He had been caught in the cross fire. Shot six times, including twice in the stomach and once in the chest—a bullet that pierced the lungs and brought him perilously close to dying right there, off the Record, on a dirty warehouse floor in Glendale.
And perhaps that would have been better, I thought with sadness as I listened to the machines breathing for him. As I watched the medicine dripping into his arm. Drip, drip.
“Arlo?”
I had fallen asleep, I suppose. My eyes opened to find his looking into mine. Charlie, dear Charlie. He spoke, clearly but with difficulty. “The monster,” he said, and I closed my eyes. Still. “I have to…” He cleared his throat. Turned his head to one side.
“Goodness, Charlie,” I told him. I opened my eyes, leaned forward and took poor Charlie’s hand. “I wish you would take pleasure in your success.”
“Success,” he murmured. “Success.”
It was like he could not accept the word. Like he was rolling it around in his mouth, tasting it, unsatisfied. The machines beeped and hummed.
“Yes, Charlie,” I said. “Success. Numerous arrests were made. A grave assault on the Objectively So was ended. All because of you, Charlie. Because of you.”
“The monster—could be anyone.” He couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t. My old friend, still in the thrall of this wild idea. What was to be done? He looked up at me. Desperate that someone believe him. “What if it were an Expert, Arlo? What if it were someone from the Office of the Record?”
“Or”—I stood up, wiped my hands, leaned as far over his bed as I could, whispered as quietly as possible—“a Speculator?”
23.
All four of them are dead, each with a single neat bullet hole through the center of the forehead.
The duty team, caught unawares by a familiar face. I recognize them all, Librarians who worked the entrance of the Record, rigorous and polite and efficient.
The first is just inside the door, thrown back against the wall, still wearing a stunned expression, blood in a frozen trickle from the bullet hole down into the line of the eyebrows.
The second is centered in the lobby, slumped at the wanding station, thrown across the small desk with one hand outstretched, clutching his weapon as if caught just before he could fire.
The third is at the elevators, between the two shafts and just beneath the keypad, and she sits with legs outstretched and arms slack, and her face turned toward the elevator just to her right, where the fourth of them is wedged between the elevator door and the wall of the car itself, half in and half out, keeping it from closing, inviting me in.
The lights in the elevator car are dim but I can see the button panel, and there is a dark red fingerprint on the button marked 9, a clue so glaring and egregious it has to have been purposeful. A taunt.
Subbasement nine. That’s where you’ll find me. Come along, now… down we go…
I push the button gingerly with my forefinger and it comes away tacky.
At the last minute, though, I don’t take the elevator. I step off before the door can close, step around the fallen bodies of the Librarians, and take the spiral stairs instead.
I go down slowly, one floor at a time with my weapon drawn, and listen at every floor. Pause at sub four, where Silvie’s offices are tucked away. Pause again at sub five and then again, halfway between six and seven, where I hear or think I hear the minute click of a file drawer shifting open. The blood button was 9 and that may be where he is, or it may have been another artful misdirection, another signal rigged to catch my eye and hold it while worlds move in shadow all around me.
One more clue for me to find, one more part of the trap that was set for me, for my clumsy feet to stumble into.
With each footfall the ornate structure of the staircase shimmies beneath my heavy frame. The metal stairs are very old. There is gold detail at every balustrade.
I breathe heavily as I descend.
“I can hear you, Mr. Ratesic. Laszlo.” The, low and wavering in the stillness of the Record. “I can hear you coming.”
I’m halfway down, between sub eight and sub nine, and I stop and perch on the edge of a stair. His gentle creak of a voice echoes from somewhere close by.
“You were never one for sneaking up.”
There are no offices on sub nine, as Silvie’s office sits on four. Just endless intersecting hallways, file rooms, and review rooms. The hallways are dim, lit only by the cool red emergency lights of the Record after hours. Helpless to do otherwise, I go in the direction of Arlo’s voice. And it is even easier than that: there is blood on the floor, dark fresh heel prints on the tile.
I follow those footsteps, still not believing, still not wanting to believe, that it’s him I am following. Still unwilling to live in the world in which he is the villain at the end of the hall.
And yet here he is. Around a corner, the sixth door down. He is seated at a table, examining a file. He looks up and squints behind his glasses, gives me his old fond smile as I come into the room with my gun raised and aimed at his head.
“Get up, Mr. Vasouvian.”
He shakes his head and murmurs, “No, Mr. Ratesic.”
The file on the review desk is deep blue: a CSE. Collated Significant Event. I take two steps into the room. All around me are files. Cabinets full of folders; binders on shelves. Up to the ceiling, down to the floor. Collated truth, running from floor to ceiling and to the ends of the walls.
My gun is aimed at Arlo’s head and I am deciding whether I would really do it.
“You have to get up, Mr. Vasouvian. You have to stand up and come with me.”
“No, no. No, I’m not doing that.”
He seems glad to see me; he seems as he always does. He smiles, and scratches his nose, and sighs. There are flecks of blood on his glasses, a smear on his necktie and on one rumpled lapel of his corduroy jacket. He has killed four people, and left their bodies for me to find.
“I’m not going to do that,” he says. “This is not a normal situation. You can’t think you are going to—what?—arrest me? You will shoot me, Mr. Ratesic, but not right away.”
“Stop talking, Arlo.”
He sighs again. “I’ll tell you what. Come and sit down across from me and we can look at this together.”
“Look at—what?”
“At the file.” He taps it with two fingers, gazing at me evenly. As if he has been waiting for me to discuss it. As if we had an appointment, and I am late.
“Come, Laszlo. I wish you would have a seat.”
He points with his chin to the chair opposite his, and I can feel the energy in the room changing. I am the investigating officer who has come upon his prey, but at the same time I am the younger man, less experienced, a pupil in the presence of his tutor, a child in the presence of the adult.
I grimace, keep my gun up. “You are under arrest for—” For what, Laszlo? For everything. For all of it. “For murder in the first degree.”
“Okay. I plead guilty. We will come to all of that, Mr. Ratesic. Justice will be done. Please. Sit.”
There is a chair across from him. I sit, but I keep my gun out, in my hand.
“This is a CSE file, Laszlo. Do you know the nomenclature used down here? In the labyrinth?”
“CSE,” I say. “Collated Significant Event.”
“Very good.” His smile brightens, gold star for me, and he begins reciting from memory, his favorite trick. “Incidents of self-evident public importance are to be cross-cataloged into a master file, to include all relevant information from all relevant captures, gathered together in a permanent and comprehensive manner to put on Record the full truth of the incident in question.”