Dying Memories

by Dave Zeltserman

  Simon sat still for several minutes, his expression thoughtful. Then nodding to himself he placed the hypodermic needle back into the case. “How much were you paid?” he asked.

  “Fifty thousand dollars was transferred into an offshore account,” Roberson said without hesitation.

  “Give me the account information.”

  Roberson wrote the information on a piece of paper and handed it to Simon, his hand shaking noticeably. Simon folded the paper into an inside jacket pocket and smiled philosophically. “What’s done is done,” he said. “Just don’t make that mistake again. If anyone else from the organization tries contacting you, let me know me immediately. That’s all, we’re done here.”

  Roberson felt a shakiness in his chest as he got to his feet. He waited for Simon to leave, but the man stayed seated, smiling at him, so Roberson took the hint and walked to the door first. If this man wanted to search his office, let him. When Roberson’s hand touched the knob, he felt a pinching behind his ear, then his eyes widened with a horrible terror. He opened his mouth wide but whatever scream he tried to let out seized instead within his throat. Clutching at his chest, he fell to the floor dead of a massive coronary. Simon stood over the body observing it with a mix of curiosity and amusement, then packed the hypodermic needle back in its case. He moved Roberson’s corpse so he could open the door, then left the office.

  “What’s too painful to remember…” he said with a melancholy sigh to his subordinate, the ox-sized thug who for this assignment was using the name Todd Shackleford. Shackleford didn’t bother glancing towards the open doorway to see the body that lay on the floor. He stood silently until Simon walked past him, and then followed his freakish boss out of the building.

  Chapter 36

  That night Bill returned to the same overpass in Porter Square. Like the other night, he found a small group of homeless laying huddled on the dirt surface underneath. It was one o’clock in the morning when he left his car and joined them, passing out doughnuts and coffee from a thermos that he brought. The first three people that Bill tried approaching ignored him as they lay on the ground buried under piles of dirty clothing, the next one grabbed a handful of doughnuts, shoving several in the pockets of a torn and battered winter parka he had on while demolishing two of them as fast as he could push them into his mouth, sending a rain of crumbs to the ground. The man was probably in his forties, but with his wasted body and grizzled exterior he could’ve easily passed as seventy. A coating of grime mostly covered his face and hands and the skin that showed underneath was an unhealthy yellowish-gray. Bill poured coffee from his thermos and handed it to the man.

  “Do vans ever come by here late at night?” Bill asked.

  The man wiped some of the more stubborn crumbs from his mouth and ratty beard. He peered slowly at Bill, his eyes greedy. “Give me money,” he croaked in a raspy voice.

  “Okay, sure, but first tell me whether vans ever come here to pick you up.”

  “Fuck you. Give me money.”

  “You answer my questions and I’ll give you some money.”

  The man’s eyes glazed over. He dumped the remnants of his coffee on the ground. “Fuck your coffee and fuck you,” he swore. When he lumbered around to turn his back on Bill, Bill shoved a couple of dollars into his hand. The man turned to show off a smile that would’ve made any jack o’lantern proud; the few teeth remaining in his mouth resembling rotted and shattered fence posts that had been splashed with mud. “I don’t know nothin’ and fuck yourself.” The man stumbled away back to the heap of rags he’d been sleeping on.

  The next person Bill tried was a woman who looked more like a gnarled wood carving than anything human. She took a doughnut and accepted a cup of coffee and nodded amiably at Bill while he asked her questions. He realized quickly that she wasn’t capable of answering him, and he placed a couple of more doughnuts in her hands, refilled her coffee, then moved on to a white-haired man lying nearby who muttered something angry and unintelligible before ignoring Bill completely. When Bill turned from him there was another man standing waiting.

  “I’ll take one of those,” the man said with a slim smile.

  “Here. Take the rest of the box,” Bill said.

  The man nodded, accepting it. He eyed Bill cautiously. “You asking about those vans that come around?”

  “That’s right. So they do come here?”

  “Yep, they certainly do,” the man said. He nibbled casually on one of the doughnuts and accepted a cup of coffee from Bill. “I’m not sure how often. But yep, they come around. White vans. Nothing printed on them if I remember right.”

  Bill took a picture of Trey Megeet from his inside jacket pocket and showed it to the man. The man gave it a careful study before shaking his head. “Sorry, wish I could help you, but I don’t know him.”

  “He would’ve been here a year and a half ago.”

  “Well, that explains it. I’ve only been here three weeks.” The man smiled at Bill with a mix of embarrassment and sadness. “Up until six months ago I was working construction. Hurt my back and couldn’t work the job no more, so here I am.”

  Bill nodded. The man needed him to understand that he wasn’t like the rest of the others there. He wasn’t mentally ill or an alcoholic or a drug addict, but someone who was going through a bad patch because he hurt his back and lost his job.

  “When the vans come around they pick people up, right?” Bill asked.

  “Yep, they do. They picked me up once. They paid me, too. Twenty dollars.”

  Bill took the gentle hint and handed the man a twenty dollar bill.

  “Where did they take you?”

  The man thought about it, shook his head. “A brick building but I don’t know where it is. There weren’t no windows in the back of the van, and I didn’t recognize where they took us. Just some parking lot. But it’s not too far from here. I don’t think the ride was more than ten minutes.”

  “What did they do with you?”

  The man shrugged. “Some test,” he said.

  “What kind of test?”

  “Medical, I guess. They had me take off my jacket and shirt, then cleaned my arm and gave me a shot with something. Then they asked me a bunch of questions. Outside that I don’t like needles, I don’t think it did much to me.”

  “What did they ask you?”

  The man’s eyes stared off into the distance while he thought about it. When he looked back at Bill, he smiled weakly and shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you,” he said. “Just a bunch of questions that didn’t make much sense. Sorry.”

  “Anything else about the place?”

  The man’s smile turned sickly. “You’ll think I’m crazy, but I’ll tell you if you want,” he offered.

  “I’ve been having that same problem of late. Go ahead.”

  “Just don’t laugh.”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  “They’ve got angels there.”

  “They treated you well then?” Bill said, holding back his disappointment. He wanted to believe there was nothing but sinister evil filling the halls of ViGen.

  “No, not like that. I mean actual angels,” the man said. “Honest-to-God angels. Halo, wings, the whole bit. And it was real, not any kind of costumes or nothin’.” He stopped and pulled on his lip as he considered what he was saying. “But they had a devil among them,” he added. “Flaming red skin, horns, pointy tail, hoofs, even a pitchfork. Yep, he was a devil alright.”

  Bill stared at the man with a strained grin as he waited for the joke, then realized there wasn’t any when the man turned from him and wandered away. He realized that the grin that he’d had frozen on his face while waiting for the punch line that never came was probably not that much different from the way Emily had looked at him when he had told her about how he’d been kidnapped, and that realization caused him to shiver. He headed back to his car to camp out and wait.

  It wasn’t yet one-thirty which meant he was going to be sitting there
for a while, but he was better prepared than he’d been the other night. This time around he wore a warm wool sweater under his leather jacket, and he also had waiting a bag of doughnuts and a separate thermos of coffee. While he munched on a chocolate glazed cruller, he thought about earlier that evening when he and Emily were sharing a shrimp scampi pizza for dinner that he had brought to her apartment. She had stopped in mid-bite, her head tilting slightly to one side, and asked him if they knew how that woman had gotten a gun.

  “What?”

  “That woman, the one who’s story you’ve been covering.” Thin lines grooved her forehead as she concentrated to remember Hawes’s name. “Gail… Gail Hawes,” she said, her eyes glistening. “She was an accountant, right? I’m just wondering how someone like her would get a gun. Because I would have no idea how to get one of those, so I’m wondering how she was able to find one.”

  “That’s a good question,” Bill admitted.

  The more he thought about it, the more preoccupied he became until he interrupted dinner to call Detective Chuck Boxer on his cell phone and leave a message that he had an interesting question that he was sure Boxer would want to hear. It didn’t take long before the detective called him back.

  “That was a bullshit article you wrote,” Boxer complained bitterly. “There’s not a goddamn thing linking Trey Megeet and Gail Hawes, and you damn well know it!”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “Fuck your maybes.” There was a pause, and with his voice still heated with anger, Boxer asked, “What’s your big question?”

  “How did Gail Hawes get her gun?”

  Boxer hesitated before telling Bill that he was right for once, it was a good question. “And we never got a good answer for it. She wasn’t licensed to own one and the story she first told the patrolmen bringing her in was complete bullshit. By the time we realized that her lawyer had shut us down.” There was another long pause before Boxer added in a low voice, “This isn’t for public consumption, at least not yet, and if you burn me with this you’ll never get another word out of me. We can’t trace the gun. It’s a Smith & Wesson, it’s got a serial number, there should be a history for it, but we can’t find fuck about it. I want something back in return, especially after that bullshit article of yours. You find anything?”

  “Maybe. I’m still digging, but I don’t think the shooting is what it looks like.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I can’t answer that now ’cause it’s all still fuzzy. I might be able to tell you soon. What story did Hawes first give you guys about how she got the gun?”

  “Ah jeeze,” Boxer said, his voice dripping in sarcasm, “it’s all too fuzzy right now for me to remember, but I might be able to tell you soon. Just don’t hold your breath.”

  Bill heard a click as the detective disconnected the call from his end.

  Chapter 37

  A van came that night.

  Bill was drifting off when a noise jerked him awake. Why it was mostly obscured by shadows, when Bill looked up there was enough moonlight where he could see a glint of it as it sat parked under the overpass. It was ten minutes to three. He slid down into his seat and video recorded two men as they brought a homeless man into the back of the van and then as they went back to retrieve another one.

  The two men were concealed in dark clothing, and at times disappeared into the night, but there was a full moon and Bill was able to capture glimpses of them as they moved like shadows. He recognized the homeless men that they half coaxed and half carried into the back of the van: the one who saw angels and devils and the very grimy one who had grabbed a fistful of doughnuts and took a great deal of pleasure in telling Bill to fuck himself. When the two men went back to grab a third person, Bill drove away with his lights off and waited until he was several blocks from the overpass before turning his lights back on.

  The streets were empty at that hour, and at times Bill found his speed breaking ninety miles per hour before he’d catch himself and slow down. A pulse beat rapidly along his left temple, his mouth dry, his hands gripping the wheel tightly enough where they ached, his right leg bouncing nervously up and down. He was barely aware of any of that. When he arrived at ViGen’s generic gray brick building he navigated down several side streets until he found the back of it. Sure enough there was a small back parking lot illuminated by floodlights. He spotted the security cameras aimed at the asphalt parking lot. A glass door opened to a small vestibule where there was a metal security door with an attached key-encoded lock.

  Bill found a side street where he could inconspicuously dump his car, then he circled back on foot. A neighboring parking lot had a dumpster where he’d be able to hide in its shadows and have full view of ViGen’s back entrance.

  The next ten minutes dragged by as Bill waited in a crouched position. His heartbeat slowed and his features turned granite hard. For a moment it was as if he was transported back fifteen years to when he was in the army, and was experiencing that same stillness he used to feel before a mission.

  When the van pulled into the parking lot, it swung around before backing up and coming to a stop so that its rear faced the glass vestibule door. If Bill had been camped out almost anywhere else he wouldn’t have been able to capture the homeless men being escorted from the van into the building, but where he was he got all of it. After they were taken inside, one of the men dressed in black came back out to drive the van away. Bill waited several minutes after that before emerging from where he was hiding, then made his way back to his car.

  It was quarter past four when he returned back to Emily’s apartment. He sat at the small ceramic table that Emily kept in her kitchen too wired to sleep. Instead he made a pot of coffee and played the video he recorded over the built-in LCD monitor. He had them. There was enough moonlight at the overpass where he was able to capture the homeless men being herded into the van, and the area by ViGen’s back entrance was lit brightly enough where all of them were easily identifiable.

  The coffee finished brewing and he poured himself a cup, adding both sugar and cream. The extra caffeine wasn’t going to do anything to him at this point. He drank a cup, poured himself another, and thought about what he was going to do next. His thoughts kept circling back to whether he should go straight to the Feds or break the story in the media. What made him antsy about going to the Feds was how these people had handled things so far; the way they bugged his car and kidnapped him and cleaned up the crash site. If he brought his recording to the Feds and these people had enough reach, he’d be walking straight into a viper’s nest with his recording disappearing without anyone ever knowing it existed.

  He made his decision. He would splash this story all over the Tribune, as well as making sure each of the local news stations had copies of the video recording. He’d wait until after the genie was out of the bottle before contacting the Feds. So now the problem was how to get inside the Tribune building in case that very pink-faced man and his colleagues had it under surveillance watching for him. After another cup of coffee he settled on a plan.

  Chapter 38

  At seven o’clock the next morning Bill was at work making pancakes and frying up sausage links. Once he had the food spooned out on a plate and the kitchen cleaned up, he loaded up a tray, adding to it a freshly brewed cup of coffee, and brought it to Emily. She woke up as he entered the room, and after stretching like a cat, smiled contentedly at him on seeing what he brought her.

  “Such service,” she said, her face pale but beautiful in the early morning light.

  He reached down to kiss her lightly on the lips. “I aim to please.”

  “How come no breakfast for yourself?” she asked.

  Bill shrugged. “I’m not hungry this morning.”

  He sat down on the side of the bed, and watched as she cut herself a small bite-size piece of pancake and sausage, sampled it and told him how good the food was. “If you want we can share this,” she said. Bill shook his head. “I’d rather just sit he
re and watch you eat.”

  She had half her breakfast eaten when she put down her fork, apprehension pulling at her mouth. Smiling in a way that tugged at his heart, Emily asked him if he had come to bed that night. Bill shook his head and told her that he was out until four o’clock tracking down a lead for his story and then later was too wired to sleep. “If I came to bed I would’ve just kept you up,” he added.

  “What were you doing from four o’clock until now?”

  He grinned sheepishly. “Sitting in your kitchen drinking coffee.”

  “A good thing to do when you’re already wired.”

  His grin turned more sheepish. “Yeah, I know.”

  She sighed and asked him if he found what he was looking for.

  “I did,” he said. “I won’t be spending any more nights staking out an overpass.”

  She looked puzzled at that, small lines crinkling her brow. “What was all this about?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it tonight,” he promised. “It will be easier that way. If I tried explaining it now you’ll think I’m a crazy man, and would probably start screaming at me to get out of your bedroom.”

  “I don’t think there’s much chance of that.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure.” Bill hesitated before getting off the bed and telling her that he needed to head out. When he reached the bedroom door she called out to him to be careful. He turned to see a look of deep concern pinching her features. He forced an easy smile and told her not to worry, that he had everything under control.

  On his way out he removed the DVD from the video recorder and slipped the disk into his jacket pocket. As he closed the door on Emily’s apartment his face hardened into a grim mask as he thought about the next few hours where he’d be pounding out the first draft of his story and then sneaking into the Tribune building. He would’ve written it at Emily’s but he needed Internet access, and she was still living in the stone ages that way.