Shadow Memories: A Novel (The Singularity Conspiracy Book 1) (5 page)

13

Impact

It wasn’t my
day to die. Because, right as I felt that cold steel against the back of my scalp, the air filled with a flash of light—bright as a million bulbs illuminating at once. The gun at my head lowered for just a split second, the gunner pausing to reach up at his eyes in surprise.

I fought the same urge. Beside me, I heard Cassie scream, “Run!”

I did as I was told, leaning back, dropping a shoulder through my would-be executioner, the force sending a spray of bullets careening about the tight quarters. Everything happened at light speed, but my mind told me I hadn’t been shot. I wasn’t sure if I believed it, but I believed that I would be if I didn’t keep moving.

I ricocheted forward, making my way towards the sea breeze, the blue sky. I could hear Cassie darting towards the same destination, two steps behind, two steps in front; I didn’t know which, just that it was her, and then she was there, right next to me.

“Jump,” she said as we reached the edge, and I didn’t stop.

I just leapt, arms flailing at the sky, praying on the brief way down that these weren’t shallows filled with man eating rocks.

Hitting the water isn’t like you see in the movies, where you just hop thirty feet down and you feel nothing. This impact hurt like being hit by a linebacker, and it didn’t help that I’d landed half on my damn side. My lungs tried to fill with air, but all I got was a breathful of seawater.

The light dimmed, and the edges of my vision became murkier, clouded by shadows. I wretched underwater and reached for the top of the surface, but the fall had sent me some ways down, and my legs weren’t working the way I wanted. I drifted towards freedom, upwards, but not at a pace that I was too happy with.

Just as my brain was thinking about giving up the ghost, an arm reached down and about dislocated my shoulder.

“There you are,” Cassie said, swimming me over to shore, “I thought you were dead.” I seized up and then puked on her, as if to confirm that I wasn’t. “Good to see you, too. Should have let you die.”

“Yeah, but it looks like you might need some help on this one,” I rasped out, mouth like sandpaper, “so I might be worth keeping around.” I closed my eyes. The sun had never felt so good.

She thought about it for a moment, flinging vomit from her lap with disgusted flicks of her hand.

“Maybe.”

Hell, I’d take that.

14

Splinters

On top of
everything, the truck was missing from the lot when we finished the trek back over the endless sand. Otto and his goons must have figured there was something of value in it. Besides their upfront payment of twenty grand, they’d be disappointed in whatever they found in that old rust bucket. But maybe it would give them something to do for a while.

It felt like a long walk back to the office—even though it wasn’t that far—and by the time we reached the front door, I’d about had it. The sun was broiling my back, and my clothes, stiff with saltwater, felt like over-starched dress shirts.

Not that I’d know much about fancy clothes.

I was looking forward to a nice shower and a long nap, but no such luck. The lock was in splinters, kicked in by an aggressive booted heel. Slivers of wood littered the entrance; the door was ajar, but not wide open. Cassie reached down and extracted a long, curved blade from a sheath on her boot.

Chasing down dogs and snapping pics of fat, pasty husbands, we hadn’t needed any sort of muscle to scare people off for some time. But now, I wished I had a Gatling gun. Even with the knife, I didn’t feel good about going in blind.

“Maybe we should call the cops or something.” I tried to bend my vision around the corner, but had little luck. “We don’t know what’s inside.”

“That’s half the fun.” If I didn’t know better, I’d think that she was salivating at the opportunity for some payback. I was a less vengeful type—more live and let live—so I didn’t share her almost-frothing enthusiasm.

“You got anything for me,” I said, “feeling kind of naked over here.”

“Just stay close.”

That seemed like a terrible plan, but I dropped in behind her and waited.

With a sharp, waist-level kick, Cassie popped the door open. That was it; the poor thing had had enough. It flew from the hinges, heaving under the force, demolishing a side table in our living room.

I stared into the gaping abyss. Besides the wrecked door, it looked like our place had been hit by a tsunami. Everything was either broken or on the floor. I lamented the loss of my flat screen as I followed Cassie into the bedroom.

“Shit,” she said, sitting down on the bed, running the knife’s tip along the rustled sheets.

“I know, right,” I said, “they didn’t have to get the television. That thing didn’t have any case files on it.”

I felt underneath the bed frame for Cassie’s secret stash drawer that she thought I didn’t know about. It opened with a click. The money looked like it had been disturbed, but the seven hundred sixty-eight bucks—minus whatever she’d spent—was still there.

The twenty grand, though, that had been in the truck. I shook my head; if only we’d hidden it. Could have all sorts of options. How far were we going to lam it with seven hundred bucks?

Cassie started rifling through the dressers, looking underneath furniture. I had no idea what she was looking for. There was nothing of value within this whole crap heap, except the scattered case files we had about the cave. Those were gone, of course, but we wouldn’t be needing them. Whoever this art collector or obsessive linguist was, it seemed doubtful that he’d require any follow-up services.

“Look, Cass,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder, trying to get her stop, “I think we gotta start thinking about getting out of here. These guys are serious.”

She brushed my arm away and kept looking. “We’re not going. We can’t go.”

I didn’t think that an explanation would be forthcoming, so I dropped the matter. Without a television, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Reading seemed out of the question. Then I heard a bark.

Fox.

We hadn’t checked in the bathroom yet. I flung open the door and his big hairy muzzle shot out, rubbing against my leg.

“Some guard dog you are,” I said, and saw that in the bathtub was the center bone of a rib-eye. “You can be bought pretty easy.”

He barked again and didn’t look sorry for it. I couldn’t stay mad at him. It wasn’t like we’d bought him for protection—or bought him at all. At least those dicks hadn’t shot him in the head. That would have been depressing for everyone.

Especially Fox.

I went back on the couch, and he joined me, placing his head in my lap.

Our office phone started ringing and I just about leapt out of my seat. I grumbled something about not being able to get any rest, then picked up the handset.

“Atwood and Desmond, affordable private detective services.”

“I think my wife is cheating on me,” the voice on the other end said, “what do you charge to find that out?”

“It depends,” I said, and then paused, thinking on my feet, “what about three hundred to start?” I heard the words come out of my mouth before my mind could stop them. So much for leaving.

“That’s pretty pricey—”

“Two hundred, plus expenses at the end. You want to know if your wife is slobbing his knob, right?”

There was silence on the other end. The voice that followed sounded defeated. “Can you start today? I’ll drop the money off.”

“How ‘bout I come to you? No, it’s just that we’re, ah, renovating at the moment and things around here are a little messy. Where are you? Okay, sounds good.” The guy mumbled something about how he was impressed with the door-to-door service and hung up.

I went back in the bedroom, where Cassie was still rooting around.

“I got a case.”

“Fuck a case.”

“It doesn’t involve any Satanic messages or ancient cult symbols. Guy wants to know if someone is laying pipe into his wife.”

“How much,” she said, without looking up.

“Two hundred.”

She thought about it, and by the look on her face I could tell she was unimpressed with my bargaining skills. But she bit her tongue. “Good. Where you headed?”

“To his place to pick up the cash. Then to Manny’s,” I said, “he thinks Manny’s the guy. Saw her go in the hardware store.”

“Sure she wasn’t just
buying
some pipe?”

“Funny.”

“So Manny, huh?”

“I don’t want to see him again either, but the money’ll spend.”

“Yeah, well, stick it to that old Hitler loving bastard,” she said, “I still need to find something.”

“Good luck with that,” I said, already out the door, Fox tagging along behind, “I think they ruined all the good stuff.”

“What good stuff,” I thought I heard her say, but then, I was already gone.

15

An Extra Five Hundred

“That’s some rig,”
Mr. Murphy said, toeing his worn hardwood, averting eye contact, “must have set you back a couple.”

“It’s my partner’s,” I said, placing the camera with the telephoto lens on the table, “she says it’s good for catching people in the act, and I don’t disagree with her. Former cop and all, so she knows her gear.”

I threw that in there, just in case he was having second thoughts. It seemed to work, because he sat down.

“Look, my wife and I…”

“I get it,” I said. “Relationships, man, they’re hard.” Here is where a savvier individual would start their Dr. Phil routine, maybe place a hand on his shoulder. I wasn’t that type of guy. “You don’t need to explain the specifics to me, if you don’t want.” I prayed that he wouldn’t. I’d heard enough about people’s lives to fill
Letters to Penthouse
for the next twenty years.

“No, I think it will help.” I wanted to ask
you, or my investigation?
Therapy should’ve been extra. I’d have to discuss that with Cassie, see what she thought after—
if
, rather—we got out of the bigger mess looming over our lives.

“Mr. Murphy—” I wanted to head him off at the pass, but there would be no such luck.

“Chuck,” he said, “people call me Chuck.”

“Right, well, Chuck, you don’t have to tell me any personal information. Just, you know, what you think will be useful in confirming—or denying, there’s always a chance of a reasonable explanation—the situation.”

“Yeah,” he said, clasping his hands together, “I hope so. But I don’t know, I just don’t know.”

“That’s why you hired me. To find out.”

“But what if it’s true?” Here it was. If I wasn’t careful, I’d be here for an hour, listening to this poor son-of-a-bitch rattle on about how he was just shocked. Everyone was always shocked, until they became jaded, realized the world was full of whores and con-men. Then they came to expect this type of garbage. Worked better that way.

“Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” I said—and by my estimates, that would be soon. I just didn’t want to be on the bridge when he burned it to the ground. A bad place to be; knew that much from experience. I began walking toward the door.

“Mr. Desmond,” he said, just as I’d gotten my hand on the knob, “I do have one request.”

“What’s that?” I’ll always stick around for a couple extra dollars.

He waited at least a minute, as if thinking it over. “I need to know if he’s got a bigger…you know. Proof.” I’d have thought it over, too. And then kept it to myself. But this guy, he had balls. And it got my attention, all right.

“So, let me get this straight…”

“I want, well, I
need
a picture of his dick.” Well, there it was.

“I’m not running a porn shop, Chuck. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, but…look, there’s an extra five hundred bucks in it for you. And wouldn’t you want to know, you was me?”

I considered Cassie boning another dude.

“At that point, when he’s balls deep, does it matter? You’ve already lost.”

I thought he was going to cry when I laid it out for him like that. It was getting time to go. But he just said, “Five hundred. On top of the two hundred I just gave you. I’m good for it.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

I shut the door behind me, and gathered Fox from the post where I’d tied him up with a stray piece of rope. I flung the ratty braid behind me.

“Some weird people in this world, boy,” I said.

He wasn’t paying attention, but I think he understood.

16

Reward

“You got a
permit for that dog,” Greenville asked, pulling up alongside me. I was right by Ocean Boulevard, the town’s main drag—at least seven shops there, and we even have one of those frozen yogurt places and a T-Mobile store—and Mike Greenville was busting my chops. Just a little. But, after almost dying, my patience was short.

“Yeah, Mike, I got it right here.” I slapped my ass. “Along with his leash.”

“Damn Desmond, just trying to say thanks for nailing those tweakers the other night.”

“You’re welcome.”

“We found a gun in the wreckage, used in a murder ‘round Sausalito. Giving me a commendation and a promotion for it.” He stopped, window half cracked. “And a reward for the fine tip-off man. Cops there had been looking for those two assholes a long time.”

That got my attention.

“What’s this I hear about money?”

“I swear, Desmond, you’re as predictable as man’s best friend down there,” Greenville said. “Come by the station. I’ll get the paperwork ready and you can have it in half an hour.”

“I’m working a case.”

“Don’t lie to me, Desmond. And even if you are, whatever hooker you’re after ain’t going to pay you five grand.”

“Five grand?” I just about choked on my own damn saliva. That’d get us headed out of town nice and quick. “Where do I sign?”

“Station,” Greenville said, looking up at the green light urging him forward, “and you know, I think I saw that truck of yours down in the impound lot. Deputies found it an hour ago, some dweebs pushing it in the sand. I think they were trying to get it in the ocean, if I didn’t know better myself.”

“You have them in lockup?”

“Nah, they bolted. But we got the truck.”

He roared off before I could ask him what these so-called dweebs looked like. If they were anything like Otto and his mercenaries straight out of an eighties action flick, I wanted no part of them.

I looked forward at Manny’s Hardware Store, and to my right, where Greenville’s cruiser had disappeared. The sun was hinting that it was considering giving up the ghost. If I went to Manny’s, the reward might have to wait until tomorrow.

Then, though, I’m always a sucker for conflict. And I needed a win at this point.

I nodded my head across the street.

“You ready to catch someone with their pants down?” I asked Fox. He bounded across the crosswalk, ignoring all traffic laws. I put it on the lengthy mental to-do list I was accumulating: get this dog a leash. He’d already burned through a couple of his lives today, and from what I knew, canines aren’t blessed with all too many.