Stasis: A Will Vullerman Anthology (12 page)

"Thank God." Immanuel leaned back in his chair. "So, you bin busy?"

Will sat down in the front row and put on his seat-belt. "Yeah, I just finished a private mission for Director Brownbarr. His relatives were being threatened with insane phone calls."

Immanuel whistled. "A-men. You catch th' man?"

"Mhm. He turned out to be a cigar-smoking taxi driver. I caught him just last night, but Brownbarr ordered me back to HQ for debriefing."

"Hm, he in'a hurry, yeah?"

Will shrugged. "I don't know. He just seemed eager to debrief me."

Immanuel held up a finger. "We go'ring ta take off soon, so we kin talk later. Need ta concentrate'o flyin'."

"No problem."

************

Brownbarr entered the room and glanced at the bare concrete floor of the hotel room where, several days ago, the murder of an ASP agent had taken place. The concrete had been covered with a carpet, but Rolvo had told him that the carpeting had to be stripped because of the blood. The room didn't have much space, just enough for a bed and a desk. The bed looked slept in, on Brownbarr's left, and the desk was in the far right corner of the room. The walls had been painted brown.

Disinfectant. The room reeked off it. Sometimes hotel employees tried a little too hard.

"Not much to look at," Brownbarr said aloud. Mothinghotch came in behind him and nodded, tugging at his shirt nervously.

"Sir, I'm not much for, uh, murder and blood. I have a weak constitution, sir, and—"

Brownbarr glanced back at him. "Most of it's cleaned up, but if it bothers you, step outside."

Mothinghotch bobbed his head up and down. "Thanks, sir." He ducked out the door quickly.

Weak constitution indeed.

Brownbarr examined the room. Most everything had been left alone, except for the carpeting. He studied it for a long while, but he didn't find anything that would help clue him as to the murderer's identity. The only possibility was a similarity in the circumstances between the recent American murders and this one. But no one knew who the murderer was, or why he did it.

Brownbarr crouched down and examined the concrete. Nothing to see there. He glanced at the wall, and was about to stand up when he took a second look.

"Mothinghotch!" he shouted.

Mothinghotch popped into the room, glancing uneasily about. "Yes, sir?"

"You have better eyes than I do. What do you see on the wall, there?"

Mothinghotch peered down at the wall. "Not much, sir. Just something like a reddish stain that's been scrubbed away. Wonder how that—oh!" Mothinghotch gagged, cutting off his sentence.

"That's what I thought." Brownbarr glanced down at Mothinghotch in disgust. "Stand up straight, Mothinghotch. You can't expect to be in the ASP and not see blood every once in a while. Tilt your head, just so. What does the stain look like?"

"Uh...blood?"

Brownbarr resisted the urge to cuff the aide. "No, what does the shape of the stain remind you of?"

Mothinghotch squinted. "The letter A, sir."

"Exactly. That's the wall where Tarent died."

"Oh!" Mothinghotch straightened and backed away from the wall. "What...what does it mean, sir?"

"It means that Tarent must have been too weak to get his comm, so he crawled over to the wall and left a note in his blood. The murderer tried to clean it off so we wouldn't notice. It's hard to see unless you're trying to see it."

"You were looking for it, sir?"

Brownbarr shrugged. "If you were an ASP agent, what would you do? You needed to leave some sort of message."

Mothinghotch was silent for a moment. "Uh, sir," he started, "The letter A isn't much of a message."

"On the contrary," Brownbarr said, turning around and striding out the door. "It gives us our murderer's identity."

"How?" Mothinghotch trailed Brownbarr into the hall.

"It tells us what we're dealing with."

"I don't quite understand, sir."

"A is the first letter in an acronym that should be well known to you." Brownbarr halted at the hotel's stairs and glanced back at Mothinghotch.

Mothinghotch's eyes widened. "The AAA."

************

On his way out of the hotel, Brownbarr called Rolvo back at intelligence. Mothinghotch followed silently.

"Call connected," said his comm.

"Rolvo, can you hear me?" Brownbarr said.

"Loud and cleah, sah." Rolvo's voice crackled a little, but the connection was otherwise good.

"Any news on Tarent's comm?"

"We've traced a signal. It showed up first in the hotel, but the signal was either corrupted or permanently shut down."

Brownbarr frowned. "It fits with my theory, I suppose."

"Which is?"

"We're dealing with an AAA man. Tarent scrawled the letter A on the wall of the hotel, and someone tried to scrub it off."

There was a pause. "That cleahs things up," Rolvo said. "The man is obviously good with tech, which means we may be dealing with the AAA ringleadah, the one that kidnapped Mr. Vullahman. He has yet to be found.”

Brownbarr thought about this for a moment. "Continue working on locating Tarent's comm. I'll do some detective work here."

"Yes, sah. I'll call you if I have any furthah information."

Brownbarr disconnected the call and walked back into the hotel.

"Uh, sir?" Mothinghotch again, walking along behind Brownbarr. "Where are you going?"

"Into the hotel." Brownbarr pushed open the door and walked up to the stomach-high front desk. A young lady in blue slouched behind the counter, fiddling with a hotel pen and looking indescribably bored. Her name tag read "Florence".

"But sir, we've already been in—"

Brownbarr turned. "You do your job, Mothinghotch, and I'll do mine. Now do me a favor and shut up."

Mothinghotch pressed his lips together and didn't say another word.

Brownbarr faced the desk again. "Miss?"

Florence sat up. "Yeah?"

"I'm looking for a friend of mine. He's a bit shorter than me, with close-cropped black hair and dark eyes, probably dressed casually, with a Persian complexion. He also has a bracelet made of wood around his wrist."

"Look, grandpa," Florence said, leaning back in her chair, "I'm only takin' a summer job while my uncle's makin' moolah. I don't know this place any better than—"

"Look, miss, can you just tell me if you've seen my friend?" Brownbarr restrained his anger. It probably wouldn't do any good to rant at a spoiled teen—she'd probably just clam up.

"Maybe I have." Florence glanced at him.

With a huff, Brownbarr dug into his pocket and threw some money on the table. "Will that help jog your memory?"

"Just fine, grandpa." Florence counted up the money. "I saw your...friend. A couple days back. He left early in the morning. He was a handsome guy, so I tried talkin' to him. Couldn't get much outta him, but he said he was headin' somewhere west of EC."

"Thanks, that's all I need." Brownbarr turned and headed back out the door.

Mothinghotch walked beside Brownbarr and glanced at him. "Uh, sir, what exactly just happened?"

Brownbarr ignored Mothinghotch and called Rolvo again. "Rolvo? I've got news."

"Yes, sah?"

"We're after the AAA ringleader. The lady at the hotel desk needed a bit of cash to jog her memory, but she's seen him, and he's heading somewhere west of the European Confederation."

"On it, sah."

Brownbarr hung up.

"Sir—" Mothinghotch started.

"Mothinghotch, if you say another word, I'm going to lynch you. You'll find out what's going on soon enough. In the meantime, we've got a trail to follow."

************

Will woke up to the sound of footsteps. He opened his eyes and blinked for a few moments at his blurry surroundings. Where was he? What was that loud sound?

"Awake, my man?" Immanuel's voice.

Oh. Now he remembered.

Will rubbed his eyes and stretched. "I am now."

Immanuel chuckled. "You bin sleepin' for th' last coupla hours. You take somet'ing ta knock you out?"

"Sorry. I've been staying up late for the last few nights." Will yawned, glancing out the window. Blue sky, as usual. Nothing exciting. "I think it all caught up to me."

Immanuel nodded. "Tough mission, yeah?"

Will shrugged. "Sort of. I was worried about how it would turn out for a while, but the culprit was caught pretty easily. It looked like he just wanted to burgle the house. Still, the job's done. Once I talk with Brownbarr, I'm off on vacation."

"Uh-huh." Immanuel paused a minute. "So th' Director say he comin' back ta debrief?"

"Not specifically...he just told me to come back. I assume he'll be there. His comm signal wasn't that great, so I thought that he was off on a mission somewhere."

"Hm." Immanuel seemed to digest this for a minute. "Las' I heard, he left yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” Will frowned. “I'll call and make sure.” He stuck his earpiece in and spoke. "Comm, call Brownbarr."

"Connection error," the comm said. "Please reprogram."

Will frowned. "Reprogram? What's that supposed to mean?" If the line was busy, then the comm would have said so. What was the problem, then?

"Th' Director ha' no signal, maybe. Or it—hm?" Immanuel stopped mid-sentence at a loud beep. He swiveled his chair around and examined the screen in front of him. "Will, might wanta see d'is." Immanuel motioned for Will to come.

Will stood up and leaned over beside Immanuel, resting his hand on the back of Immanuel's seat. "Urgent message—Danton Brownbarr, Director of the ASP" scrolled across the screen. Immanuel hit play.

Brownbarr's voice sounded loud and clear from the speakers. "All ASP operatives on alert. We have a code yellow situation. Two nights ago, an ASP operative was murdered by the man we suspect of heading the AAA and also of kidnapping ASP operative Will Vullerman." Brownbarr then described the man and all known information on him, and then concluded the call, saying, "If any operative sees this man, report your position immediately and wait for backup."

Will straightened once the call had ended. "So how is it that Brownbarr's able to call us, and why does he have a perfect signal?"

Immanuel shrugged. "Tech," was his only answer.

Will rubbed his chin. "That's always my excuse, but it's still a little odd.”

"I'm more interested in th' murderer at this point," Immanuel said. "You met'm, yeah?"

"
Met him
is an understatement. He kidnapped me and masqueraded as my grandfather." And hopefully the ASP would find him soon. Will had a score to settle with the man. He'd probably be hard to catch, though. The fellow was a tech genius. As long as he had a comm, he could probably do some bad damage. Hackers could easily do stuff like erase numbers and fake calls and stuff.

Hold up. Will furrowed his brow. "Immanuel, you know more about tech than I do, right?"

"Yeah. It requiah for pilot trainin'." Immanuel glanced at Will curiously. "Why?"

"How easy is it to fake a call with someone else's voice?"

Immanuel didn't answer for a moment. "Well," he said, at last, "if you ha' good tech an' a sample o' th' voice, not too hard."

"Then we may be in trouble." Will glanced down at his comm. "Did Brownbarr call you to come pick me up?"

"Yes..."

"Was the connection bad?"

"Yes.” Immanuel frowned. “You mean d'at—"

"What if the connection was faked? That would explain why my comm can't call Brownbarr, and why he has a good signal now when he had a bad connection earlier. And the AAA ringleader is behind it all, I'd bet." Will paced back and forth. It added up, didn't it? The bad connection, the terse call, and the apparent fact that Brownbarr wouldn't be at HQ like his comm message had said. "But why? Why would the murderer want to send me a fake call?"

"Maybe he want you gone."

"Gone? Why would he—"

Then it hit him.

The voice. The familiar voice. That scratchy voice that he was sure he had heard before. And he
had
heard it before.

The call.

The thirteenth call.

Will staggered back. "Immanuel, turn this plane around!"

"Will, what—"

"Turn the plane around! No, no—I've killed them!" Will's breathing came hard and fast, and an empty feeling twisted his stomach into pieces. How could he have been so blind?

"Will." Immanuel's voice broke into Will's horror like water over a rock. "Calm down, my man. What's wrong?"

Will's chest heaved. His vision blurred. He turned on his heel and stumbled forward. "I've killed them, Immanuel.”

"I don't understand—"

Will turned back and focused on Immanuel. "Immanuel, it happened again. I arrested the wrong man! The real man, the one who's been making the calls—
he's still out there
!"