keeping his authority in effect. With that in mind it seemed like a parody of the great police chief rather than reality. A shadow of a former self, if you wish.
Lincoln was about to say something when D. began looking everywhere, most of the time on the ceiling of the apartment. “Did you hear that, officers?”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about, D.”
“Up here . . .” He pointed a wagering finger toward the ceiling. “It came from another floor . . . is there a floor above here?”
Officer West shook his head. “As you probably read, McDermott lived in the penthouse. There are no other floors.” He smirked. “Have you ever noticed the button on the elevator?”
D. rubbed his face. Lincoln guessed he must have thought of this before. To change the subject, Lincoln proposed the old detective search around the place. He even gave him the Polaroid with the little boy in the school uniform that seemed to belong to a sailor in the 40s.
“When was this taken?” he asked him. “Do you know?”
“There’s no date.”
“Are you certain about that?” D. mused. He flipped to the backside of the photograph. “It says here in tiny print a month and a day: November 19th. Not so sure of the year, but from the look of school uniform the boy is wearing, it might be a long time since this was taken. It’s a shame people have abandoned the time of the year.”
Officer Short giggled like a schoolgirl. “Have you been living under a rock or something, detective?”
D. faced him. “What do you mean?”
“You say everybody abandoned the year. Who comes up with that kind of sense?”
“Well, from what I’ve recorded in the public’s response to the questions I’ve assigned, none of them knew what year it is now. My mother had a similar problem and couldn’t remember what year it was or when people decided to abandon the year and only keep track of the month and day. I’m sure they keep the day of the week, but I don’t know if they’ll keep it for long.”
“Detective,” Short said. “Do you realize right now it is 1978?”
“No, I haven’t.”
Astonished, Short told the others, “This is gonna be interesting. What’s next, the whole sky has been under the dark for as long as you have lived?” The other officers tried to keep themselves from exploding, but Lincoln noticed that D. noticed. He kept his arms crosser than ever like they were taped to his armpits; his eyes getting blacker, he said nothing.
“Let’s have a look around,” Lincoln proposed. “Maybe you can find something.”
Big Hands stood. “I’ll come too.” It sounded awkward to him, so he added, “Just in case.”
“We’ll go together,” D. said.
They both followed Lincoln into the bathroom with glass everywhere. A shiny sink was on their left; it was clean enough to see through it, brush your hair, and clean your teeth. Same went with the toilet that had twenty buttons for things Lincoln never knew existed. Apparently one officer who used it told him some buttons had different flushing functions, but who needed that? Flushing was flushing, and nobody needs to see how their waste goes through the bowl. D. looked around like the both of them, but the detective picked off something that could’ve been a Post-It note. Lincoln wasn’t sure. Could it be another photograph? He wanted to ask, but maybe D. had found something personal. He took no glance at the photo, or whatever it was, and kept it in his pocket.
“Keep looking,” Lincoln said. “There can be evidence here. We need to search further.”
So they searched, going through corners and hearing through walls for any activity. There were none. Lincoln attempted to fix his hair, but did nothing spectacularly new to it. The detective kept himself lean like a slender beast-- Nosferatu, darkened by his mysteriousness.
“Nothing here,” D. proclaimed. “Did you try –?”
A tremor from outside rambled the walls in terrible wonder. They could have inspected the outdoor pool from the highest point of the building, but Lincoln needed to know where that trembling sound came from, and who was doing it.
“Same thing happened before,” D. said, “while we were in the living room discussing the case.”
So that’s what it was, Lincoln thought. “Where do you suppose it came from?” he asked the detective.
“That’s what I was asking before, but no one answered.” He moved to the door. “Shall we see outside?”
Another rumbling began its course as if it were watching them all. A Chinese lamp standing on the silver sink danced along the surface before wobbling over, tipping into a shattering finale of pieces and a broken light bulb. The three of them – Lincoln, Big Hands, and D. – witnessed the scene, but of course none would dare applaud at a dance like that. Dust seethed through the cracks of an angry mouth that was the ceiling, falling over their heads like dandruff. Although too hard to see from the tiled floor, sliver fissures spread across the ceiling, crawling like ants marching with their queen on a mission to conquer land.
“Get out!” ordered Big hands. “Move out, move out!”
The bathroom lights blinked shut as they moved their way out the door. Big Hands and Lincoln were out but when Lincoln searched for the detective, he found that he still lingered inside. What was the man thinking? He wouldn’t kill himself for nothing, would he?
“Detective!” Lincoln called. “Why are you –?”
But the lights came back on. Lincoln saw half the bathroom imploding, a mystical force pressing down on the foundations of the bathroom, making a crumbled clutter of broken utilities. The detective was on his knees, inspecting the tiled floor. Lincoln took no more than a step to get a view of a pile of photographs, one on top of another. He didn’t have time to find out what the photographs were but kept ordering D. to get out. As fast as the detective could muster, he scrambled to get as many pictures as he could into his arms. He went through the bathroom door and landed in the living room, Lincoln slammed the door sharper than a kitchen knife on a cutting board.
“God!” said Big Hands. “Where are they?”
All the officers, and they meant all of them, lay on the ground. Blood filled their mouths like melted cherry candy. They lay on their stomachs, their backsides punctured with holes that fit to some kind of blade. The remains of their screams were etched on their dead faces. One light bulb that was left working cast sharp and sinister shadows glorifying the horror of the police officers’ corpses. Big Hands’ had miniature earthquakes before him. He took a flashlight that was on the ground and used it, but it served no purpose. The light shook over the walls as if it were having a seizure.
Lincoln turned to D., who had some of the photographs in the bathroom. “How did those get in there all of a sudden?”
The lights blinked out again. Lincoln saw the moonlight shining on them, saving them from complete darkness. It was still fairly dark when someone knocked Lincoln over the head. His eyes blurred into three versions of the penthouse before blending back into focus. For a few seconds, he made out the old detective D. writhing in pain, his arms moving in odd directions he never thought possible for a human being – it surpassed the limits of normal articulation. And the screaming . . . oh God, the screaming hurt like bees stinging with a voice box. Someone else was pulling the strings of D.’s body so that he wasn’t in control of them, and Lincoln didn’t have time to wonder why. ’Course Lincoln heard of those stories about body possession and all that, but the way it occurred in the old man
. . . it unleashed a dark disturbance that wanted Lincoln to close his eyes like a frightened child.
Everything went black again. Somewhere in the background Lincoln heard screaming, bald and raw screaming, but it came out in stifled gibberish. It’s kind of like a boring board meeting with the CEO, only more frightening.
Chapter 2
The McDermott penthouse burned down with pride, amazing when you saw it from the bottom. Alas, standing there you couldn’t witness the brilliance of fire’s brightest potential. It had to be from above, although you need a helicopter for that. D. took the stairs to escape the building, unaware of the whereabouts of both the giant officer and the one called Lincoln Deed. They had been on the penthouse floor before D. got out; he didn’t carry the two men out because they were too heavy to drag and would have fallen off the stairs. Anyway, if he did, the cloaked men that hid their identities would’ve caught him and taken him to who knew where. During the trip down the stairs, D. scraped his ankle. When he reached the bottom, his socks turned into a darkened red. He supposed he’d deal with that later, if there was time.
Those photographs . . . back when the shower curtain was afire. Amazing that in the middle of it all, one printed photo slid across the bathroom floor trying to eat him. No one who pulled that off would think of running off without capture. Officer Deed wondered, right before getting clamped with a lamp, what the photographs were. If the men had taken a second or more to plan their ambush, D. would’ve told him. But now the fire that soared at god-speed burned them all, possibly even the officer and the bigger one. All of them, however, weren’t destroyed, since D. kept a few in his pocket. From the pile he learned that not all of it was pictures; some were notes and torn notebook pages, but who wrote them?
Police sirens were on, riding their way onto the scene. The front desk must have called or, if not them, then maybe one of the residents in the building. Other officers climbed out, some looking to the detective.
