Speak the Dead (6 page)

12

T
he man with the slippery eye and shark-fin nose broke the lock on the rear entrance to the punk club and made his way inside.

The club—so anti-trendy it was simply called The Club, although its signage boasted a wooden bat adorned with sharp iron spikes dripping with blood—was empty except for the lingering and pheromone-rich stench of booze, rage, sex, and sweat.

It was a stink only humans could exude.

Assured by the silence that he was alone, the man crept down a narrow hallway until stopped by his reflection shimmering in a large full-length mirror where the performers took a few final seconds to adjust themselves before taking the stage.

In front of the mirror, he removed a tiny squeeze bottle of artificial tears from his pocket.

His face drooped with the waxy pallor of a decorative candle placed too close to a neighboring flame. The left side was nearly flawless so long as he didn't try to smile or otherwise pull on the overly tight skin. His left eye was a glassy brown marble flecked with fiery orange, its dark iris so intense few people could stare directly at it without feeling a shiver run down their spines.

The right side didn't fare so well. Although his strong nose was unmarred, the area that ran from hairline to the far corner of his mouth was a rippled mass of sagging skin. His wrinkled forehead drooped over his right eye, which resembled a smoldering ember adrift on an infected red tide; his cheek had collapsed inwards, the plump muscle eaten away, leaving only a sunken hollow of corrugated flesh.

The right ear was missing its outer flesh and cartilage housing, leaving only a dark hole.

An eye patch would have gone a short way to making his façade less frightening, but the man knew his deformity made people so squeamish they could barely look at him. If a witness to his many crusades ever came forward, they would only be able to articulate one singular thing about him:
ugliness
. And as he had witnessed many times in this world, ugly was not a rare commodity.

The man squirted the saline solution into his dead eye and returned the bottle to his pocket before moving on.

Inside the manager's office, a quick survey revealed no videotape or digital recorder for the security cameras. Instead, a coiled mass of black USB cables snaked down from holes drilled in the ceiling and into an eight-port hub. The octopus hub, in turn, was plugged into the back of a squat mini-tower computer nestled under the desk.

The man hit the power switch on the PC and waited for it to boot. Within a few seconds, a monitor flickered to life and the Windows icon appeared. The man waited patiently while the computer ran its checks and balances. When the floating Windows icon finally disappeared, it was replaced by a flashing security sign. The sign asked for a finger to be placed on a print scanner. To one side of the keyboard, a flat plastic pad, no larger than a credit card, pulsed with a soft red glow.

The man would have smiled if his skin had allowed it.

Scrounging around the office, he picked up a roll of transparent tape and a pencil sharpener. With strong hands, he broke open the sharpener and dumped a thin layer of graphite dust onto the shiny curved surface of the computer mouse. The fine dust clung to the oily swirls and sworls left over from the owner's hand. He blew the excess away with a gentle puff from the side of his mouth.

The man tore off a tiny strip of tape, placed it over a clean, dark print of the mouse-clicking index finger and placed the tape on the scanner. He covered the tape and scanner bed with the back of a plain white business card to turn light escaping transparent into readable opaque.

After hitting the Enter button, the scanner read the lifted print without a single hiccup, and the computer's welcome screen appeared.

From there it was a simple job to locate the digitally encoded video files for the rear entrance camera and find the time-coded entry. A double-click opened the tiny movie while a tap on the spacebar made it fill the screen.

The man watched in passive silence as the large sedan mowed down the screaming woman. She had simply stood there, not believing her husband could possibly do what the man told him to. She hadn't known just how convincing the man could be.

After the car sped away, the man watched as Sally entered the alley from the mortuary. She had grown into a beautiful woman with the inherited shock white hair of her father and the mystical green eyes of her mother. The straight razor looked cumbersome and silly in her small, delicate hand, but the man was pleased that she possessed a fighting spirit.

When Sally crossed to the discarded woman, the man tensed and leaned forward to peer even deeper into the monitor. The scene was darker than he had hoped, the funeral home's security lights focused too narrowly to encompass all of the body, but there was enough ambient spillage to read the cosmetician's body language.

The man watched Sally reach out and touch the body.

Sally froze. Her body became as rigid as a statue, and the man wished he could see her eyes, but the camera's resolution was too low and the light too dim.

The moment finished too quickly as the heavyset leather-clad punk broke Sally's trance, but the man felt a stirring deep in his soul.

Had she
seen?

She must
have.

But could she understand
what
she saw without the
interpreter?

He lifted his cellphone and dialed.

The phone was answered on the second ring.

“Yes?” An older man's voice. Alert and awake.

“I've found her.”

“Are you sure this time, Aedan?”

“It's her,” he said confidently. “It has to be.”

The phone was covered and Aedan heard whispered voices conferring.

After a few moments, the older voice returned. “Bring her home. We'll be waiting.”

13

J
ersey's phone rang as he and Amarela wound their way out of the suburban maze of Maywood Park in an effort to avoid the traffic jam that made up the interstate.

The locals liked to blame the continual congestion on the Canadians as they flooded across the border into Washington and down through Oregon to California in a greedy blitz for bargains and sunshine. But from what Jersey could see, most of the license plates still boasted Pacific Northwest roots.

When Jersey answered the phone, a nasally voice—the kind that only comes from repeated blunt-force trauma—said, “Did you break into my club?”

“Now why would I do that, Les?”

“To get the CCTV footage. You called about it.”

“If I was going to break into your club why would I call first?”

Les grunted. “Yeah, okay. Well someone did. The back door was kicked open and my computer don't work.”

“The surveillance footage is on the computer?”

“Yeah, 'course, that's why I bought the damn thing. VCRs are for shit.”

“I'll stop by and take a look. I know a thing or two about computers.”

“Figured you would,” Les said. “You got that geek vibe about you.”

Jersey turned to Amarela. “Can you drop me off at the club and do the NOK without me?”

“Ah, shit, Jers,” Amarela whined. “You know I hate that job. People get so damn emotional, and clingy and snotty… always with the snot, you notice that?”

Amarela actually had a good whine: all pouty lips and large eyes and the ever-present hint of sex if you did her bidding. Fortunately, it hadn't taken Jersey five years to become immune. The first two were tough though.

“And what?” Jersey argued. “I like it?”

“No, but people take it better from you. You've got that cuddliness about you.”

“Cuddliness?”

“Yeah, you know? They see me, they think ‘skinny bitch with a great ass has it all going on', but they see you and—”

“They think ‘fat fool
with a decent ass
doesn't have a clue.'”

Amarela grinned. “No, I'm not saying… it's just people naturally trust you more.”

“Cause I'm cuddly?”

“Because you
appear
cuddly. People don't want to cuddle me.”

“No, they want to—”

“Don't!”

Jersey sneered without malice. “Suck it up and drop me at the club. I ain't nobody's teddy bear.”

Jersey pressed the
power button on the PC.

“I tried that,” Les grumbled. “What, you think I'm a moron?”

Les had been owner/manager of The Club for the last five years and had led the format change from black leather biker bar to black leather punk club. The reason for the change was simple—he couldn't stand listening to Johnny Cash every night.

“Man was fucking depressing,” he told Jersey one night between sets. “All religion and righteousness, but with a voice that chews out a little piece of your soul and spits it on the ground. That cover he did of
Hurt
? Jesus Christ, stick a gun in my mouth already.”

To blend with his club's image, Les had buzzed his premature gray hair, leaving a two-inch-wide Mohawk that ran down the center of his head like an exploded zipper. He dyed it different colors to match the various holidays: green for St. Paddy's; orange for Halloween; red, white and blue for Fourth of July, and so on. Today, it was purple. Whether or not that was for the Queen's birthday, Jersey didn't want to know.

To further complement his anti-establishment punk credo, Les wore a tight pair of black jeans and a loose-fitting black T-shirt with the slogan
Punk Sucks
in a metallic shade of purple to match his hair. Les owned at least a hundred black T-shirts, all with different slogans that ended in either
Suck
or
Sucks
, like iPods Suck, Death Sucks, and Pandas Suck.

On his hands and knees under the desk, Jersey discovered the computer had come unplugged from the wall socket. Rolling his eyes, he plugged it in and hit the power switch again. Instead of the expected triumphant Windows launch tune, however, the computer beeped in protest and flashed a cryptic BIOS message on the screen.

“It can't find the hard drive,” Jersey said. “You got a screwdriver?”

“Bit early for me.”

“Not the drink. The tool.”

“Okay, but you sure you know what you're doing?” Les started digging through drawers and cabinets.

“I've been building these things for years.”

“Building them? What the fuck for?”

“For fun. It's a hobby. Challenges me, you know?”

“Well, that's stupid.” Les pulled a fat red multi-purpose screwdriver from a dusty drawer. “They come already built from the store.”

“Yeah, I know.” Jersey sighed. “But I like to customize them. You know, bump up the RAM, add a killer video card, slip in an over-clocked processor or water-cooling. Mod the case, some neon lighting…”

“Yeah, like I said, stupid.”

Les handed Jersey the screwdriver. “You want that drink now?”

“It's ten in the morning, and I'm on duty.”

“I'm just talking a screwdriver. Vitamin C is good for you.”

“Make it virgin, and I'll take you up on it.”

“Suit yerself.”

When Les left the office, Jersey unscrewed the top of the screwdriver, found the right bit, and slipped it into the stem.

When Les returned with his orange juice, Jersey said, “I've found your problem.”

Les looked down at his computer lying open on the floor, a tangled mess of electronics and multi-colored wires.

“What the fuck did you do?”

“I just opened the case,” Jersey explained. “But I wasn't the first. Your hard drive is missing.”

“Well it must be in there somewhere.”

Jersey grinned. “No, it's not. Someone took it.”

“Well, crap. All my records are on there. Payroll, work schedule, inventory, everything.”

“You have a backup?”

“A what?”

“An external drive where you backup all your files.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” said Les. “I had the computer. It does all that stuff.”

“Not anymore,” said Jersey. “Sorry.”

“Well, fuck. I knew I should have stuck to using recipe cards. You never see good ol' pen and paper giving you this much grief. Fucking technology, who needs it?”

Les took a long gulp of his orange juice, grimaced and handed it to Jersey.

“That's yours,” he said. “Tastes horrible without the booze.”

Jersey accepted the glass and took a tentative sip. Surprisingly, it tasted fresh squeezed.

“So can I still get the Internet?” Les asked.

“Without a hard drive, you can't do anything. Can you think of any reason why someone would want it?”

“Can't see it being any good to anyone but me.”

“Did you watch the footage from the hit-and-run last night?”

“Didn't even think of it. The camera catches a good part of the alley, so it was probably on there. You think that's why I got broken into?”

Jersey shrugged. “We found the driver, but it couldn't have been him. He's dead.”

“Maybe it was the Feds. I downloaded some movies the other week, just Asian porn, but still.”

Jersey laughed. “I don't think the Feds are interested in your peccadilloes.”

“What? No, it was nothing like that. Just some girl-on-girl stuff.”

“Well the action's over until you get a new hard drive. I know a kid who'll sort you out. I'll ask him to call.”

Jersey brushed the dirt off his knees, handed back the empty glass, and headed for the rear door.

“You'll need a new lock on here as well,” he called over his shoulder. “This one's buggered.”

Standing in the alley, looking across the potholed gravel at the dark windows of the mortuary, Jersey pulled out his phone and dialed dispatch.

When the call connected, he said, “Darlene? I need an address.”