Houston, 2030

by Mike McKay

  Even more extraordinary stuff followed. Spalding got a promotion to Captain in 2017, and by 2018, – found himself at His Majesty's Royal Navy aviation base in Yeovilton, the UK. But wait, Mark though, Spalding was not a naval officer, not a pilot, and not a Marine? And – not British! What could an American infantry captain do at the Royal Navy aviation base? The file did not have an answer. It stated: 2020, a Medal of Honor, and the second Purple Heart. Whatever the Captain was doing at the naval aviation base, he did not consume the Royal Navy rations for nothing. Then, quite unexpectedly, Mark read: 2021, The United Kingdom Correction Facility at RAF Lakenheath, the UK. Other-than-honorable discharge followed in 2027, and Spalding was ‘dropped from the officers roll.’ But there was no dishonorable dismissal: Captain Spalding remained in the current rank and with all the decorations. The last known address: the Mesa Drive Slum, Houston, Texas. The e-mail address and the telephone number were not listed. But there was a second photograph: the type of mugshot they make in prisons. Spalding was in the field uniform, without the insignia. The full face and the profile shots, with the computer-generated registration number at the bottom, and the height lines over the pale blue backdrop. Exactly 5-9, Mark observed. Instead of the young ambitious West Point graduate from the first page, on the prison photo there was a mature man. His face looked even thinner, the nose and the facial features became sharper, and the nose slightly overhung the upper lip. The close-cropped hair was still dense. The eyes. The same, slightly narrowed glance. But now the eyes looked like the ones of a hunted wild animal.

  Mark looked at the prison photo and slowly descended into a panic. Eric Spalding. Assuming the man worked at Frederick's gasoline plant, the source of all these information ‘leaks’ was, naturally, Mark himself! While at home, he often chatted with Mike and other family members about the Sheldon Butcher investigation. No, Mark never ever told the family members anything confidential, but over the last two years Mike became more familiar with the case than any member of the TV and press. The rest was trivial. At the plant, Spalding would casually ask Mike about the family, and how the Dad was doing, and so on. Mike had never been a type who would keep his mouth shut. Obviously, after Mike had been drafted, Spalding needed the new source of intelligence. That was why he was sucking up with Samantha! Besides, the profile said the serial killer was ‘forensically aware.’ What was Spalding studying in Quantico? Unlikely it was the Behavioral Psychology. His approach to Samantha looked a bit clumsy for a pro. That would mean he was studying the Forensics. Not ‘forensically aware,’ as the profile said. ‘Forensically trained,’ and by the FBI itself!

  Mark picked the phone from the table and located William's number. This telephone William passed to Mike before leaving for the Army, and now the same telephone was passed from Mike to Samantha, but Mark had not bothered to change the name in the Contacts.

  The answer came after the second beep. “Hello? Is it you, Mark?”

  “Clarice? Why the phone is with you, and not with Samantha?”

  “Sammy forgot to charge it yesterday, so she left it in the charger this morning.”

  “Well, very smart of her! Right when we need the phones the most! Anyway, how are you there?”

  “OK, I guess. The hurricane preparations are all done. Now we are sitting and watching the True Lies from the DVD. Arnold Schwarzenegger for a super-spy, nice movie. The wind outside – o-oh! The entire house is shaking! You know, I am worried a little about Mary, Billy and Davy.”

  “They are not back yet?”

  “Not yet. And Mary's phone is not answering. Just says it's not on the network.”

  “Likely, something is wrong with the mobile communication. The doctor Smiths' phone also wasn't answering. Don't worry too much, Mary and William are probably fine, but simply can't call. OK, hold on in there. I will dial Frederick now…”

  Mark hung up and dialed Frederick Stolz. Come on, Mark begged, come on, pick the phone, man! Pick the bloody phone and tell me that the name of your night watchman is not Eric Spalding but Joe Spalding. And he is five feet two inches. Or the opposite, he is a former NBA player, who never served in the Army, due to his old basketball-induced hernia. And if he sucks up to my daughter, – it is simply because he is such a sucker. After the sixth tone, the telephone started the prerecorded message. “Greetings! You have reached Syntegas. I am the CEO and the Chief Scientist, Frederick Stolz, and I don't have a secretary. If I don't pick up the phone, there could be two possible reasons. One. I am doing something, from which our little plant can blow up. Two. It blew up already! Boom! OK, besides the jokes. If you merely want to buy some gas, – go to the website: three double-u dot Syntegas dot com. Everybody else: leave a message after the beep. I'll call you, honest. But only in the case number one, above. Stay safe!” And the phone emitted an answering machine beep.

  Mark grinned. He had not heard this particular version of the Fred's answering machine message yet. “Frederick, this is Mark Pendergrass. If you and my Samantha have not blown your plant up yet, please call me back,” he said into the phone.

  The Frederick's website was the same: the business and the fun, all blended. For example, there was a page entitled ‘A Bit of Chemistry.’ At the top, it very seriously explained, why it was totally impossible to convert old plastic scrap into gasoline. Then, in the middle, it suddenly said: “Thus, if you cannot, but really want to,” and the rest went on explaining why the plant products still could be put into a fuel tank with only minor risk to the engine. There was another excellent page under a serious name: ‘Customer Feedback.’ It contained an officially-looking questionnaire form, and amongst the other things, there was the question: “In our gasoline, you are not satisfied with: (a) the price, (b) the octane number, (c) the phenols' content, (d) the asphaltenes' content, (e) the odor, (f) the color, (g) the taste.” If the customer clicked the ‘price’ option, a window would pop up: “Dear customer! If you have not mentioned, today is…” – the current month, day and year would follow. “Note that the year is 2030 and not 1998. The price – as it is. Sorry.” And if the customer clicked the ‘taste’ option, the pop up window said: “Error: Wrong Orifice. Spit out – immediately!”

  Mary, with her programming experience, helped Frederick to design this website. She refused to take any payment, but Fred finally convinced her to accept a gift: a porcelain figurine of a bear cub, shrugging off attacking bees. The statuette could be opened to place in a jar of honey or jam. Back then, Mary said: “Fred, you have a major chemical enterprise. Why do you need all these funny trinkets on your website? As a former programmer and a web designer, I can assure you they look totally unprofessional.”

  To this Frederick replied, “Mary, my dear, all the major chemical enterprises have ended – ten years ago. Whatever we are doing with the boys is called a ‘hobby!’ I can't possibly take it seriously, – my former, now completely unnecessary, Philosophy Doctor degree disagrees. Nevertheless, because our hobby allows me occasionally eat my favorite Bratwurst sausages with my favorite beer, I can't be complaining…”

  Mark's thoughts were interrupted by the on-duty deputy who knocked lightly on the door and reported: “We've got an attempted robbery, sir. Two dead. The owner says that three more ran away. At the corner of the Beaumont and the Erin.”

  “OK, Deputy, this must be for us,” Mark nodded. If the shop owner called the Police himself, the bodies surely belonged to the potential robbers.

  “Our CSIs, Natalie and Tom, are sleeping in the slammer. Would you be so kind to wake them up?”

  “No problem, sir,” the Deputy replied and ran away.

  Mark turned his laptop off and put it back into the box. He replaced his sandals with the rubber boots, double-checked his ‘Glock,’ made a final glance around his little office, now ready for a swift evacuation, and took his yellow Police raincoat from the hook on the wall. Tom and Natalie appeared in the hallway, yawning, also dressed in yellow raincoats.

  “Well, the Deputy says, they foun
d some job for us, after all,” Tom said. “But how are we going to get there? By boat – a bit early. The water is not deep enough.”

  “Tom, you're such a pessimist,” Natalie laughed.

  “Rather, a realist. Look, it rains like hell.”

  “Not much we can do, let's try on the bikes,” Mark suggested doubtfully, “I wish we had enough diesel for the response vehicles.”

  On the bikes, they had little success. The wind gusts were so strong, it was difficult to even stand straight, less ride a bicycle. They had to dismount and push the bikes, which suddenly became a useless burden. Notwithstanding the rain gear, they were instantly soaked to the skin. Rain water unpleasantly squelched in Mark's rubber boots, and he looked enviously at Natalie, shod in rubber flip-flops and bravely spanking right through the puddles. Her feet were equally wet, but at least the water did not squelch.

  Chapter 24

  The good news was they did not need to walk too far – about a mile and a half. At the corner, they were met by the local Deputy. “It was probably a mistake to call you here, guys,” he apologized, “as a second thought, we rather made pictures with a cell phone, and you would send us a coroner's statement without leaving the Station.”

  “Hence we are here, who killed whom and at what place?” Mark asked.

  “That saloon over there. Let's Come In For A Couple of Shots,” the Deputy pointed. “The owner is a great guy – I know him well. I frequent the place myself, as you may guess. It's a very decent watering hole. Naturally, the saloon was closed, as everything else, but the robbers knocked in politely. Said, they are traders, returning home, the weather is terrible, all such stuff, could you let us in? Well, the owner took pity of the guys and opened the door. And the so-called traders pulled out guns and knives! Only, they didn't see that the owner's son was sitting nice and quiet – behind the bar. With a rifle in his hands! And the young man served in Mexico, as a sniper. Bang, bang! Two shots – two dead. The three others, who didn't get inside yet, decided to flee for dear lives.”

  They quickly inspected the scene of the failed armed robbery. Natalie made few photos, then put on latex gloves and packed the belongings of the hapless burglars into evidence bags. For the weapons, there was an ancient revolver, by the looks, from 1970-s, a shiny brass knuckles and a standard-issue Army knife. Tom pulled out a handheld fingerprint scanner, and ten minutes later reported that the robbers had been identified. Both men were from the west of Houston. By their main specialty – the fish traders, indeed. Probably today they did not have time to purchase their usual load of smoked fish in Galveston, and decided to earn some money by a quick robbery. It was obvious from the first glance that the owner's son did not exceed the limits of self-defense. The bullet holes in both robbers were in the upper third of the chest. The young ex-sniper fired as taught in the Army, and positively at the attacking, not retreating robbers. Besides, the young man was still sitting on the floor behind the bar, wrapped in a blanket, and with a bottle of bourbon in his hand. He was still shaking. One thing was to fire a bullet into someone at five hundred yards, and quite another – to kill somebody like this, eye-to-eye.

  Even if they wanted to, they could not carry the robbers' bodies to the Station – how would you do it on the bikes? They left the local Deputy to write a report and decide what to do with the bodies, and got out into the fresh air, under a canopy next to the saloon's front doors. The hurricane Arthur was raging now in full-strength. The Beaumont Highway was not flooded yet, but the water in the flood gutters was almost level with the road. Mark tried to call Frederick Stolz again. The standard six beeps, click and: “Greetings! You have reached Syntegas. I am the CEO…” What the hell was he doing there? He dialed Mary's phone. “The phone you dialed is switched off or outside the network coverage area.” The only remaining number was the William's phone.

  “Mark?”

  “Clarice! Are Mary and William back yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “And Samantha?”

  “Also not here. Mark, I am afraid, they are unlikely to come home today. On TV, they show the Eastern Highway under water. Perhaps, they will be sitting this over at the doctor's place? And hopefully, Sammy and Mister Stolz will be at the plant, and not on the road.”

  “Got it. OK, sit tight. On Samantha, I probably will go to the plant and check myself. I'll call back.”

  He pressed the hung-up button and turned to the CSIs: “Tom, can I ask a hypothetical question?”

  “Sure thing, sir. I love the hypothetical stuff.”

  “Let say, we ask the Pentagon to give us a list to fit a particular profile. Let say: age such and such, served in the special forces, and so on. Is it possible that they omit some names from the list?”

  “Of course, sir. The DB Admin is a human too. Humans make mistakes. Errare Humanum Est. So the ancient Romans said. Although, the ancient Romans certainly did not have the computers to amplify their screw-ups.”

  “No, I'm not about the human errors, Tom. Would they omit a name on purpose? What if someone has been doing something very secret? Served on a nuclear submarine, for example?”

  “If on the nuclear submarine, nobody would omit the names. Now it's not a big secret. They don't go to the sea anymore. But if the person in question served in, let say, some very advanced military command, especially in the intelligence, – they may consider if it's necessary to edit him or her out. Remember, I said each profile search request sits in the Pentagon longer than a month? Well, a couple of weeks it's waiting in the queue, but then – they have to read the records themselves and decide how much the Police and the others should know. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, just a thought,” Mark avoided the answer. “OK. That is what we do. You guys start for the Station, and I'll pay a quick visit to my friend's gasoline plant. It is not too far from here – less than a mile.”

  “Perhaps, we better stick together in such weather?” Tom replied hesitantly, “should we go with you?”

  “It's kind of private business, Tom. For you two, no need to walk back and forth. Besides, they will need you both at the Station.”

  Most likely, his fantasies about Eric Spalding were just the first-degree paranoia. Even if other-than-honorably discharged captain Eric Spalding was indeed a night watch at Fred's plant, Mark thought, what made me conclude this particular Spalding was a serial killer? He was a military officer, with the highest decorations, twice wounded in action. Most likely, he served in some strategic military intelligence. Well, he ended up behind bars for something. So what? He served his time and got out. Not even ‘dismissed,’ so whatever his crime was, it was not the worst type. More than likely, he simply refused to take part in some covert operation. After the ill-fated Gas Shield, many military men lost faith in their commanders. Operation Gas Gangrene, they called it so for a reason, right?

  “No, guys, don't go with me,” he said decisively, “on the highway, I turn to the left, and you – to the right. I'll join you at the Station in about an hour. Maximum, an hour with few minutes…”

  “OK, good luck, sir,” Natalie nodded, “if you need any help – call.” She kicked off her flip-flops and stuck them under the scene kit on her bike's cargo platform. Tom followed Natalie example and took off his rubber boots, hanging them over the bike's frame. They forded a lake-size puddle that kept growing along the highway, – the water was almost reaching to their knees, and began pushing the bikes along the rain-drenched road, leaning against the gusts of wind and bursts of rain.

  Mark decided against taking off his rubber boots and scooped some water into the right one while crossing the puddle, but at this point it made practically no difference. At least, for him the storm was blowing in the back, and it was pretty easy to walk, or more precisely, almost run, trying to slow down the bike, pushed by the wind. How difficult would it be to walk back, he wondered.

  When Mark approached the McCarty Road Landfill, the filthy alleys were deserted. All the garbage processing shops were clo
sed, but some of their stacks emitted fine plumes of smoke, even more noticeable in the rain. Mike once said that most smelters would be running their furnaces day and night. Surely, someone was sitting inside, keeping one eye on the fire, and the other – on the door. And lightly fingering whatever weapon they had handy. As in the shops and bars, all the doors and windows were shut and bolted. Mark approached one of the doors, but then decided not to announce his presence. Despite Mark's yellow Police raincoat, some frightened guard might shoot first, and ask questions later. Even the FBI badge would not help. Who would take time to examine IDs in such rain?