The Broken Ones (Book 3): The Broken City

by Jobe, David

  The boy had been in the process of ripping out his headphones, something that looked like rage on his face, when the truck swooped past, leaving great furrows in the grass and tire marks on the spot where the kid had been standing. His face twisted from rage to donning realization. “You? You saved me?”

  Chris got up, dusting himself off. “Please don’t sue me.” He blinked as the words came out of his mouth.

  The boy sat up, looked at him for a long moment and began to laugh. “You got a lot of money, do ya?”

  Chris shook his head. “All I’ve got is the shirt on my…” He looked down at his shirtless chest. “Well, shit.” He gave the kid a smile.

  The kid began to laugh, but they both stopped as the truck’s driver side door screeched open.

  Out stumbled a bloodied man, looking to be in about his forties. A steady stream of blood poured from the man’s right temple. “What kind of shit you pullin’?” He stumbled forward, slurring his words. “Look what you made me do!” He gestured at his ruined truck and the ruined SUV it was now mating with. “You’re gonna-”

  Chris punched him in the mouth, then the gut. He finished with an upward knee that put the man on his back and silenced him. Panting at the sudden burst of effort, he put his hands on his knees and looked at the kid. “I hate drunk drivers. You got a cell phone?”

  The kid pulled out a cell phone that had been the source of the music he was listening to. He pressed the screen a few times to make sure it still worked and then nodded.

  “Call the police. Let them know you were almost hit by this jackwad.” He stepped over and offered the kid his hand to help him up. “Do me a solid though. Don’t mention me.”

  The kid blinked at him. “But you’re a hero?”

  Chris shook his head. “Naw. I just did the right thing.” He looked down at the bleeding man. “Well, mostly.”

  “How can I repay you?”

  Chris looked at the kid. “Pay it forward, I guess. Be a hero yourself. Odds are, you won’t see me again.” He made to move off, but the kid stopped him by a hand on his arm.

  “At least take this. It’s my good luck charm.” He held out a small stone knight about two inches tall.

  “I don’t think I should.”

  “Please. I’ll follow you like a puppy if you don’t.”

  Chris laughed and nodded. He took the stone figure and put it in his pocket. “Just give me about two minutes before you call the police.” He began to move away and then paused. “And don’t walk around with your headphones in. Be aware of your surroundings.”

  The kid nodded and laughed. He raised his phone to mime that he was dialing and motioned for Chris to get moving.

  Chris nodded and started to move off. He kicked the downed drunken man as he passed him again, but saddened when the man made no noise to indicate he had felt the pain. Hopefully, the police would make him hurt some more. With that, he bounded for the Taco Bell, whose bright sign shone like a beacon of hope in a truly messed up evening.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Show Must Go On

  Dr. Rebecca Landers sat behind the wheel of a beat-up old Ford Fiesta. A definite step down from her pristine BMW, this car suffered from an inside as in disrepair as the outside. It shook in idle as it sat in the prison’s employee parking lot. Normally, Rebecca would not have been found dead in a car like this, or rather possibly only found dead in a car like this, but special circumstances deserved special allowances. She flipped down the hideous yellow visor and gazed at herself through the spotted mirror. Dull grey eyes peered at her where her eyes had once sparkled with the brilliance of the mind behind them. Crow’s feet danced around the corners of her eyes, and new lines had formed on her checks. A fake prosthetic had been added to her chin to turn her once thin and regal face into one that boasted a heavy jowl. A skin color skull cap hid her pretty hair as a modified wig started further back on her head. All in all, she looked at least twenty years older, if those twenty years had been spent abandoning the academic excellence she prided herself on, and going full force into the extravagant and indulgent lifestyle of a loose and morally devoid harlot. “Looking good, Miss Honeypot.”

  She frowned. “Oh, but we will have to work on your speech, Miss Honeypot. It’ll only take one half interested guard to call you out on your voice alone.” She scooped up the file folder that sat on the ripped passenger seat. Next to it, she picked up a small digital recorder that she always kept on herself. She had found that the long drive to and from work was better spent listening to her own reciting of prominent cases, or the occasional case study that was relevant to her work. Clicking record on the device, she set it on the dash in front of her. She opened the file and then began to read aloud. “Subject is a one Oliver Castillo. Age 23. Hispanic. Charged with felony murder. No prior arrests, but a few speeding tickets. Where were you going in such a hurry all the time, Oliver?”

  She pulled out the crime scene photos, finding the ones that depicted the victim in this case. “Heather Burdimeyer, 19, Caucasian. Studying at Ball State for Psychology. For shame, Oliver, you took one of our own.” She examined the photos, memorizing the gory details. How they had discovered the poor woman in an alleyway. The manner of her clothes, or rather the absence of some of them. She read the coroner’s report, looking for specifics that she would use later in Oliver’s therapy session. “Single gunshot wound to the back of the head. Execution style. Forensics indicate the victim may have known the assailant.” She turned back to the part which detailed Oliver. “No known connection with the victim. Last seen at same location, a bar on the Southside, the Broken Buckle. Witnesses state they saw Oliver leaving the club in a hurry shortly before the girl went missing. Is this why you were in a hurry, Oliver? Places to be? Women to assault? It says here that you worked as a handyman and installer for a home repair shop. Are you in this country legally, Oliver?” She closed the file and clicked off the recorder. She took both and slid them under the seat on the passenger side. She wouldn’t need them anymore tonight. Besides, one of the things she had been good at when she had been doing the graphics effects for motion pictures was remembering the gory details of a scene.

  She slipped out of the Fiesta, making a show of it being difficult in case anyone was watching. Standing up, she did not go to her full height. Instead, she rose to a low stoop that denoted a spine curved from age. Smoothing out her denim dress, she took a look around the quiet parking lot. The moon peaked over the structure of the prison in all its glory, night having taken the town in a flurry, mere hours before. She noticed that very few cars remained. This was most likely due to the insane rules suggested by the African-American police officer. The same one who thought he was so much cleverer than she, even though she possessed a hard-won doctorate and at best he had an Associates in Criminal Justice. “Might as well be a degree in daytime drama shows.” She chuckled to herself but remembered mid-chuckle to make the sound deeper, more throaty. Miss Honeypot, as her name would suggest, had spent far too much of her time damaging her throat with smoking and other oral vices. She shook her head at the errant path Miss Honeypot had set herself on before waddling toward the employee entrance.

  Once inside she found the main greeting hall all but deserted. One lone guard sat behind bulletproof glass playing on his phone. Officer Durmount looked up from his game and gave her a startled expression. “Can I help you?” he asked, his tone implying he wanted to do no such thing.

  She hobbled over, fumbling with the badge they had issued her on the day she had sat through countless hours of videos telling her what she could and could not do once inside the prison. “Honeypot here to start work. Cleaning lady. She pressed her badge against the glass, swaying slightly as she did.

  Officer Durmount nodded, pressing a button underneath the counter. “Go see Officer Moss at the end of the hall. He’ll give you your jobs for this evening. He’s in charge of the whole janitorial staff.”

  She nodded and turned to walk toward the door.


  “Um, you’ll have to go through the metal detectors. You don’t have anything metal on you?”

  She turned and gave him a smile that revealed yellowing teeth. “Only my backside. Steel, ya know?” She patted her fake posterior, feeling the soft cushion of the showmen’s hose she wore. They made her finely sculpted backside look robust and slightly riddled with dimples. “You want to pat me down?”

  Officer Durmount jerked back, his mouth twitching down. Just three hours before, she had caught this very same officer ogling her from across the room, staring at her with eyes that told her he spent the moments debating the best ways to defile her, with or without her consent. Now, he was repulsed by the sight of her, seeing none of Landers in the salacious Honeypot. “Just go,” was all the Officer could muster.

  She shrugged. “Don’t ever turn down experience, young man.” She gave him a wink and walked through the metal detector without incident. As she closed the door to the next room behind her, she turned to find Officer Durmount back at his phone, as if she had not been there at all. She hummed as she waddled toward the next door.

  Officer Moss had a pleasant demeanor and appeared indifferent to her passes. She had never met this man, as he most likely sat in this little office of his, commanding his cleaning drones without ever unseating his enormous ass. Looking at his clipboard, he rattled off assignments to her like she was dictating a laundry list for him. For a breathless moment, she was sure he wasn’t going to assign her to the proper portion of the prison, but he finished by adding, “if you find time, mop the breakrooms on the east wing.”

  Rebecca had a backup plan if they didn’t send her to Oliver’s wing, but her heart’s desire sat in the east wing, awaiting his first session with her.

  Officer Moss sniffed the air, his eyes narrowing. “No drinking on the job. I find you passed out in a broom closet, or slurring your words, I’ll have you bounced and arrested for public intox before you can stumble to your car. Am I clear?”

  Rebecca nodded and smiled. “No drinking, gotcha.” She wondered if she had spilled some vodka on her costume at some point. She hadn’t been drinking since earlier today, and she’d already eaten and taken a breath mint after that. Right before she coated her teeth with the fake resin to give them the yellowing tint. Then she realized the glue that held her wig on had a distinct odor. She had no intentions of drinking. No, these types of sessions are what she lived for. It was getting through the other parts of her day that required a quick sip here and there to make them bearable.

  Officer Moss was staring at her. “Your shift started thirty minutes ago. You’re already behind.”

  Rebecca rose, making a show of the effort. “Of course, captain my captain. I’m off to make this place a much cleaner place.” She gave him a tip of her head and marched out of the office.

  Her whole mind screamed for her to make haste to the east wing and begin her session, but he had made that the last item on her list. Had this been a one-off encounter, she might have dismissed her tasks, but since she didn’t know how long the lockdown would be in place, she needed to keep up appearances, in more ways than one. She made her way to the supply closet, getting what she needed and humming as she did. She had always had a strong work ethic, and she intended to knock out these remedial tasks with ease and efficiency. Then she’d have longer to work with Oliver on coming to terms with what he had done.

  Hours later, she found herself standing on the second floor of the east wing, a branch of cells spread out before her. The cleaning staff had their own paths they could walk, but they were allowed to transverse the walkways, provided they stayed to the left of the yellow line. This denoted a safe place where the inmates would not be able to reach out and grab her. While it wasn’t forbidden, it was strongly discouraged. “You should only tempt the beasts of men when you have to,” her mother had always said. Then again, her mother had proven to be less than reliable on wisdom.

  She moved along the path provided her, very aware of the yellow line. Most of the inmates slept at this late hour, those still awake lost in their own thoughts. If any saw her pass, they assumed her another employee of the prison and forgot about her immediately. As she walked by Oliver’s cell, she saw that he too had succumbed to sleep. She rolled her mop bucket into the cell door, making the whole thing rattle loud enough to wake the contents. “My apologies,” she whispered, marching on.

  Once a few cells away, she turned and crouched by the railing, finding a spot that hid her well in the dark gloom of lights out. Recalling the file she had committed to memory, she summoned the image of Heather Burdimeyer. The bullet from behind had done a great deal of damage to the woman’s face, and Rebecca recreated the image in perfect detail. Drops of blood fell from the wound in her masterful illusion. Though the woman had died in regular clothes, Rebecca decided to clothe her in a soft blue dress that hugged her curves. A pretty dress that a mother would have buried her daughter in. Sadly, Victor had not granted Heather’s mother the closure sometimes given with an open casket funeral.

  She heard a sharp intake of breath from within the cell as her apparition stepped into the light. Oliver whispered something in what she guessed was Spanish. Then he moaned, “I didn’t do that to you.”

  Rebecca shook her head. Why would a ghost seek out an innocent? Surely he was guilty if she was able to conjure up the image of the slain woman. Would she be here, if not to accuse him of his heinous crime?

  Her illusion stepped forward, placing one hand on the bar, the other touching her ruined face ever so gracefully. Heather shook her head, the hand snaking through the bars to point an accusing finger at Oliver.

  “It wasn’t me!” Oliver shouted, his pitch getting higher with each denial of responsibility.

  Rebecca smiled in the shadows. Her therapy was working. She could hear the tinge in his voice that he was breaking already. She had no doubt it would take a few more sessions like this, but he would come to the realization that innocent people don’t get haunted. That you could dazzle ignorant jurors with tricks and legal loopholes, but in the dark, when the specter of your crimes comes calling, you cannot deny your guilt.

  Still, the illusion persisted, mouthing words that he couldn’t hear. Rebecca’s visual abilities were just that. Nothing she summoned could make noise. If she were close enough she could smack the bars or whisper in hushed tones for effect, but the apparitions had no voice of their own. She had to be their voice, so they could face their attackers and demand justice! She was given this power to fuel reform, to clean up the garbage who won’t face the truth of their actions.

  Heather pressed towards the bars, her face distorting as she did. The wound expanding to appear like a giant red-rimmed eye that stared accusing at Oliver.

  Oliver in turn screamed something in Spanish that set lights to coming on in a nearby watch station.

  Rebecca smirked, rising and pushing her mop bucket toward the nearby access door to the break room. Tonight’s session had been a roaring success. Two or three more trips, and Oliver would seek redemption for his awful crimes, or the demons within him would finally consume him. Either way, Rebecca will have cured him of his mental illness. Once inside the break room, she began to mop the floors, whistling a tune from the radio she had heard. “Detective thinks he is soooo clever,” she mused to an empty room. “You can’t stop me. The show must go on.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  If You Want Something Done Right

  Dr. Jesuit Patton stood with hands clasped behind his back, staring down at the corpse of Hector Farrad, who had called himself Hypnosloth up until the time someone burned a fist-sized hole through his chest cavity. On death row for the abduction, rape, and the murder of a college coed, Hector had walked that final shuffle to the room in Texas where they kept the infamous needle. Through Jesuit’s connections, the lethal injection had been a sham, a sideshow. After they pronounced him dead, they transported his unconscious body to this very facility where Jesuit and his team began exp
erimenting on him with the Djinn compound. His particular ability manifested as near lizard-like eyes that could hypnotize anyone who locked gazes with him. Jesuit preferred not to use Hector for outside work, but as potential corpses started showing up in other states, his usual collection teams were hard-pressed to keep up and more importantly, to keep the general public unaware of what was actually going on.

  “Shall we begin?” Doctor Kimberly Daly stepped forward. She stood to his left, the angle hiding the horrible scarring that had taken place on her left side. She had been in a car wreck not long after discovering her powers and finding out her husband of five years had been living a double life. Both of his lives had ended in that car crash. Jesuit still had his suspicions that she intended to die with him, but he had no doubts the crash had been intentional. “Did they show you the message?”

  Jesuit looked at her, frowning. “They did not.”

  She nodded, and pulled back the white sheet, revealing the ruined torso of Subject Six. Above the circular burn hole, someone had taken great care in carving a message for him.