Atmosphere (16 page)

Hector nodded. "Please."

Ernie reached in and grabbed the bag. "Whatever's in it, it's light." He handed the bag to Hector.

Hector unfolded the top, first peeked inside, then reached in and pulled the contents out. A pile of small papers appeared in his grasp, some tumbling to the floor.

Frank picked one up. "This is a store receipt, for jeans. There's a return tag attached to it."

"They're all store receipts. Clothes...music...electronics, and get this—almost everything here has been returned." Hector scratched at his moustache. "The Gap..."

"He has good taste," Frank said thumbing through a few more.

"...Fifth Avenue Electronics...Rock and Soul Music. He bought a hat at Jerry's Bargains and returned it a week later."

"Macy's. Bought and returned two shirts."

"Here's one without a return. A place called Village Clothing, on Union Street. Wow, big purchase. Listen to this. Three hundred sixteen dollars. Pants, leather jacket, gloves, sunglas—"

"Hect!" Frank dropped the receipts he held.

Hector looked at Frank momentarily, smiled. "—sunglasses, socks, shoes. This is our probable cause."

"The icing on the cake."

"Captain?"

"Yes Ernie," Hector said, still looking down as he quickly fanned the remainder of the receipts.

"We've got company."

Hector and Frank looked up.

Still wearing the same black clothing from the alley, the leather jacket, the jeans, the sunglasses, Harold Gross stood in the doorway, looking at them.

I
nexplicably, Harold became immediately paralyzed at the sight of the Outsiders in his apartment. He tried dearly to coerce movement in himself, but could only stand frozen like a mannequin, a unique intermingling of emotions—much different ones than those the Atmosphere conjured—thwarting his every effort to move: fear, indecision, confusion, anger, all integrated to form a single complex state of awareness, severely complicating the battle of thoughts inside his head.

As the three Outsiders stared at him, he offered a glare of his own, trying hard to decide exactly what he should to do given the dire circumstances. He forced his mental efforts to dig down deep within his consciousness, try to come up with a solution to his inaction. But sadly no thoughts came, and both parties remained in a motion deadlock for what seemed an eternity, but was perhaps only a few seconds.

Then suddenly, from within his deep psychological travels, an answer came forth, not one invented from his own imagination, but of another origin—a voice,
the voice
of the one and only entity that could indubitably provide him with a reliable answer. The only one he could trust at the moment.

The Giver.

It was as if the force field within his mind holding back his thoughts had simply vanished, releasing the solution to Harold's dilemma, loud and clear.

Kill yourself.

F
rank, Hector, and Ernie, now unexpectedlyface to face with Harold Gross, were all clearly indecisive in their immediate choice of action. The man was dangerous, unstable, probably armed, and needed to be handled like a crate filled with china: gently. Go easy first, then pull the punches if need be. That would be the best course of action.

Hector dropped the receipts he held. The couch blocked a clear pathway towards Harold. He took one step to the right, in front of Frank and Ernie.

"Harold Gross?"

Harold immediately raced off down the hall. Ernie leapt the couch, yelling
freeze!
Frank ran past Hector, following him, Hector on his heels. Frank remembered the feeling of paralysis he experienced in the alley when he first encountered the mysterious bald man that had turned out to be Harold. He hadn't the energy or the gumption to pursue him through the fence. Now, this time, he swore to himself he'd shoot him before he got away.

He only prayed that this time there wouldn't be any unexplainable holes for him to escape into.

Once in the hall, Frank saw Harold racing past the elevators toward the opposite end. Ernie was ten steps behind, keeping pace with him. At once Frank noticed the absence of an exit sign and turned quickly in mid-pace to see one over the security-barred window at the other end of the hall, half its face cracked and missing.
 
"Are there any steps over there?" Frank yelled.

"I don't think so." Hector's words were nearly lost in his labored breaths.

With horror, Frank saw that Harold showed no intention of slowing.
Dear God.
"Ernie! Be careful!"

Ernie slid to the tiles when he realized what Harold was going to do. He covered his head with his arms, shielding himself from the inevitable.

Harold hurled his body into the window, shoulders first. Glass shattered everywhere, raining over Ernie, who crawled away from the bursting fragments.

But what Harold hadn't realized was that the windows were barred, and he slammed forcefully into them, jarring them a bit, but not enough to give him his freedom. He fell to the floor in a river of glass, his face—sunglasses now thrown askew—a sudden bloodied mask, jagged shards of glass sticking from his cheeks and forehead like the tiny lights on a Christmas tree. He staggered up, wobbling like a marionette, then screamed sheer lunacy, an animalistic howl, started pulling frantically at the bars, seeking escape as if his life depended it, banging his forehead against the top of the window frame, one, two, three, four times, over and over again. Blood flew from his wounds in an amazing spray.
  

Ernie scrambled up, gun pulled. "Freeze mother-fucker!"

Harold continued to yank on the bars, screaming in a tantrum, crying hysterically, tears lacing through the blood on his face in pink rivulets.

Frank, gunned pulled, said, "What the fuck is he doing?"

Hector moved alongside him. "You've got three guns on you, asshole. Get away from the window."

Harold, still pulling, finally turned to face his pursuers. Tears and snot washed down his bloody face in a pathetic stream of agony. His eyes were two glassy black orbs. "
Please
, he cried. "
Please kill me...
"

Finally, with Hector holding the gun on him, Frank and Ernie wrenched him away from the bars, tackled him to the glassy ground and cuffed him. Hector called for back-up.

A squelch emanated from Ernie's radio. With one hand on the back of Harold's head, his knee in his back, Ernie answered the call.

"Captain?"

Hector faced him.

"The warrant. It was just issued."
   

H
appy hour at Danford's was no different than all the other afternoons Jaimie joined her friends for what they termed a 'cleansing', which meant the 'washing away of the day's studies with a few cold beers'. Of course none of the girls were of legal age to drink; a good deal of the students here hadn't reached twenty-one. But somehow, the college hot spot always managed to get away with allowing a few university students in to release some pressure, as long as their drinking didn't get out of hand.

"If you smile at the bouncer, he'll let you in." This was Tracy Scheuler's philosophy, which had always worked for her, although Jaimie would rarely try this on her own. She had hardly felt comfortable riding Tracy and Barbara's coattails into the bar, which lately she found herself doing much too often. Her father would have a fit if he found out his daughter was using her good looks to get into a bar.

Sitting at a booth in the crowded pub, they shared large portions of buffalo chicken wings and french fries, washing the munchies down with light beers. Tracy and Barbara took turns commenting on a few of the guys flexing their stuff around, while Jaimie smiled along pretending to agree with their commentary. Her taste was more for the smart-sexy type—tall, dark and lean, glasses perhaps, and well articulated—as opposed to the meaty, brainless, self-absorbed guys that her girlfriends so much adored. These meatheads were a dime a dozen, right off the factory belt, and much too commonplace for Jaimie's taste. Sometimes when they spewed their pick-up lines at her, she would feel as if she would need a deep hole to go hide in until they went away.

A guy holding a beer brushed by the booth, earring dangling from his lobe, his head mostly shaved, a farm of stubble texturing his dome. Although his eyes had not been shaded by sunglasses, Jaimie felt a surge of discomfort at the sight of him, and she shuddered at the spooky reminders of this afternoon.

"What's with all the guys shaving their heads nowadays?" Barbara wondered aloud, shoving a fry in her mouth. "They look ridiculous."

"Seems to be a new thing. I don't like it, though." Tracy motioned her hands in front of her as if she were giving someone a shampoo. "I like to run my hands through long wavy locks."

The conversation prompted strong images of Jaimie's unusual experiences, and she felt compelled it bring it up. "You know, I saw a couple of strange looking bald guys today. One on the subway, one in climatology. They both had the same kind of clothes on, all black. Sunglasses too." She smiled in effort to cover her discomfort, hoping that either Barbara or Tracy might have seen a similarly dressed guy, and would comment.

Barbara wiped buffalo wing sauce from her mouth with a napkin. "Yeah, they're all over Greenwich Village. It's a gay thing, cause I can't see any girl in her right mind finding that attractive. They dress for each other, you know?"

Jaimie sipped her beer, at once wondering if she might have let her thoughts get too carried away. Maybe it
was
a gay thing; she wasn't too familiar with much pertaining to that lifestyle. Perhaps both of the bald guys she saw today had behaved normally as far they'd been concerned, and were simply trying to allure the others, as strange as it seemed. But then what was that odd black object the bald guy in the subway held in his hands? And why did the other guy steal it?

Like spectators at a zoo, a couple of guys wearing jeans and F.I.T. sweatshirts suddenly emerged from the crowd and approached the girls' table. Jaimie cupped her hands over her ears, attempting to tune them out, but still managed to hear them comment on how beautiful the three of them were. Each had enough muscles beneath their sweatshirts to blanket a ship's hull, but it didn't make up for the blank expressions on their faces, dumb, one-dimensional, a clear indication of limited intelligence. God rarely gave out equal amounts of brains and brawn.

This was an ideal time to excuse herself to the bathroom. The effects of the alcohol hadn't done a very good job in helping her forget the day's events—only succeeded in pressuring her bladder—and she wasn't in the mood to be social with these meatheads. Barbara and Tracy would just have to wrestle the pests on their own—which Jaimie knew would be quite well and fine with both of them.

Battling the crowd, she mazed her way to the rear of the crowded bar. Upon her
 
arrival at the restrooms she found a line circling out from the ladies' room around the corner, reaching almost to the kitchen, at least fifteen girls waiting to pee and powder. It'd take a good half hour before she got in. She spun away in an angry huff and worked back through the crowd. From a distance she saw the two meatheads taking residence in the booth alongside Barbara and Tracy, each trying to swing their hooks around the girls' shoulders.

Returning to the booth, Jaimie retrieved her knapsack from beneath the table. "Line's too long. I'm gonna use the bathroom at the Math building, then probably go home."

"Jame," Barbara said, ignoring her. "This is Dan." Her cheeks glowed bright red, probably a combination of beer, hot chicken wings, and the delight of her new company.

Dan smiled. He had blond hair, nice shoulders, but crooked teeth.
Meathead.

"He was just telling us that an F.I.T. student was murdered last night."

Jaimie shivered as she shouldered her knapsack, her fluster suddenly frozen. "My God. Who?"

Dan shrugged, didn't say a word. Apparently his vocabulary was limited to a couple dozen adjectives and nouns. He smiled again, showing those gnarly teeth, then redirected his efforts back to Barbara. Clearly Dan couldn't give a hoot about the dead kid. He wanted to get laid, and to Jaimie, his aspirations couldn't have been more visible.
Nice way to start a conversation, Dan.

Barbara smiled. "He doesn't know. Just heard it himself."

"Well, I'm going home," Jaimie said. "If you find out anything, let me know." She received nods and good-byes from her friends, who seemed quite content with their new acquaintances. After a struggle with the crowd, Jaimie found the exit and went outside.

It felt good to breathe in the cool nighttime air, as if she were clearing out all the impurities inhaled inside the smoky bar. She quickly paced back towards the campus, anxious clouds of air unfurling from her lungs. A hundred yards away, the Walton Math Building's lights glowed like beacons in the center of the ocean. The amber spray from the lampposts guided her along the campus walkway as she gathered a few thoughts about her father and what he had said to her earlier this afternoon.