I heard sirens in the background and a voice calling my name. I screamed in my head and was silent to the world. I heard the scrape of shoes on cement and the voice got closer.
“Travis. Are you in there?” Anda. I would have cried with relief if I could have. “I don’t hear you so I’m going to hope you are still a statue. You had better still be a statue. I’ve lost too many jobs already. I need this one. You need to be okay. Stay a statue and be okay.”
She was babbling and I wanted to tell her I was okay. Listening to her babble was reminding me of how bad off I was. “I guess we know what Brian meant by rock. I need you to be okay. If we’re going to stop him, and boy do I want to stop him, you need to be okay. Okay?”
Okay, Anda. I’m okay. At least I thought I was. I am hard to hurt as a statue, but I dreaded what would happen if I changed while under this pile of debris.
“If Jet were here he could help me. After losing Lauralee, I don’t think I can stop Brian by myself. He always intimidated me when I was working for Mr. Newman. He’s too touchy feely for my peace of mind.”
I guess when she was a secretary for Mr. Newman, the crooked accountant we stopped, she didn’t realize that what Brian wanted was a piece of her mind. We were lucky that he hadn’t stopped in after we met Anda. I didn’t think Brian knew she worked for me and I wanted to keep it that way.
“Maybe I should get Jet to help me stop Brian until you can get free. I’m sure they’ll bring machinery soon to help you. Oh, but Jet is a giant today. He hates being seen in that mode. He always feels like people are staring. Ohhh!”
I had almost fallen asleep since I was lying on my back with my eyes closed, and Anda’s cry startled me. I thought something had fallen on her and I strained to hear more from her.
“Travis. How could we forget? Jet is a giant. He can get you out of there. I’m going to go contact him. Don’t move.” She laughed and I could hear her footsteps moving away on the broken material. Don’t move. Funny lady.
I wanted to kick myself for forgetting Jet was in giant mode, but figured it was a waste of time. Even if I had remembered, I couldn’t tell Anda. I decided to thank my luck instead. I was lucky that I was a statue when the bomb went off and I was lucky that Anda had stopped by the office even though we were closed. If she hadn’t been there, she wouldn’t have known that I was rubble among the rubble.
●●●
It seemed like I was stuck under the pile of my office remains forever. Luck is a complicated thing. I was still a statue so the weight above me was not hurting me but because I was still a statue the rescue crews didn’t know I was under the rubble and they were working on other areas. I had no idea how much of the building had been destroyed. There were only six offices in the front of the building. I hoped none were occupied. I had no doubt Brian was aiming for me and I didn’t want other people to die because of our conflict.
“Oomph.” In one swift moment, I transformed from rock to jelly and three feet of rubble flattened me. I tried to call out and found that I could barely draw a breath. I tried to move my arms and found them pinned by metal plates. The only thing I could move was my head and I had no idea what was on my legs. I tried to focus on breathing and found that incredibly hard. Looking downward I saw that Grant’s desk, now Jet’s desk, was laying on my chest. What luck. The world’s most well-built piece of furniture was crushing me. I tried to move my back lower into the rubble but nothing seemed to give. Any space that had been created when I was a statue had filled when I became flesh and blood. At the slow rate I was breathing, I figured it wasn’t going to be too long before my lungs were so smashed that they couldn’t fill with any air. And that would be that.
It really pissed me off that Brian might win. I wasn’t prepared to lose that war. I tried to find my mad hoping a little adrenaline would come with it. Instead I just felt scared.
“Travis!”
I croaked at Anda’s cry and my lungs collapsed a little more. Jet’s next desk was going to be a TV table.
“Travis, don’t move. Jet is here.” I heard the sound of concrete scraping against metal and the pressure on my lungs decreased. I imagined giant Jet yanking away I-beams and chunks of flooring, with Anda pointing at the next piece. The view above me got brighter and soon my head was exposed. With only the desk pressing down on my chest I could breathe easier.
“The desk, please.”
Jet looked down at me, his head the size of a super-orange-pie-gourd with a smile to match. Anda stood next to him, tossing aside small pieces of carpeting and chair legs. Next to Jet, she looked like a child. Jet grabbed the desk with his two massive hands and lifted it off me. I dragged in air and immediately started coughing. Anda climbed in next to me and freed my arms and legs. She helped me up and I hacked some more.
“Help me get him out of here, Jet,” Anda said, pulling on one of my arms. Jet reached down and pulled me up by my torso. I felt like a ragdoll and looked like a blackrock miner. Emergency personnel hurried over to us, and Jet set me down on a rolling bed. I wanted to thank him for the timely rescue but couldn’t stop coughing. Jet backed away from the ambulance that he towered over and bent down to look at me.
“I’ll get caught up tomorrow,” he said.
I nodded and Anda promised to keep him informed. I watched Jet lope off and realized why he called his Problem a Gift. Sometimes unexpected events have good outcomes. I wasn’t going to doubt it.
“I’ll come see you at the hospital a little later. I still need to call Misty.”
“We need to find the next bomb,” I croaked.
“We will, but I think it will have to wait until morning. We should have twenty-four hours between blasts if he plans to do one a day.”
“Get Jet and show up early.”
Anda patted my shoulder. “We will. Get your lungs back in working order.”
I nodded and Anda told the technician that I was ready to go. They rolled me in and got a mask on me. I really wanted the pain in my chest to go away and wondered if I had crushed any ribs. Since my luck was being fickle, I couldn’t decide if that would be a good thing or a bad thing. I needed to get on my feet as soon as possible to stop Brian. Rock. Paper. Scissors. We knew what rock was. What were the others? A needle prick on my arm was the only warning that I wasn’t going to be pondering much for the next little while. Considering that I felt like a building had fallen on me I didn’t complain. Anda was right. We had time tomorrow to thwart Brian.
●●●
“I’ve got to get out of here.”
Anda shook her head. “Travis, your lungs almost collapsed. It’s going to take time before you are breathing at one hundred percent.”
“I don’t need all my air if I am just going to be sitting.”
Anda looked over to where Jet was leaning, smile in place, against the wall. “You hear that, Jet. All he is going to be doing is sitting.”
Jet shrugged but I could see his smile getting larger. I had not realized before now how mothering Anda could be. She stood over me with her arms on her hips. Her overalls made her look about ten, but her frown reminded me of my grandmother when she expected to get her way.
“Anda. I appreciate your concern, but I am much better. I have no broken bones, and my lungs will improve. How are we supposed to stop Brian if I am stuck here?” She gave me a blank look and I was so tired I couldn’t even figure out how to phrase my words to make her talk. I looked at Jet and pointed at Anda. Jet straightened and came over to my bed.
“I propose a compromise. Until we know what we need to do, Travis will lie here like a good patient. Once we know what our next step is Travis can come with us.”
Anda looked at Jet and then at me. Her hands dropped and she laughed. “Sure. That seems fair.”
“Besides,” Jet said. “We currently have no office to go to so this room is as good as any.”
“True.” Anda settled on the edge of the bed and Jet dragged a chair over to us. “So we know what the rock meant. How a
re we going to figure out paper or scissors?”
“Well, maybe it’s like the game.”
I was surprised to see confusion on both Jet and Anda’s faces. “What game?” Jet asked.
“You know. Rock. Paper. Scissors.” I lifted my hands and made a fist in one and a V in the other. “Rock crushes scissors.” I smashed the V with my fist. “Scissors cut paper.” I slid the V along my flat hand. “And paper covers rock.” I covered my fist with my open hand.
“Oh,” Jet grinned. “Crush. Cover. Cut.”
“No,” Anda corrected. “Hard. Flat. Sharp.”
I looked at them each with amazement. “Really. How odd that a simple game would have different names.”
Jet shrugged. “That is what it is called on Gregos.”
“And we call it something different on Auronan.”
“That is interesting. I wonder if every moon has its own version.” I wheezed. Damn Anda for being right. I was breathing heavily and I hadn’t moved. I breathed deep and tried to get some oxygen in my system. “More important is if Brian knows this and if he was really just playing a game when he decided where to place his bombs.”
“You guys know him better than I do,” Anda said. “Does he like to play games?”
Jet and I nodded. “Sure. He never just kills someone outright if he can play with his victim first,” I elaborated.
“He loves to stage his crimes so they are artistic or tell a story,” Jet said.
Anda shook her head. “Creepy.”
I agreed. “And psychotic. It makes him very unpredictable because every murder he commits has a different style. He doesn’t have any pattern and he is rarely caught. Even his recent use of knives isn’t consistent.”
“Okay,” Anda said. “So let’s assume rock, paper, scissors is his version of the game. What does that tell us?”
“The rock bomb was meant for Travis because of his Problem,” Jet said.
“That is not overly helpful. We would need to know the Problem of everyone in the city to figure out paper and scissors,” I offered.
“Plus, it doesn’t matter how it relates to us. It matters how it relates to Brian,” Anda said.
We were silent for a while. I would be the first to admit we didn’t know much about the Handler. He hadn’t exactly written a tell-all for us to use.
“Is Brian from Ausdine?” Anda asked.
I shrugged. “I always assumed so, but before Jet I had never met anyone from another moon.”
Jet shook his head. “We cannot know, but I have never noticed him having another Problem. Although mind reading is a pretty powerful Problem.”
“I only asked because if the game has different names on different moons than perhaps it means something different to him,” Anda said.
“Well, rock, paper, scissors isn’t getting us anywhere. How about your moon, Anda?” I paused, took a deep breath and continued. “Tell us again the name you call it.”
“Hard. Flat. Sharp.”
We sat for a moment and I tried to fit those three words into the picture I had of Brian.
“I do not think that is it,” Jet said. “We know the first bomb was for us. Hard does not describe us at all.”
“Travis is hard when he is a statue,” Anda said. Jet shook his head.
“I think the bomb was for all of us. If it was just for Travis, they could have hit his apartment. We are not hard. We are called gumshoes. We are not hard to find. And he had no way of knowing that Travis would be a statue when the bomb went off. Travis himself could not plan that.”
“I agree,” I said.
“Me, too,” Anda said. “What is your game called, Jet?”
“Crush. Cover. Cut.”
We sat silent again and this time I had the answer. “Us. The paper. Jem Tun.”
Anda stood up. “Perhaps lack of air helps your brain power after all. That is brilliant.”
I looked at Jet. “Make sense?”
“Three threats to Brian. We want to crush him. The paper wants to cover his murders, but more importantly the mistakes he’s been making lately.”
“Making him seem weak,” Anda said.
“And Jem Tun, who wants a cut of everything Brian does because he thinks Brian works for him, the local Battleboy boss, instead of the other way around.”
I nodded. “That’s what I think.”
“So he’s going to bomb the newspaper this afternoon?” Anda asked.
“I looked at Jet. “Too simple?”
“Perhaps. Or made to look simple. Would bombing the paper truly stop the news?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. More importantly, wouldn’t it give Brian more bad press if he is caught bombing the paper?”
Jet nodded. “The other guy must be the bomber.”
Anda nodded. “I agree. From what I saw, it looked like he was taking instructions from Brian. You said Brian liked to commit his murders up-close and personal like he did with Lauralee. Bombs are very impersonal. I would almost say they are a means to an end if you don’t care about the means.”
“It is possible that he is tired of his plans not working. Perhaps we are seeing an impatient side to him,” Jet said. “If he is using the Gregos name of the game for inspiration perhaps he is not from Ausdine. Perhaps he is from one of the other moons, maybe even Gregos.”
“And impatience is another Problem he has,” Anda said.
“I’ve never noticed him being impatient before,” I said. “But you may be right. Or it may be that the Ausdine name of the game means something to him that we have not seen yet. Brian is probably the only one who knows the entire plan.”
“How do we stop him if we don’t know his plan?” Anda asked.
“He must have a reason for the placement and timing of the bombs. I understand bombing our office. He told me point blank he wanted us dead. But I don’t remember the paper putting out anything recently about the Battleboys. And they rarely sling mud at Brian. He stays under the radar.” I had to stop talking to breathe.
“So do we think it is the paper or not?” Anda asked. We have to let them know with enough time to find the bomb and dispose of it.”
“Let’s go look at our bomb site and then extrapolate to today’s bomb.” I sat up and the gown tried to go south.
Jet stood up. “Come on, Anda. Let us give Travis some privacy.”
“I still don’t think this is a good idea, but I guess a deal is a deal.”
“I’ll heal faster on my feet than I will wasting away in bed,” I said.
“I look forward to seeing that,” Anda said as Jet closed the door behind them. It took some searching but I finally found the bag that had the fresh clothes Jet had collected from my apartment. The time for supposing was over.
●●●
We stood outside what had been a non-descript two-story office complex on the edge of downtown. The room that had been our office rested at our feet. Some of the debris had been removed but both my desk and Jet’s desk lay like the result of a giant’s temper tantrum. In the case of Jet’s desk, it wasn’t too far from the truth. It amazed me a little that that solid wood monstrosity hadn’t killed me. As I worked my way around the furniture I noticed that the secret compartment in the leg of the desk had popped open. I reached my hand in and found the paper that had exposed my first partner’s killer. Grant had been smart enough to keep evidence, but not smart enough to stay alive. I crunched up the paper and tossed it on the debris. Now was not the time to be dwelling in the past. We needed something to show us the future.
“This is just awful,” Anda said.
“It was just an office,” I said.
“No. It was our office,” Anda said. “It was home.”
I shook my head. Leave it to a woman to get sentimental over a dingy office that didn’t even have space for three desks. “We’ll get you a desk in our next office.”
Jet grinned. “Three lightweight desks.”
Anda nodded. “Okay, I guess the job is more than a ro
om.”
“What about the bomb?” Jet asked.
I waved my hand. “The tape has come down so we’ll assume the police have taken what they want. I don’t know what there is to find, but what I am looking for is something that is not part of the building.” I pointed at the rubble that had been my coffin. “This pile is from our office. If we run on the assumption that the bomb was meant for us then this should be ground zero.”
Anda and Jet started looking through the debris that had pinned me yesterday and I wished Jet was still a giant so he could look under the large chunks of building. There was probably nothing to find since the bomb squad would have removed any evidence, but we knew more than they did so there was a chance we might find something they overlooked.
I bent over to move a patch of carpeting and the world tilted. I teetered toward the hole Jet had created yesterday and Anda grabbed my arm. Jet hurried over and supported me on the other side.
“Let us do the looking,” Anda said. I dragged in air and nodded. Making allowances for my dizziness I let them lead me over to the remains of my desk. Sitting down, I put my head between my knees and focused on breathing. Jet patted my shoulder and moved back to the pile of debris. Anda looked at me and frowned.
“We should have left you in the hospital.”
“I’ll be fine. I can’t help from a bed.” I sat up and took a deep breath. My head only swam a little. “Keep looking.”
Anda patted my other shoulder and went back to help Jet. I hated feeling this useless. You’d think I’d be used to it since I spend so much time as a statue. But when I am stone-still I can blame Them. In this case, I could only blame an unknown bomber and Brian the Handler. I found I wasn’t blaming them much because unlike Them, I knew I could stop Brian, if only I could breathe.
The wind whipped up, cooling the late Suntern morning, and I leaned back on the desk. I immediately wished I hadn’t as my vision blurred so I leaned forward again. At my feet I saw a copy of the paper I had not had time to read yesterday. Thinking of the second bomb, I picked it up and glanced at the front page. I quickly skimmed to the bottom hoping to find something that would justify Brian’s ire. All became obvious when I saw the article.
In Stone Vol. 1-6: The First Six Travis Eldritch Problems (A Travis Eldritch Problem) Page 11
