They Ate the Waitress Page 7

  He walked down the main hall until he came to a door marked “Heather C – Resident Assistant.” The door muffled the sound of reggae music and someone singing along. He knocked on the door and waited. Nothing. He gave the door a swift kick with his boot. Someone inside said “Hold on, man!” The door opened to reveal a young woman with a blonde bob and baby blue skin. After tanning fell out of fashion, the spray-on tan companies switched to selling skin dye. Blue was a very popular color that year. “Um, hi?” she asked, brushing her hair from her face. She tapped a button on her wristwatch, silencing the music. The heavy smell of cherry-scented incense wafted into the hall.

  “Hello there. My name is Nick and I’m collecting panties for charity. With your help, we can find a cure!”

  “Did you need something,” she asked, laughing, “Or are you just here to hit on me? Or, I suppose, both?”

  “Actually,” he said, fumbling in his pockets, “I have a plastic bag in my jacket filled to the brim with marijuana. But, the thing is, I really hate to smoke alone…”

  “You think I’m going to invite you into my room just because you have cannabis? It’s a weed, man. Grows anywhere. It’s cheaper than ramen.”

  “Not this stuff. It was genetically engineered by a mad scientist, grown by Tibetan monks, and then cursed by a witchdoctor. This is the stuff wet dreams are made of.”

  “Well, all right,” she said reluctantly, waving him into her room. “But I’m not sleeping with you until I’m too stoned to remember that I slept with you…”

  Nick didn’t have long to wait. Ten minutes later, Heather tossed her cigarette into a potted plant and flopped on the bed. “I’m ready for love,” she said sweetly. She stretched and sighed. Moving swiftly, he grabbed her wrists and handcuffed her to the bed frame.

  “Oh! You’re kinky,” she said, pleasantly surprised.

  “I sure am. You know what’s really kinky? Leaving you here for a couple of hours while I go visit another girl’s room…” He grabbed her keycard from her dresser and stepped into the hall, locking the door.

  As a resident assistant, Heather’s keycard could access any room on her floor. Nick opened Jessica’s door slowly, peering inside. Her roommates were still out, probably at class. The dorm room was very large, even for three people. The beds had royal blue linens which matched the throw rug on the tile floor. One of the new, paper-thin televisions was pinned to the wall with thumbtacks. There were a few shelves and cabinets, but they held nothing out of the ordinary, just cosmetics, school supplies, and the girls’ pet rodents. Their names were scrawled in black marker on the side of their cage: “The Four Gerbils of the Apocalypse: Strife, War, Famine, and Cutie Pie.”

  “Okay, Jessica, let’s see what you’ve got in your dresser.”

  Nick began his search with her underwear drawer, where he found a photo frame. He switched it on and scrolled quickly through the images, mostly snapshots of Jessica and friends at school. But then he came to some photos of the restaurant. Lots of waiters and waitresses, work parties, and Todd Sweeney. He replaced the frame in her dresser and searched the other drawers. Other than a riding crop and a hot pink, leather corset, there was nothing of interest.

  He decided to search the nightstand. There was a pair of thick paperbacks in the top drawer: “Shakespearian Somniloquence: Learn to Act in Your Sleep,” and “Transvestite Beauty Secrets: Men who Look Like Women Help Women to Also Look Like Women, But Better.” The second drawer was filled with candles, disposable lighters, and memory tabs of that month’s popular songs.

  “Nothing else in here… I should check under the bed.” There was a small, orange box hiding in the back. He stretched to reach it, but froze. Someone in the hall was rattling the doorknob. He dove under the bed. From his hiding place, he saw a pair of brown leather boots and a pair of white sneakers walk into the room.

  “Jessie left the door unlocked!” the boots groaned. “Again! She’s so damn irresponsible.”

  “At least she cleaned up,” said the sneakers. “God knows I wasn’t going to.”

  “Too bad we all can’t have a maid at home,” the boots said darkly. “Some of us even have to work for our tuition.”

  “Can I help it if my daddy invented self-changing diapers? Being rich isn’t a choice! I was just born that way!”

  “Alright, fine,” the boots said. “Forget it. Let’s do something fun. Do you want to go swimming?”

  “Swimming?” The sneakers laughed. “What, in the public pool? People pee in there! If I wanted to soak in a stranger’s urine, I would visit that weird nightclub downtown.”

  Jessica’s roommates spent the next few hours studying, eventually deciding to take a break to watch television. Finally, they had to leave for a party. As soon as they left the room, Nick slid out from his hiding place, dusted himself off, and climbed out the window. His transmitter interrupted his walk back to the car. He pulled it from his pocket, watching a tiny, holographic Gabrielle appear in midair.

  “Why didn’t you trans me last night?” she pouted. “I was really hoping to hear from you.”

  “Sorry about that,” he muttered. “I was called away suddenly. Family emergency.”

  “Oh? What happened?” Her eyes were more suspicious than concerned.

  “Bar fight.”

  “What? How is that a family emergency?”

  “My grandmother got stabbed. It was her fault, really. She shouldn’t have insulted those bikers.”

  “Oh. That’s… odd. Well, are you doing anything right now? Why don’t you come over?”

  “Why don’t you come to my place instead?” he suggested. “You can audition for me, I can grill us a couple steaks, and maybe afterwards we can try out my new hot tub. You can show me your voice and your… other talents.”

  “Oh, you’re naughty, Nick,” she laughed.

  He gave her an address in Portland. “I’m heading home, so you can come over now, if you like.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty. Ciao, baby!”

  Nick switched off his transmitter and climbed in his car. “She’s publicly fought with Renee,” he thought, lighting a cigarette. “I can imagine she could get inside the restaurant fairly easily. A woman like her would have no trouble flirting with an employee to get the alarm code. At this point, she’s a definite possibility.”

  ◊

  Gabrielle lived in one of the most upscale neighborhoods in Vancouver. Residents were wealthy enough to pay for the roads themselves, so there were no billboards anywhere. The roads had odd names like “Elm Street” and “Shady Lane.” In most neighborhoods, the roads were owned by advertising agencies that sold the naming rights to the highest bidder. As a result, most people lived on streets with names like “Chester’s Cheesy Pizza Road” or “Jenkins’ Cold Sore Treatment Lip Balm Avenue.”

  Gabrielle lived in a three-story Colonial Revival home surrounded by oak trees and a wrought iron fence. The gate stood open invitingly. “My imaginary Portland apartment is twenty minutes away,” Nick thought. “Gabrielle will probably spend fifteen minutes driving up and down the street, searching for the building. And then she’ll trans me, and I’ll tell her to meet me at the nightclub instead. More driving, more searching, and then a very angry trip back home. Altogether, she should be gone for at least an hour.”

  Walking up the long, winding driveway, he noticed an open window on the top floor. He climbed a nearby tree, grunting with the exertion. Standing unsteadily, he leapt from the tree to the roof. Carefully, he leaned over the edge and knocked the screen from the open window. He swung down into the room, landing gently on a polished bamboo floor.

  The library. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined the walls, with a wheeled ladder affixed to a track running the circumference of the room. There were biographies of famous singers, guides on writing a hit single, and other, more general books about music.

  An alarm sensor blinked at the top of the window frame. “Those sensors don’t work if you leave the windows open! She’s lucky I
’m not here to steal anything. …Actually, I should steal something. Just to teach her a lesson, of course…”

  He scanned the room under his portable black light. “Nothing here. No blood stains, no weapons.” Hiding in the corner, a small cabinet held a few copies of “classic” novels, the kind of writing only English Literature professors loved. “She could have forced Renée to read A Farewell to Arms… No, that can’t be right. It was murder, not suicide.”

  He stepped across the hall where a heavy, soundproof door opened to reveal a large space filled with musical instruments. The centerpiece was a pink grand piano. In one corner, a drum set and xylophone gathered dust. In another corner sat several cardboard boxes filled with memory tabs of Gabrielle’s music. A row of electric guitars were hung on the wall like artwork, with individual spotlights highlighting each one. He didn’t know much about guitars, but he assumed they were collector’s items. A wooden stand at the back of the room was reserved for brass instruments.

  Again, a quick scan with the light turned up nothing. “If Gabrielle is the killer, she probably didn’t beat Renée to death with a flugelhorn. I should move on.”

  Further down the hallway, Nick came to a small office. There was an antique writing desk, a computer with a pricey holographic monitor, and a row of oddly cheap, aluminum filing cabinets. On top of a small table was a Schlock Products™ combination photocopier/paper shredder. It was a useful device, if you had to make a copy and destroy the original at the same time.

  There was a small safe with an alphanumeric keypad under the table. “I know her type. The combination is probably the name of one of her songs.” He tried several titles, finally hitting the jackpot with La Petite Mortuary. Inside the safe were a large bag of coins, some remarkably tacky jewelry, and a thick, black ledger. Most of the ledger seemed to be records of bank deposits. Tens of thousands of dollars deposited in an account every few weeks. “Probably just her record company sending her royalty checks. – I’m running out of time here. Better try something else.”

  The next door was a bedroom. In the back of the room stood a king sized, four-poster bed with a white bedspread to match the rug. Sitting on the bed, in a blue silk nightgown, was Gabrielle. In her hand was a pistol the size of an antiaircraft gun.

  Nick dove to the floor as the wall behind him exploded in a shower of plaster. Scrambling to his feet, he ran for the library. He leapt out the window, half climbing and half falling down the tree. He didn’t stop running until he was back in his car.

  His sides ached. He hadn’t gotten that much exercise in quite a while. The last time he climbed down a tree to escape from a woman’s house was in high school, the night of his junior prom. Unfortunately, his date’s husband had come home early.

  “What the hell?” he gasped, fumbling for his keys. “Why wasn’t she on her way to Portland? She said she would be gone! She’ll probably call a security patrol and have them watch the house for the next couple of days. I should leave her alone for awhile. I can’t catch the killer if I get arrested for trespassing. While I’m waiting, I should check on Bender. Hopefully, he’s at work and not watching Sophie.”

  ◊

  Back at home, Nick switched on his computer and connected to the video feed from his hidden camera at the pet store. Luke Bender was shoving a trash robot that didn’t seem to know which direction it was supposed to move. Kicking it violently, he knocked it through a pair of swinging doors into a back room. A ponytailed man in a white apron walked onscreen and said hello.

  As the camera was underwater in a fish tank, there wasn’t actually any sound. However, it was an advanced model that could read lips. Any spoken words appeared on the screen like subtitles in a foreign film. Due to an unfortunate software glitch, the camera had a tiny bit of trouble with homonyms.

  MAN1: Luke, eye want yew two billed a display inn the cat supplies I’ll. Were halving a sail on kit tea lit her.

  MAN2: Aye Kant rite now, hairy. Isle kneed page two help me, butt cheese out getting sum heir.

  MAN1: Owe, that’s write. Islet page go on brake. Ewe get start, Ted, and aisle collar down hear late her. …Any weigh, I herd yew and so fee uh whir Bach two gather. Dew yew guise halve sum thing planned fore two knight?

  MAN2: Wee mite, I’m naught shore. Weed disgust halving a pear of stakes at hour favor it plays, this lit till dining haul up the rowed.

  MAN1: Aren’t they clothed be cause of aunts?

  MAN2: Jest fore a phew daze. Well, know thyme too wrest. Eyed bettor git were king, hairy.

  MAN1: Awl wright. Sea yew lay tare.

  “Sophie’s dating Bender?” Nick thought. “No, she can’t be. But how else would she get his home address? He must be her ex. She dumped him, he got obsessive and stalky, and so she came to me for help. She didn’t tell me because she’s embarrassed about dating such a loser. …Well, all I have to do now is go back to Sophie’s and wait for him to show up. Should be easy to prove he’s stalking her. I just wish she’d been a little more honest with me.”

  It had been a very long day, so he took a moment to make a cup of coffee. Baldwin Brew, a popular brand that had radioactive dust mixed in with the grounds to keep it warm. Drinking too much could give you cancer, but you didn’t have to bother with an insulated mug.

  As he sped to Sophia’s, the combination of caffeine and stress twisted his stomach into a knot. It felt like a taut-line hitch or possibly a directional figure eight. It was hard to tell; he wasn’t that good with knots. He decided to take some pills to distract himself. A few minutes later, the apartment complex came into view. He turned the corner at full speed, scattering a group of children playing in the parking lot. Several of the kids cornered him when he stepped out of the car.

  “Are you insane?” the oldest one screamed. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “That was my fault? You’re the ones playing out here in the middle of the night!”

  “When are we supposed to play flashlight tag? Noon?”

  “Oh, shut the hell up.” Nick pushed his way past the children and continued through the lot. Sensing some motion at Sophia’s door, he ducked behind a tree. It was Luke. In the dim light from a nearby lamppost, Luke fumbled in his pockets, eventually producing a plastic keycard. He casually unlocked Sophia’s door and slipped inside. A moment later, a light came from the front window.

  “Odd. If she broke up with him, surely she would have changed the code on her door lock. Well, maybe they didn’t break up. Maybe he’s unbalanced, and she’s afraid to break up with him. Or maybe he cheated on her, and she wants revenge. Either way, she didn’t hire me to catch a stalker. She hired me to frame an innocent man. Me, a manhunter! I’m supposed to defend the law, not use it to further my own selfish ends! She wants me to break the law! …Well, alright then. Good to know.”

  After some careful thought, he formed what he considered a particularly brilliant plan. Unfortunately, it would take some time to collect the things he needed. He would have to return in the morning. Besides, just then, he had a perfect opportunity to pay a visit to Renée’s ex-boyfriend, Clayton West.

  Chapter Eight

  As Nick’s car locked onto the highway’s magnetic rail, he put his feet up on the dashboard and closed his eyes. The navigation system’s breathy, feminine voice read off the names of the passing exits. Hearing a few familiar street names, he realized that Gordon’s apartment was on the way. A quick command reset his route. The car shifted onto a new rail with a gentle clink.

  Heading toward the Columbia River, he thought, “According to Sweeney’s records, Gordon lives just inside of Oregon. Why would anyone commute so far for such a low-paying job? Well, I suppose it’s not all bad. You get to meet new people, hold one-sided conversations with them, cut them into little pieces…”

  After twenty minutes of high-speed driving, he pulled into the lot of Wellington Apartments. The decaying building had once been a factory for Grandma Edith’s Snack Cakes. The company had gone out of business when i
t was discovered that their Chocolate Sweeties contained insecticides, mercury, and forty-three grams of saturated fat.

  The new owners had converted the building into apartments and then simply let it rot. The building was the same dirty, gray color as the cement lot and just as cracked. An ancient pile of empty beer cans in the yard had been recently declared a historical landmark. The dumpster in the back hadn’t been emptied in so long that it was the site of frequent archeological digs.

  “Now this is just sad,” he thought. “The guy spends all day slicing up human corpses, makes as much money as a babysitter, and he has to go home to a place like this. He’d almost be better off at a work camp. At least they get free TV.” He climbed the steep stairs to the main entrance. Despite the rundown condition of the building, the door looked very secure. There was even what appeared to be an alarm sensor mounted to the top of the doorway.

  He returned to his car and pulled two bulging, paper sacks from the trunk. He carried them back up the stairs and waited. Soon, an older woman in a green sweater came up the steps to the apartment door. Pretending he had just arrived, he tried to reach into his pants pocket without putting down the sacks.

  “Oh, do you need inside, honey?” the woman asked. She smiled politely, revealing teeth like popcorn kernels.

  “Yes, please. I can’t reach my keys. We’re having a party and I have to get there before the girls do. You see, I’ve got the whipped cream.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”