Chapter 22: Three Chords and the Truth

Fate decided to answer a question that Chloe had asked herself the night before. There were still payphones in Arcadia Bay, and one of them was in the lobby of the Embassy Suites.

Chloe felt around in the pockets of her jeans and found that she had enough spare quarters for two phone calls.

The second call she placed was to Max's iPhone. She answered halfway through the first ring.

"Hello?"

"Hey," Chloe said, and froze. How did one continue, given the current situation? Hi, honey! I wound up killing the drug lord instead of the other way around!

Thankfully, Max was quick on the uptake. "Oh, thank God!" she said. "I've just been… like… pacing back and forth for two hours, trying not to freak out!"

"It's okay," Chloe said. "Did anyone knock on the door, or try to get in?"

"No. No, it's just been me up here."

"Good," Chloe said. "I'm coming up now. I just… I thought I'd call so you didn't put a bullet through the door."

"Could you hurry?" Max asked.

Chloe could.

Chloe did.

She slid the keycard into the slot above the door knob and opened the door to the suite, and was wrapped in Max's arms before she could shut the door behind her. She broke the embrace and took Chloe's face in her hands.

"What happened out there?"

Chloe couldn't look Max in the eye when she told her "The Bull's dead."

"Oh," Max said. "Did you…?"

"No," Chloe said. "His own guys did him in. He… he just wasn't really nice to anyone, really. But… just because I didn't kill him, doesn't mean he isn't dead because of me."

Chloe started looking at her boots. Max's hands moved from Chloe's face to Chloe's shoulders.

"Chloe," Max said. "Look at me."

Their eyes met.

"I know for a fact that it isn't easy seeing what you saw tonight. I'm a pacifist, remember? I don't like this violence at all. But something needed to be done about that man, and you were the only one who could have done anything. He wouldn't have stopped until he killed the both of us, and you know damn well which of the two of you I'd rather have taking up space in the world. You may feel like shit about this, but you stopped a dangerous man, and I'm proud of you. That probably won't make you feel good… but I hope it makes you feel better."

To Chloe's surprise… it did.

Chloe gave Max a kiss that she hoped the two of them could vanish into forever. When the time came to pull away from each other, Chloe looked at the clock on the wall. Ten thirty.

"The night's not over yet," Chloe said. "We have one more stop to make, and we have to make it in a hurry."


The moon hid like a coward behind the clouds, and the only light violating the darkness of this lonely stretch of Oregon forest came from the headlights of The Beast.

Chloe's right hand held Max's left as The Beast turned left onto a gravel road. Chloe's truck threaded the needle of this rocky path until it came upon a massive house that still had its lights on.

"What is this place?" Max asked as Chloe put The Beast in park.

"This," Chloe said, "is Denise Leonard's house."

The two women walked to the door and Chloe rang the door bell. A few moments passed, and Chloe rang it again. In an instant, Rutger, one of Denise's employees who had driven Chloe to this very house a few days prior, answered the door.

"Miss Price?" Rutger asked.

"The job Denise hired me to do? It's done. I'm here to collect my check."

"I see," Rutger said. "And this can't wait until morning?"

"Dude," Chloe said, "this can't wait another five minutes."

Rutger held the door open and Max and Chloe stepped into the large foyer. As Rutger went up the winding staircase to the second floor, Chloe watched Max look at the room around her. Max had never been able to hide the emotions on her face very well, and Chloe detected notes of envy, intimidation, and more than a streak of working class disdain on her girlfriend's face.

Denise eventually came down the staircase, followed by Rutger. She wore a sea-foam green silk robe that was so thin, flimsy and sheer that Chloe figured if the room were a little bit colder, Denise would have put someone's eye out. Chloe always considered sea-foam green a butt-ugly color, but with Denise's skin and hair, she managed to pull it off.

Oh, and look at that, Chloe thought to herself. She paints her toenails red.

"Most civilized people call before arriving at someone's house at such an hour," Denise said. Chloe wondered what Denise would be like after she told her about Chloe and Max's rekindled relationship that morning, rendering any potential bedroom fun-times between herself and Denise moot. Now she had her answer. It had crossed her mind to be more delicate about it, but Chloe wanted to see the look of a rich person who didn't get what they wanted.

And it was priceless. She had blinked as though a foul stench wafted beneath her nostrils, before she said "I see…"

"I'm not civilized," Chloe said. "I was raised in Arcadia Bay. You have wonderful taste in clothes, has anyone ever told you that?"

Both Denise and Max seemed surprised by this.

"Not often enough," Denise said. "Thank you for noticing."

"You have… like… someone who picks your clothes out for you? Or is it all you?"

"All me."

"Congratulations," Chloe said. "I did what you asked me to. I've come to collect my check."

"Right this way," Denise said. "You'll have to tell me the whole story while I'm writing it."

Which Chloe did, once the three women had entered the white office where Chloe and Denise had first met. Denise held the check between her fingers as Chloe told Denise about her adventures with The Bull a couple of hours prior, at which point, she handed the check over. Chloe showed the check to Max, who looked at the amount of money in amazement.

"And The Bull's men just… let you leave?" Denise asked.

"Why wouldn't they?" Chloe asked. "It was dark, so I had no idea what they looked like. I don't know their names, don't know specifically what they do, so I couldn't testify to anything. And I just exposed their boss as an FBI informant, which keeps them out of federal prison. They kinda owed me after that. I know you technically hired me to figure out who killed Trainor, but the endgame of that was to see Bull behind bars. He's dead, but I don't think you'll spend too much time crying over spilt asshole."

"No," Denise said, "I don't believe I will. It's a shame you couldn't out who killed Trainor, but yes, for all intents and purposes, our business together is finished."

"I could have sworn that finding out who hired Trainor to kill Justin was the point of this whole thing," Max said. "Are you saying you still don't know who started all this?"

"Oh, I do," Chloe said. "But isn't it obvious?"

Max looked at Chloe for a bit. "Umm… No."

Chloe pointed at Denise. "She did it."

Chloe could not have imagined a fart in church going over more poorly than her last three words did in this room. Denise's expression didn't change, but any intangible joviality or goodwill contained within had dissipated. Max kept looking back and forth between Chloe and Denise, trying to anticipate what was going to happen next. Chloe looked over a shoulder at Rutger, who was standing by the door to the office. He rotated his shoulders, as though waiting for the shit that was about to pop off.

"I… beg your pardon?" Denise asked.

"Yeah," Chloe said. "You hired Trainor to kill Justin. Then you killed Trainor. That or you had Rutger over there kill him for you, but I like my way better. I'm romantic like that… Oh, and you kidnapped Jennifer Healy. She's in this house right now."

Denise blinked a couple of times. Her lips became a thin line.

"Well," Denise said, "just because what you're about to say is going to be exceptionally stupid doesn't mean it won't be entertaining. Explain yourself before Rutger throws you out."

Chloe cracked her knuckles and re-adjusted herself in her seat.

"We start with Arnold Trainor," Chloe said. "Yes, he and The Bull were FBI informants, but whatever deal they had must have still been in the planning stages. If it were any further along, the FBI would have made upfront contact with them. I know they didn't because if they did, then they would have given them each their own phone with a contact trace on it to make calls. They wouldn't leave them to use the untraceable burners that The Bull bought for his guys. Not to mention the fact that if this FBI operation was officially official, they'd be calling Washington DC and not Quantico. Quantico's just the training academy. Trainor was a multiple-time loser in a shit-water town like Arcadia Bay. The only way he could have made a contact inside Quantico was if someone introduced the two. Someone like, say, the person the FBI gave a medal to for giving them hacking technology? That means you. You knew the FBI, you gave tech to Quantico, and Trainor was high up in the Leonard International freight depot. You're the only connection."

"You want me to say I gave Trainor an FBI agent's number?" Denise asked. "Fine, I admit it. Whether Trainor and The Bull were in prison, dead, or off the field completely, it kept them from jacking Leonard International shipments."

"Yeah," Chloe said. "Because you wanted them all for yourself. Logan told me that someone important inside Leonard International was making a play to be the monopoly for the drugs entering and leaving Arcadia Bay. I thought it was Trainor at first, but no. It was you."

"In case you haven't noticed, Chloe, I'm rich. I don't need to be a drug lord."

"Yeah," Chloe said. "You are rich. But Max here did some reading on Leonard International, and she told me something interesting. Your father? The CEO of Leonard International? When he dies, all his money is going to charity. You're not getting a dime. So you're rich. But right now, you're richer than the apostles. You want to be richer than God. If you can't do it in the boardroom, you might as well do it pretending to be Scarface."

Denise folded her hands on her desk. "Let's entertain the delusion that you're right. If I gave Trainor and The Bull to the FBI to use as informants, then why is everyone turning up dead?"

"Because you found something in Arcadia Bay that could make you even more money. You found Jennifer Healy."

"Oh, I was wondering when we'd get to her," Denise said. "Denise's father works for me at the freight depot. The reward for information leading to her whereabouts is coming from Leonard International funds. Why would I kidnap her?"

"Because you found out she could travel through time."

Denise was not expecting that. Denise's expression was that of utter shock, and though it was replaced in an instant by a snide demeanor, Chloe still saw it. She knew she had her.

"Oh, for Christ's sake," Denise said, trying not to sound cowed and almost managing it. "Time travel?"

"I had a talk with Nathan Prescott the other day," Chloe said. "He said that the richest families in the Pacific Northwest get together at a resort in Astoria, do rich people shit, and tell each other stories about what they'd do if they got control of The Traveler. The Girl Who Will Break the World. Last time I checked, the Leonards were one of the richest families in this part of the country. Are you saying you don't know about The Myth of the Traveler?"

Denise blinked. "You came into my home with a ghost story told to you by a crackpot like Nathan Prescott. I feel foolish for even liking you, let alone paying you."

"So you know Nathan," Chloe said. "Tell me The Myth of the Traveler, Denise."

Denise didn't say anything.

"Um, let's see," Max said. "There's the part about…"

"No," Chloe said to Max before turning to Denise. "You know I've got you, Denise. You can think that none of this will stick all you want, but don't pretend to be an idiot. It cheapens us both."

Denise folded her arms. "By the sea, a girl will break the world. She will go back when others go forward, and she will pass through portals unseen. She will tear the sky. She will sunder the waves. She will bring the wind to shore beneath a fiery, watchful eye."

"See, Sean Prescott thought that what was gonna go down with The Traveler was gonna go down in Arcadia Bay. And you believed him, or came to the same conclusion on your own. Y'know, I'm willing to bet it was your idea for Leonard International to set up shop in The Bay in the first place. There's nothing here. This place is a shithole."

Denise nodded gravely. Chloe continued.

"I'm thinking your original plan was to give Trainor and The Bull to the FBI, and they'd roll over on their crew to save their own asses. Everyone goes to jail, and you're the only one left standing. But then you found out about Jennifer's power, and built a new plan. Because if Trainor and The Bull died instead of all of their guys going to prison, then you could scoop those guys up. Why not? It'd be cheaper then hiring new people, and you could get 'em at a discount. It's not like The Bull's goons are just gonna give up being criminals and go work at Wal-Mart."

"How is it you think that I found out about Jennifer?" Denise asked. "And how would she factor into things?"

"I'm glad you asked," Chloe said. "You hacked her personal accounts with the same corporate technology you gave to the FBI, and found that Twitter DM she sent to her friend Troy. You said so yourself that every corporation has their own hacking and counter-hacking software, so hacking the accounts of every teenage girl in Arcadia Bay wouldn't be much of a stretch. Hell, you probably hacked my phone. I mean, I text Max, saying I'm gonna meet her at the hotel. I show up and you're there to give me the key to the evidence shed at Big Bob's Storage. That's the only way you would have known I'd be there. As for how she figured into your plans, there's this one part in The Myth of the Traveler about "passing through portals unseen."

Chloe reached into her jacket pocket and took out the photographs of Jennifer Healy that she'd gotten from the evidence shed. She placed them on the desk in front of her.

"Photos," Chloe said. "She could travel through time using photos. So you pick her up. You keep her drugged during the day so she doesn't use her power to start any shit. Then every night, at eleven fifty-nine PM, you take a picture of her. And if a shipment got jacked by The Bull that day, you told her about it. Then you send her back through the previous night's photo and she gives you the information about the jacked shipment. See, The Bull was pulling out his hair about a mole in his crew feeding Leonard International information to get those jacked shipments back. I thought it was Trainor, but I was wrong. There was no mole, and you didn't need one. You had a time traveler who could tell you what was going to happen before it happened. And because each photo was taken before the next night's incoming rewind…"

Max finished the thought for her. "Then the number of rewinds keeps getting stuck at one. That's why there are no eclipses or beached whales. That's why there's no storm coming."

Denise looked confused. "Beached whales?"

"Before the storm," Max said, "there's a bunch of weird shit like that in the days leading up to it. It's like a countdown timer."

"And how would you know that?" Denise asked.

"Yeah, I kinda… sorta… broke the world five years ago."

Any veneer that Denise had had on her face vanished completely. She was dumbfounded. "What?"

"Don't worry," Max said. "I fixed it."

"So with all this in play," Chloe said, "you had Margarita Newman killed so she wouldn't stumble on anything or ask questions. But you didn't count on Justin. He was a low-level street dealer, but he could still raise a stink, what with his girlfriend and her half-sister disappearing. He may not have had enough power to threaten The Bull with his questions, but Trainor likely would have heard about it. He worked at Leonard International, too. So he goes to you, tells you there's this guy on the periphery causing trouble, and you take this as an opportunity to make things confusing. You have Trainor kill Justin, then you kill Trainor to get rid of the witness. The Bull, with his best friend dead and his drug shipments getting stolen, gets angry and throws his weight around in public ways that could get him either arrested or killed."

"This still doesn't explain why I would hire you to solve all of this," Denise said. "Why would I pay you to put all this together if I'm the one who did it?"

"Because you didn't plan on me," Chloe said. "You didn't count on Trainor attempting to pin Justin's death on anyone, because it was just a conventional hit. But he tried to pin it on me. Since I was now on the board, you figured you might as well use me. So you put me to work as a detective. The only way I'd be able to factor you into this at all would be if I knew about time travel, and being as you couldn't reasonably assume that, you wound me up and turned me loose. My involvement was a win-win for you no matter what happened. Either I expose The Bull and get him killed, or I get killed myself and you'd have Max to connect the dots because you knew I'd tell her everything."

"Which you did," Max said.

"A famous photographer comes in and raises Hell about her ex-girlfriend getting whacked by The Bull. With that kind of visibility, his deal with the FBI vanishes and he goes up for killing me. But he didn't, and in your version of a perfect world, I'd be there to draw the FBI a picture of what went down. There were these photos of Jennifer in the evidence shed. Photos you planted there, you having the key to the shed in the first place. You wanted me to believe that Trainor kidnapped Jennifer, and if I'd called you and told you about The Bull dying tonight, then you'd have killed Jennifer and had her body come up tomorrow morning because you wouldn't need her anymore. Most likely with the same gun that killed Trainor. At which point everything would have looked like a complicated mess. Everything would have pointed to everyone else. But with Jennifer and Margarita dead, there would be no one to rescue. With The Bull, Trainor, and Justin dead, there would be no one to prosecute. No headline means no one in a position of power would care. Justin looks like the bad guy in hindsight, getting into gangster shit and dragging Margarita and Jennifer down with him. And yeah, the FBI would raise a stink about two of their informants getting popped, but it wouldn't be a big one, and they'd go away eventually. All that's left would be you. You and the drugs that you now had complete control over."

Denise took a page out of the Villainy 101 textbook and did a slow-clap.

"Well done," Denise said. "But you do realize that my getting punished in any way for my transgressions relies upon you bringing time travel into a courtroom."

"Oh, I don't have to," Chloe said. "I just have to prove you kidnapped Jennifer, and everything else falls into place."

Chloe held up the check that Denise had just written her.

"You know I can stop payment on that, right?" Denise asked.

"It's a personal check," Chloe said. "It's not a Leonard International check. I get the notion that you use your own money on your extracurriculars instead of company money."

Chloe reached onto the desk and picked out the photo of Jennifer Healy in a sundress that had caught her eye that morning. She pointed to the waist of the dress in the photo.

"See that?" Chloe asked. "That's a tag from the shop the dress was bought from. All of the clothes that Jennifer is wearing in these photos are new. You used those clothes as a cataloguing system to go along with the dates on the photos. If your personal accounts get subpoenaed, and they find the purchases of any of the clothes in these photos… then you are going to prison for a very long time."

Denise picked something out of the corner of her eye. She seemed deflated. "So what are you going to do, Chloe? Call the cops?"

"Oh, no," Chloe said. "You own half of them. And kidnapping's a federal crime anyway, so I called the FBI. They should be here in… what time is it?"

Max checked her phone. "Eleven fifty-one PM," she said.

"In nine minutes," Chloe said. "So here's how it's gonna go down. You, me, Max, and Rutger here are gonna go upstairs. You're gonna change your clothes, because I don't think you want to go to lock-up in a silk robe. Then you're gonna take us to wherever in this house Jennifer Healy is at. Then the five of us are gonna go outside and wait for the FBI, at which point you'll give them Jennifer and tell them everything you've done. Then maybe, just maybe, you'll spend some of your life in prison instead of the rest of it. You may be rich, and you may have an in with the Feds, but with two murders, a conspiracy to commit a third, kidnapping, and a bunch of drug and hacking charges, nothing is gonna save you from what happens next."

Denise broke eye-contact with Chloe. She diverted her attention to her hands on the desk and sighed, before looking at Max.

"You know," Denise said, "just because your girlfriend has made my life considerably more difficult for the foreseeable future, that doesn't mean I'm not still a great admirer of your work."

Max had her angry-face on, and seemed to be weighing two separate but equally satisfying responses to Denise's statement, before she finally settled on…

"Eat… shit… and die."