The Science of Deduction
"Songs of Solomon"
They're not bad houses on this block. LA might not be like every town, but it has its moments. A hard working, steady upper management job and you might end up here. They're two and three bedroom homes. Career couples that met on a company retreat, married in Bermuda, raise up a small family that's manageable for working parents. Settle down to a collection of classy post card picket fences that you'd be happy to pay a mortgage on. The place reeked of housewives, PTA, and neighborhood associations. Pot lucks, borrowing a neighbor's lawn mower. Over all, it's not a bad life to live. Not every person in this city wants to be famous, not every person a never-was.
The trouble you find in this part of town is underneath the surface. Hidden secrets covered by drawn curtains and brick walls that snuff the noise of domestic violence, volatile marriages, infidelity, child abuse, and bankruptcy. All played as idle gossip discussed by those you trust and content never to do anything. They're the family down the street, the ones who throw the Christmas party every year, afraid of the bitten apple that might force them from their own Gardens of Eden. There were secrets behind these picket fences. On the streets and back alleys, all the places these people fear, it's not hard to see what's being hidden. The quested truth was luminous for those who sought it. When you have nothing, there is no loyalty, and nothing to lose. But trying to unearth something in a place like this would take more than a cigarette and a threat. They don't smoke, and they have rights … and how they like to remind you of them. The cops in this division like to count them, just to make themselves crazy some nights. When called to this area they can get nothing done, because of all the rights these people have.
Take Rodney Alexander, fifty-six, two girls, and a wife. He's middle management at the electric company, working nine to five every day for twenty four years, pension in three. His wife and eldest daughter run a day-care from their home. Every mayoral and City Council candidate would look at this man and tell his voters that he was who Los Angeles could be. He's the model citizen that every politician strives for their community to someday look like. It's not their fault that they don't know what's in this man's heart. The model citizen that comes home, perpetually pissed off at the world. He's slamming doors, gritting smiles for the straggler parents, making underhanded comments that are borderline rude. When they're gone he sneers and cusses at his wife, screams at his daughters.
He's bored with his life, frustrated about the way it went. The only way he feels better about himself is sitting out in his garage every night, blasting his rock music with a beer in hand, and chomping on a lit cigar. It's the pounding of the music, the flagrant defiance in aggression from the alcohol. All of it makes him feel alive. Rodney waits for someone to come and get him. He lives for a well-meaning neighbor to come and ask nicely for him to turn down his racket. He'll blow smoke at them, cuss, and use his bulk to intimidate till their gone. He just wants to know he still has it, that the bar hoping hell-raiser was still in there. One 'fuck you' to the cops that come for sound ordinance and he can delude himself that he's still every bit the young man who took a part time job to pay for a baby he didn't really want.
"Do you fucking see me … does it look like I want to be fucking bothered?! Huh?!"
A slim young blond stood in the corner, a tear in her eye. She wears a UCLA cheer t-shirt, short shorts, and a perfect tan. She should be a picture of a strong female role model, and to many she was. But here and now, in this home, in this moment her eyes are big and glassy. The young girl is hunched and her demeanor was demure and frightened. The raising of this violent man's voice melted fifteen years off her, and she cowered in its echo through the garage as if she was a little girl again.
"You make me pay for all your shit, you make me pay for your so called fucking education, and what do you do with it? You dress like a slut and shake pomp-pomps for TV cameras! Is that what my money pays for?! Huh?! Now what do you want?! Isn't that enough?!"
The overweight man roared at his youngest girl. He'd regret saying this in the morning, but right now it felt so good to tell her what he really felt. The single tear that fell down her cheek only made him angrier. She was eating him alive, and all she can do is cry when confronted? Who did she take him for?
Suddenly his pounding music was cut off as something swished by. He felt the ice cold of his beer spew over his fist as his radio buzzed and crackled behind it. He looked down and saw that something had knifed through his hard aluminum can like butter and imbedded into his radio speaker. A four pointed metal object in the shape of the North Star was dug deeply within his stereo. In the metal weapon's center was a glowing jewel that blue electrical charges arced out from. Alexander and his daughter watched as the webs of electricity bounced down the cord and into the plug. Overhead the garage light buzzed on and off before the fluorescents suddenly exploded. The man stood out of his seat while the girl yelped as the brittle pops resulted in the world growing dark.
"What the fuck …?" The man whipped beer off his big hand as he leaned over to see the sleek star embedded in his sound equipment.
"You're good at bullying little girls, but let's see how you do in a fair fight."
Eyes swept angrily toward a figure standing in the Alexander drive-way. The stranger was tall and athletic, and wore a vintage double breasted coat of beaten leather, his hands in the pockets. In the cold breeze of the Pacific night, locks of grown out curls and a dark scarf fluttered to one side. Though his eyes weren't visible, Rodney could feel them look right through him.
"Wha … what the fuck do you want?!" Sudden fear was compensated with bravado.
The man gave a tilt of his head that seemed almost inherited. "You heard me, you fat slob." The man baited darkly. His voice was just raspy enough to make the big man think twice about his entitled suburban tone.
This was all Rodney Alexander dreamed of for five years. Someone had finally come for him. He'd get his chance to prove to himself that at any time he could turn on that buddy-buddy college kid heading to Santa Clara on Saturday night. But he was the victim of the old caution to those that wish for something.
What came over Alexander was very primal to all animals that live on this planet. This middle age man wanted to fight, but he wanted a fight with someone on his level. He wanted a fight where he knocked a guy down, threatened him, and felt smug with his opponent limping back home to the scorn of pride. The shadow standing on his driveway knew nothing of this type of fight. He felt the prickle on the back of his neck, the anxiety in his chest, and the feeling of inhuman eyes on him. This stranger was looking for a real fight. He wasn't settling for a squabble with neighbors, police getting called, wives separating opponents. This man was a predator from a different time, which fought and believed in values and rules that stood apart from the contemporary. When this man fought, he'd settle for nothing less than total annihilation …
He'd settle for blood.
The large man had enough sense to puff up his chest. He'd show his size in a last ditch effort to scare off the shadow. But eyes hard and sharp continued to glimmer in the dim star light. They felt like a knife to his throat as they waited. There was enough lard, piss, vinegar, and a whole host of unhappy yesterdays in the tank for the combustion needed to fool Rodney into thinking he wasn't a complete coward.
So he'd take the first swing.
"Male, fifties, five'eleven, at least three-hundred pounds. Cigar and beer, blue collar, prides himself on being a real man, typical bar brawler. His bravado, taste in music, and temper means haymaker. Sub for height, weight, and beer hand. The blow is coming at three quarters to the right. He's aiming for the jaw. Chop block to deflect. Heavy drinker, black circles, yellow tinted eyes, and swelling on his side. Counter with body shot to bulge, got to be swollen liver. Cigar, stained teeth, flab, desk jock. Use lighting combination to break lower ribs, hard enough to puncture clogged lung, keep him from lifting that arm. Trap desperate Jab, flip … break."
Rodney Alexander reared back at the man as he charged in a trot to build momentum. He let fly a powerful haymaker that was fueled by all the fear and primal anger of the situation he was in. Almost immediately his opponent, keeping a solid center, tilted his body away and countered with a chopping hand at the oncoming arm. The counter made contact with the heavy man's wrist at the apex of the coming strike over the silhouette's shoulder, shifting control.
Redirecting Alexander's momentum, his opponent drifted him right into a compressed punch that ripped into the man's side with all the speed of a striking serpent. The boisterous drunk, who had so many things to say to everyone in this neighborhood, now choked on his pain as it surged like a tsunami through his shocked body.
Chest now open, the experienced fighter's hands were a blur of slamming lightening punches that beat into the larger man's rib area. The sound of fist to flesh was like the hard thunks of bare knuckles against wet meat, and just as painful. Alexander gave violent coughs at the assault on his abused respiratory system. With a traumatized liver and punctured lung, he was left with no alternative for fighting back but to use his rarely needed left to jab, desperately trying to create space.
But his hard jab missed when his opponent side stepped the blow. A disturbingly painful noise of buckling bones echoed into the night when the man suddenly trapped Alexander's arm within both of his. As if in steps of a choreographed dance that only one of the fighters rehearsed for, the vigilante slipped a leg between both of the larger man's. Applying pressure, he reversed on the larger with all their combined weight. With a hoarse gasp of surprise, Rodney was swung over the shadow fighter's shoulder and slung down on the cement. He coughed and wheezed as his shoulder crushed into the hard surface, his left arm still trapped above him in his opponent's hold.
CRUNCH!
Rodney hooted and gasped, kicking his heels into the pavement. With one violent action his hand had been twisted the wrong way and his arm was collapsed on. The stranger released the broken limbs that fell limply over the defeated Alexander's broad chest. There was a second spine tingling munch, when the shadow dropped a knee down hard on the large boisterous family man's arm, cradled against his chest. Sobs of intense pain were quieted with a vicious and barbarous ferocity of the beating that came after. Teeth and sinew arced into the air as the sharp eyed shadow rocketed one beating fist after another.
The blood roared in the vigilante's ear. Rage filled his eyes as he pounded on the man. The dark of the cold night, the feeling of cracked cement under tread, and the hovering of aircraft over the skyline were all reminders of a world he came from. The violence of the self-imposed justice of a ruined time period that was only the flutter of a butterfly's wings away. Rodney Alexander could've died that night, and in any other world he would've. But the ambiance of car engines beyond, the far off searchlights of a movie premiere gliding over the open crimson night sky, and the glint of a knife reminded this vigilante that he wasn't home.
The shadow of a horrific tomorrow halted his barbaric beating and looked up from the twitching fat man as a predator would its prey in the African bush. The girl had an old army knife and pointed it defensively at the man. It was a half-hearted threat. She nearly fell when he stood to full height and took a step forward. Buckets and a lawn mower rattled as she stumbled backward. When he halted, their eyes met. And for all of the surgical savagery of the short lived fight, somehow, the young woman knew that he wasn't going to hurt her.
"Is … is he dead? Did you kill him?" She pieced out with a terrified stutter.
The vigilante was even toned. "No …" He replied honestly. "But It would've been more humane." He stepped over the broken fat man like he was a pile of dog shit. With a tug he pulled his throwing star from the fried sound equipment.
The girl paused, still holding her grandfather's knife at him from a distance. "Did you cripple him?" She asked in shock of his calm candor and the guilty feeling of hope in the answer she waited on.
As if her father could answer, he moaned. The man with the sharp eyes looked down. "Only if he slacks off in rehab …" He turned and matched a glance with the girl, before his eyes trailed up her body. It made her feel uncomfortable. It was like he could see all her secrets, could see the things she was hiding. Her bruises, the deflated self-worth, and the prescription drugs not in her name to deal with it all.
"Imagine what you could do with a year and half while he toddles and spits in Pescadero." He left her with that image as he turned his back on her.
Pushing back his coat sleeve, the man swiped a finger over a metallic bracelet on his wrist. Suddenly, their world was illuminated neon. A miniature holographic screen the size of a smart phone appeared above his wrist. She watched in amazement of this futuristic technology as he swiped and move things on the screen with just his finger. Crackling and snapping was underlain with disembodied voices on radio frequencies that were classified to the public. She watched the neon holographic sound waves coursing up and down on screen as dispatchers directed police cars all around the metropolis. The shadow's voice was modulated when he spoke into the sleek bracelet.
"KGPL, this is 5-ADAM-11, requesting back-up at 9319 Europa, 217 in progress, over."
The vigilante paused and turned back toward the girl. Her eyes were wide as the night was filled with static from a police radio. She looked back and forth between the man and her father. She was conflicted for only a moment. Memories, hurtful names, and the way she felt when she saw what had been done to her father. All of them washed over her. Every night afraid of being yelled at, all the work done just to show how much she loved him, and how many times he sent her to "Bother your fucking mother." Her heart was weighed down like an anchor when flashes of the ridicule, the hair pulling, and dragging her out of the dorms by her shirt to finish his drunken screaming when she walked away from him.
These were all the reasons that the young cheerleader lowered her grandfather's knife.
"5-ADAM-11, KGPL, assistance in route, over."
There was a long minute of silence before either one of them spoke. "I've never seen anything like that before." The girl offered gently, pushing blond locks behind her ear demurely. She stood in the cold with starry blue eyes whose shine didn't wear as the world turned dark as the holo-screen blinked out. The vigilante felt a pang of loathing. The cheerleader's father would be eating out of a straw for the next year and a half in Pescadero for mental trauma from the beating. And all this young woman could do was look at this handsome stranger like she might be in love.
There was a time he had lived for that look from people, especially pretty girls. There was a time it made him feel something. There was reassurance in those grateful glances, a flicker of relevance like he was doing the right thing. It was a sense of purpose that went beyond the obsession that pushed him into this life of violence. But tonight it made him feel bitter and jaded. This wasn't justice; it wasn't what heroes did. They didn't beat on people to make the means justify the ends. But then he wasn't a hero anymore was he? Heroes were the ones who died, cowards where the ones that survived, and the villains … the villains where the ones that couldn't let go.
He brushed past the blond and into the dark. The girl followed him a few paces, before the sound of a siren echoed down the silent neighborhood. She stopped and listened for a beat. When she returned the stranger was gone.
By the time Ryan Connor had cut across the block, scaling fences, the police cruiser that stood guard in front of James Ellison's home had switched on their bubble gum lights. Perched on the fence, like a silent gargoyle on the thirteenth floor, his handsome face was shadowed by the flashes of red and blue. He watched the black and white pull out to respond to the 217 in progress a block away. When they were gone he slipped into the yard in a crouch.
"What the hell?"
From the minute he landed on the turf, he saw that the entire lawn had been all but torn up. There were over fifty holes and punctures all over the backyard. Sharp eyes immediately became suspicious. The piercings and probing were in efficient patterns that if gridded properly covered the entire volume of the yard. Only a machine could be so precise. Sticking a hand down into the dirt, he took ahold of the loose grassy clumps, rubbing the soil in hand. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully letting sod and turf fall in granulated powder between his fingers. This had been done months ago, at the beginning of Ellison's infection. From the minimum of damage or excavation it looked like Ellison was other about to put in a pool or 'the world's worst lawn service' didn't find what they were looking for.
Keeping low to gravity, the man glided soundlessly under the sightlines of the upper floors of the neighbors' homes, using the back fence to screen his movement. Years of fighting in the darkest of the most dangerous places and warzones in a ruined world of tomorrow had made seeing and moving in the dark all muscle memory and old training for the vigilante. Ryan Connor would sooner forget his own name before he'd lose a Ranger's instincts and other skills taught to him by a taskmaster father in the finesse art of sneaking in and out of heavily populated and guarded areas.
The FBI agent's white railed back porch was decorated with a grill, lawn chairs, and a yellowed book of Sudoku word puzzles. The book was meant to put the period on a lazy summery of a busy professional. It might have worked too if it wasn't for the fact that the grill looked recently used. The charcoal stains were relatively fresh and the grease was yet to calcify. There had been four chickens and two links of sausage on the grill as late as a week ago. It seemed that someone was having a cookout for two. If he needed more evidence of that, all he had to do was look at the twin lawn chairs around the tables. While the one facing the inside of the house looked dingy and weather worn, the second one looked newly bought in anticipation of new company. The chair had its back pushed against the wall, giving the user a strategic look of the yard around them. It was a strange and paranoid quirk for a guest of a downhome backyard cook-out.
There was no sound as the shadowed figure walked across the white planks toward the small table. He picked up the yellowed and worn Sudoku book in the center, eyeing the new chair. He leafed through the book in the dark, eyes forming a glare the more he read. Each crinkled and stiff page, deteriorated by exposer, had been filled out completely. Every puzzle had been solved with neat flawless handwriting with a purple gel pen. That was the biggest oddity of everything. While James Ellison was certainly not a man who used purple gel pens, more to the point, no normal person used a pen to play the game. The mistakes that will eventually happen while trying to solve puzzles will need an eraser. Only someone completely sure of their answers would be able to play with a pen. As for the condition of the book, it could be explained by the small black printing on the back that said that it had been produced in the year 2007, nearly two years ago. The cheap paper, made for throw away impulse supermarket aisle buys, would surely start to degrade by now. Only helped along by someone who had already began prepping its condition before the murder.
Someone was trying really hard to sell the picture of a lonely, time crunched, professional, too stressed to notice he was killing himself. And with the absences of crime scene tape, it looked like they were succeeding in pulling the wool over the LAPD's eyes. It also didn't help that the eight percent police pay raise in Proposition 14 was voted down last week in favor of more environmental restriction. All of it culminating in the bitter, disinterested, shoddy, and non-existent police work here. Whoever the killer was, had as much inside ball on future events as he did and timed all of this perfectly to coincide with the LAPD's "Schrodinger's strike" they would be on for the next several months. In his mind's eye, Ryan felt the chess board already setting up between the killer and himself. Both their moves and counters based on their preconceived notions of a board only partially lit in a dark room.
It wasn't the first time, though it would be the last that lock picking tools flipped the bolts on James Ellison's back door. But what happened next was a phenomenon that could never be explained. It didn't happen often in the world, call it an anomaly, the damage from the flames of a great war through time and space. But as the shadow opened the door and walked through the thresh hold, there was a sparked flicker through quantum atoms in the ripples of time.
For a moment, just a breath's second, when Ryan Connor shut the door behind himself it turned afternoon. While on the other side of this tear in space time, a woman closed the same door and found it night time. Both rugged man and regal woman turned and came face to face. A sliver of moonlight gashed the man's scarred eye through the blinds, while a sliver of sunlight gashed the woman's from those same blinds. Even with the skin tones, stubble, and gender separating them aesthetically, it was still like looking in a strange funhouse mirror. Both man and woman had the same sharp emerald eyes, same grown out locks of black curls, same bone structure, and way of carrying one's self. Neither ghostly apparition flinched in one another's presence, even when inches apart, because in a blink the tear closed.
It was rare in the timeline of the universe that the exact same action would happen twice as it had before two years prior. But it could only get worse as the time fields between past, present, and future scab over from the damage caused by the terrible destructive weapon created in the final days of the last great war of the future. Its maker was a vengeful mechanical god, enraged by the murder of a little girl who had been his only friend. The rips and tears created by this artificial minds rage and fear of a second death would take six generations before they'd patch themselves. For now, as was the case for most, Ryan and Sarah Connor, separated by two years, would only ponder it for a second before forgetting anything ever happened.
The detective made sure that all of the blinds were closed and curtains were shut. Then with a click, a beam of light lit the pitch black of the homely house buried in obscure suburbia. Emerald eyes followed the beaten chrome plated flashlight's spotlight over table and desk tops.
He started in the living room to find it dusty and lived in. James Ellison was a man who spent much of his time here and less in his bedroom. If Ryan didn't know that Ellison was a divorced man, than he would've by now. Magazines and newspaper were stacked next to DVD remote, Christian Science Monitor, The Examiner, and Atlanta Magazine. Was he home sick? Or was it a longing to see something familiar? A bought and paid for six dollar round trip down memory lane to a time before James Ellison knew about the machines?
Ryan wondered what it must have been like to never know about Judgment Day, to believe that all of this, the world, would stay the same forever. It must have been nice … till it wasn't. Till you realize when you're family is dead and a grinning metal skeleton rips out your friend's spine that it all was a lie. There weren't many times, but there were moments that Ryan Connor was glad to be who he was and know what he did.
A foreign object glimmered in the flashlight beam. It was on the left side of Ellison's brown tweed couch. It was a glass of stale water sitting on an end table. He examined it for a long moment and turned his attention to the other objects on the coffee table. The magazines, newspapers, coasters, and entertainment remotes were on the right, next to the recliner. Even his television was angled for a right side view. If Ellison was right handed and had a recliner, he wouldn't be sitting on the left side of his couch.
A grim smirk touched the vigilante's face.
Reaching into his pocket, the man clicked off his flashlight, and extracted a small laser. Pointing the bulbous neon pen light at the glass he clicked it on. A blue laser began trailing over the glass up and down like a grocery store scanner. Slowly, yellowed splotches appeared, and what was the promise of finger prints turned into washed out smudges. When the detective turned the flashlight back on he found a white ring around the bottom of the cup. One sip of the water glass and he could taste the salt and preservatives from the ice makers of the time period. The glass had been filled to the brim with water and ice. Slowly melting in room temperature, the liquid over spilled within hours, washing away any finger prints.
"Touché." Ryan muttered, feeling as if he had just had his intelligence severely insulted by hoping that the killer would be that stupid.
But, even let down, he'd still not give up so easily on the ability of finding something. Walking around from behind the couch, Ryan stuffed his hands in between the cushions. Two French fries and twelve cents hadn't bought him any clues. But the whiff of something familiar made him pause. It was the same sweet sent that had made everything in his brain to go fuzzy in the Central City Morgue. The intoxicating smell of femininity and silk made him heady and overcome with emotion. He knew that perfume. Not only because the scent had lingered on James Ellison's collar when they found his body, but because now that it was stronger, he could identify in a moment of clarity that it was the same perfume his mother used to wear.
Ryan crouched in front of the sofa and smelt the back rest cushions. A single tear fell involuntarily. It had been so long since he had last smelled the scent. It felt like a slap to his nostalgia, a sudden attack of sentimentality. It hurt more than anyone could fathom, to be reminded in a split second of all that was taken from a small boy, who buried those memories rather than let them fester inside him. Nothing hurt more than being reminded after all the years of heart ache, that once, long ago, Ryan Connor had been happy.
His chest heaved as he paced away from the couch before everything he thought he had suppressed drowned him in old wounds. Quietly he breathed hard and tried to push past blank golden eyes staring at the dark ceiling. He tried to forget the feeling of a satin night slip's smooth material under his palm. And the sight of pooling blood and wires on the living room rug. They were all the images he associated with his mother, and tried to reach back farther to the truth, to the relevancy of the case.
When he pushed his emotions back into the old dusty box, he remembered that It was a perfume that his momma … mother, didn't wear often, expensive, meant to last. A gift from someone from a Christmas long before he was born. A woman in a dark suede jacket, and matching scarf and black hair flashed to mind suddenly, but was lost eventually. Unless the killer was ultra-wealthy she would only wear something that expensive for special occasions, like his mother. A grilled meal, seductive perfume … the killer was here for one hell of a sendoff before Ellison took a cruise down The Styx. It was just too bad for Jimmy that all of the Boatmen's faire was in between the cushions.
Ryan gave one final whiff of the back rest, savoring the last hazy images of a teenage girl standing in front of the bathroom mirror. A curling iron was in her hand, the forever young beauty explaining to a very small boy, watching from his perch on the bathroom counter, why hair was the hardest thing to get right. After allowing just a moment longer in all the old memories, he left the living room and chose to forget that period of his life ever existed.
While the girl's physical form had left his mind, her voice hadn't. Though, it wasn't the ever frustrating paradox of hair styling that was on her lips. It was a matter of a much more relevant tangle to brush out, the science of deduction and fundamentals of solving a murder.
It had often been asked throughout the war why John Connor needed a partner and more to a point why he needed an arrogant, fearless, and reckless kid like Ryan. It was for the very reason that the now grown man had been ignoring for over two decades of trying and failing to fill the boots of the impossible. John Connor needed Ryan because the hero of humanity was the big plan guy, the inspiration, the global offensive coordinator. John needed Ryan because he needed a human prospective, he needed someone who saw and enjoyed the little things … John Connor needed a detective to replace his wife.
For so long Ryan had been asking the big "how" of a twenty eight year old serial killer case that caused the world to end, but not the "why" that was essential. Why was James Ellison the first victim? What did he have that she wanted? Where did she kill him? And who was it that wanted this item so bad? All questions summed up in one.
"Who gains?"
The first stop would be James Ellison's computer. He had seen a desk coming into the house. But when he reached the old, dusty cherry wood he found nothing but piles of open bibles and walls filled with old family pictures. Ryan picked the holy books up and read highlighted passages. "Solomon's Song", "Samson and Delilah", "Bathsheba". Each story involved the lust for a woman, the sins committed by men of power to possess her, and God's punishments and other sacrifices endured to keep her.
Conclusion: The man was having some serious women trouble.
"What did you give up, Jimmy Boy? What'd you give to keep her?" He muttered dropping the last bible back on the desk.
The only other place that James Ellison would keep his computer would be in the bedroom. The flashlight led the way into a smaller side hallway covered still by pictures. There was a semi-recent picture of little girls on bikes. Below it was a black and white of three old women in rocking chairs on a Sharecropper's porch. Two little boy's shirtless and in overalls carrying blocks of ice down a dusty Depression era country road. James Ellison was a collector of family history, proud of the places and roots that got him here. The advice he sought came from the bibles …but the crippling guilt came from all the faces of generations of Ellison's on his wall he felt he was letting down. From the backbreaking cotton fields of old Georgia, to heroism on the Cuban battlefields of the Spanish-American War, and finally to the parents who watched their son graduate from law school. In a strange way Ryan empathized with James Ellison, knowing of a legacy he could never live up to and constantly knew he had failed. They were two men going back to what they knew for comfort, Ellison his religion, Connor his gun and magnifying glass.
The bedroom was neat, tidy, and organized. There was something off about it. Judging by the living room and what the killer had wanted them to think of the busy professional. It was odd that out of all the places in the house, it was Ellison's bedroom that the man kept tidy. Sometimes in detection it was what wasn't there that was as effective as what was. The killer wanted to hide something that happened here. Perfume, barbeque, "Song of Solomon", he'd be truly perplexed … if he was five years old.
Before he could ponder what exactly was being hidden here, he found what he was looking for. In the corner of the master bedroom was a mini-desk with a flat screen, keyboard, and a tower underneath. The man sat in Ellison's office chair for a long moment. He flipped on the tower and heard the wire of the ancient computer that made Ryan Connor, a time traveler yet to be born, feel like he was in the Stone Age. Seeing the white text on the black backdrop, he simply shook his head. While he waited for the boot up he took a look at what was on the man's desk. It was paper work and inquiries into the security system, and clearances of guards at Serrano Point. It seems he had been looking at the potential meltdown that had happened nearly a year ago. Ryan marveled how herculean a task it would take to rally Ellison in catch up from how many steps he was behind the rest of the world he had been inducted into since North Hollywood.
When the black and white screen stayed, the man read what it actually said. His sharp eyes narrowed in the sudden clarity. The computer informed the detective that it couldn't be booted up because it was missing the drives. The man hit his knees and flashed his dented chrome light on the inner workings of the old computer. Someone had ripped the drives out. Reaching into his coat pocket of beaten leather, he pulled out a coin looking chip. Slapping it onto the tower, a blue light started to flash on the metal device. Pushing his sleeve back, he brought up his holographic screen.
"Run forensic reconstruction of database."
On the black and white screen source code began appearing horizontally and running in rows like a river of futuristic data. On the holo-screen the entire desk top of James Ellison's computer appeared. "Run diagnostic on last viewed data." He ordered.
Certain icons on the desk top began disappearing. Finally there were just two. "Zeira Corp. Employee List" and "Zeira Corp. Work Schedules." Though the man wouldn't be able to access the files without the drivers, he knew now what Ellison had given his killer. Not just his security access, but the means, and the intelligence to start making moves that would cost not only his mother and a little girl their lives, but the whole world's.
"You dumb fucking bastard." He growled in disgust.
Who was this woman, this monster, who had branded her name on his life, on his family's lives long before he had ever been born? This woman who seduced and killed her way into the fabric of fate and destiny? Who took from men and women all that was precious and demanded more and more till she broke them, like James Ellison, Like Savannah Weaver, like his mother? Did she want anything, or did she do it because she could? Pension for violence, religious fanatic, or just likes the idea of fire and ice. Ryan Connor could and had superimposed her face onto every enemy he had ever fought and it didn't make him feel any better. Because he wasn't any closer to finding her, to finding what she wanted. So he'd follow her sex and lies, the scent of expensive perfume and blood to its logical last destination right in front of him.
He shined light on the bed and tilted his head. There were wrinkles and ridges on the bedspread, the ends where crooked, and it looked like someone stuffed the sheets under the mattress. For all the masterful clean up and track covering of everywhere else, the killer seemed rushed to get out of the room, possibly get out of the house.
Strangely as he knelt next to the bed he began to smell a pungent odor in the air. The vigilante sniffed twice and crinkled his nose. It was a certain smell that he knew and hadn't forgotten in all his years in the tunnels. It was human urine. He turned the sheets over and found a yellowed spot on the left side of the bed sheets, just like the water on the end table. There was also the unmistakable scent of female ejaculation at different spots around the urine stain. He'd question just what exactly got James Ellison's lumber mill cutting when he noticed that the female ejaculate was older than the urine. The Killer had made violent love to Ellison, fell asleep, and pissed the bed. This woman killed people, killed children, and she was worried that someone would find out she still wet the bed?
The man shook his head and leaned down to pick up his flashlight that he left on the floor when something shiny glimmered in the light. Reaching underneath the bed, the man found something interesting. A female's double breasted trench coat was stuffed underneath amongst wiped away dust bunnies. Dumping it on the comforter, the man raised an eyebrow.
It wasn't just a woman's designer coat that was 32-24-32 in size. There was also a pair of pearly bikini panties made of satin that were wrapped inside of it. Ryan would be lying if he said he didn't feel a touch of shame for having to sniff the panty crotch. There was lingering must of a woman's arousal, but there were no pubic hairs. The only thing of note was that both coat and panties seemed almost doused in the perfume. They were possibly dumped so that the scent of the overpriced cat piss wouldn't linger on her skin or the items were too distinctive and noticeable if worn back to her haunt. It was becoming more and more likely to Ryan that this killer was moonlighting, hiding in plain sight amongst people that had no idea what she was doing. A classic infiltrator …
But non-the-less it was all dead ends again. The Woman's fluids couldn't produce DNA. While the coat, perfume, and silky panties seemed designer, like the clothing of a young woman possibly even a teenage girl who paid attention to contemporary youth fashion rags. All of it was clues to the killer's psychology, like the urine stain. But sadly the clothing seemed clean. All in all it was looking like a whole lot of nothing again …
That was, till he reached into the coat pocket.
It was an empty syringe. High quality not cheaply bought or produced by some two bit dope dealer on the Boulevard. Good plastic, industrial strength needle and the milligram counter on the side in clear black writing. While observing the item, finding what had to be the last dose of steroids given to Ellison that tipped him over into that long goodnight, he noticed a label on the bottom of the counter. Extracting his magnifying glass, Ryan Connor used the glimmer of moonlight through the blinds to read.
"That's interesting …"
Property of Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services