Friday, October 11, 2024

Deadly Drafts - CH 46

MOUTHPIECE


"I've figured the sodding thing out!" Arthur brought the pad of his thumb close to his eyes.

"You've figured what now?" Kavi said.

"Look." Arthur leaned across the computer and opened a screencap of their fingerprints. "I said I'd never been printed, but that's not entirely true." Arthur keyed a web address, conjured a picture of a red-brick building. Giant black fingerprints crawled across the building like bugs, each sprouting antennae and legs.

Kavi exhaled. "Your fingerprints?"

"I was hired to paint a mural outside an exterminator's office in Louisville," Arthur said. "I used my own prints for the picture."

"Well that was dumb as hell," Harris nodded at the picture. "You give them your social and blood type? Mother's maiden name?"

"Yes, I absolutely should have anticipated being framed for literary crimes via wall art."

Sheila's phone trilled. Its psychadelic pop turned The Irregulars to statues, a composition in marble entitled, "Accused Scared Shitless by 'The Doors.'"

"Well," Kavi nodded, "answer it."

Sheila huffed. Her face, already drawn from lack of sleep, pulled tight enough to play a drumroll. "It's a video call request," she said. "From Alex Dalkowski."

Harris sidled next to Sheila to peek at the phone. "That means Hardcastle didn't throw her in jail. That's good."

Arthur pulled Harris back. "Let Sheila answer her bloody phone."

The three Irregulars sidled to the edge of the sofa, just out of frame. Sheila took a deep breath and accepted the call. Alex Dalkowski appeared against a woodgrain background, dark hair frazzled around an unusually serious face.

"Alex Dalkowski," Sheila said. "You look a little pale. Hardcastle been breathing down your neck?"

"Let me speak to them." Alex spoke slowly, her voice stripped raw.

"Them?" Sheila forced a laugh.

"Sheila," Alex's voice shook. "We called everywhere else. I know they’re there."

"Who?" Sheila's gaze flicked to where the trio sat on the couch. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Tell her to stop with the games." A second voice shot from the phone, dark and rough. The memory of it, the fear, shocked Sheila to her core.

"Ohmigod," Sheila turned to where the Irregulars sat. "It really wasn't you."

"Please," a tear welled in Alex's eye. "Put Harris on. Please."

Sheila couldn't thrust the phone fast enough. Anything to get that voice away from her, keep it from knocking the sanity from her mind.

Harris' unsteady hands took the phone. Alex offered a token smile, all shape but no warmth. A pit formed in his stomach.

"What's wrong."

Alex didn't answer. Her eyes haunted the small screen, ghostly white. It felt like looking death in the face. The world around the Irregulars swirled.

"You're going to write me a story." The words came from Alex's mouth. Her lips moved. Yet, somehow, the voice wasn't hers. Her eyes scanned, ever so slightly, left to right as she spoke.

"You," Arthur said, "want us to write you—Alex Dalkowski—a story?"

"You will write me a story," she repeated. "A series of literary crimes, a brutish oaf of a former wrestler framing three innocents, all culminating in a hostage rescue gone wrong."

"I swear to god, you fuck," Harris spat at the phone, "if you so much as harm another hair on her head, I will spend the rest of my life hunting you. We know who you are, Highley."

"Wait. Do you guys mean Judge Highley?" Sheila said. "Are you being framed by the Judge?"

Alex bolted upright. She turned, face clenched, panic flashing in her eyes.

"What?" Kavi said. "What?"

But Alex relaxed with a breath. She looked past the camera, waiting. "That does throw a wrench in the plans," Alex finally said. "But it doesn't mean your girlfriend need find harm. Or any of you for that matter."

"Girlfriend?" Arthur couldn't contain his surprise. "I think you're overstating—"

Alex continued, her voice a stomach-wrenching drone, fear and pain made manifest. "Write your story. Frame Bernard. Turn yourselves in. Once that's done, the Detective walks free. Everyone else lives happily ever after so long as no one makes a peep. The Talbot reporter. James. Gwyn. Grace."

"You motherfucker," Kavi growled.

A tear spilled down Alex's cheek. With a sip of a breath, she regained composure. "Or you can decide your freedom is more important than the Detective's life."

"Fuck you," Harris' shout rattled the dishes in Sheila's cupboard. "You sadistic piece of shit. A fucking Judge, you took an oath."

"I don't often agree with Kagan," Arthur chimed in, "but yes: fuck you a thousand percent."

Alex's flashing smile heartened the trio, but only for a moment. A gun barrel slid into frame, a sleek, venomous snake, its fang wrinkling the soft skin of Alex's temple. Tears shook down her face as she sobbed in silence.

Arthur stood, legs wobbling. Surely the detective could handle herself. If only she had time. If only that withered old ball sack wasn’t smooching a gun against the side of her head. Damn it all.

"There's... There's something I need to know." Arthur spoke in a quiet, firm voice. As slow as he possibly could. "How did you know?"

Alex sat silent. The gun slid away.

"Know what?" Alex finally said.

"My personal life."

"That you’re a fairy?" Alex said the words through a frown. "I was a sailor in my youth, Mr. Kite. I’ve seen plenty. All your stories about leather-clad bikers and burly bears? How could one not know?"

"Alright," Harris jabbed a finger at the screen. "As long as it's Q and A, tell us who your third accomplice was—the tiger getaway driver at the jewelry store?"

"A mannequin. You stupid, stupid fools."

"And the costumes?" Arthur said. "Where did they come from? The clerk at the shop—"

They'd gotten him riled enough that he didn't even bother speaking through Alex. "The internet, you boobs," his voice rasped. "Did you really think I'd be so stupid as to buy the costumes from a local shop? You really are awful detectives, you know? In your shitty fiction and in real life. Completely inept."

To this point, Kavi had remained quiet. The moment Alex's name flashed on Sheila's phone, Kavi had braced herself against the tide of panic certainly rolling in. Pick a fleck in the ceiling. Keep the room from spinning and count, 1-2-3, 1-2-3. Except...the heart-clenching? The shaking legs? It never came. An odd tingle crashed against Kavi, a seawall repelling the flood, leaving her dry, ready.

"Why us?" Kavi finally said. The question had simmered inside her from the very first, a sliver left to fester. "If you needed money, why go on a crime spree? You could have skipped town after the jewelers and been Scot free."

"Ha!"

The burst of laughter startled Alex. Her shoulders tensed. She blinked the wetness from her eyelashes. The rifle waggled ever so slightly back into frame as the Admiral chuckled to himself beyond the camera's eye.

"You boobs!" the dark voice pushed through the phone like a ghost. "You think this is about money? Money? A true sailor doesn't set foot to deck, submit his very life to the bosom of the ocean for pursuit of droll things such as money. A life without money may be lived… But a life without adventure…?" The Admiral's voice trailed off like a tide ebbing to the dark horizon

"To think," Alex said, again trumpeting the Admiral's words, "that I was nearly bested by you idiots. At every junction you've stepped in shit. All the dead ends. The costumes. The boy. Miss Leslie's affair. Well, no more shit. You have until 7 p.m. tomorrow night. Tell the reporter to put your story in tomorrow's paper. If you don't meet my demands, if you let slip my identity, if even a single thing goes awry," again Alex's lip quivered, the tears now dripping steadily from her chin, "the girl dies and I go after everyone else. Do you think St. Boniface Prep has any contingency plan against sharpshooters, Mrs. Adnan-Byrne?"

"Alex," Kavi broke in. "I promise you we'll find a way. We won't leave you."

Alex's jaw set. Her eyes gained focus, alight. The moment felt like a string, a rubber band, pulled to its limit. A slow, slight smile spread over Alex's cheek. Her face seemed to warm from its deathly pale. Her eyes darted quickly to her left, toward the gun, and then back at the screen.

The phone swiveled in her hand, the screen panning down the line of the gun to an older man in a black coat. His white hair hung in greased, tangled strands. Three-day stubble salted his hollowed cheeks. Judge Highley’s trademark moustache drooped and frayed around his sudden frown. The window behind him showed a grove of evergreens and elms swaying in the night's embrace. Sebastian's red-rimmed eyes bulged.

"You," Sebastian looked past the phone, up to where Alex loomed over him. "The duct tape..."

"1782 County Road 42!" Alex cried.

The screen swirled with shadows and blackness before Alex could finish. The phone thumped to red pile carpet. A foot—it was hard to say if it was Alex's or the Admiral's—stood in the fuzzy distance. There was a jumble of voices, shouting, screaming. Then a brilliant light flashed through the camera, followed by a blast. The light gave way to dark and Sheila's phone swiped back to its home screen.

The Irregulars sat for a breathless moment, unable to move, hearts frozen in their chests.
 
 

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