Jury of Peers (29 page)

Chapter Fifty

Telepath

              Seth let the boys watch.  Saul dropped his head and left his chin on his chest for the duration, but there was no escaping the audio.

             
Bolo watched.  He seemed fascinated by himself on camera.  Drawn to his image.  He was in a movie, hardcore, the kind of killer people would respect.  And he sneered. 

             
Meek watched him passively and the insanity swirling about in the room seemed to brush by him without any impact whatsoever.  But he saw the sneer.  Just after the kid heard himself say, “She’s shakin’ like you…”  He fucking sneered.  It was making him famous, making him special.

             
For the first time in days Seth wavered.  Watching this kid draw more pleasure out of what he’d done was too much.  He thought of the gun, thought of removing the sneer by removing the face, and then nature intervened. 

Seth had been holding his breath.  He exhaled audibly, and drew in a long, deep lungful of air.  It saved him.  He squeezed his eyes tight, and when they opened again, he knew that he’d come too far to stop now.  He’d failed his family, but he had also sacrificed their memories so that he could vanquish this madness.  It needed to be done right.  

              He glanced at Ray.  He was sitting at an angle to the monitor that would have made it very difficult to see, but he wasn’t looking.  He wasn’t jotting notes, and he wasn’t watching the kids.  Ravish Ramadeep was crying.  His head was down, but telltale tears dripped into his lap.  Meek watched him for a few moments as his mind muted the screams in the room.  He didn’t feel like comforting the man.  Certainly the guy hadn’t done anything wrong, but it wasn’t his suffering either.  Seth just didn’t feel a thing for his pain.  He didn’t care if he cried or not.  He didn’t care if anyone cried, or laughed, or just shook their heads and went on about their lives.  He didn’t care about anything except seeing this through.  His life had ended with his family there in the hallway.

             
And then a very misplaced and unexpected feeling washed through him – hope.  Certainly this Ramish fellow had been closer to this
case
than most others, but he didn’t really have a good reason to be broken up over the suffering of people he didn’t know.  It was horrible, it was rending, but it hadn’t been personal for him.  But if it had touched him… perhaps it would strike a chord with others.  It occurred to him that hitherto, he’d not considered what others might think, the basic plan had formed in his mind, he’d executed it with the efficiency that he’d learned in years of going over line after line of computer code… and yet his focus had been upon only the next step in the procedure.  Now the recipe was complete, it just needed to simmer a bit.  Given long enough, he sincerely
hoped
that it would boil over and make one hell of a mess. 

Rage had a companion.

*
              *              *

Zero's Online Forum and Grill

              General

             
              Meek Trial (UnModerated)

             
                            Re: Really Real?

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Pages: 438                                                                                                  Reply  Notify  Send  Print

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Author
                                                        Topic:  Really Real?              (Read 44,987 Times)           
                

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Fenwyk:                                                                                                    Posted: 11:22

new one up

I'm gonna archive them all here for all of your forum newbs that are just getting in on this:

http://200.393.392.111/tam/temp//files/21/58/28/f215828/public/Meektube.php

http://200.393.392.111/tam/temp//files/21/58/28/f215828/public/Meektube2.php

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verryberry39: 
                                                                                                  Posted: 11:25

This is disgusting.  He's horrible.

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gek0tec: 
                                                                                                  Posted: 11:26

well we've cleared up whether or not it's all real I think.  God, that tape was awful.  The Feds will want this guy gone bad.  I called a friend in D.C. that worked with Meek's company once.  Said that he's a big time CRYPTO guy.  Let's start a line on how long he'll outlast Big Brother!

I'll stick to my guns.  Three days max.

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asukamon:                                                                                                    Posted: 11:34

think he knows something about how to hide?  He must or he wouldn't have done it this way right?  I give him less than a day still.  Everyone is gonna come down on him, and if he's in D.C. he doesn't have a chance in hell

Sent from my iPad

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soccertom_111:                                                                                                    Posted: 11:35

I can't believe you all are betting on this, do you see what's happening?  He's mocking everything the constitution stands for

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verryberry39: 
                                                                                                  Posted: 11:42

Exactly soccertom  This is so wrong.

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Fenwyk: 
                                                                                                  Posted: 11:43

Uh… didn't Thomas Jefferson have something to do with the Constitution?

"a little rebellion now and then is a good thing…"  go away verryberry39 and hide under your little ACLU rock

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vclear9: 
                                                                                                  Posted: 11:48

When you Yanks do something, you do it big.  My brother in law is in the bloody Falkland Islands with the sheep and he's heard about this row.  He called ten minutes ago.  If
he
knows, the whole world knows.  Lordy.

Chapter Fifty–One

Tompeates

             
“So you think this is a good idea?” Tonic asked.

             
“Wait a second, this was
your
idea, don’t be trying to put it back on me.”

             
“I don’t wanna go.”

             
“At least here we don’t need the Silly String,” Finn said as he opened the car door.  The sun had come out but it evidently had no intention of actually heating the air between the car and Ray’s front door.  There would be more snow.

             
Ray and his brood lived in a shack compared to Meek.  In fact, it was kind of a shack in comparison to Tonic who actually
lived
in a shack.  A love shack, yes, but Tonic was single and had hefty car payments so that he could impress his girl.  Truth be known, the two of them lived in his car far more often than he lived in his ratty apartment.  But poor ol’ Ray, non–single and working hard to feed the baby birds, was obviously having a rough go of it.

The neighborhood was suffering through the winter with scorched lawns that had been seared in the Cherry Blossom sun, and then simply frozen in place.  It was a place from which people would have moved from if they could have, a sort of suburban Levittown which had reached the height of its mass–produced glory and now faced the inevitable decline into a shantydom.  The one thing that they had going for them, Finn thought, was the fact that they weren’t piled on top of one another like everyone in the city.  These were individual homes, more like cottages, but each with a yard and a fence, and their own crooked mailboxes. 

              “You know,” Finn said as they walked up the driveway.  “I actually
do
feel better.”

             
“Want me to schedule another visit?” Tonic hopped up the steps and knocked on the door. 

             
Finn worked his shoulders around and was going to reply when a cacophony of bawling erupted from within the house.

             
“Jesus Christ,” Finn said instead.  "
My
cats never do that.”

             
Tonic took a step back from the door, “Uh oh.”

             
“What uh oh?”

             
There were four loud steps by way of warning and then the door swung open.  A woman stood there behind the screen, lips tight in a bloodless jeer, eyes wide as if hoping to absorb some ambient wrath.  Finn took a step back too.  There had been no pause to check through the peephole – she’d just stomped up and yanked back the door looking for someone to lynch.

             
“Heya,” Tonic tried his old standby.  The screaming quartet of babies and toddlers filled the little house, and spilled out at their feet.

             
“
What?”
the woman hissed.

             
“Heya?” Tonic repeated.

             
“You’re fired,” Finn told him and then turned to the woman.  “Mrs. Ramadeep?”

             
“
Yes.” 
She was poised to slam the door, and just as Finn opened his mouth, she did. 
Whamp.
  It wasn’t a solid door, and it rebounded back open, revealing her shocked and infuriated face.  She scowled at the door, at them, and then…
whamp.  Recoil.  Whamp! 
Each time the screaming increased, and each time she slammed the door harder until there was a
clink
and something inside the latch tumbled down the against of the screen.  Finally, she closed it hard and pressed her body up against it from the inside. 

             
“Heya?  That's all you've got?” Finn asked.

             
“Maybe this is a bad time…” Tonic said.

             
“You
think
?” Finn said as he tapped once again.

             
“What do you want Mi’ijo?
” she said from inside.

             
“Just a few moments…” the door flew open again.

             
“
You woke ‘em up, I just got ‘em to sleep.”

             
“Yes ma’am.  We’re sorry about that.  My name is James Finny and this is my partner…”

             
“
Is this about Ray
?” she pressed her belly up to the screen, but didn’t move to open it.

             
“Yes it is.”

             
“
Me vale madre!
” Ray’s wife had none of the accent that Ray had made charming in the
would you like a Big Gulp with that
sort of way.  In fact, she sounded like she might have lived somewhere south of Arizona for a spell. 

“
He just left last night
.”  She didn’t seem overly concerned.  And obviously, she’d not seen the television… but generally having the police at your door threw up some red flags.  This gal was just pissed.

             
“Mrs. Ramadeep, your husband is fine.”  Finn explained for two minutes, during which time she exited her home, struggled with the screen door which was on only one hinge, and again slammed both shut.  This made it somewhat easier to hear, but made the porch considerably less comfortable. 

             
“
You mean he’s been out working all night again?”

             
“Well ma’am, I’m not sure that I’d consider it
working
really,” Tonic ventured. 

             
“
What would you call it?”

             
Tonic considered different ways to angle the word
hostage
back into the sentence but finally gave up.  “Yes ma’am, well… has he called here?”

             
Her stare made it clear that he hadn’t.

             
Finn reached for one of his cards and then made a show of being all out.  "
If
he calls, would you please make certain to let us know.  We believe that he’s safe at the moment, but we’d very much like to talk with him.  Give her a card Spencer.”

             
Tonic scowled at his partner and reluctantly handed over one of his own cards.  One with
his
number on it.

             
“
Whatever… poca madre.” 
She looked beyond them at the street as another descript non–descript government sedan pulled up, brakes squeaking to an agonizing stop.  The only two vehicles on earth that had this built–in squeak were UPS trucks and FBI sedans.

             
“Well, we should let you get back to… yeah,” Tonic said, and stepped off of the porch.  Finn did the same, leaving the wailing behind.  Two men exited the sedan, their sunglasses and long coats hiding quick eyes and well pressed suits. 

Finn decided to start things out on the right foot as the two pairs drew near in the driveway.  “You can’t see me, I’m not here.”

“Who are you?” agent number one said.  These were the same two from the hospital, so everyone knew who everyone else was, which was exasperating, but playable.

“Cake or death?” Finn said instantly. 

This puzzled the long coats for a moment, but they recovered with a line of their own that had shut down countless conversations – their equivalent of yelling
cock
in the middle of dinner with the in–laws: 

“I’m agent Miller, and this is agent Dupree,
FBI
,” Agent One said.

“Well I’m James Finny.  This is my partner Spence.”

"We were under the impression that you were with D.C.P.D. Mr. Finny.  Is this so?”

“You're lucky that I'm Church of England.”

              “This is unhelpful,” Agent One said.  Agent Two lifted his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.  Heady emotion from the FBI.

             
Tonic said, “He tries, he really does.”  Finn suddenly seemed preoccupied, so Tonic continued to stall.  "We're going to run out of cake at this rate.”

             
The agents ignored him.  "Do you have business with the Ramadeep family?”

             
“Just checking in,” Finn said.  He’d noticed a tiny reflection on Agent One’s lapel.  It came from the cell phone at their feet, almost exactly equidistant between the four of them, lying in the crunchy grass.  It was silver, and signaling for help like a downed pilot.

             
“Unless you have official business with the Ramadeep family, let me suggest that you allow us to work the case to its conclusion.”  The reflection bounced on his coat.  “There is a kidnapping involved, and you are well aware that kidnapping falls under Federal jurisdiction…”

             
Finn took one long step forward and said, "Well, I'm afraid we're all out of cake."  The agent instinctively stepped back.

             
“What?” Agent Two said.

             
“Oh shit,” Tonic said.  "Dropped my phone.”  He bent down, scooped it up, and flipped it open as if he were checking for calls, then pocketed the phone.

             
Suddenly Finn was friendly.  "Welp, we should be going.  Good luck up there.”

             
“Knock hard,” Tonic said as they walked to their car.  "She’s a little hard of hearing.”