Histories of the Void Garden, Book 1: Pyre of Dreams (10 page)

West now had
his legs wrapped around McMahon’s neck, trying to choke him. From
his position in the grass, all that Carmichael could see was West’s
hands gripping McMahon’s left calf, an unusual sight, but
Carmichael was unable to move his head to see what was happening
further up this slithering totem of flesh, and he gazed on in
impotent horror, as thumbs and fingers pushed through fabric, into
muscle fiber, and presumably, only stopping when the hands had
grasped bone. He had closed his eyes, but the soft crunching sound
confirmed his suspicion.

When he opened
his eyes again, McMahon’s body was nowhere to be seen. His breath
caught finally, and he inhaled, pushing himself over in the grass.
There, by the van, the attacker stood, blood dripping from his
face, his hands, and smeared across his chest. Carmichael got to
his feet carefully, his gaze fixed on the man, desperate not to be
taken unaware again.

“It doesn’t
have to be like this.” His words were ragged, still struggling to
breathe deeply.

West walked
forward, surefooted, calm, “You will have a chance. Just a ghost of
a chance mind you, but that’s all we ever have really.”

Carmichael
didn’t see it coming, and couldn’t understand how he had been
bested, but he felt consciousness slip away quickly, as somewhere
in the distance, a voice spoke softly to him, familiar words, “Pax
huic dómui.” Peace to this house.

West dragged
agent Carmichael into the rear cabin of the van and lay him next to
McMahon. At least Carmichael was a clean take down. Neither of the
men were dead yet, but their bodies were in a race against time,
and odds were not in their favor. He undressed, wiping his face
with his shirt, spitting on the fabric and doing his best to clean
off the blood. He did the same with his hands, and realized that he
really wasn’t getting anywhere with the blood, so he tossed the
shirt on the metal floor. He stripped Carmichael of his clothes,
careful not to get any blood on them as he tried them on. They were
a tight fit everywhere except the waistline, which although not
ideal, West could cope with.

He went about
the van now, systematically removing every type of hard drive,
recording media, or transmitting device. The hard drives and
recording media, he placed in a gym bag he’d found conveniently
sitting behind the driver’s seat, and the transmitting devices, he
crushed and broke, either with his hands, or under foot.

Once he was
satisfied that there was nothing left of use, he stepped out of the
van, and closed the doors on the devastation, removing the phone
from his pocket, and navigating to redial.

Stephanie had only
just managed to regain her composure, but as Jean Valjean marched
towards the camera, veins almost managing to claw free of his
forehead, the phone rang again. Stephanie inhaled quickly, her eyes
darting to the phone, but after two rings, she hid it under the
couch cushion, and allowed her eyes to return to the safety of the
screen, where a leaf traveled up into the clouds. The phone rang
off, then started up again immediately.

She took a deep
breath, then pushed her hand under the cushion.

“This is the
Beach Residence …” the voice on the other end of the line cut her
off, “Yes, good morning Stephanie Beach, it’s so good to hear your
voice again. I spoke to you, and your father last night regarding
your prize, and I’m afraid he was rather short with me.”

Stephanie
sighed her relief, “He’s average, he says he’s average anyway. He
can’t help his height.”

“No, sorry,
short tempered, he lost his temper.”

“Oh … yeah.”
Stephanie’s focus returned to the screen in frustration, lip
syncing to the mute singers. No free lunch … no free lunch.

“Do you mind
putting him on the phone, there’s something I need to discuss with
him urgently.”

On autopilot,
Stephanie spoke the words she’d been just about to lip sync, “At
the end of the day …” she tried to think of an appropriate follow
through, “He just doesn’t want to talk to you. You could … I
suppose you could send him an email or something … He has
email.”

“Miss Beach,
this is a matter of life and death!”

“Dun … Dun …
Duuunnnn …” Stephanie responded mockingly, in a sing song tone, as
if she’d expected this. “Everything is.”

There was
dumbfounded silence on the other end of the line, then finally, an
equally dumbfounded, “Pardon?”

“Everything is
either life, or death. There isn’t another thing, like not life, or
death … there’s just them.” She breathed slowly for effect, mucus
catching in the back of her throat, then she repeated her key
thesis, “Everything is either life, or death.” She hung up the
phone, satisfied that her philosophical observation would give the
salesman something to think about.

West stomped
the grass in the shadows at the side of the house. He pondered the
child’s words while he listened to the sounds of the house. She was
right of course. Everything was about life, except the bits which
were about death. Profound thoughts indeed from a seven-year-old,
at … he glanced at his phone again … not even six in the morning.
He redoubled his efforts, trying to cleanse his mind of the Zen of
Stephanie Beach.

It wasn’t always
possible to tell a person’s sex just by the sound of their
breathing, but West was pretty sure he had the somnolent rumblings
pegged. He picked a pebble up from the ground, and threw it at the
window frame. He waited a while, and when there was no response, he
tried again. A woman’s face appeared at the window, and West tried
his best to hide behind a marginata bush, which provided less than
adequate coverage. The window opened, and Hannah Beach held her
hand over her eyes to shield them from the rising morning sun.

“Are you
fucking kidding me? I can see you dick head.” She waved, and the
bush rustled its awkward response. “Yeah you! You better be about
to propose to me or I’m gonna ram that fucking bush up …” West
stepped out from behind the bush, waving his hands in
surrender.

“Absolutely.
I’ll marry you, if you’d just fetch your brother for me.”

Hannah frowned
in disgust, “Pervert.”

The window
slammed shut, and West was about to look for something else to
throw, when another window opened.

“Hello?”

“Mr Beach, I
spoke to you last night … I took up your offer, dragged my ass down
here.”

The window
started to close, “Mr Beach, it’s about the assassination. I can
help.” West could still see David Beach’s distorted and shadowy
form, standing at the window, so he forged ahead, “David, I know
you didn’t do it, I know you weren’t involved, and I can help you.
Please, it will only take a few minutes of your time, if you’ll
just come down and talk to me.”

The window
closed.

Half a minute
passed, before the window opened again, “I’m coming down.”

David leaned against
the door frame, peering tentatively through the glass panel at the
side of the door. He couldn’t make out much, except for the same
cleaning van that had been parked there for several days now, and
the sight of it made his hackles rise. Homeowners weren’t permitted
to park commercial vehicles in the neighborhood. Even the worst
house clean couldn’t require that much attention. This, thought
David … this was why this neighborhood was going to hell in a hand
basket.

He opened the
door, and stepped out onto the front step, closing the door gently
behind him. Standing in the shadow of the Bleaker’s cherry blossom,
David could make out the man whom he had spied from his bedroom
window. The same man who had apparently phoned the night before.
The same creep who had messaged him on reddit. As the man started
to walk towards him, David felt his own unease rise through his
body, tightening his chest, drying his throat. David stepped
backwards, stumbling over the single raised concrete step as he
retreated toward the safety of his front door. He tried to turn
around to open the door, but too quickly he felt West’s hand on his
shoulder and he shuddered with the shock of it, the hairs of his
arms prickling.

“Mr Beach, I
need to talk to you and in order to do so, we need to get away from
your house for a few minutes.”

David turned
abruptly, pushing the man’s hand away, “What are you going to do to
me? I haven’t done anything for God’s sake.” The sound of his own
voice, high pitched and faltering, came as a surprise to David. He
hadn’t had many physical altercations, and in the calmer recesses
of his mind, he liked to think that he could handle himself.
Perhaps he needed to reassess.

West took a
firm hold of David’s shoulders with both hands, and this only
served to further panic David, who had already started to writhe
and jostle against his grip. Focusing, slowing his breathing, West
reigned himself in, concentrating on his strength before slapping
David’s cheek with the back of his hand. Wide eyed, a picture of
veracious fury, West glared at David. “Calm down man. Do you see
the van behind me?”

“Yes.”

“Up until a
couple of minutes ago, there were two FBI agents camped out in that
van monitoring your home.”

David frowned,
“There were?”

Unable to widen
his eyes any further, West resorted to raising his eyebrows,
nodding slowly.

“Where are they
now?” David asked cautiously.

“To tell you
the truth, they’re still in there, but they are no longer
monitoring your house.”

David opened
his mouth, then closed it again, then made another attempt,
“Why?”

West bit his
bottom lip, and exhaled through his nose, “Mr Beach, they are
functionally incapacitated. They will stay like that for some time,
but we don’t have all day.” David’s nose wrinkled in confusion, but
West pushed on, “The point is, we can’t talk in your home, there
are almost certainly monitoring devices in there, and I don’t have
the time or equipment to check for them.” West started walking down
the street away from David’s house.

“I can’t leave
Stephanie alone!”

West turned to
look at him, “There’s a woman in there.”

“Yes my sister,
but I need to keep an eye on Stephanie”

West guessed
that Beach just didn’t want to be alone with him, but he knew there
would be little mileage in humiliating him on this issue. “Fine, is
there somewhere we can talk?”

David nodded,
“We’ll go out back, in the yard. I doubt they’d put any monitoring
equipment out there.”

West was
pensive, eyes traveling over the cracks in the pavement. He glanced
at the van and thought about agents Carmichael and McMahon. He
looked back towards David and nodded, “Lead the way.”

David sat on one of
the swing seats, watching Stephanie in the den. She had protested
that she wanted to come play in the yard, but David had insisted
that this was grown up stuff.

“Mr … I’m
sorry, I don’t recall your name.”

West stood
facing David, legs apart, arms crossed, straight faced, “My name is
West Yestler, although I didn’t actually get a chance to tell you
that last night. After our little talk, I was inclined towards
leaving you in your mire, to flail and fester in your own shit.
Your situation is … odd. Good odd, but odd nonetheless. Still, I
wasn’t sure you would be entirely worth taking a risk on, because
right now, you are one of most dangerous men in the world. To talk
to I mean. Obviously.”

David looked
hurt, “What do you mean obviously? I could be dangerous.”

In the rat runs
and oubliettes of his mind, West was heartened by David’s bravado,
although his face did not portray even a hint of this. “David, I’ve
thought a lot about what I would say to you. There were some
questions I had, certainly, but for the most part, they have been
answered simply by seeing you. I think two questions will suffice.
Others may arise, but now, I need you to tell me two things.” David
nodded, slack jawed wonder, swinging slowly, allowing his feet to
trail in the mulch.

“When you
received the phone call on march sixth, did the impostor tell you
what to do with any information you discovered about Arctum?”

A lump caught
in the back of David’s throat, because of the word impostor, and
because this question had never been raised during his FBI
interviews. When he recovered from that thought, another occurred
to David immediately, “I don’t know you. For all I know, you’re
part of the investigation! I’m a government employee. Discussing my
predicament would involve divulging highly confidential
information.”

West watched
David’s legs swing out in front of him, “David, assume, for
argument’s sake, that I know everything about your situation.
Assume that I’m privy to the fact that you’ve been pulled in for
questioning eight times in the past month, that you have been asked
the same questions repeatedly, and that you are not responsible for
any of the assassinations which took place on March tenth. Now,
within those parameters, tell me, what did the impostor ask you to
do with the information they requested.”

David plowed
the mulch with the balls of his feet, leaning his upper arms in to
the chains. “They didn’t tell me what they wanted me to do with the
information.”

“Now David,
tell me, what did you actually find on Arctum?”

David brought
the swing to a stop, and stared into West’s eyes. He suddenly felt
sick to his stomach, as the true absurdity of his situation hit him
like a clown car. With less than four days to go till the meeting
of the EUC, and marooned as David had been, in a vacation house
with only a phone, he had found nothing about Arctum. He’d placed a
few phone calls to planning, code, and records offices in New York,
and he had actually called the building management company who were
responsible for the upkeep of Arctum’s massive office complex, but
he had soon resigned himself to the fact that he wasn’t going to be
able to get anything solid. He was on vacation. He’d been pissed at
Carlton for even trying to call in a favor during his vacation
time.