Dead and Kicking (3 page)

“Gran!” I dumped my purse on the
kitchen island and went straight for the cupboard. “Gran?” Of course she was a no show. What a disaster her little set up turned out
to be. The entire afternoon spent being
grilled by the police and I still had the headache of figuring out what Bryce
needed me to do for him.

My roommates, Tess and Holly, were
both still at work. Tess worked at her
uncle’s gym and Holly worked as a nurse at the nearby Riverton Hospital. The three of us lived above my shop on the
second and third floors of the firehall.
A deal with the building’s owner had allowed us to sink some money into
the place, with the understanding that we would be able to buy the building
from him in five more years’ time when he retired and moved back home to
India. The second floor was shared space
with an open concept living room and kitchen.
There was also some storage, a powder room, and the laundry on this
floor. We converted the third floor
dormitories into three spacious bedrooms each complete with its own ensuite. The best
part was the roof top greenhouse and garden.
The building’s flat style roof had allowed me to create a green oasis in
the city. Besides a kitchen herb and
vegetable garden, I cultivated many of the plants and flowers there that ended
up in customer containers for the shop.

Since I was alone and didn’t feel
like making anything to eat, I grabbed a jar of peanut butter, a bottle of
chocolate syrup and a spoon from the cupboard, sat down on one of the stools at
the kitchen island and dug a big spoonful of peanut butter out of the jar. Next I drizzled on some chocolate sauce then
stuck the whole spoonful in my mouth.
Hey, don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it. I was seriously running low on energy
reserves. Communicating with cops and
ghosts will do that to you. Okay, so the
cops were just really frustrating. It’s ghosts that are draining. One of the pitfalls of being a medium; ghosts
have to get the energy to manifest from somewhere and a medium is like having a
telephone and a battery rolled into one handy package. When I started to feel drained like this, the
best thing for it was carbs followed by a protein chaser, thus the peanut
butter and chocolate sauce. Not to
mention it tasted damn good too.

I poured myself a big glass of milk
and then pulled the memory stick out of my pocket to look at it. It was just a standard USB memory stick. What could be on it that was worth killing
for? I guess there was only one way to
find out. After firing up the old
computer sitting in the corner of the living room, I inserted the memory stick
and opened it up. There was only one
file on the stick, a rather large video file.
Great, it was starting to look like Bryce was killed for a sex
tape.

Knowing I would probably regret it, I
clicked on the icon to play the video, but instead of getting someone’s naughty
home movie, a security screen popped open asking for a password.

“You need the RSA token.”

“Bryce! Quit doing that.” My heart pounded in my chest. You’d think I would be used to voices coming
out of nowhere by now. “What’s an RSA
token? Do you know what’s on this
video?”

Bryce took form behind me, looking
over my shoulder at the monitor and frowning.
“No, I can’t remember. I just
know it’s something important, something very important and I want to trade it
for Bianca, my sister.”

“Your sister? You mean she’s being held
for ransom or something?”

“No, no, nothing like
that.”

It turned out Bryce’s younger sister
had a bit of a gambling problem. She had
dug herself into a hole so deep that even her brother couldn’t help dig her out
by legitimate means. That’s why Bryce
had started working for Salvador Arroyo in the first place, to work off her
debt by doing some less than legal computer security.

“And now that I’m, uh, well dead, I
need to get her out of debt once and for all.”

“Well without the password we don’t
even know what’s on here and if it is even worth trading. How do we find the password to look at it?”

“You need to get the RSA token and
use it to enter a code. I have one at my
place. I must have copied the video from
somewhere and used the token to protect it.”

“Can’t you just hack the password?”

“No, it’s 128-bit encryption. I can’t hack it. You just need to go to my place and get the
token then we can use it to unlock the file.”

“Go to your place? Are you kidding? I’m sure the cops are all over it. I can’t just waltz in there. What if someone sees me?”

“I can get you in so you won’t be
seen. There’s a fire escape around the
back and the bedroom window doesn’t lock properly. The sooner you find out what’s on that video,
the sooner you can get rid of me.”

Solving Bryce’s problem and sending
him on his way was high on my list of things to do, even if I did have to do a
little break and entering. “Okay, okay.
But I need to stop for a burger on the way.”

***

The third storey window to Bryce’s
apartment was unlocked, just like he said it would be. What he neglected to mention was that the
fire escape ended at the living room window and that I would have to shimmy
along a narrow ledge to get to the bedroom.
I had grilled Bryce as much as I could about where to look for the token
in his apartment before I had left because it was more than likely that he
would be a no show when I needed him.
You can’t really predict when or if a spirit will manifest, at least not
without performing some sort of summoning ritual.

Rather than lingering on the ledge
and risk someone seeing me, I quickly climbed through the window, but then
stayed crouched beside the bed so I could scope things out. The bedroom door was open and I could see
straight into the living room. Either
Bryce was a complete slob, or someone had already tossed the place. It was going to be next to impossible to find
anything in the chaos that once had been Bryce’s stuff. Still, I crept into the living room to see if
luck was maybe on my side.

Bryce said he used a laptop but, of
course, there was no sign of one. Either
the cops or the people that killed him had beat me to
it. It didn’t matter; I wasn’t looking
for his computer. I was looking for a
small keychain fob with a digital display.
Like that would be easier to find.

I started at the most obvious place,
the desk. It had been ransacked; the
drawers pulled out and dumped on the floor.
Beside it, the bookshelf and all the books it once held had been equally
turned out. The heathens had even ripped
apart some of the books looking for whatever might be hidden in the spines or
covers. At least most of the casualties
seemed to be computer textbooks.

The kitchen and the dining room were
also a bust. The last place to look was
the living room. Bryce said he more
often sat on the sofa than at his desk when working. Unfortunately, it had fared worse than the
books. The cushions were strewn about
the room and someone had taken a knife to them, the stuffing torn and spilling
out, the back of the frame cut to ribbons.
Feeling defeated, I flopped down on the bare sofa frame to think.

Remarkably, the end table still stood
beside the sofa, although the lamp that used to sit on it lay smashed on the
floor. I tried to imagine Bryce working
there. He probably would have set the
token on the end table but a search of the floor around it turned up nothing,
not even the remote, but since the TV was also missing, I guess that was no
surprise. It looked like Bryce’s killers
helped themselves to his 50” LCD TV as well as his life.

I was beginning to think this little
field trip was a total waste of time. It
was a shame about Bryce’s nice leather couch, although I guess he wouldn’t need
it anymore. I ran my hand along the soft
leather, smooth as butter. I guess
that’s what gave me my sudden epiphany, thinking about butter melting and
sliding down the sculpted sofa arms.
When you are sitting on your sofa where does everything end up? I slid my hand along the soft leather arm
until I reached the point where it met the seat. You know what I’m talking about; the place
where all the loose change and food crumbs go.
I tried not to think about what all might be down there, when my fingers
brushed against something hard and plastic.
Bingo!

Clutching the token, I headed back to
the bedroom just as I heard a key turning in the lock. I dove under the bed as the apartment door
opened.

“Damn! They sure did a number on this
place.”

“Doesn’t look like we’ll get much
help here,” a familiar voice replied.

Detective Nash! Just my luck he would show up now. I huddled under the bed and held my
breath. Nash and his partner, Dev,
walked through the living room, randomly looking at the mess. When he reached the sofa, Nash stopped and
inhaled deeply, a puzzled look on his face.
He had done the same thing several times when I spoke with him
earlier. He must have a sinus problem or
something.

My heart started to pound so loudly I was sure they would hear it. I took a few slow breaths and focused on
lowering my heart rate, a skill Gran drilled into me when I was younger. When Nash reached the bedroom, I figured my
goose was cooked. Luckily, I had thought
to close the window behind me when I had entered the apartment. Nash stood beside the bed and examined the
window, discovering the broken lock. He
inhaled deeply again and his feet, clad in well-worn, black motorcycle boots,
came to the side of the bed.

“Hey man, this is getting us
nowhere. Let’s get out of here.” Dev
called from the living room.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Anything
that might have led to the killers is long gone,” Nash replied as he walked
back towards the living room.

I lay under the bed for at least
another five minutes after they left.
That had been too close for comfort.
It was getting dark by that point and rather than use the window, I
decided to risk using the door. I really
didn’t want to climb out on that ledge again.

"You did what?"

“Without me?”

Both Holly and Tess were home when I
arrived with my prize and a bit of an adrenaline buzz from the whole
adventure. Their polar opposite
responses after I gave them the
Reader’s
Digest
version of what had happened, pretty much summed up their
personalities.

Always my partner in crime, Tess and
I had been raised together having both lost our parents as young kids - I never
knew mine and Tess’s parents were killed in a car accident when she was a
toddler. In typical Tess fashion, she
was a bit miffed I committed a break and enter without her. Short and scrappy with a gorgeous head of
shoulder length, wavy, black hair and Latino features, she’s a real knock-out who
can literally knock you out with one punch.
Trained in a multitude of martial arts, from Tai Chi to Krav Maga, she has black belts in
four of them and beats up men twice her size on a daily basis at her uncle’s
gym. She can also bench press twice her
body weight, of course the fact that she’s a werewolf may have something to do
with that.

Holly, on the other hand, is a curvy
blonde who looks like she belongs on the set of a California surfer movie. Her golden locks and perpetual tan, courtesy
of no small talent in magical body modification, accentuate her usually sunny
disposition (although she looked pretty stormy right now). Being five years older than us, Holly was
often the
de facto
babysitter when we
were growing up and when Gran died seven years ago and I was still under age,
she stepped in. Caring was just in
Holly’s nature; I didn’t think she could turn it off if she tried. It was probably a side effect of being a
hearth witch with a very strong gift in healing. You end up getting a full dose of empathy to
go with it.

“I can’t believe that guy your Gran
wanted to set you up with is dead.” Tess
flopped down on the sofa. “Was he at
least good looking?”

“Really Tess,” Holly scolded sternly,
“a man is dead. It shouldn’t matter what
he looked like.”

I looked around for any sign of Bryce
but the coast was clear. “Holly’s right,
but yeah, he was pretty hot.” I fired up
the old computer again and stuck the USB memory stick back in. “Let’s hope this works so I can help him
out.”

“You should really just throw that in
the trash.” Holly shook her finger at
me. “You shouldn’t get any more involved
than you already are.”

“That’s the whole point. I’m already involved. I can’t ignore it now and I’m not throwing it
out or turning it over to anyone until I know what it is,” I replied.

I clicked on the video and the
password prompt appeared again. I
entered Bryce’s four digit PIN then the six digit
number currently displayed on the RSA Token.
This time the video started to play.
The picture was kind of grainy because of low lighting, but you could
still make things out. It appeared to be
a security feed from an empty warehouse or parking garage. There was a small group of people in the
background of the frame. At first you
couldn’t really see them, but then the camera began to zoom in bringing them to
the foreground.

“I don’t like the look of this,” I said, shaking my head slowly. The small group appeared to be two men
standing over a third man on his knees on the floor. His hands were bound behind his back and he
was wearing a blind fold. There
appeared to be several people in the shadows watching. I clicked pause on the video. “Uh…guys…you better come look at this.”

Holly and Tess both came over to
stand behind me and I started the video back up. The two men that were standing grasped a long
knife together and held it aloft. They
appeared to be chanting but there was no audio with the video so we couldn’t
hear what they were saying. The kneeling
man began to struggle until one of the standing men grabbed his hair, pulling
the man’s head back. He yanked off the
blindfold.

“They’re not going to…” Tess leaned
in closer to get a better look.

“I think they are,” I replied in
shock.

“I can’t watch.” Holly turned away from the monitor.

The men holding the knife suddenly
plunged it into the chest of the kneeling man.
He crumpled to the floor and one of the other men held the knife aloft
again. The man holding the knife
continued to chant for a moment then appeared to wipe his thumb along the blood
on the blade. He turned to his fellow
murderer and drew a symbol on his forehead.
For a minute nothing happened, then the man with the symbol began to
convulse. Two other men rushed from the
shadows and grabbed him as he began to fall to the floor, laying him down
carefully. The man with the knife turned
back to the body of the murdered man and cut his bonds, taking some blood from
the knife and wiping it on the dead man’s lips.
He bent over the corpse with the bloody lips.

“Eww, he’s
going to kiss the dead guy!” Tess made a disgusted face.

Holly turned back, unable to look
away any longer. “It looks like he’s
doing CPR.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why kill a guy only to then try and save
him?” The whole thing was messed
up. I had never seen anything like
it.

“This can’t be real. The whole video must be a fake.” Holly began to pace. “You should just throw it away and we’ll
forget we ever saw it.”

“Wait,” Tess pointed to the
screen. “What the hell is happening
now?”

The guy with the knife was standing
again, watching as the formerly dead guy jumped to his feet. The dead guy pumped his fists in the
air. If there had been sound, I’m sure
we would have heard him roar in triumph.

“Did they just do what I think they
did?” I looked from Tess to Holly. Their faces both held the same disbelief that
I’m sure mine did. The men on the video
had just jacked the dead guy’s body.