Man I write slow.
Part 5-
Wong looked distinctly out of place in the club. His neatly pressed
designer clothes were definitely unusual and the bartender looked
awfully amused when he ordered a Cosmopolitan before we found a seat
along the back wall. The club was mostly empty, with the droves of
people who usually filled it at work or staying in. The rain was pouring
down for yet another day.
I took a pull from my beer and looked up from my pile of paperwork. The
low muted sounds of a band warming up filled the background, but I was
focused on the papers on the small table between Wong and I.
"Is this really the right place for us to figure out what Mitchell is
doing?" Wong asked as he glanced at the door. A few clubbers were
entering, clothes plastic and shiny from the rain.
"No better place. I don't trust him and the last place he'd look for us
is this place." Besides, I was in dire need of a beer after the
firefight in Patrol Area 51. I knew several of the RDO's troops from my
grunt days. "Not your scene?"
"Not quite," he muttered as he took a sip from the pink beverage. He
shuffled through some of his papers as he sat the drink down. "Lets
start with what we know about Mitchell and go from there."
"A novel approach," I responded. "He's an asshole from Massachusetts,
USA. Nene dug up his doctoral thesis from Stanford," I muttered. I'd
seen Nene in the morning as I came into work. She'd managed to dig quite
a bit of stuff up on the NPD Inspector, and his paper on 'Cross-cultural
Similarities of Indigenous Religious Rites' was one of them.
"Interesting stuff," Wong said as he flipped through the pages. "How do
you manage to become a cop when you know six dead languages?"
"He started off in the Military." I watched Wong play with the lime in
his drink for a moment. "Nene couldn't find anything about those years,
no matter how hard she looked."
"Must have frustrated the shit out of her," Wong commented, putting the
paper down. "Awful weather we're having isn't it? Drizzled all day."
"Rainy season in Japan," I muttered. "I don't mind rain, but six
straight days is a little ridiculous. As soon as we get an interesting
case the sky opens up on us."
"By the way," Wong added as he turned on his PDA. The small screen lit
up and Wong tapped it a few times before handing it over to me. "The
boomer registry got back to us finally."
"What took them?" I asked as I glanced at the screen. It reported that
research boomer 10012-0170023 committed the murder of both Akuto and the
salesperson at Shiny-happy-fucking-robot place. Below this statement was
a bio of the boomer in question, which had been purchased by Miskatonic
University Library, outside of Arkham, MA. It had disappeared from there
around a month and a half ago.
"Interesting coincidence, don't you think?" Wong muttered as he took
another sip.
"No such animal," I muttered, remembering the line from somewhere. "Is
it his boomer?"
"Nope. It was purchased two months after Mitchell was transferred to
the Tokyo police. Did Nene find any of the transfer documents? That
would definitely shed some light on the reasons for Mitchell's presence
here." Wong pushed up his glasses and glanced across dance floor, which
was slowly filling as the evening progressed.
"Couldn't find them. Section 7 requested him specifically though," I
said, passing a paper back along with Wong's PDA. Wong glanced at it.
"A summary perhaps?" He asked. "I'll start. We have a rogue research
boomer that made it from the US to here and began killing and stealing.
A police inspector with a Doctorate who specializes in cult cases who
comes from the same area of the US as the boomer. And finally a series
of rogue boomers unlike anything I've ever seen before. Did I miss
anything?"
"Seems more or less right. You might want to add that the rogue boomers
seem flawed somehow. The first one in Gomi district lasted half as long
as the one from last night."
"True. Our research boomer must be making progress. Towards what I'm
not sure." Wong finished his Cosmo and rose to get another. "I'll be
back in a second."
Alone for the moment I watched the dancers as they started moving to
the band. The loud music was blasting through the speakers, a curious
mix of electronic and instrumental sounds. There didn't seem to be a
singer on stage. It was pretty good and I found myself tapping a finger
along to the beat.
It was loud enough that I didn't hear my phone ring until the six ring.
I picked it up, barely made out what was said through it and put it
away. I polished my drink off and waded through the people in the now
busy club towards the bar. Wong was just hanging up his phone when I
found him.
"We've got to go," I told him. He nodded and left, his Cosmopolitan
untouched. In the hot bar the glass had gathered a great deal of
condensation. Someone zipped by on a red motorcycle as we pulled out.
The drizzle had thickened up a notch and full-fledged raindrops were
splashing across the windshield as we pulled up to the newest crime
scene. I pulled my jacket up higher, the synthetic leather forcing the
water to roll off the coat. I was a little proud of how well it worked.
Wong was already talking to one of the officers on the scene and the two
walked into the small shop in front of us.
Already wet, I took a moment to look at the front of the shop. Roman
letters dotted the window, arranged in what the Japanese took to be
English but was unintelligible to any native speaker. What struck me was
how similar of a shop it was to Akuto's, even though it was on the other
side of the city. The neighborhood might as well be Gomi.
"Wong," I called out when I finally entered the room. The other man
looked up from his conversation for a moment. "We're in a book store."
"I know," Wong replied.
"Why, exactly?" I asked, taking great pains to keep my voice even. "I
got a call reporting the next burglary in the pattern."
"And it is. There was a survivor here, and when the first ADP boys
arrived he gave them a description that matched a research boomer. The
ADP Central Computer put two and two together and here we are."
Wong usually has a pretty good answer. It doesn't make it any easier
working with him, though. "So where's the witness?"
"Over here, sir," one of the grunts told me. He was referring to a
little old man sitting on a chair in the back room.
"Hello, sir," I began as I walked towards the rear of the store. The
old man was perched in a comfortable if old looking chair, with tables
loaded with books. It had been a very long time since I'd seen this many
books in one place, and coupled with the man's age and the darkness
outside the place had an archaic atmosphere that was almost
disconcerting. "I'm Leon McNichols, an ADP detective."
"I'm Kentetsu Shinji," the old man said, nervously wiping the thin gray
strands of hair out of his face.
"Well Kentetsu-san, I'm sure you've told your story already, but I'd
like you to tell myself and my partner the whole story, right from the
beginning." Wong had already made it over to us, a small recorder hidden
in his left hand.
"Certainly." The old man took a moment to compose himself, digging into
his pocket and coming out with a pipe and a bag of tobacco. With
practiced ease he stuffed the brown strands into the pipe and lit it
with a match. "It was a very odd thing to have happen at my age," he
muttered by way of a preface. "I was minding my store around an hour
ago, reading some manga to pass the time. Most people don't buy books
these days so I generally get repeat customers.
"A gentleman, or at least what I took to be a gentleman, came in. He,
sorry, it was wearing a long cloak and I couldn't see what it looked
like for a moment. It was raining so I wasn't took alarmed by the
cloak." The old man paused and pulled on the pipe. "I went over to help
but the thing ignored me. There was something strange about how the
thing moved but it seemed to be minding its own business so I went over
to the desk."
"What sort of books was it looking at?" Wong broke in.
"That section over there. Mostly obscure books on the Occult. Nothing
that sells," he added. "Since I'm pretty much the only bookstore in
Mega-Tokyo I carry just about everything." Wong went over and began
looking at the books, having secured the recorder on one of the nearby
tables.
"Go ahead Kentetsu-san," I prompted as the old man drifted off.
"He, I'm sorry again, it came over to the counter," Kentetsu gestured
to the counter behind us, "and I got this very strange feeling from it.
It darted forward and grabbed my arm, starting to pull me forward." I
looked at the man's wrist where a bandage wrapped around his forearm.
"The movement caused the cloak to fall and I saw the thing's face. It
was like a boomer with a cheap wax mask on but the feeling it gave me
almost cause my heart to fail." The old man's hand went unconsciously
to his chest and he continued.
"Then it just sort of stopped. The menace I felt from it ceased and the
thing acted scared and ran out of the store. I called the ADP almost
immediately and these fine gentleman showed up a couple of minutes
later."
I mused over the story for a moment, struck by the oddness of the
situation. The perp was acting in a bizarre manner, hitting a target
unlike the two previous ones. It was sticking to the same basic MO,
however, and that made me think it was up to basically the same thing.
Kentetsu had lucked out, as I was betting he would've ended up human
sashimi like Akuto and the other poor stiff.
"You're sure you didn't do anything to scare the boomer?" I asked.
"Anything at all? We've been trying to catch this thing for four days
and its killed a few times already. Whatever you can tell us will make
it easier for us to catch the thing."
"It grabbed me," Kentetsu said after a moment, eyes shut in
concentration. The pipe tobacco's smell tickled my nose. "Then I�made
the sign my mother used to make when she was scared."
"Your mother?"
"She was from Sapporo, part of an old Ainu family there. She'd make
this symbol with her left hand," he made a strangely intricate tracery
with his fingers, "when ever she got frightened."
I let that marinate for a moment before I spoke again. "Could you draw
this sign of yours out for me? I could be important to the case."
"Sure," Kentetsu stood and picked up a pen and a sheet of paper.
"Actually, you can write it here," I said, handing him my police PDA
and stylus. "Digital's easier for a police officer."
"Sorry," he muttered, putting the pen and paper down almost sheepishly.
"I forget that I'm one of the few paper lovers still around."
"Its quite all right," I responded.
Kentetsu held the stylus a little uncertainly over the blank page I had
keyed up. He started tracing an arrangement of his fingers, more like
the stroke order of a Chinese character than a simple hand sign. He grew
increasingly frustrated as he sketched it over again. "How can I erase
part of it?" he asked. I showed him, taking a glance at the picture he'd
drawn. It was a complicated arrangement of motions, with small clumps of
Japanese annotating the process.
"This is pretty impressive," I said when he finally handed it back to
me.
"I was a professor once," he said, "and I prided myself on being able
to explain things." He said it oddly, with a slight catch in his throat
that made me wish I hadn't said anything at all. "Unfortunately that's
not complete. I can seem to write down the process properly."
"Regardless, Kentetsu-hakase, you've been a great help."
"It's my pleasure. I hope you catch that ungodly machine. Nothing good
can come of its activities."
I picked up the recorder discreetly and stood, walking towards Wong and
his books. "Find anything interesting?" I asked.
"These books are fascinating," he muttered, his glasses hanging low on
his nose. "These are all reprints of texts dating back from a thousand
years ago. They're all considered frauds," he pointed to the forward of
one of the books he was holding. The title read Liber Ivonis and just
below was a disclaimer that dated back to the book's first printing in
1980.
"If those books can help you you're welcome to them," Kentetsu said
from his position behind the small counter across the room. "They've
been sitting on that shelf since I got them ten years ago."
"Thought they'd sell?" I asked.
"Didn't really care. I got the whole lot by mistake when a printing
house in America went out of business. Couldn't even return them," he
finished, trailing off.
Wong already had an armload by the end of the sentence. "I think these
will help," he said as he slid the books under his raincoat. I pulled my
leather jacket up as I followed him to the door. With a curt nod to the
officers and Kentetsu I left, sliding into the driver's seat of the
patrol car we took from the station.
"Now what was missing?" Wong asked me, his tone making it certain that
he knew the answer and was having a little fun with me. I was paying
more attention to the slow oscillation of the windshield wipers as they
cleared my field of vision.
"Have something besides the lack of a body and boomers in mind?" I
countered as I pulled into the slow moving traffic.
"Mitchell, perhaps?" That shut me up.
"Good point. He's been at every other crime scene with or without us
telling him. He couldn't have missed this one."
"Unless he knew he wouldn't learn anything new from it." Wong was
sounding like he had the whole thing figured out already. "I'm beginning
to think that our friend Mitchell is a bit further into this than we
originally thought."
"How so?" I hate when Wong takes me along for the ride, but I can't
help but ask.
"We know Mitchell worked for the US military for a long time, but we
don't know if he left with any sort of military rank. He doesn't seem to
have the military character, either."
"Right," I nodded. He certainly didn't come off as a military guy. The
man's brand of asshole was entirely his own.
"So chances are he wasn't a grunt or killer. He was there for his
brain."
"And?" I asked. Wong was being really annoying with his carrot and
stick technique. In fact, if the stick came anywhere near me I was
planning on shoving it up Wong's ass.
"Bear with me, I'm working off the top of my head here." I felt a drop
of sweat form on the back of my head. I quickly rubbed it off on my
seat. "Perhaps he's testing something for the US military?"
"I don't see where you're getting that idea," I started before Wong cut
me off.
"We're definitely onto something here. Look, the research boomer is
obviously working on something, right? The rogue's we're seeing are
completely unique and they're progressing towards something. What better
way to test some radical new technology than through a rogue boomer that
you be connected to."
"That doesn't explain the murders or the lack of connection between
boomer 10012-0170023 and Mitchell. And why here? The ADP is the best
anti-boomer force in the private sector."
"The US military doesn't want to test anything on its own soil anymore.
Not since the US Congress put such tight constraints on them after that
Plague mishap in '21. What better place to test than the home of your
biggest trade rival? Genom's been eating into the arm's market for the
last ten years."
"Then how did Mitchell get his appointment here? We both know pretty
well how far Genom has their hands in both the NPD and the ADP. If
Mitchell was working against Genom then he'd be up shit creek here."
"True," Wong said. "But it doesn't mean he isn't. If anyone can pull
the wool of Genom's eyes it the US Spooks."
"Good point," I nodded. This was rapidly escalating from a routine
boomer robbery/homicide, and I wasn't all that happy about it. Excited
yes, but I would rather be blowing up boomers that chasing after
imaginary US spies. I let a sigh out as we reached a stoplight, one that
Wong echoed.
"This is hard," he muttered when we started moving again. "What should
we do now?"
"Take a look at those books of yours, I guess. And see if we can find
what this thing is." I dug the PDA out of my jacket pocket and keyed
Kentetsu's drawing up. I tossed it into his lap as we pulled in towards
the overpass.
Wong was quiet as he looked down at the picture, tapping the screen
with the stylus occasionally. His brow was furrowed in thought and the
only movement he made was an occasional change of page.
"That wasn't too hard," he said after a moment of searching. He
presented me with a page in one of the books, detailing hand motions
almost exactly like Kentetsu's drawing. "It's supposedly the Elder
Sign," he explained after it became apparent that I couldn't read the
Latin caption below the picture. "A ward against the forces of the Old
Ones."
"Cult shit?" I asked as we came to a red light. The rain had picked up
again, sheets of it pouring down across the windshield and almost
completely blocking the view of the street.
"Yup." Wong sounded a little confused as he continued. "I wish I could
see how this all connected. This sign frightens off a�oh shit."
"What?" I asked as Wong fell silent.
"Can a boomer join a cult?" he asked as the wind picked up.
Author's Notes-
I figure the secret of the elseworlds is out as of this part. At least
if you're a fan of Lovecraft.
Fnord!