Plug In

Hal unlocked the door to the dingy one-room apartment he’d been renting. No caution tape, no forensics specialists, nothing. He was in the clear… for now. But he wasn’t about to kick his boots off and run a bath. It probably would take Capoldi’s men no less than an hour to realize he wasn’t dead in that car crash.

The boys in blue would be a little bit longer, surely, what with the green bananas they called detectives these days. Then again, he shouldn’t be so judgmental. He’d been like them once himself. Now he was ripe, and he had the bruises to prove it. Still, he was a long ways away from the banana bread that was retirement–a pension and a condo in Florida.

Although come to think of it, the pension wouldn’t be waiting for him now that he’d gone rogue trying to find out what happened to his brother. And the condo? Hell, he could barely afford this dive.

Two of Capoldi’s henchmen were probably at Sheila’s right now. It sickened him to think of them talking to her, but then again, Capoldi was an old-fashioned man. A crime lord, yes. A killer, of course. A drug dealer, smuggler, embezzler, you name it. But a gentleman, through and through. His goons never got rough with anyone who wasn’t a bit rough themselves. They’d dress as men from the gas company or what have you and poke around looking for clues. And Sheila wasn’t exactly unforthcoming about the end of the engagement. Seemed like she took great pride in broadcasting the circumstances of the relationship’s termination: Hal saying about how, before he could talk romantic commitments, he needed to solve this one case that was so personal to him; her saying they couldn’t get hitched because he was already married… to chaos.

The point being he didn’t have much time.

He flipped open his MacBook and an email notification dinged loud enough to make him jump. Muting the volume, he checked the message.

Saw your stunt on the highway. Real convincing, but you’re gonna need to do better than that if you really want to disappear long enough to figure this thing out.

The address it came from was a series of letters and numbers, inscrutable.

Hal typed back:

Who is this?

The response came back almost instantly:

I’m just someone looking for the same answers as you. Meet me under the Tinkerton Bridge in one hour and we’ll compare notes.

Hal stood from the desk and paced the room. This all gave him a bad feeling, and yet, it’d been three months since Clark had gone missing and every lead had been a dead end. He had to do something.

He’d barely been there five minutes before he was locking the door behind him. It would take most of the hour to get to the Tinkerton Bridge on foot, but after that funny business he pulled on the interstate, walking was his only option.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The above-mentioned MacBook was plugged into a wall using a Black Anker PowerPort III 45W Pod.