Server Down

by J. M. Hayes

  One of his uniforms laughed, but up close, Dempsey had to admit the guy was big and muscular enough to be trouble. But not right now. That wasn’t really drool, though, it was blood leaking from the man’s nose. And the guy was making progress at trying to stand. Getting his legs under him, little by little.

  “How many times you stun him?”

  “Lost count,” the officer admitted.

  “More’n they recommend,” the other uniform suggested.

  No question about that, Dempsey thought. You had to hit a guy a lot of times to leave him this fucked up twenty or thirty minutes later. And with all that, the guy might be about to make it to his feet. Dempsey put a shoe on the man’s shoulder, pushed, and toppled him easily.

  “Let’s get this over with.” Dempsey’s plain-clothes detective didn’t like what they were doing. He’d gotten involved because his kid was turned into a paraplegic in a traffic accident that had been his own fault. Even the city’s generous insurance had proved insufficient long ago. The detective might be ashamed of himself, but he’d do whatever it took to care for his son.

  “This thing’s already too fucked up,” the detective said. “What were the chances that hit man would take down one of our enforcers at Pascua? Or that we’d spend the whole night chasing this hick around town? Let’s just get him out on the tracks and put one between his eyes.”

  Dempsey thought the Sewa officer who died at Pascua had been about to rat them out. That he’d been thinking about turning state’s evidence, along with the elections guy. Not that Dempsey knew for sure. So he avoided that part of the question. “No, we’re going to wait and include Parker and Matus. And we won’t do it too close to here. I don’t want word about our private ‘substation’ getting out.”

  “Fourth Avenue?” the detective suggested. “Where the hippies hang out?”

  The problem with the hippies was some of them might still be hanging out, or starting their day early.

  “No. The three of you, take him to the parking garage at Pennington and Scott. Third level, central staircase. I’ll get my car and wait for Parker and Matus. I’ll send them up. Be ready. Take them from behind with one gun. Turn another on this guy. Make it look good.”

  The detective nodded, all business. The uniformed officers high-fived each other, like they were about to take the field for the annual interdepartmental softball tournament.

  “Need a throw down?” Dempsey asked.

  “Got a spare .45,” the detective said. “Good one, so we’ll be sure of Parker and Matus.”

  “Then go. Set it up. I’ll be right behind you with this cop-killer’s last victims.”

  The uniforms took the bald guy by the shoulders and jerked him to his feet. He tried to walk, but he wasn’t ready for it yet.

  “You’ll clean up here?” the detective asked from the door.

  Dempsey hadn’t planned on it, but the man was right. There were a few other officers who knew about this place, but not this situation. Before long, all of them would have heard about Parker and Matus and Mad Dog. There shouldn’t be any fresh blood stains on the floor in here.

  “Yeah. I got it.”

  The detective disappeared down the hall in the wake of the uniforms and their prisoner. Dempsey went to the utility closet. He grabbed a mop, ran some water in a bucket, and mixed in cleaning solution. He did a half-assed job, but it wasn’t like no one had ever bled on this floor before.

  He put the cleaning stuff away and was about to leave the building when his cell rang. Were Parker and Matus already here? He snatched the phone off his belt and checked to see who was calling, then answered real quick. You didn’t keep Bobby Earl Macklin waiting.

  “Mr. Macklin. What can I do for you?”

  “Where are you? What’s going on?” Tucson’s biggest wheeler dealer’s voice sounded harsher than usual.

  “The office in the warehouse by the tracks. We’ve got that Mad Dog. We’re setting up another incident to establish him as a psycho.”

  “Right.” Macklin paused. “Where’s it going down?”

  Dempsey told him.

  “Wait for me.”

  It wasn’t like Macklin. Usually, he didn’t want to know any details when they had to get their hands dirty, let alone turn himself into a witness.

  “Hey, you sure you want this?”

  “Wait!”

  “Okay, sir. But this could get messy. We got targets coming for him. Gonna be hard to keep them occupied for long.”

  “Won’t be long. But, by damn, Dempsey, you better wait for me.”

  “Sure, sure, no problem,” Dempsey said, but by then, no one was on the other end to hear him.

  ***

  Only a game?” English said. He was tempted to slap the kid upside the head a few times—with a two-by-four, maybe.

  “Yeah. Another one, like War of Worldcraft, only better,” the Peirce kid said from where he sat in front of a monitor. Isaac Miller was by the door, attached to the roto-tiller.

  “Killing a cop is a game?”

  “Kill a cop, kill a dragon,” the Miller boy said, “what’s the difference? They just respawn if we want them back. Then they’re right back in the game.”

  The sheriff shook his head. Did these kids really believe that? Frank Ball had seemed to start with a similar opinion.

  “Listen to me,” English said. “A policeman died in Tucson tonight. Mad Dog is on the run down there, accused of the murder. And my daughter….”

  “Oh sure. We know. It’s because of our assassin.”

  “Your assassin?”

  “In our game, Sheriff. It’s a computer game we’ve been developing. It’ll be out there, competing with Syms and Halo and WOW one of these days. But while we’re refining it, it’s more fun to throw in characters we know from real life. That’s why we decided to put Mad Dog and Heather at risk tonight. We probably wouldn’t kill them off, even in a game, but it’s just their avatars that are at risk.” His shrug was obscenely casual. “Just a bunch of ones and zeros in the electronic ether.”

  “No,” the sheriff said. “I’m telling you, a real policeman died a real death. Not make believe. My daughter was actually attacked by some kind of maniac, and my brother truly is being chased by officers who think he’s a cop killer. Not in those computers of yours. Not avatars. Not electronic ether. Real people! In Tucson!! Right now!!!”

  “No way,” Isaac Miller said.

  “That can’t be,” Kevin Peirce echoed.

  “Yes. That cop is irreversibly dead. And don’t you know about the bomb at the courthouse?”

  “Well, sure,” Peirce said, though he didn’t sound as certain of himself anymore. “It’s more fun when we make some of the stuff happen in the real world, but that was just an M-80 and….”

  An M-80 was a super firecracker, though big and dangerous enough to be illegal in Kansas.

  “It wasn’t an M-80,” the sheriff said. “It was a Bouncing Betty, Vietnam War ordnance like that M79 grenade that blew my brother’s house off the face of the earth earlier this morning. Really destroyed it, just like thousands of others killed real people in real wars.”

  “You’re not serious,” Peirce said, though his eyes had begun to take on the fearful look of someone afraid the opposite was true.

  “And Ed Miller,” the sheriff continued, “is every bit as dead as that cop in Tucson, burned to a crisp when the thing bounced off the courthouse wall and exploded in his face. Doc Jones is opening his chest and skull, or what’s left of them—doing an autopsy, even as we speak.”

  “But Billy said…” Peirce muttered.

  “No,” Miller said. “That’s wrong. It can’t be because that’d mean….”

  “You’re responsible for two deaths,” the sheriff said.

  Kevin Peirce shook his head. “Way more’n two. We’ve been running assassins for a year.”

  “Oh Jesus,” Isaac Miller moaned. “Did we fix real elections? Did Uncle Ed truly die?”

  The sheriff nod
ded.

  “Wow!” Peirce said. “Does that mean I moved real millions into those offshore accounts?”

  ***

  Turn left,” Heather said, indicating the parking lot near the hospital’s emergency room entrance. “I’ve got a faster car here.”

  “Sure,” Ms. Jardine said. “But where are we going that we’ve got to hurry?”

  Heather wished she had a good answer. She’d almost gotten Parker the last time she tried. She dialed again as Ms. Jardine pulled the VW in an empty slot. Nothing. The battery symbol indicated no charge at all.

  “Shit,” she said, and stuffed the phone back in her fanny pack.

  “Look at Hailey,” Ms. Jardine said. “She’s not worried so you needn’t be.”

  Hailey didn’t seem upset. Impatient, maybe, but she sat on the back seat and waited without complaint.

  “Funny,” Heather said. “I really thought she might lead us to Mad Dog.”

  “Still could.”

  Heather got out of the bus and trotted to Matus’ 4Runner, three slots down. Hailey was right behind her, but as Heather fumbled with the key, Hailey passed her and kept going.

  “Hailey!” Heather called. The wolf didn’t look back or slow down.

  Ms. Jardine joined her, basketball shoes slapping the asphalt. “Like now, maybe,” she said.

  “Get in.” Heather yanked her door open and jumped behind the wheel.

  Ms. Jardine ran around the SUV and did as she was told. “You know what to do now?” she said, climbing into the passenger’s seat.

  Heather twisted the key and the engine roared. “Damn right I do. Follow that wolf.”

  ***

  Mad Dog was on the floor in the back of another police car. Not a marked one, this time. But big. A solid dark-blue sedan with four doors that screamed official-government-vehicle for all its lack of insignia.

  He didn’t know where they were going. Not far, if he’d understood what was happening back in that warehouse. Not that he was sure he had. His mind was as confused and unresponsive as the rest of his body. He thought they were going to a parking lot. For his execution. And someone else’s. Parker’s he thought. And…? He tried to concentrate. To remember. To decide how to get out of this.

  One of the uniformed officers was in the back with him. The man sat, keeping him pressed to the floor by planting big feet in the middle of Mad Dog’s back. Not that he would have been doing push ups back here, anyway. He ached. Every single muscle felt like it had just been through the most vicious workout of his life. Even his eyebrows hurt.

  At least he wasn’t confined by cuffs anymore. They’d taken those off before they hauled him into the office. But he wasn’t sure they hadn’t replaced them with plastic before putting him in the car. Streetlights went by, alternating moments of light and dark. He couldn’t see anything with his face pressed to the floor between the front and rear seats. He made sure about the cuffs by stretching his hands farther apart than he could have if a binding were there. Then he folded one leg up toward his butt while keeping the other against a back door. The cop kicked it down. Mad Dog’s muscles threatened to cramp, but it was their pain that confined him now, not steel or plastic ties.

  The car never got up much speed. And it turned a couple of times before its tires began squealing the way tires often did on concrete surfaces. Like parking garages, for instance. Like they might in the place where these bastards planned to kill him for reasons he didn’t begin to understand.

  The car stopped. Doors opened. Mad Dog tried to lift his head to see where they were, but he couldn’t. The only weapon he had left was surprise. He had to take them off guard. Slug somebody, push somebody, run like hell. If he could. He tried to get his legs under him as they pulled him out of the car and didn’t quite manage it. It was going to be hard to run if your body wouldn’t obey you any better than that.

  No real point in trying, though. Not yet. Not until the right moment. So, he didn’t try again. He let them drag him across the oil-stained concrete toward a stairwell near the center of the building.

  “Yeah,” one of the men said. The one in the suit, not one of the uniforms. Mad Dog realized the man had answered a cell phone. The buzzing he’d thought was just inside his head must have been the phone.

  “No shit?” the guy said. Then, “Okay. Whatever.”

  “What?” one of the uniforms asked.

  “We got to wait,” the suit told them. “The big man himself wants to come watch us do this one.”

  “Macklin?”

  Mad Dog thought the name sounded familiar. But it had nothing to do with Tucson.

  “What I said, wasn’t it?”

  “That’ll be a first.”

  More time, Mad Dog thought. More time to recover. He could use that because he couldn’t stop himself from impacting the concrete with his face when the uniforms dropped him, even though he tried. Mad Dog’s nose started bleeding again, and there was blood in his mouth where his teeth had bit into his lip.

  “How long?” one of the uniforms wondered.

  “Long as it takes. Man’s paying the bills.”

  Longer would be better, Mad Dog thought. Much longer. He rolled his head to one side so he could watch them out of slitted eyes. The uniforms went over and leaned against a concrete wall. The detective stood at the top of the stairs. He held a Colt .45 semi-automatic pistol in his right hand. It was aimed in Mad Dog’s direction.

  Long enough for that .45 to get really heavy, Mad Dog thought as he spit a little blood and maybe a piece of tooth onto the pavement.

  ***

  The moon sliced its way down the Kansas sky behind the sheriff as he approached the Macklin place. It was only a mile and a half southeast of Buffalo Springs and lay near the center of a rich quarter section, ready for a heavily irrigated crop of corn that would feed the ethanol plant. There were only two ways to get there other than cross-country. The long way, going around the section, or the short, direct route. The sheriff chose the latter. But he would have preferred making the trip with some deputies, the full use of his legs, and a better understanding of what he was getting into.

  Kevin Peirce and Isaac Miller hadn’t been much help. The Peirce kid never quite got it—never fully accepted the idea that what they were doing could be dangerous. And Isaac Miller…. The boy was too shaken by learning what had happened to his uncle. He didn’t know where his sister Dana was. He’d believed it was real by the time the sheriff left, but the shock knocked him for a loop. Isaac hadn’t been able to calm down and explain things to the sheriff. And the two claimed they hadn’t even been on the internet tonight until after the explosion at the courthouse.

  It was hard enough for English to grasp the possibility that local teenagers had fixed elections, arranged cover-ups, and run a top-of-the-line hit man to keep their activities from becoming known. Harder still, when, it seemed, the bulk of them hadn’t realized they were doing it—at least that it was real. If the sheriff had it straight, only Cole and Billy Macklin might have known. And Dana Miller, maybe. Even Cole might not have fully realized the implications of the things they were doing. Cole was the best hacker among them, but he may have been working on the instructions of his family and the investors behind the ethanol plant.

  Times had changed. In the sheriff’s memory, the occasional criminals who roamed central Kansas had been forced to do their killing up close and personal, not electronically and without ever encountering their victims or the pawns they used to do the job. Sheriffs who pursued those old-time villains hadn’t needed to care about things being played out half a country away.

  How would Wyatt Earp or one of his contemporaries have dealt with this? The sheriff shook his head. Same way as usual, he supposed. By buffaloing the opposition—slamming the bad guy over the head with a revolver, disarming him, tossing him in jail, and then leaving a judge to sort it out. Sheriff English hadn’t slammed any heads yet, but he’d left Peirce and Miller cuffed to a rototiller and a chair so it’d be dif
ficult for either to make a run for it, or get help without doing some serious explaining. The Ball kid was still out here somewhere, maybe trying to repair the things he’d done. And Dana Miller, Cole and Billy Macklin, and their father the county supervisor…? Well, that was what the sheriff was about to find out.

  The patrol car rumbled over a little bridge that crossed one of the many streams feeding nearby Bull Creek. He slowed, and pulled into the drive on the far side of the neatly trimmed evergreens that guarded the south side of the yard. The sheriff’s headlights swept across a lawn, thick and neat enough for any fairway even if it was still winter brown. A cluster of stately hardwoods that would soon begin budding out was also illuminated. So was the great porch that circled the sparkling-white Edwardian house at the center of the lot. The sheriff hit the brakes when he realized someone was sitting on that porch. He backed up and centered his headlights on that lonely figure.

  There were no lights on in the house. The sheriff thought that was peculiar, since Supervisor Macklin had been awake and over at the courthouse a couple of hours ago. Even if he hadn’t come back, the man would have left lights on. Instead, there was no sign of life at all…except for the person in the Adirondack chair, watching him from the porch.

  The sheriff popped his door and stood, bringing his shotgun and his walker out behind him. The figure on the porch didn’t move. It might have been a mannequin but for the light that reflected from its eyes.

  Small figure, short-haired, and wearing some kind of running shoes with stripes that reflected light. Cole, he thought.

  The sheriff closed his door and walked up to the edge of his front bumper. He paused there, behind the glare of the headlights, took a flashlight out of his pocket and examined the evergreens behind him, the row of rose bushes at the foot of the porch, and the thatch of some bare-for-the-winter lilacs and forsythia. Nothing.

  “That you, Cole?”

  Both hands came up and waved, ever so slightly from side to side—a motion that served to confuse more than answer. The boy didn’t say anything.

  “Raise your hands, son, and come on down off that porch.”