Hard Wired

by C. Ryan Bymaster

  He walked over to the women, exchanged nods, and looked down at what the morning had to offer.

  Pearline lay face down on the filthy, pitted asphalt, in a pool of her own bloody vomit. Her legs were bent tight, expressing pain. Her left arm was beneath her, possibly clutching her stomach, her right arm splayed out to the side. If he had to guess, she died on her knees, her right arm that had been supporting her giving out, dropping her chest and face into the pool of gastric regurgitation.

  And to her right, its contents spilled across the asphalt, a small cardboard box, brown grainy pellets looking much like the feces of the animals they were designed to poison.

  “Swallowed half the box,” Chin said after a stint of respectable silence.

  He looked up, opened his mouth, closed it. Nothing to add on his part. Bad enough he was staring at one of his daughter’s childhood friends.

  Chin put her EB down at her side, made a show of gazing around Pearline’s death scene. “No evidence of anybody else here at the time of …,” she trailed off, unsure what to call the circumstances.

  Bobseyn had no doubts. “Forced suicide, Chin,” he stated. “This was not a simple suicide.” Though how a suicide could ever be considered simple was not something Bobseyn wanted to think about.

  Chin kept her tongue, letting her superior talk things through.

  “She has a baby girl,” he said. “No mother would willingly leave a daughter behind like this. Only if she were coerced.”

  “Forced suicide,” Chin agreed. He could tell she was following his logical train of thought.

  “No witnesses?” he asked, though it was more of a statement than anything.

  “No witnesses.”

  “You two stay here, finish up the reports. Have Ramirez on crowd control. I don’t want this becoming more than what it is.”

  “Got it.”

  He turned from the body and made his way back to the entrance of the alley.

  “Where you going to be?” Chin called out to him.

  “Have to have a heart-to-heart with a certain Agent.”

  “From what I hear,” Chin remarked, “it’s going to be more of a heart-to-ass.”

  “Yeah,” Sheriff Bobseyn sighed. “Dent’s a dick. But I think that’s why he’s here, Chin.”

  He left Pearline behind, though her memory stuck with him. He must have kicked up some of the particles of death, because he knew he would need a shower or two just to rid himself of the stench.

  XXII

  Dent swallowed, went to put his coffee mug down, and the girl reached over for it. He handed it off.

  “You want me to check out the scene?” he asked Bobseyn.

  The sheriff shook his head, checked his wristwatch. “It’s nearly five-thirty now. Even with processing, Chin would have had the scene cleaned by late afternoon. Wouldn’t be good for business having a body lying out ’round back of the kitchens.”

  Dent shrugged. He didn’t see how a dead body would keep people from eating, but wisely kept his thoughts to himself.

  Fifth put the coffee mug down, in front of her, and ran a finger along the rim. “Why her?”

  Putting a blue folder down, Bobseyn looked over to the girl and said, “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  The sheriff was uncomfortable with Fifth being there, he had said as much when he pulled Dent aside when he came home from the murder scene. Dent told the man that the girl had insights that he himself did not and assured the sheriff that she would be more help than hindrance. The sheriff had replied that he wasn’t concerned about the girl being a hindrance, but Dent had lost the deeper meaning behind the concerned man’s words.

  “Did she ever come in contact with the devotees of The Ranch?” Dent asked.

  Bobseyn shook his head. “No more than any other waitress in town. With her baby, Pearline didn’t have much time to go sightseeing.”

  “How does sightseeing fit into her murder?”

  Fifth let out a heavy breath. “That’s not what he meant, Dent.”

  Dent looked between the two, then continued, “So if she had no connection to The Ranch, why would she be targeted?”

  “Money?” Fifth suggested.

  Bobseyn picked up the blue file he had been perusing earlier. “Nothing funny in her finances.”

  “Loneliness?” Dent suggested.

  Both girl and sheriff stared at him.

  “What?” he said.

  “She had a baby girl, Dent,” Fifth told him, though it was highly unnecessary. He knew that. His blank stare triggered her to let out another breath. “She wouldn’t be lonely if she had a baby.”

  “Yep,” Bobseyn agreed, putting in, “If anything, she may have secretly hoped for some time alone. Kids take a lot out of you.”

  Dent looked at Fifth. That sentiment, he could understand, and he said as much.

  “Hey!” the girl snapped at him for some odd reason.

  Bobseyn put his hands in the air between them, calming the girl down, and brought the conversation back around. “There was something about Pearline … She knew my … She knew the other victims, but nothing that raised any flags. She had a baby, yet took her life. From what I can tell, she made good money at the restaurant. No reason for depression, no reason to go and do what she did.”

  Dent and Fifth nodded.

  “So,” the sheriff said with a definitive tone, “I think it’s high time you told me why you were sent here to investigate, Dent.” He looked to the girl, including her in his demand. “You aren’t exactly the investigative type, you know nothing about procedures, profiling, crime scene work-up. From what I’ve seen you don’t even know how to extrapolate findings from any of these folders or case files.”

  He laid his hands flat atop the most recent blue file — Pearline’s file — and squared his shoulders. “Why are the Feds interested in Graftsprings, and why did they send you in particular?”

  Outside, a bird trilled, announcing the onset of evening.

  “We’re not interested in Graftsprings,” Dent told him.

  Bobseyn drummed his fingers atop the file, perhaps waiting for Dent to elaborate. The trilling outside ceased.

  Nothing to do but talk, Dent tried explaining in as simple of terms as possible. “We think that The Ranch is employing illegal means of emotion tampering and we’re here to find and eliminate those means.” He was speaking of himself and the girl and the mysterious Otto, but if the sheriff mistook him to mean the Feds, that was his problem.

  “You mean eTech?” Bobseyn said. “Why are the Feds worrying about illegal technology here? We aren’t exactly high-tech around these parts. People don’t need to be manipulated to go about their regular lives out here. There would be no gain from such technology.”

  “That’s what we are trying to determine,” Dent admitted. “We don’t know why we’ve been sent here, only that it has something to do with eTech.”

  Bobseyn looked at the files. “How can you be sure it’s eTech?”

  Before Dent could come up with an answer that didn’t involve an unknown hacker, Fifth answered for him.

  “You don’t think it’s funny that people are being murdered for no apparent reason in your town?” she asked. “That the murders didn’t start happening until that place started drawing people in?”

  “That’s a far reach, young miss. Putting the two together doesn’t make it a fact.”

  “Does a mother killing herself with rat poison for no reason sound like a normal thing to you, Sheriff?” Fifth asked.

  “Never said anything about this was normal. Death itself isn’t normal,” the sheriff stated, “no matter how it occurs.”

  Fifth was on a roll here, and Dent let her do her thing.

  She continued to press the sheriff, “You think people try killing themselves for no reason? You think that all of a sudden people in your town just deciding to either join up with the weirdoes at The Ranch or kill themselves is a normal thing?”

  Dent noticed the she
riff rub the inside of his left wrist, almost as if he didn’t realize he was doing it. And when he spoke up, his voice was heavy, cold.

  “Don’t think you know the first thing about people taking their own lives. It doesn’t take some machine messing with a man’s mind to drive some people to despair.”

  “I’m not saying it’s some machine, Sheriff, but come on, something is going on here. Pearline was a nice lady,” Fifth told him, “and there was nothing about her that screamed suicide. I don’t need to be a cop to tell you that.”

  Something the girl said made the sheriff stop rubbing his wrist and lean in toward her. “Wait. What do you mean she was a nice lady?”

  Fifth looked to Dent, maybe for help, maybe for something else, he didn’t know. She didn’t answer Bobseyn so the man turned on Dent.

  “You met the victim?” he asked of Dent.

  “Yes. She served us lunch yesterday.”

  “You didn’t think it was relevant to tell me that?” Bobseyn snapped.

  “That we had lunch? No.”

  “Dammit, Dent!” he turned to Fifth. “The waitress who’d served you lunch is found dead the next morning. Tell me you think that is relevant.”

  The girl seemed to shrink in on herself under the man’s gaze. Dent didn’t like it and leaned in toward the sheriff, ready to break his jaw. Fifth must have sensed what was going through Dent’s mind and she waved her hands before her, signaling Dent to back down. It was only then that the sheriff realized how close he was to being beaten to a bloody pulp.

  “Hold on, hold on, hold on!” Bobseyn said aloud. He leaned back, possibly to make himself less threatening to the girl, and rubbed his face with both hands. He finished his facial scrubbing and put his hands gently down on the table. “Let me try again. I’m sorry, young miss. All this has got me on edge. Trust me when I say that’s not something that happens to me often.”

  Fifth spread her lips to shoot something at the man, but, to Dent’s surprise, the girl simply shut her mouth then nodded and patted the sheriff’s hand. “I’m sorry, too. Maybe I shouldn’t have snapped at you like I did.”

  Putting a hand atop hers, Bobseyn agreed with her. “We both got a bit emotional back there, didn’t we? Let’s put it behind us, keep moving forward, but with level heads. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  Both brought their hands back, Fifth’s went to her lips as she thought, Bobseyn’s to the blue file before him. Both stared at Dent.

  “What?” he asked them both after a moment.

  “Level head,” Fifth said. “That’s your thing.”

  “Oh.” He ran through the scenarios in his head. Now that the sheriff knew about the possible eTech, Dent didn’t hold back on his assessment. “People have been leaving their lives here to join the devotees at The Ranch — which we know from the financial records is part of HelpTouch, a leading eTech manufacturer — and in doing so, have given over their possessions to the estate. And if we conclude that The Ranch is employing eTech, it stands to reason that the recent murders are eTech related.”

  “But how can we link the two together?” Bobseyn asked. “You say they’re using eTech, but there’s no way to prove that what goes on up there has anything to do with Graftsprings. Even the murders, though I can see how eTech might be involved with them, have no connection to The Ranch.”

  “Too many things point to The Ranch,” Fifth said in what Dent took as a hopeful voice.

  “But we need something binding between the murders and the devotees,” Bobseyn told her.

  “Pearline didn’t like the place.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Fifth looked over at Dent before answering. “She told us. I kind of asked her about it and she said she wasn’t too fond of the place.”

  “Is that why you went up there?” Bobseyn asked Dent.

  He nodded.

  Slamming his hand down on the table and exclaiming, “That’s it, then!” Bobseyn quickly stood. “Pearline told you about the place, you go on up there, and she winds up dead. That’s the link!”

  Dent let it roll around in his mind, and he came to determine that with high probability the waitress may have been murdered for talking to him and the girl. Someone was protecting their secrecy.

  But Fifth started to shake her head, eyes beginning to water.

  Bobseyn retook his seat, scooted it in closer to Fifth. “What’s wrong, young miss? This is good, it’s a lead.”

  The girl sniffed loudly, wetly. “No,” she said, looking up to the sheriff. “You don’t understand. I killed her!”

  “What? No, you didn’t.”

  “Yes, I did! I’m the one that asked her about The Ranch. I made her answer and because she talked she was killed. It’s all my fault.”

  “Young miss, it is most definitely not your fault. Pearline talked to you because that’s what she did.” He reached over and gently put a hand on her shoulder. “You can’t force someone to talk to you if they don’t want to.”

  But Fifth could, Dent thought. The girl was right. By manipulating the waitress to talk about The Ranch, she had put a target on Pearline’s back. But that was beside the point. What’s done is done. There was a more pressing issue right now, one that Bobseyn was obviously unaware of.

  “The bank manager,” Dent said.

  Bobseyn gave Dent a blank stare.

  Standing up, Dent reminded the man, “We talked to the bank manager and he gave us information pointing to The Ranch.”

  “And?”

  “If the waitress was murdered for talking to us—”

  “Then Fred is in danger!” Bobseyn blurted out, his chair scraping on the wood floor, the man finally catching on.

  XXIII

  Dent and Sheriff Bobseyn had rushed off to the bank manager’s house, leaving Kasumi alone in the sheriff’s house. She had begged to go, but Dent had been as stubborn as ever, telling her that she would be safer at the house. She’d figured Dent was just trying to act the part of protective guardian until the sheriff spoke up and agreed with Dent. After that, no amount of pouting or pleading got her anywhere. Even her attempt to force the sheriff’s emotions proved fruitless for some odd reason.

  And so, with nothing exciting to do, Kasumi rummaged through Sheriff Bobseyn’s fridge, looking for something sweet and sugary. She was hoping for a cola, instead found a two-liter of some knock-off brand of lemon-lime soda. After filling up a cup and eating the last piece of pizza, she decided to see if the sheriff had anything cool lying around his place to keep her occupied until they got back.

  First stop, the living room. She couldn’t find the television’s remote controller and was forced to turn the big screen on manually. Some sports station came on and she groaned. Now finding the remote was even more important. Nothing was on the wooden coffee table, and only a few magazines about fishing and RVs were on the small table near the side of the couch. Moving and tossing aside pillows resulted in nothing. Frustrated, she walked back to the television, looked for the channel button, and cursed when she couldn’t find it.

  Now the screen flashed to some football game recap and she’d had enough. Leaving the television on — she’d turn it off when she found the stupid remote — she headed to the hallway that went beneath the stairs.

  She walked past the piano, stopped, and took three quick steps back. Now that the sheriff wasn’t here, she could really give playing the thing a try. Putting her cup down on top of the polished wood, she scooted onto the bench.

  A couple minutes later her ears were ringing and she was entirely sure that she had zero musical talent. That done, she grabbed her cup, wiped the water-ring it had left on the wood, and headed into the hallway.

  Three doors, all closed.

  She took a sip of her soda, playing eenie-meenie-minie-moe, and the door to her right won. She opened the door, found it full of furniture and rolls of carpet, and quickly closed the door.

  Okay, door number two, then, at the end of the hall. Opening it, she
found what looked to be Sheriff Bobseyn’s study. It was done in the same wood-cabin décor of the rest of the house, but had metal shelves all along one wall, a locked metal cabinet taller than she was on another, and a desk and computer in front of the windows on the far end. And stacked next to the doorway were dozens of large cardboard boxes.

  The light coming in from the setting sun barely made it into the room, so she flipped the light switch and tossed the lid of the closest box to the door to see what the sheriff had tucked away. Stacks of folders, mostly manila-colored, were rubber-banded together, and it took only a minute to see that they were all cases the sheriff had handled over the years.

  Hoping to find something juicy, she rummaged through them, snapping rubber-bands when necessary. When the most interesting folder was of a gas-station robbery that ended with Sheriff Bobseyn talking the robber into giving up, she herself gave up.

  She kicked the box in frustration, wondering why the sheriff even had all these files. Didn’t the man have any clue about saving things on the computer? It would clear up a lot of space.

  But then again, the man lived by himself so he probably didn’t care much about having more space.

  As she went about the room, pulling open drawers, finding the tall cabinet locked, and the computer password protected, Kasumi thought of where Sheriff Bobseyn’s daughter was. She hadn’t seen any clues besides the one picture that his daughter, Cherry, even existed, or that she once lived in this house. She opened a drawer on the desk, found a bunch of random keys labeled either “gun safe”, “back door”, or “ATV”, and closed it again.

  This was boring. She thought of Cherry again and grinned. Having a definite goal in mind now, she turned off the light, closed the door behind her and decided she would check all the rooms in the house, to find out if Cherry had a room here.

  She was about to open door number three when a flash of headlights speared into the hallway. She cursed.

  How long had they been gone? It’s been what, less than an hour? Half hour at most. The last thing she wanted was for Dent and Sheriff Bobseyn to find her snooping around. She took off, spilling her soda on the narrow rug, through the hallway, past the piano, and into the living room. She slammed her cup down on the side table and hopped onto the couch.