Hysteria Page 3

  The Sergeant draws her side arm. “Step away from the crime scene, sir,” she says calmly.

  Del Amitri smiles and steps back. “I’ll come back with your chief of police to take your badge, Officer,” he says.

  “You do that, sir,” the Sergeant says. “Name’s Rodriguez. Make sure you spell that right.”

  Del Amitri raises his empty hand, points his trigger finger at the Sergeant, aims between her eyes and makes like to squeeze one off.

  Rodriguez blinks

  Del Amitri smiles.

  “I’ll be off then, officer,” he says.

  She nods. “Not before you hand over that evidence bag,” she says.

  Del Amitri feels his smile falter. He reaches inside his pocket and retrieves a bag, handing it over.

  She glances at it.

  “Now how about the one with evidence from this crime scene?” she says.

  He feels his hand tighten into a fist and reaches for the other inside pocket. His fingers brush over the Glock.

  “Slow and easy,” the sergeant says aiming at his face.

  He hands over the bag with the blue gloop. Turns to walk to his car.

  “What else you got?” she says.

  He stops

  No time to drop the bullet drive into a pocket. He keeps his fist around it tight. Reaches into his jacket and with the same hand and retrieves his lighter. A stormproof piezo-ignited Silva flick top capable of igniting with one swift thumb movement. He thumbs the lighter. Holds the flame over the body. Takes the twenty-dollar bill and holds it over the flame.

  As the flame consumes his name across the bill he lets it slip form his fingers.

  Rodriguez throws herself backwards as the burning bill floats through the air and touches down on the body of the jumper.

  A wall of flame erupts out of the body and chases Rodriguez along the road.

  Rodriguez rolls herself away as the wall of flames spit at her boots and separate Del Amitri from her.

  “Be seeing you, officer,” he says and walks away towards his car.

  He whistles and sings to himself, “Body count going sky high on this one, Officer Rodriguez.”

  *

  Del Amitri connects the BULLET drive to his phone. He guns his car down Fifth Avenue.

  The jumper walks across his phone screen.

  “I am Tyler Blake,” the kid says. “And if you are watching this it’s because I am dead. I see it coming. Know it’s the only way out. To give Hysteria time to stop the source code.”

  “What the hell you talking about, Tyler?” Del Amitri shouts at his phone.

  “I Kidnapped Madison.”

  Del Amitri hits the brakes.

  “Why? Someone had to be Hysteria. Why not the prettiest girl on my class.”

  He laughs but his eyes seem to be looking at something a thousand years ago. Maybe back to a time when he had hopes and dreams.

  “I invented Fantasy Fifteen,” Tyler says. “It was meant to make everyone’s dreams come true. But now I know it’s a mistake. I’m sorry it has to be this way. Do not try to find Madison. After what I’ve done to her, she is no longer the daughter you know.”

  The screen turns black.

  “Fantasy Fifteen?” Del Amitri says and hits the App button that connects his phone with the FBI central computer. As he weaves his car through traffic, he scrolls through selections on screen.

  Subject: Fantasy Fifteen

  He hits enter.

  Case assigned to special agent Angel Hunter.

  “So who you working with Tyler?”

  Target: Damian Diamond CEO Fantasy Fifteen

  “So is this my puppet master?” Del Amitri says. “Let’s go speak with this kid Diamonds.”

  Chapter Six: Angel Hunter

  FBI headquarters.

  “I was first on scene,” Del Amitri shouts and slams his fist down onto the desk of Assistant Director Harry Hunter. “It’s my case.”

  “You can assist evaluation of the team I pick,” Hunter says calmly, shaking his head and running fingers through his thick white hair.

  “I should be heading up the team,” Del Amitri says and lights a cigarette.

  Hunter slides a paper file across the table. “Here are the candidates,” he says tapping the no smoking sign and retrieving an ashtray from a drawer. “And that’s a federal offense.”

  Del Amitri smiles and blows smoke at his boss. Ignores the ashtray and stubs out the cigarette on the mahogany top. “I’m not the one blowing smoke up my-”

  Hunter jabs the intercom. “Show in Agent Gonzalez-Hunter.”

  The office door opens and in enters a girl, maybe sixteen or seventeen, wearing a black Tee with a dinosaur on the front, dark jeans and high heels.

  “Since when do the FBI use kids?” Del Amitri says.

  “I have a special remit,” Hunter says. “For a new team.”

  “What can kids offer the FBI?” Del Amitri says.

  “We face a new world of pioneers,” Hunter says. “The brilliant minds changing our future belong to kids too young to legally drink, smoke and-”

  “I get it,” Del Amitri says shaking his head. “A world gone nuts.”

  “Oscar, if you or I try to infiltrate a high tech start up run by kids,” Hunter says scratching his graying beard. “But an agent like Angel, here.”

  To Del Amitri, this girl walks like a leopard. Sleek, powerful, edgy, as if prepared to pounce, fight or run. Whichever is easiest. Her eyes constantly dart back and forth from the exit. Weariness in her eyes. A wisdom not born of age, but it seems to Del Amitri something strange.

  He blinks to remind himself of her age according to her file in his hands.

  She sits silently and waits. Again just like a leopard. No extravagant use of precious energy. The calmest, most docile of killers.

  “You’re Brazilian?” Del Amitri says.

  Her unblinking, dead eyes look up at him perched on the desk.

  “Naturalized American,” she says softly.

  “Brazilian father, American mother, both dead,” Del Amitri reads from the file.

  She shows no reaction.

  Del Amitri continues, “And adopted by-”

  Del Amitri turns sharply to Hunter. “You’re joking?”

  “Green tea with honey, my dear?” Hunter says to Angel.

  “You kept that one quiet,” Del Amitri says and lights another cigarette.

  “Found Angel in Rio,” Hunter says pouring from a teapot. “For two years she survives on the streets.”

  Del Amitri fans himself with the paper file. “This says you’ve killed five times?”

  “We don’t ask,” Hunter says.

  “Hunter, first man to give me money,” Angel says. “Without asking for something in exchange.”

  Del Amitri begins to think the joke is on him somehow. This slip of a girl could be a catwalk model like hundreds her age. And yet by some quirk of fate she is orphaned to the streets until Hunter wants a daughter? And one that can be sent on a covert operation? Something is very wrong. Must surely be a joke? Hunter seems to be toying with him. But why? Does Hunter suspect him? He shakes his head.

  “Says here your mother was murdered,” Del Amitri says looking for some kind of reaction in her eyes.

  Nothing.

  “By your father?”

  Again no reaction in those dead calm eyes.

  “Tell me about the first person you killed,” Del Amitri says.

  “Oh really Del Amitri, must you?” Hunter says.

  “Who was it? What did it feel like?” Del Amitri says.

  She looks up with those dead calm killer eyes and says, “Feel?”

  “Yes,” Del Amitri says needing to know. Is she capable of emotion or just one of those killing-machine kids? “Anger, remorse, regret... pleasure?”

  Hunter snorts.

  “It felt like...” she says, “vengeance.”

  “Vengeance?”

  “First man I killed,” she says, “was my fath
er.”

  Del Amitri feels a chill run up his spine like an ice pick stabbing the back of his neck. He snaps the file shut. He realizes now why Hunter wants her on his team. If the old man suspects. If Hunter wants Del Amitri dead. This street killer daughter wouldn’t bat a long fake eyelash before killing Del Amitri.

  He turns to Hunter. “Who’s next on the list?”

  “She is the list,” Hunter says.

  Del Amitri shakes his head. “You’re breaking every rule in the book.”

  Hunter smiles. “Something you’d know about.” He turns to Angel. “Meet your new partner, Special Agent Oscar Del Amitri.”

  Angel looks up at Del Amitri with a stare that seems to penetrate through to his soul. He looks away, fumbles for a cigarette. Considers his options. The worst kind of partner is the one who observes too well. Knows too much. Too much to be allowed to live. He will not enjoy killing her.

  “What do you know about this jumper?” Del Amitri says.

  “Tyler Blake. At seventeen one of the world’s top Nano-tech experts and co-founder of Fantasy Fifteen,” Hunter says.

  “And your interest?” Del Amitri says.

  “My contact,” Angel says.

  “Let me guess,” Del Amitri says with a smile. “The kid jumped before you learn anything?”

  Angel’s eyes narrow as if she resents Del Amitri’s petty point scoring.

  “Tyler’s death means something,” she says.

  Del Amitri shakes his head. “Only the living needs death to mean something.” He turns to Hunter, “Harry, you should have brought me in on this earlier.”

  “There is a chance I can infiltrate Fantasy Fifteen,” Angel says and gets up to leave.

  “You work your angle,” Del Amitri says pushing pass Angel. “But stay away from mine.”

  He stubs his cigarette out on Angel’s handbag and slams the door behind him.

  “Do you excuse his behavior because of his daughter?” Angel says.

  Hunter shrugs. “I’m afraid after all this time we will never find her,” Hunter says. “Oscar searches for her night and day.”

  “Such men destroy everything to get what they want,” Angel says.

  Hunter sighs. “Now suppose you share with me what Tyler told you,” he says.

  “One name,” she says. “Oscar Del Amitri.”

  Harry lets his teaspoon clatter against china. “Oscar saved my life in Afghanistan.”

  “A mistake he will regret,” Angel says.

  “Do you think Oscar suspects?”

  Angel nods. “When a hunter allows the prey to look in its eyes,” she says. “Do not delay the kill, or the prey will flee.”

  Harry smiles. “Give Oscar a little more rope to hang himself.”

  “You are making a mistake,” Angel says. “Del Amitri intends to eliminate the trail of evidence.”

  Harry chokes on his green tea. “You mean to say destroy?”

  “I mean kill,” she says. “All who can speak of Fantasy Fifteen will die.”

  “I need to know why,” Hunter says pushing his tea away. “A man of his character does not turn like this, not unless… I should take you off the case.”

  “Not every man is a sentimental old fool,” Angel says.

  Hunter laughs. “Do what you have to do.”

  Chapter Seven: Lethal Evidence

  Sergeant Rodriguez taps impatiently on the glass table. Wanting to be anywhere but in this CSI lab with Hector. She stares into a microscope focusing on a slide of blue gloop.

  “Hector, you said you had something important to show me,” she says. “So what is it?”

  “Joke shop glow in the dark party slime, right?” the lab tech says.

  Rodriguez shrugs.

  “Why does it glow?”

  “A bi-product of its dormancy, who knows?” Hector says.

  “Anything to do with the gasoline tanker?” Rodriguez says.

  “Now officer Rodriguez you are thinking like a detective,” Hector says. “We discovered the gasoline tanker involved in the accident was a federal transporter-”

  “And so not required to display a coded placard identifying the cargo,” Rodriguez says.

  “Making me suspect this maybe a new enzyme in the production of a bio-fuel, like this ethanol,” Hector says shaking a beaker of colorless liquid. “To produce a substance like this, only without the highly flammable and therefore dangerous qualities.”

  “Why?”

  “Ten thousand roll and flip accidents involving heavy trucks last year. Many of them Gasoline tankers. Imagine the safety benefits of transporting a bio fuel that only becomes combustible when needed.”

  “And you can prove this?”

  The lab tech grins and adjusts a Bunsen gas burner as he passes the slide over the flame and replaces the slide under the microscope.

  “Now what do you see?”

  “It’s moving,” Rodriguez says.

  “Now watch,” the lab tech says, “as I increase magnification by ten million.”

  Rodriguez pulls away. Shakes her head. “Spiders?”

  “Look closer,” the lab tech says.

  “Are they some kind of metal?”

  The lab tech nods. “An artificial life form,” he says. “Or was.”

  “Was?”

  “We have to accept it may be dead,” he says. “Or existing in a dormant stasis.”

  “You can wake it?”

  Hector once again waves the slide over the blue Bunsen burner flame.

  Rodriguez stares at the army of tiny metallic spiders, crawling and twisting over one another in mesmerizing patterns.

  “It’s a synchronized dance routine,” she says.

  At some level they communicate,” Hector says. “For what purpose, we don’t yet know.”

  “I’m impressed,” Rodriguez says.

  “Hector smoothes back his greasy hair and pulls her towards him, wrapping his strong arms around her tight. “ How impressed?”

  “Oh no Hector,” she says struggling to pull away, fighting against the warm feeling inside her. Denying it before it sparks into something dangerous. “One date with you was enough to last a life time.”

  “So why did you marry me?” he says.

  “That all you got?” she says.

  “For you I got plenty,” Hector says. “Seriously we don’t need to get divorced.”

  “There you go thinking with your night stick again, Officer Romano,” she says. “Save it for your girlfriends.”

  “Plenty to go around,” he says leaning in and kissing her lips.

  She pulls her head to one side and pushes at him. “Don’t make me use my cuffs on you.”

  “Now you’re talking,” Hector says. “Time-out your hot-shot career and we’ll start a family.”

  “Cruising for a tazering,” she says, raising a knee to his groin and breaking his hold. She steps back. “Stick to business. And this life form was inside the jumper?”

  Hector leans back on a stool, rubbing his injury. He shrugs and turns to the microscope. “Where exactly did you find this, Officer?” Hector says starring down the microscope.

  The CSI lab door swings open. “She didn’t,” Del Amitri says. “I did.”

  Rodriguez looks over Del Amitri’s shoulder. “I don’t see the chief of police,” she says.

  Del Amitri smiles. “We’re all on the same side,” he says. “Aren’t we?”

  “And you are?” Hector says peering over his nose as if a bad smelling cloud drifted into his pristine lab.

  “Crime Scene Investigating Officer Hector Romano,” Rodriguez says. “Meet the FBI’s excuse for a Special Agent, Del Amitri.”

  “Autopsy report?” Del Amitri says.

  “For an autopsy report, Special Agent,” Hector says. “The victim, generally speaking, needs to be certified dead.”

  “I’m not here for a rookie’s lecture,” Del Amitri says.

  “Careful Hector or the special agent will have your badge,” Rodriguez sa
ys and laughs to herself.

  “Under the circumstances I’ve decide to place your victim, your jumper in quarantine,” Hector says and clicks a remote at a glass wall separating the lab with another.

  A light comes on in the other room revealing a body on a desk.

  Del Amitri and Rodriguez step up to the glass wall.

  The body of the jumper seems to twitch as a blue current of electrical sparks chases itself up and down the kid’s legs and arms. In and out of his nose, ears and eyes like a snake after its own tail. An Ouroboros consuming itself.

  “Beautiful isn’t it?” Hector says.

  “The kid’s alive?” Del Amitri says.

  “What is a measurement of life? Electrical impulses of the brain?” Hector says. “And yet no heartbeat. For at least two hours. Completely unexplainable.”

  Del Amitri’s eyes narrow and flicker from Hector to Rodriguez and back. An unblinking, questioning stare that makes Rodriguez shiver.

  “But you discovered something?” he says.

  “Be my guest,” Hector says and points to the microscope.

  Del Amitri takes a look. Sighs. Lifts his head.

  “Anyone else know about this?” he says.

  Hector shakes his head. “In the event we may be dealing with some sort of contagion, this lab and the next are isolated pending further investigation,” Hector says looking down the microscope. “Fascinating, and I assume it was found on the victim’s body?”

  “So just the three of us?” Del Amitri says and takes out what seems to Rodriguez be a cigarette lighter.

  Something in Del Amitri’s eyes makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand. Not in a good way like when Hector takes her in his arms. Her fingers reach slowly, almost casually, for her side arm. Hover above the clasp. Imperceptibly, she hopes if either of the men notice, she knows her fingers shake.

  “And the two kids on that helmet cam footage,” Hector says waving at a base jumper’s helmet on the glass table. “With so much evidence destroyed, their testimonies may be vital.”

  Del Amitri ejects the disc from the camera and pockets it. “Exactly.”

  “Hey, I warned you about removing evidence,” Rodriguez says.

  “That’s strange,” Hector says playing with the focus.

  “What is?” Rodriguez says.