Town at the Edge of Darkness

by Brett Battles

  Rosario shrugged. “Perhaps.”

  Ananke rolled her eyes. “Fine. So we have a computer cord without a computer.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what type of machine it’s for?”

  “Not from this,” Rosario said, lifting the cord a few inches. “It is generic. But when we get back to the hotel, I can use the modem’s serial number to figure out what kind of machine accessed the internet from here.”

  Ananke looked around the room. Something else was bothering her. Patterson was in upper management of a tech firm that had relationships with companies around the country. There must’ve been deals going on all the time. Deals that needed the input of the company’s CFO. It seemed likely for Patterson to be called upon to travel now and then. But—

  “Have you seen any luggage?”

  Rosario cocked her head. “No, I have not.”

  “If she went somewhere, she would have taken it with her. Maybe she took her computer, too.”

  “A desktop computer? It seems unlikely.”

  “But possible.”

  “I suppose.”

  “You finish looking around in here. I’ll check the garage.”

  Ricky scanned the neighborhood through his binoculars. The streets were as quiet and uninteresting as they’d been the other fifty times he checked.

  Country towns, man. Early to bed and early to rise and all that crap. How can anyone live this way?

  He was a big-city boy. An action guy. Bradbury was small-town USA and light on the action.

  He lowered the glasses and shivered. His perch was on the second story of a house under construction, a couple of blocks from where Ananke and Rosario were. Being on a slight rise, it provided an excellent view of the area. What it did not provide was protection from the quickly descending nighttime temperature. He could not wait until this little foray was completed so he could go somewhere warm.

  A flash of light to his right drew his attention. A car had turned off the highway into the development. Someone coming home late from work probably. He raised the binoculars, and smiled.

  “Now we’re talking.”

  The vehicle was no late-night worker bee cruising home in her hybrid. It was a police sedan.

  It turned down the first cross street it came to, slow and steady. An officer on his beat.

  Nice to see Mr. Law doing his job.

  Ricky followed the sedan as it zigzagged through the neighborhood. When it neared Cloud Drive, he flicked on his comm.

  “Ricky for Ananke.”

  Rosario thumbed through the hanging files in one of the desk drawers. They were in alphabetical order—bank, gas company, sewage and water, etc. Old school. These days most people ditched hard copies for digital records in the cloud, if they kept copies at all.

  She glanced in each file to make sure the contents corresponded to the folder’s label. As she closed the drawer, she heard a very subtle thuck.

  Being a master thief, Rosario recognized the sound right away. She opened the drawer again and pulled it all the way out of the desk. She reached into the vacated space and felt along the underside of the drawer above. Taped against it at the very back was an envelope, with a corner hanging down no more than an inch where the tape holding it had come loose. This flap had caused the noise when she closed the lower drawer.

  She peeled the envelope free. It was about the length and width of a paperback book, and contained something maybe half an inch thick. She unclasped the flap and tilted the envelope, slid out a small Moleskine notebook.

  What do we have here?

  She pulled off the elastic band holding the cover in place and opened the notebook. The first seven pages contained dates followed by two columns. The first column held numbers ranging from one to seven, while the second contained twelve-character strings of letters and digits. The strings were repeated several times throughout the seven pages, but never in succession. Beyond these pages, the book was blank.

  Rosario slipped it into her pocket. If it was important enough to hide, it was important enough for a closer look.

  She picked up the drawer to slip it back in place as Ricky’s voice came over the comm.

  Though no vehicles currently occupied Patterson’s garage, it possessed enough space to house two large cars, and that was even taking into consideration the wall of shelves that ran down the far side. Clearly labeled plastic storage bins filled most of the shelf space, while the rest was taken up by items too big or odd in size to fit in a container. Notably among these loose items were several suitcases.

  Given Patterson’s pattern of keeping things in order, Ananke would have expected to see an empty spot among the bags if the woman had taken one on a trip. But the suitcases took up all their allotted spaces. Right next to them were two tubs, one labeled SMALL BAGS and the other MEDIUM BAGS. She found each was filled to the brim, with no room for anything else.

  Of course, none of this precluded Patterson from having used a suitcase or bag she’d kept in the house, but Ananke didn’t get that sense. Everything had its place, and there had been no obvious storage location inside for a travel bag. If Ananke was right, the logical conclusion was that Patterson had not intended to be gone for any length of time.

  She headed back toward the door into the house.

  “Ricky for Ananke.”

  “Go for Ananke.”

  “Hey, boss, just thought you’d like to know there’s a police car heading your way.”

  “I’m not in the mood for jokes, Ricky.”

  “No joke this time.”

  She paused. “How far?”

  “I’d say it’ll be turning onto your street in about fifteen seconds. So a block away, maybe.”

  Ananke raced back into the house. “What the hell, Ricky? What happened to a little heads-up?”

  “Isn’t that what I just gave you?”

  “Son of a—”

  “Relax,” Ricky said, chuckling. “I said he’s heading your way, not heading your way.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” she said, hurrying through the kitchen.

  “He’s patrolling the neighborhood, that’s all. Nothing to get all freaked out about.”

  She stopped in her tracks. “I swear to God, Ricky. One of these days, I’m going to drop you down a deep, dark well and walk away.”

  “I will help,” Rosario said as she stepped off the stairs onto the first floor.

  “Got you running, didn’t—”

  Silence.

  “Ricky?” Ananke said.

  Another beat passed before he said, “We may have a problem.”

  “Define problem.”

  “The cop stopped in front of your house.”

  Both Ananke’s and Rosario’s gazes shot toward the front, but from where they were, the home’s layout provided no direct line of sight to the street. Crouching, they hurried through the dining area into the sunken living room, and hunkered down by the sheer curtains covering the front windows.

  The squad car was parked at the curb, headlights on.

  “Are you sure we didn’t trip an alarm?” Ananke asked Rosario.

  “I am positive.”

  Ananke stared at the car. If the police had known Patterson was missing, they’d understandably send someone by her house every now and then, but unless the Administrator had been misinformed, the police had no idea there was a problem. So why the hell was one of their cars here?

  The sedan’s lights went out and the driver’s door opened.

  Oh, crap.

  “Um, I think the cop’s getting out,” Ricky said.

  “Yeah, we can see that.”

  Ananke figured if she and Rosario left at that very moment, they had about a fifty-fifty chance to make it over the rear fence without the officer seeing them. But that would mean not relocking the deadbolt or resetting the alarm, which would be even clearer signs than a tripped monofilament that someone had broken in. The safer play was to stay hidden inside.

  The o
fficer rounded the front of his car and started walking toward the house. At least he appeared to be alone. Ananke assumed he would turn down the stone path to the front door, but instead, he headed toward the garage and disappeared from sight.

  “Go watch the rear,” she said to Rosario.

  With a nod, Rosario returned to the back of the house.

  “Ricky, do you still have him?” Ananke asked.

  “Yeah. He’s looking at the garage door. Wait, he just crouched down at the west side.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “I can’t tell. His back is to me.” A pause. “Okay, he’s standing again…heading toward the front.”

  A light beam streaked across the stone walkway.

  Ananke lowered herself as far as she could while still being able to see through the window. The officer came into view a moment later, his light turning him into more of a silhouette than before. When he reached the short set of stairs leading up to the small front porch, he squatted and played his beam along the first step.

  The light bounced off the gray stone and illuminated the cop’s face, causing Ananke to groan.

  Not a male cop. Officer Harris.

  After a few seconds, Harris stood and leaped over the steps onto the porch. Ananke quickly crawled away from the window and moved behind the couch, tucking herself up against it. She half expected to hear a key slip into the lock and the door open, but neither occurred. She heard nothing at all until Ricky said, “Anyone near the front window, hide now!”

  Three seconds later a light shined inside and swept through the living room. Ananke pressed against the sofa, and watched the beam cut back and forth several times before disappearing.

  “Status,” she whispered.

  “He’s off the porch,” Ricky reported.

  “Not a he, Ricky.”

  “What? Really? Well, she’s heading around the right side of the house. Hold on…she’s opening the backyard gate. I’m going to lose her in a second.”

  Ananke hurried to the rear of the house and joined Rosario. From their hidden spot, they could see the deck and the grass area near the back fence.

  The flashlight beam shot through the yard a moment before Harris walked into view. The cop played her light over the grass and approached the deck. When she reached the steps, she did the same thing she’d done out front—crouched and studied them.

  Son of a bitch.

  The monofilaments. Harris was checking them. Ananke was willing to bet another set had been strung across the front porch steps, and probably a third attached to the garage door.

  Either Harris had put them there, or she worked with whoever had.

  Not the police department, though. Stringing monofilaments was not standard policy for even the most advanced forces, so there was no way little old Bradbury’s department would employ such methods. Besides, if they thought Patterson was missing, they’d be a lot more overt in their efforts to find her. A rogue officer involved in the woman’s disappearance made much better sense. If Ananke had been that person, she would have wanted to know if anyone was snooping around her victim’s house. Of course, Ananke would have used much more sophisticated methods, such as cameras and hidden microphones.

  Officer Harris, you have moved to the very top of my persons of interest list.

  When the officer stood back up, she shined her flashlight across the deck. Apparently satisfied, she went back the way she’d come and disappeared.

  As soon as Ricky announced she had driven off, Ananke and Rosario left.

  After they arrived back at the hotel, Rosario showed Ananke the notebook she’d found.

  Ananke looked over the chart on the first several pages. “Maybe the right column is a personal code for a particular event or action, and the left one is…how many times that action occurred?”

  “That is as good a guess as any. If you give me a little time, I can try to figure it out.”

  Ananke handed the book back with a nod. “Patterson’s computer first. That’s priority. Then the book. Better yet, shoot some pictures of it and send it off to Shinji. I’m sure he’s dying for something to do.”

  While Rosario set to work, Ananke grabbed her own computer to write up a list of what they knew so far, and see if that would spur some other ideas. As the machine was booting up, Ricky called.

  “I’m back,” he said. “What’s next?”

  “Nothing else tonight. Get some rest.”

  “It’s barely eleven p.m. There must be something.”

  “Go to sleep, Ricky.”

  “Why would I—”

  She hung up.

  “Just so you know, I checked the kit and there is more than enough sedative to keep him unconscious for the whole job,” Rosario said.

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  Though Ricky had been granted his release from Crestridge Federal Prison when he agreed to join the Administrator’s team, he wasn’t exactly free. Granted, detention on the Karas Evonus was considerably better than his days at Crestridge. On the ship, there was a video arcade, satellite TV, a private deck for lounging around, and a kitchen that served food a million times better than the crap the feds gave him.

  But he was still in confinement. He couldn’t even try to sneak off the boat. His new employers had injected him with subdermal tracking bugs that allowed them to always know exactly where he was. Anytime he came within a couple dozen feet of the gangplank, one of the ship’s security personnel would appear to remind him it would be healthier to find somewhere else to loiter. Now that he was off the ship on another mission, there was no way he would go to sleep yet.

  He was sure Ananke would be fine with him going out for a bit, but to be safe, he walked the motorcycle a block from the hotel before firing up its distinctive motor.

  With the chilly wind rushing past him, he drove to a place he’d seen called the Blue River Bar, not far from the Brazen Diner. Though the sign had been turned off, he didn’t give it much thought, until he walked up to the door and found it locked.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  Did the state of Washington have some sort of draconian law about alcohol-serving time? That didn’t seem possible. Not in the twenty-first century. He figured the bar hadn’t been busy enough to stay open tonight. What else could it be?

  Their loss.

  Bradbury might be small, but it wasn’t that small. Surely someplace else would still be open. And, come on, was Ricky supposed to believe that a town with a sizable community of tech nerds didn’t have, at the very least, a fancy cocktail place that served into the wee hours?

  He googled bars near me, then gawked at the results. Within twenty-five miles of where he was, there were only five entries.

  At the top of the list was Blue River. Weekday hours 11:00 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.

  What a waste of real estate.

  Another place, Max’s, was also closed. It was more a bar and grill, off the highway just south of town. Of the three bars supposedly still open, only two were within city limits—the Bradbury Brewery and the Cache Bar.

  Ricky could imagine the décor of the latter—motherboards and floppy disks hanging from the ceiling, and portraits of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs on the walls. Definitely a location of last resort.

  The Bradbury Brewery it was.

  He found the place on the east side, in an old converted barn. A handful of cars sat in the lot and the lights still blazed inside. Feeling a sense of sweet relief, Ricky parked his bike as close to the entrance as he could and sauntered inside.

  Three rows of picnic tables filled half the space. The other half was cut off by a serving bar running across the room, behind which lived the metal tanks and other accoutrements of the brewing business. It was a surprisingly large operation, making Ricky think they were likely selling beer up and down the river. Probably even had visions of breaking out nationwide.

  Three hipster types manned the bar—a guy with a substantial beard and shaved head, and two girls sporting tattoo-sleeved arm
s. Spread out among the tables were several groups, most made up of twenty- and thirtysomethings. Scattered among them were gatherings of slightly older folks sharing a beer and a laugh.

  “Evening,” the female bartender with the darker hair said as Ricky approached. “What can I get you?”

  “Evening to you, too,” he said, flashing his Ricky grin. “Let me see.”

  He examined the beer list hanging behind her. Stouts, lagers, a double IPA, a hefeweizen, even a Belgian farmhouse. As impressive as the list was, its abundance of styles made him pause. Brewing was an art, each variety taking time to perfect. He questioned if this place had been in business long enough to create acceptable versions of all they were selling.

  “Can I get a taster of the hef?”

  “Of course.”

  She bopped over to the taps, poured a little of the wheat beer into a small glass, and escorted it back.

  “Not bad,” he said after a sip. It was not the best ever, but better than he’d expected. “I’ll take a pint.”

  She poured him a glass and he paid with a ten, telling her to keep the change. That earned him a playful look that, were he not on a job, he’d have been tempted to investigate later.

  Being about as far from an introvert as one could possibly get, Ricky took a seat between a group of youngsters and a couple of guys probably in their early forties, in hopes of working his way into one of the conversations.

  The two guys were the first to look over when he plopped down. He raised his glass, but they didn’t take the cue and returned to whatever it was they were talking about.

  To hell with you, too, Ricky thought as he took a drink.

  He turned his attention to the others, but they didn’t seem to notice him at all.

  Fine. Whatever. At least I’m out enjoying a beer and—

  “I don’t care,” one of the older guys who’d blown off Ricky said, his voice suddenly loud.

  “Relax,” his friend whispered harshly.

  Ricky listened in.

  “I can’t do this again,” the first guy said.

  “We have an obligation.”

  “You do it, then. I’m done.”

  “You can’t just back out. You know they’re not going to like that.”