The Eighth Day

by Joseph John

  And now he was to believe some amorphous “they” had been keeping tabs on him? That his name and memories of his hometown were a work of fiction? If he wasn’t an investment broker, what was he doing sitting here, in his office, reviewing his clients’ portfolios? A part of him insisted that the man with the cryptic message had been delusional, and he’d figured out Shawn’s name and looked up his profession and previous residence online. But then again, delusions weren’t capable of murder.

  “This is ridiculous,” Shawn said. But the words sounded as hollow as an empty room. His eyes drifted over the financial statement he’d been reading, yet his mind kept wandering, and after the third time rereading the first paragraph, he gave up. If he didn’t figure out what was going on, he’d lose his mind. And if there was anything to the stranger’s warning and someone was watching him, there’d be a lot more at stake than his mind, because Shawn doubted they’d be looking out for his best interests.

  He cleared his digital tabletop with a wave of his hands and pulled up a search app. First things first: ID the stranger. He cracked his knuckles, fingers poised over the keys, but after a pause, he frowned down at the screen and dropped his hands into his lap. Where was he supposed to begin? He didn’t know the man’s name, didn’t even have a picture to reference.

  Shawn decided to check the news feeds, see if they had any intel or updates. He read everything he could find about the murder at the Café del Mar—local and national articles, professional journalism and amateur columnists, fact and conjecture—it didn’t matter. He read it all but still didn’t learn anything he didn’t already know. No one had any leads, and the police hadn’t released any information about the stranger or his identity.

  Shawn was about ready to give up when a new headline appeared at the top of his search feed: “Bomb Threat at NYU Medical Center a Hoax. Body of Man Slain at Restaurant Disappears.” His heart skipped a beat. He tapped the headline, and the article filled the screen.

  Authorities claim the bomb threat at the NYU Medical Center reported earlier today was a hoax. Security personnel received an autonomous tip that a bomb had been planted in the medical center. When they found a suspicious package in a utility closet, the building was evacuated, and the NYC Bomb Squad was called in. However, the alleged bomb was a hoax constructed of cardboard and wires. At some point during the incident, an unknown party entered the morgue and took the body of the man slain earlier this morning at the Café del Mar, a restaurant on 46th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan. According to the medical examiner’s office, the man’s body had not yet been processed, and his identity remains unknown.

  Shawn read the article again. There was no way to rationalize events now, no innocent explanation. The stranger had delivered a warning and died because of it, and someone who didn’t want Shawn or the police to figure out who he was had called in a bomb threat as cover and taken his body before the medical examiner identified it.

  Nothing you know is real.

  But his name was Shawn Jaffe, and he was from Ohio. He hadn’t imagined his life. He was pretty sure he was an investment broker, too, but he’d been with Lark Morton for less than a month, and it was possible they were a front company for some kind of organized crime or terrorist cell.

  At any rate, no way was he going to sit here like a frog in slowly boiling water. Shawn powered off his tabletop and marched out of his office, and Miss Elliot sat up with a start and peered at him from over her bifocals. He watched her, his eyes narrowing with suspicion.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked. Her voice had a tenuous trill, her hair was silver, and liver spots stained her wrinkled skin like old and faded tattoos. Oh yeah, he had a real hard-core mobster and jihadist here.

  Shawn sighed. “I’m sorry. I need to clear my schedule. I’ll be out of the office, probably for the rest of the day.”

  Her hands fell into her lap and her shoulders sagged as she deflated. “Where’re you going? I already rescheduled Mr. Denning once. What about your conference call with the Smiths?”

  “I know, I’m sorry. Tell them I’m sorry. Say something came up, and see if they can do it tomorrow.”

  “What’s wrong? Where’re you going?”

  “The NYU Medical Center. It has to do with that thing I told you about from this morning.”

  “Whatever for?” Miss Elliot asked, her eyes widening. “Are you in some kind of trouble, Mr. Jaffe? We can talk about it. Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No, I’m not in any trouble,” Shawn said. “Everything’s fine. I need to get going.”

  She shook her head and frowned her disapproval but said nothing more.

  The receptionist at the front desk eyed him as he approached the elevators. “You’re leaving?” she asked. Her smile looked forced.

  “Just running some errands,” he said, and forced his own smile before turning to the elevators. He was sure she was going to give him the third degree, but although he could feel her staring daggers at his back, she didn’t say anything else.

  Once outside, he dropped into the backseat of one of the self-driving cabs parked at the curb. On the digital map displayed on the Plexiglas that separated the backseat from the front, he typed in NYU Medical Center as his destination, and after he confirmed his payment with his smartphone, the cab eased its way into traffic. He alternated between watching the city creep past the window and tracking his languid progress on the digital map.

  The cab seemed to possess a prescient ability to find the slowest lane possible while hitting every red stop signal along the way. He could only sit, tapping his fingers against the armrest while his knee bounced up and down in a rapid staccato.

  Shawn tried once more to retrace his steps over the last several weeks since he’d moved from Ohio to New York, wondering for the thousandth time if he’d missed something. But he thought it would be like missing a freight train barreling toward him, engine thundering and horn blaring. There was nothing there; the tracks were empty.

  When at last he reached the medical center, Shawn opened the door and leapt out of the cab as it rolled to a stop, slipping between the cars parked at the curb and into the lobby.

  Detective Sam Harrington pushed his way through the front doors into the Midtown North precinct where a uniform sat behind the front counter, bent over an untidy tabletop of open files and apps, fingers swiping and slashing with furious abandon. Before him stood a woman. She wore a faded sundress that might’ve been pretty once. Perhaps she, too, had been pretty once, but time had faded her looks as well. She rummaged in an oversized purse and slapped a piece of paper on the counter, her palm going off like a gunshot.

  “What the hell’s this?” she asked, her voice a nasal Brooklyn whine.

  The uniform glanced at it. “A ticket,” he said.

  She rolled her eyes. “I know it’s a ticket, Mr. Wiseass.” She pronounced it Mistah Woise-ass. “Do you know what kind of day I had? First, my goddamn car wouldn’t start. Then…”

  Sam slipped past them to a door at the rear of the room and leaned into a retinal scan. The door’s lock disengaged with a buzz and a click, and he yanked it open and stepped across the threshold.

  Multi-touch interface panels, holographic maps that tracked locations and statuses for both units and incidents in real time, and ringing phone lines crowded the room beyond. Uniformed officers and detectives peppered it as well, typing and swiping frantically or standing around and sipping from Styrofoam cups of coffee while they caught up on the latest casework or interoffice gossip. It was like organized chaos.

  Sam made his way through a labyrinth of cubicles to the rear of the precinct and the private offices. Thin walls with windows covered by blinds partitioned them from the rest of the precinct, and bold, black letters on the door to one of them proclaimed it to be that of Samuel F. Harrington, Detective First-Grade. Sam pulled it open and stepped into the gloom. A switch next to the door brought to life a single naked bulb that hung from the ceiling by tw
o frayed wires like a dying sun. It illuminated a scuffed and dented metal desk painted beige with a faux-wood top at the far side of the room, a solitary locker in one corner, and a bookshelf in another.

  He took off his suit jacket and hung it in the locker, rolled up his sleeves, and adjusted the leather holster strapped under his arm before easing himself into a chair behind the desk, its springs crying out in anguish. He logged on to his computer, an old-fashioned desktop model with a flat-screen monitor, mouse, and wired keyboard.

  When he first joined the police force, he’d filled out form after form until his hand throbbed and cramped. Who knew he’d miss that one day? Now, everything was digital, hung on some server in a dusty back room like an old shirt that’s gone out of style.

  Technology couldn’t be trusted. He’d learned that early in his career, when he’d still been a wet-behind-the-ears detective.

  It wasn’t even a case at first, just a series of random accidents, all of them involving the Internet of Things—a self-driving car that went haywire and plowed into a herd of pedestrians, a security system that short-circuited and locked a family of four in their house during a fire, a malfunctioning thermostat that overheated a hospital nursery and killed a roomful of newborns.

  As time passed, the killer got overconfident and careless. It was as if he’d left a trail of bread crumbs, then gone back and brushed it away. Digital notes vanished from tablets. Reports and files were deleted or corrupted. Computers crashed and multi-touch interfaces malfunctioned. And Sam began to notice a pattern: if you stopped assuming they were random accidents, all of it was connected.

  Sam followed the bread crumbs to a former Nanosoft programmer who’d been fired for trying to insert code that siphoned off a fraction of a penny to his own account whenever a customer purchased an app via the company’s online store.

  But the killer had hacked into the NYPD’s network and created alerts for certain keywords, so when Sam typed his notes into his digital tablet, the killer knew he was busted, and rather than surrender, he decided to go out in a blaze of glory.

  He hacked into the subway’s network, shut down the cars, and sealed the station.

  It was like shooting fish in a barrel.

  Sam arrived at the killer’s apartment and discovered what he was planning, but it was too late. By the time he got to the subway, it was a bloodbath.

  He remembered sprinting down the stairs. As he leapt over the turnstile and rounded the corner, a gunshot boomed, and the back of a woman’s head splattered brains and gore against the wall. There were so many people. He screamed at the crowd to get down, get the hell out of the way. They screamed, too, trampling each other in their frenzy to escape. The killer was dressed in a trench coat, and he waved a pistol and fired again and again. Blood sprayed, and bodies fell. The killer held a little girl around the waist, using her as a shield. His teeth were rows of tombstones as he laughed. Sam had to stop him, but if he took the shot, he might hit the girl. He rushed the killer instead. The killer saw Sam coming and fired. The bullet caught Sam in the chest, and the pain exploded with a white-hot force. He staggered but stayed on his feet and collided with the killer. The girl slipped loose, and the killer shot him again. This time, the bullet grazed his skull. Now Sam buried his own pistol in the killer’s face and pulled the trigger.

  He’d saved the girl, but there’d been so many he hadn’t been able to save.

  Since then, advances in technology and security made hacking the Internet of Things all but impossible, but Sam still chose to steer clear of it. His car was the do-it-yourself kind, he took his notes with paper and a pen, and nothing in his house was automated. If he wanted to turn on the lights, he had to flip a switch.

  It was a hard, primitive life.

  Sam turned his thoughts to the present and Shawn Jaffe. The kid was holding something back, leaving something out, but for the life of him, Sam didn’t know what or why. If the stranger had been a nut job spouting conspiracy theories, it would’ve been about as commonplace as a taxi cab, and Sam might’ve chalked it up to drugs or dementia. But the stranger had been murdered, and that put a whole different spin on things.

  Suit number one had poked his head in the front door to say boo, and the supposed nut job bolted for the rear exit, where suit number two gunned him down. It had the characteristics of a professional hit carried out to keep a witness off the stand, to keep damning testimony left unsaid, not to stop a man from talking crazy. If Jaffe had stepped in that kind of shit, he’d have smelled something.

  Sam half-expected Jaffe’s story to crumble like a junkie’s will when handed the needle and spoon. He went online and checked the national law enforcement and corrections record management system, the national crime information center database, and did a background check, to include Jaffe’s agency employment history and selective service registration. But everything checked out. It confirmed Jaffe had moved from Ohio to New York sixteen days ago to work as an investment broker for Lark Morton. He had no criminal record, not so much as a speeding ticket.

  Someone knocked at the door, and it swung open, the plastic blinds rattling like dead leaves against the glass. A portly detective named Nat Francis leaned into the room.

  “Harrington, you got a sec?” he asked. “You’re gonna wanna hear this.”

  Sam frowned. “What is it?”

  “Someone called in a bomb threat at the NYU Medical Center. When security checked it out, they found a package in one of the utility closets. They evacuated the building and called in the Bomb Squad. Turns out it was a fake. But when they went back inside, your body from that homicide at the restaurant this morning? It was gone.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Sam said. “Did we at least get an ID?”

  Francis shook his head. “ME hadn’t even taken him out of the bag yet.”

  “Any witnesses see anything?”

  “Uniforms are still canvassing the employees and any bystanders they can find, but so far we got exactly jack and shit.”

  Sam stood and pulled on his suit jacket. “I’m gonna head over there and check it out, see what I can see.”

  “You want company?” Francis asked.

  Sam shook his head. “Keep looking into Shawn Jaffe. His record is squeaky clean, but there’s gotta be something I’m missing.”

  He left the precinct and climbed back into his car, turned on the flashers, and sped away, weaving through traffic as if it were a reflex. When he reached the NYU Medical Center, he swung the wheel to the right and pulled to a stop in a reserved space behind a police cruiser parked at the curb.

  Outside the entrance, a young brown-haired officer slouched against a worn marble pillar, eyes lidded as he tapped at the screen of his smartphone. When he saw Sam approaching, he stepped forward and tipped his chin and slid the phone into the front pocket of his trousers.

  “Mason,” Sam said.

  “How’s it going, detective?”

  “You tell me.”

  Mason shrugged. “Shitty. Nobody saw nuttin’. Tilly took the videos down to the station. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “What about the bomb?”

  “Just a cardboard box with some electrical wiring poking out of it. Found it duct-taped to the back of some shelving.”

  “Is it still here?”

  “Nah. CSU took it in.”

  Sam furrowed his brow. “They left?”

  “Couple of them’s still in there. Couple of plainclothes, too.”

  “All right. Thanks.”

  “Sure thing, detective.”

  Sam strode through the revolving doors that led into the medical center. Inside the lobby, coteries distinguishable by their suits, scrubs, and uniforms clustered together to share rumors of the day’s drama. Scattered among them, detectives armed with digital tablets worked the crowd. The hum of nervous energy subsided as heads turned to mark his arrival, then swelled once more, like the falling and rising of the tide.

  The head of security, Fred Frede
rickson, stood near the metal detectors that separated the lobby from the rest of the medical center. He was an older man in black slacks, a white shirt, and a black tie, and he was chatting with someone, a guy who had his back to Sam.

  Sam threaded his way through the assemblage toward them. When he saw the detective, Frederickson flashed a row of dirty-yellow teeth, a foreshadowing of the Parfum de Cheap Cigar that choked the air around him.

  “Detective,” he said, extending an arthritic hand, and Sam shook it.

  “Fred. Good to see you.”

  “Likewise. But I s’pose this ain’t no social call.”

  “No. It isn’t.”

  Then the man Frederickson had been talking to turned around, and Sam’s jaw dropped.

  “Hello, detective,” Shawn Jaffe said.

  The surprise on Harrington’s face was replaced by a look of suspicion. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “Did you have something to do with this?”

  Shawn turned up his palms. “I read about it online.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I’m trying to figure out what’s going on.”

  The head of security, Frederickson, cleared his throat. “I take it you two know each other?”

  “Mr. Jaffe was a witness this morning at the Café del Mar,” Harrington said. “The victim spoke with him shortly before he was killed.”

  “You mean the victim whose body disappeared?”

  Harrington nodded.

  Now it was Frederickson’s turn to narrow his eyes at Shawn with brow knit and face darkened. “He was asking if we had any leads about the man’s identity,” he said.

  Shawn shook his head and held up his hands defensively. “I told you, I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on.”

  Harrington jabbed a finger at him. “Stay here and don’t move. I’m gonna talk to Frederickson, and then you’re coming with me.”