MILES: Chapter Three, part 8

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I V

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Erik Strand headed for the break room and poured himself a cup of coffee. He didn’t particularly like coffee, but it’s what his coworkers did, and Erik was trying to act at ease; coffee was the prop that supported social interaction at work. Erik would pour in enough cream and sugar to make the beverage palatable, and would nurse a cup for hours, or leave it on his desk until it was cold. Sometimes, feeling brave, he would get himself a ‘warm up’as an excuse to leave his desk again and move around.

“So, how was the game?” asked Erik, with enough enthusiasm to surprise even himself. James Mathus looked up from his newspaper, confused. James was a heavyset man in his late forties, with short-cropped gray hair, a company man who had spent enough time as a field agent to be content behind a desk, counting the years until his government pension kicked in. He had a warm, confident manner about him, a soft gentleness to his face. He was Erik’s immediate supervisor; he was also the only man at the office Erik considered a friend.

“Uh, which game?” he asked.

“Don’t care; baseball, football, some other sport. Anything. Underwater basket weaving. How was the big weekend?” Erik paused, visibly flailing. “I’m just trying to make conversation here.”

“Okay, well baseball season has been over for months.” James looked amused. “I caught part of the Jets game – that’s football – but I think they were stomped pretty hard. I didn’t catch the end, though. Went out to dinner with the wife and this couple that she knows from work. Umm… that was pretty much the weekend, Erik.”

“I went out,” Erik blurted out. “And I met a girl.”

“You finally get laid? Congratulations–”

Erik cut him off. “No, no. I just, you know, met. A girl.”

“Well, first things first, I guess,” James said with a smile. “You chatted someone pretty up at a pub? You get her number?”

Erik looked confused. “No… I, uh…”

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with striking out your first time at bat. You get her name, at least? You think you might run into her again?” Talking to Erik Strand was sometimes like talking to a small child.

“She asked me for a cigarette.”

“But you don’t smoke.”

“No.”

James furrowed his brow as he considered this. “So, really, you met a girl in a bar; she said ‘hey’and you said ‘hey’back, and that was about the extent of the conversation.”

Erik pursed his lips. He looked momentarily disoriented, like all of his momentum had inexplicably vanished.

“Well, Romeo, sounds like you’ve got a ways to go before she’ll be riding the ol’sausage train, but good luck anyway.” James stood and folded his newspaper, and looked as though he was about to leave the break room, but appeared to change his mind. He leaned in towards Erik as if sharing a secret. “Look, uh… No real eloquent way to say this, so… Erik, everybody here already thinks you’re sort of nuts. So take it easy, okay? I mean, anytime you want to talk about doing absolutely nothing over the weekend, you can come to me, but you maybe shouldn’t expect anyone else to understand how exciting that is for you.”

Erik nodded, trying to make sense of the advice.

“Alright, then.” James patted Erik on the shoulder. “Get back to work,” he said with a smile.

MILES: Chapter Three, part 7

Instead of catching the next bus home, she walked out onto the avenue, down past the frozen trees of the park, and down the hill into the heart of the city. It was dark, and cold, and she tugged her long coat tighter. She needed a change in atmosphere. She crossed a glass sky-bridge, colored lights twinkling in the frozen air, and the open sky made her feel a little better.

Mark wanted something, but she had no idea what. Even when they were together, he had been enigmatic at best, and often deliberately misleading. And so, like a seed caught between her back teeth that she couldn’t dislodge, a feeling of dread rooted itself into the back of her mind and slowly began to spread.

Now Melody needed something to eat, and a chance to relax. Downtown was surprisingly busy for the season. She was rounding a corner when she noticed she was being followed, but not by anything dangerous. She stopped, and peered down an empty alley. Amidst the garbage and discarded furniture, several sets of yellow eyes peered up at her. She grinned.

“Hey, babies,” she called into the alley, and three alley cats appeared from the shadows. “I wish I had some food for you.” The cats mewed their agreement with that sentiment. Two of them – an orange tabby and a fat Siamese – approached Melody fearlessly, butting up against her. They had only been abandoned recently, she knew, and still hung onto their domestic nature. The third was a wild-eyed tom, thin and feral, and took his time trusting her. He stared her down, perched atop a stack of broken wooden pallets.

“I’m sorry, sweethearts,” she said, and the orange cat at her feet mewed sadly, nearly breaking Melody’s heart. “I’m going inside for a while, where it’s warm. No, you can’t come with me. I have to get some people food first, but if you find me later, I’ll get you something to eat.”

The orange cat turned her head to one side, licked her lips and with a leap and a scuffle, vanished into the shadows. The Siamese wasn’t so graceful, but wandered off as well, leaving the tom still perched, roughly the height of Melody’s head, glaring at her.

“You too, you big meanie,” she said, and stuck out her tongue. “But you have to be nice to Francis. He’s not good with strangers.”

The black cat yawned wide, his pink tongue flicked out, and he leapt down from the pallets into the darkness.

Down the street, she passed Frond’s – the dance club that throbbed uncomfortably and radiated much more sexual energy than Melody was entirely comfortable with – and the Watchtower Pub. Something trickled through her as she passed the Watchtower; someone inside made her curious. She peeked through a window, and caught a glimpse of a handsome man in a starched white dress shirt sitting by himself at the bar. She stared another moment, trying to glean what was so interesting about him, but scurried away quickly when he turned to look outside.

In a nearby Greek restaurant she ordered a falafel and a coffee and sat alone, just inside the window. An untended fire slowly burned away in a fireplace across the room, providing little heat. With no other customers, the proprietor wandered into the back where Melody presumed his wife was cooking, as snippets of an argument trickled back to her. She didn’t understand the language, but the anger that filled the air needed little translation. Melody began to feel a little uncomfortable. The argument quickly escalated; the man and woman began shouting and stomping about, oblivious to the business they may have been scaring off. Grateful that she’d paid her bill when she ordered, Melody wrapped up her pita and trudged outside to a covered bus stop, soaking in the bitter cold. A few minutes later, a curious meow and a bundle of orange fur joined her on the bench.

“Where are your friends?” she asked. “Not as brave as you?” Melody offered some falafel but after a sniff the cat turned away and sneezed in disgust. “I guess you’re not a vegetarian.”

She finished her dinner in silence, and sipped her coffee while the cat made herself comfortable in Melody’s lap, quickly falling asleep. Her turtleneck was warm enough, she thought, and the night was beautiful, if cold. She amused herself by watching her breath waft away in the frozen air.

And, though she rarely indulged herself, she decided what she really wanted was a cigarette.

MILES: Chapter Three, part 2

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I I

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Dr. Lucius Cain had been dead ten years, and his legacy had all but been forgotten, but Erik Strand still felt uneasy looking through the old files. He had been new to the Bureau at the time of the incident, having spent eight years in the military before turning Intelligence. Strand was not an easy man to rattle, but looking through old file photos sent shivers down his spine. The body count alone was enough to make anyone uneasy, but the fire, the horrific way the victims had died, the clear evidence of torture… Strand still had dreams of walking the site after the fire, finding the first of the many, many bodies, excavating and examining the ruins of what would be known only as the Engine.

Intelligence agencies are not known for being forthcoming with information, but as one of the primary agents in the investigation, one of the first agents to the site, Strand still had many, many unanswered questions.

Strand had learned quickly, though: sometimes it’s better to leave well enough alone. Sometime it’s better not to ask questions. When the doors close on a case, when everyone else shuts up and walks away, sometimes it’s best to follow suit.

But the dreams still came, still crept up on his subconscious mind, still nagged at his memory like a half-forgotten thought or an image through foggy glass.

He closed the file folder abruptly. Strand wasn’t even sure what he was doing digging through old records in the first place. What had inspired him to rifle through the Cain files again?

He looked up at the clock and was surprised to find that read 6:30. The floor was quiet, and had been for a while. He walked back to his desk, closed his briefcase, slid his laptop computer into his shoulder bag, and half-walked, half-jogged to the stairs.

He signed out with security, passed through the metal detectors, and loosened his tie on the way through the double doors. It was a Friday night, after all. He could afford to relax a little.

The cold air nipped at his face and hands as he stepped into the low light of the near empty parking lot, and he pulled up the collar on his pea coat. New Jersey winters, he thought. I’ll never be used to them.

Lights from the south end of the complex indicated that a skeleton crew was pulling the graveyard shift, but his end of the building was nearly deserted.

Strand chuckled quietly to himself at the thought of a skeleton crew working a graveyard shift, and blipped the remote attached to his keychain; across the parking lot his green MiniCooper flashed its lights as the doors unlocked. He loved his little car, though a few of the other Agents in his office teased him about it; most members of the intelligence community drove big luxury sedans with ominously tinted windows and government plates.

It was a short drive through the city to the downtown apartment where Strand lived alone. He hung his pea coat on the rack and discarded his tie, put some hot water on and fixed himself a cup of tea. A Friday night, and Strand had an evening of paperwork and late night television to look forward to. It wasn’t that he was antisocial, or at least he didn’t think of himself that way, he just didn’t understand people and people didn’t understand him, so he focused solely on his career. The other Agents has long since given up asking Strand to join them in their evening excursions (they called him ‘Books’ behind his back, and sometimes to his face); he would hear every Monday about the Football game over the weekend, or the girls that someone had met, and would likely never call again. None of that interested him.

He was an athletic man in his mid thirties, well dressed and well groomed, polite and intelligent, with sandy blonde hair and eyes that vaguely resembled seawater. His had broken up with Sharon, his last serious girlfriend, six years ago, a mutually agreed sense of incompatibility between them, and had since lost interest in dating. He hadn’t lost interest in women entirely, just in the game that was courtship. Relationships were clumsy and unpredictable, and so after a few years of awkward first dates, Strand has somehow unconsciously decided that his career was more important than his sex life, and had all but given up on the concept of romance.

He was a good agent; he took pride in the quality and consistency of his work. He was satisfied with that. But something bothered him this evening; something nudged and scratched at the back of his mind. Something about the old case had touched a nerve, a soft spot in his well-ordered world, and had thrown him off-balance.

He had watered the plants that lined his window sill – the only living things he allowed himself to be responsible for – and was about to open his laptop and spread his briefcase full of reports-to-file across the kitchen table when, for reasons he could not begin to explain, he grabbed his coat and gloves, locked the door behind him, and walked out into the cold.

MILES: Chapter Three, part 1

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I

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MELODY WALKED through the stranger’s home. She liked new places; here was a condo, part of an expensive high-rise. She peeked around the corners, taking in her surroundings, evaluating today’s job. Everything was lavish to the point of looking a little ridiculous. The decor was deep burgundy against a white backdrop; the furniture looked like it was straight off a showroom floor. The spacious living room looked across through a breakfast bar to the kitchen; the gas stovetop was set in an island, the cabinetry was ornate white wood with pewter hardware.

She felt the animal before she saw it; a cat mewed and padded curiously around the corner. Melody smiled and bent down to pet the grey and white creature, which immediately sprang up into her arms, purring contently.

“Looks like you have a new friend,” the woman spoke, peering out at Melody from the kitchen. The woman’s face was trapped in a permanent scowl. “Ferdinand normally doesn’t like anybody. He’s Anton’s cat. Very particular.”

“Oh, he’s beautiful,” said Melody, as the cat nuzzled her neck. “Aren’t you just precious?”

The woman looked at her strangely. “I’ll be gone in a few minutes. I just have to finish… you know.” The woman disappeared into the hall bathroom, but her voice still carried. “Then I’ll be out of your hair and you can get to work.” The woman spoke as though housecleaning was something to be ashamed of. A few spritzes of perfume later and the woman pranced down the hall, her heels clicking on the wood floors. “My car is here. I’ll be back in a few hours. I expect you’ll be gone by then.” she paused, and added with forced consideration. “There’s sparkling water in the fridge, but please stay out of the bourbon. I know how much is left.”

Melody tried not to act insulted. Instead, she held out the cat in offering, who looked up at the woman and promptly sneezed. “Say goodbye to Ferdinand?”

“Oh, good gracious no,” said the woman, turning abruptly and exiting the condo. “Dreadful animal.”

Now alone in the house, Melody let herself relax. “Poor little thing. Anton’s her son, isn’t he? He must off at school.” She ran her fingers along a family photograph on the wall, one among many. A wife and husband and a son in his late teens, all sharply dressed and carefully posed. All the pictures looked roughly the same, all carefully postured – the parents looked stern and the boy wore a quirky half-smile, as though he constantly on the verge of a laugh. “I’d laugh too, boy, if I had to wear those clothes all the time.”

The cat sniffled and jumped out of her arms, and began grooming himself on the edge of the sofa. Melody busied herself first by opening every drape in the house and cracking a few windows. Light flooded in, and a cool breeze trickled through, dispelling the stillness in the air.

She gathered her bag of supplies. The condo was barely lived in; Melody wondered why on earth a family would need a maid when it was clear to her that no one ever touched anything. Still, a paycheck was a paycheck. And they had a nice cat.

She started in the kitchen, disinfecting countertops that looked like no one had even cooked on them, vacuuming immaculate floors. Only the furniture needed the slightest attention, and she cleaned off the residual fur with a lint brush and fluffed the pillows. The cat followed her, softly, from room to room – scattering whenever she turned on the vacuum or swept the broom, but returning quickly to her side when the dangerous appliance had been put away.

She was dusting the cabinetry, the cat perched in a windowsill, when she felt it – not quite something dangerous, but something unusual. A tingling crept up from the edges of her awareness. There was a shiver in the air, a dry crackle like all the moisture had suddenly been sucked away, and the atmosphere was trying to compensate for the vacuum. The cat hissed suddenly, and jumped down from the window, circling her leg and looking up at her anxiously. Melody looked out at the window, surprised. She was nine stories up – there couldn’t possibly be anything dangerous outside. Still, she crept toward the window like she anticipated something jumping out at her, and peered out into the street.

The street was as busy as expected. An afternoon in Newark: people milled about, but nothing out of the ordinary. Then she saw him, almost a shadow below her, dark skin and pale eyes, watching from across the street. Her blood ran cold as she stared down this dark figure, still against the constant motion of the city street. She did not know how this shadow could pick her out from a window ninety feet in the air, but she knew with absolute certainty that she was being watched. And even from that distance, she was somehow certain he was smiling.

She heard the cat skitter behind her; Ferdinand quickly hid under the sofa, somewhere out of sight.

Then the traffic lights changed color, the traffic began to move, and in an instant the shadow was gone. A shudder took her, racing up and down her spine. She exhaled involuntarily, and stepped back from the window, yanking the blinds closed behind her.

The cat butted up against her leg and she jumped, barely stifling a scream. Her pulse was racing. The cat mewed up at her curiously and she picked him up, absentmindedly petting his fur, trying to calm the electricity in her nerves.

The house she finished cleaning in absolute silence.

The bus ride home was cold and lonely, and Melody spent the hour reaching out to her surroundings with her mind, unable to shake the feeling that someone was following her – someone just beyond her reach.