Detective D. Case (21 page)

          “Chief
Lincoln?” said one of the men walking behind him while they made their way to the
De Angelo Building. Apparently, Paul McDermott wanted to specifically meet with
them (Lincoln and his boys). The officer made a note that the famous missing son
had left out Chief Advert’s name. He found that interesting. “About Paul –”

          “What about
him?” The officer cared not for what Paul had in mind. Still, he needed reassurance
and not go in headfirst and get knocked out in the first few minutes of the first
round. Risks like that were too great. “Any new messages he has left for us? Has
he invited any other people?”

          “Nothing
yet,” said the man, Georgie. “But we need to take precautions in case, y’know, he
–”

          “He’d have
to be a fool to blow the place up.” Lincoln stopped walking. He sounded a lot like
the chief when he said it. Trying to change it might be hard; was it because of
the chief’s supposed death (he refused to believe the chief had really died)? “He’s
not stooping that low.”

          “All right,
but shouldn’t we send something to make sure everything’s safe?”

          “I think
we’ll be fine as long as we don’t rush it.”

          Lincoln
nodded to sell the idea. As he first entered through the almost crystal-like glass
doors of the De Angelo building, his men were speaking about his strategy. At least
some people were looking up to him, but had he really turned from a goof off from
the glory let’s-not-care days into something so strict and statistical? It broke
his youthful heart into leaks of blood. Quite gory, yes, but it pained him that
much.

          The ground
floor was clear: no need checking that thoroughly once they entered. In fact, the
place had deteriorated long before they got here – front desk destroyed and papers
flown everywhere like some young adult’s apartment that had been ransacked. No weapons
were left behind. It was as if the people who came in here and wreaked havoc on
the building wanted everyone to know they did it and that they weren’t the ones
who did it.

          Shaking,
Lincoln told his boys to go up to the second floor.

          That was
how it was, going up floor upon floor. Lincoln nearly fell on the steps as they
made their way up (elevators had broken down which slowed them down, arousing lots
of complaints and trouble from the boys). Everything he saw had no cuts, no trim;
the whole scene laid itself out in one take. The feeling was even more durable when
he had the sense of someone lingering behind him. Well, there were the men and all,
but this was different. He already knew them. No, he felt somebody watching
from behind like a large, Cyclops eye. Its iris had been stained in beautiful blood.
Just thinking about it made the gun Lincoln held tremble. Any shot from that thing
would be wild.

          Lincoln’s
thoughts were an endless chain building itself as it went. What if somebody else
were here? Although the announcement McDermott made was public, nobody would enter
the De Angelo Building except Special Forces like he was doing right now. No random
citizen would dare come here if they cried at the sight of death. Things were getting
ugly (or will be ugly) when they reached the top. Dammit, thought Lincoln, it’s
like those game machines at the arcade. The ones were you had to get to the top
to finish the level and all.

          It all
came down to that, wasn’t it? A bunch of men, most of them young,  going up stairs
till their feet ached to meet the foe. He shouldn’t say foe since Paul McDermott
wasn’t yet deemed an enemy. Not yet. However, others could be waiting for them at
the top. And if what he thought was true, then maybe Paul wasn’t Paul up there.
He might have died, but somebody else was tugging at his strings. Thinking of that
made Lincoln go back to the old detective – D. was it? Yeah, detective D. who had
the traumatizing experience in the bathroom at the penthouse. Fate had planted his
first night of never-ending torture. Lincoln sure knew what that was like, or did
he? Back then being a slack off was easy, but with things like this being different
– they called it “change” – people altered their personalities, too. He wished that
weren’t true, but that wouldn’t change anything--wouldn’t change the mind of the
world to do so. Simple-minded fool like him nobody would listen to. In the end everything
was simplified to something that banal. It usually was. 

          Some men
had to stop and rest, coming back up a few minutes later, but most continued until
the final steps. At the end they were met with a door to the top of the De Angelo
building. The paint on the door had been cracked, nobody taking part in adding new
coats to make it better. These days nobody cared about doing anything – only work
mattered, doing your job.

          “Should
we go in?” asked one man.

          Lincoln
laughed. “’Course we’re going in,” he said. “D’you really thinking that, by going
up all these steps and taking all that time, we were gonna back down now? You must
be blowing your nuts out.”

          Other men
laughed along with Lincoln. They took no shame in it.

          But their
laughter stopped, cut off like air supply. Someone had shot on the other side.

          “What the
–?” said one man.

          Lincoln
quieted everyone down. He did not do it in the harshest of manner for fear of others
hearing him. Who knew what kind of people were on the other side? Only the people
themselves knew; everything else was unknown.

          Georgie
mouthed, “Should we barge in?”

          “No,” Lincoln
mouthed back. “Just wait.”

          So they
did. Everyone else backed out making space for Then Officer Now Chief Lincoln. His
left ear was pressed against the middle-aged metal blue door.

          He heard
voices, many voices. Old and new, aging times and new times, young and old, cunning
and sweet – Lincoln heard the voice of the world inside, wrapped in a teasing box.

          What were
they saying? Lincoln strained to hear, but achieved the same result. Surely they
were on to something, right?

          And then,
out of all the nonsense: “They’re coming, you know.” Pure English prowling through
like shining light in darkness.

          It was
time. One order and Lincoln n’ his men barged through like red bulls rampaging through
fences. They never felt the fences when they crashed.

          Pandora’s
Box had been recreated into a full life-size room. Minimal in its visual standards,
it appealed to Lincoln that sense of curiosity that plagued man for eternity. Four
doors stood like advanced beings on every face of the wall. He thought there were
four until he looked up and found a fifth on the ceiling. The room was made of glass:
every face including the floor in which Lincoln and his men stood.

         
D.!
PAUL MCDERMOTT!

         
Lincoln’s
thoughts leaped like flying fish. The old detective had entered through one door,
Paul McDermott going in another, and a ragged man wearing a white wig from the 1700s
jumping into the scene. What was going on?

          All the
glass from the Pandora Room (which was what he called it from now on) melted away.
Of course glass didn’t melt, but here it did, it was possible. Guns poised everywhere
from all men, including those who followed Lincoln up here. Everybody shot, including
a lady with a little girl beside her. How did they –

*****

Bullet hit flesh.
D. hit like no other.

          His vision
was blood-caked without anything else. The room shattered, it rocking tremendously
like some insane amusement park ride. The blinking rate engaged him far more than
what the maximum could intend. His leg appeared to his crazed vision demented and
cruel-looking. Half of his brain, he assumed, had been struck by lightning if that
were the case.

                                           Winnie
had been shot, too. He felt it rather than saw it. Poor girl had only wanted her
older brother back, her one comfort. This was old detective D. assuming the girl
had been grieving for her brother this long in the game and not some follicle of
the truth.

          A long,
towering shadow bloomed above him. God was not here to save him now. D. was left
alone in the dark like humanity had been since the beginning.

          “Dear,”
said Lake coming into full view, “I have been waiting.”

          D. crawled
back, a child, until he faced a corner. All of this was done in the child-like manner
of running away from angered parents. But, of course, Lake came forth, the dominant
opponent. Tiny little pawns never lasted long, anyway.

          “Do you
see now?”

          “Where’s
McDermott?” Stretching his neck to the left and right, D. searched for the missing
son. “Where’s Paul?”

          “He’s fine.
No need to worry.”

          D. was
bitter in tone. “You didn’t answer my question.”

          “I did,
D. You just didn’t figure it out yet.”

          “What do
you mean?”

          Lake laughed,
not saying anything at all.

          “Tell me!”

          “You are
such a child, D.,” said Lake. “I wonder why they chose you.” Laughing again, he
cleared his throat. “That’s right, because they didn’t choose you.”

          The old
detective noticed that the ex-police officer hadn’t been harmed. In fact, the only
thing wrong with his image was the ragged clothes he wore, but even that looked
fitting. “They didn’t choose me? You mean the police?”

          Lake nodded.

          “Then who?”
the old detective demanded.

          “I,” he
said. “I did, dear.”

          The realization
of the whole thing sunk deep into D.’s skin like a vaccinated needle, sharp until
the point. He swallowed the truth long and hard. “It was you?”

          “It was
you, yes,” said Lake. “Sounds incredible, doesn’t it?”

          The thoughts
of before came rushing back. “But – the two letters – both of them were mismatched.”

          “Yes. They
are.” His smile tugged forward. “Keep going, you’re getting there.”

          “The case
wasn’t real.”

          Around
him, for the first time, everything had frozen in place. No one could go where time
needed them to. D. wondered if that was from the mischievous hands of Lake.

          “Yes, of
course, D.! The case never existed to begin with!”

          “And the
other detectives before... Darren Will...” He shuddered at the thought of the detective
who was the image of worship, his worship.

          “All of
them, fake. Well, I wouldn’t use the word ‘fake’ in that kind of sense for it might
bring some misunderstanding of a sort. A better word, I think, might be ‘fictionalized,’
how about that?”

          But D.
had no idea, the poor child.

          “Still
unsure?” teased the ex-police officer. “Not a problem. Lemme explain it small and
simple.” He crouched down so that, when looking into old detective D.’s eyes, they
lined up together. Lake grinned. “Come to think of it, you may just be the first
detective on the job.”

          “I’m the
first in finding the case of McDermott’s disappearance?”

          “It’s the
truth.”

          D. turned
back as if the other investigators before him were behind, former past lives in
a circle. “But the other detectives...”

          “None of
them were given the job, D. Understand that.”

          “They were
all a lie?”

          “Not a
lie specifically. I tend to think of it more like they were made up names – all
except for Will, that is – and given false ones for quitting the job and/or death.”

          Hitting
the wall, old detective D. slumped down. Everything was fading... was he dying?

          “Help me,”
he muttered. “I think I’m dying...”

          “You are?
Dear me, somebody needs hospital assistance.”

          And the
cruel man laughed.

          “Did you
know Advert’s dead, right?”

          Did he
mean the chief? “I did not know.”

          “Now you
know.” Lake paced back and forth. “Mark my words, old man; things will change from
now on. Since my change of position into mayor of this dreaded city, you detectives
will become obsolete, forever forgotten in the memory of all. In case you didn’t
know (and the pun was intended, for your information), this ‘disappearing McDermott’
thing was a fake, too.”

          This one
did not surprise D.; he had been suspicious for some time. “The whole family?” he
wanted to make sure even though the tone of his voice wavered.

          “Yes, D.,
the whole family,” Lake assured him. “Every single one of them played their part
well and achieved the goal in its entirety: to eliminate all of you.”