Ch. 6 / Pt. 1 : When They Wear the Mask
It had only taken two days for them to figure out the meaning of their first unknown number. During some esoteric chapter of Paul’s history, he’d discovered how to reference lots and developments on tax maps. The second sequence Rehani had auto-written corresponded to a cul de sac in northwestern Denton on one such map, a circle sliced into eleven uneven properties.
To Paul and Deirdre, the last unknown sequence resembled a police case reference number. But neither of them had a reliable way to access such things, at least not that they knew about, and so its meaning or context remained a mystery.
Rehani spent the first part of the week helping to organize a rally in support of the nation-wide police brutality protests spearheaded by the Black Lives Matter movement. Oceanrest Metro PD had been on best behavior since the year before, when a weeks-long internal investigation had revealed a half-dozen badges connected to a neo-Nazi militia group funded primarily through human trafficking, but most precincts across the country didn’t seem so wary of obvious eggshells.
Paul, Deirdre, and Rehani met that Thursday morning to deliver supplies to people who planned to push the demonstration through the weekend. After sunset, they drove Rehani’s car up to northwestern Denton and looped the area, searching.
They slept at Deirdre’s, Paul drowsed by a combination of over-the-counter and at-home-herbal allergy remedies. Samedi woke him anyway, curled on his chest, purring until Paul sneezed himself awake. Rehani drove back into the city for a couple hours in the morning and returned to pick Paul and Deirdre up in the afternoon.
By Friday sundown, they’d driven back up to northwest Denton to drive loops, to search.
As night curtained over the day, they parked on the shoulder of the slender neck of asphalt leading into the cul de sac. With two pairs of binoculars between them, they took turns surveying the darkness, watching the houses and the lights inside of them, waiting for Rehani’s prophesied deadline to pass.
Sitting in the driver’s seat of her decade-old hybrid, the only functional car any of the three of them owned, Rehani lowered a set of binoculars from her face and passed them to Paul in the backseat. “You sure this is the right neighborhood?”
“If you’re sure the number you wrote down was right, then yes.”
Rehani clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
“Sorry,” Paul offered. “I’m just…I don’t think we had to get involved with is. But ever since that night, I’ve felt…”
“Different?” Rehani asked.
“Yeah.”
Rehani nodded, facing away from him again. “Yeah. Same.”
“I’ve never heard the dead so quiet…”
“Spit and shake on it,” Deirdre interrupted, sitting shotgun with a revolver at her hip. “I’m glad you two feel ready to start respecting each other and all, but I’m trying to focus.”
“Whoa, sorry,” Rehani replied.
Paul said nothing, only sat awkward and quiet for a second before bringing the binocs to his eyes.
Squinting through her own pair of lenses, Deirdre saw exterior lights flicker on outside one of the houses. Someone moved around on the first floor but she couldn’t make out anything specific. Frowning, she leaned back. “Any way we could get closer over there?”
“What, you want me to park in their driveway?”
Deirdre pointed through the windshield, “That place over there, no lights yesterday and today. We could park in their driveway and get a better angle—”
“Are you crazy? You want me to—”
“This is just normal stakeout boredom,” Paul interrupted. “Back forever ago, after I got out of Quantico and before…everything else,” Paul had gone from FBI profiler to NYPD consultant before losing his daughter. Always on the edge, his grief and addictions had whittled everything else away bit-by-bit, job and social life and marriage and NYC itself. That was how he’d come to live in Oceanrest in the first place. He cleared his throat. “Uh, I had a couple of these. And people get punchy.”
“Did this boy just call us ‘punchy?’”
“Gaea please,” Dierdre muttered. “This is the dumbest argument. I need to get closer.”
“I’m forty-four, by the way.”
“Boy, what?”
Deirdre popped open her door and slipped out of the vehicle. Rehani and Paul both called out after her but neither immediately followed. She stepped over the narrow sidewalk and onto someone’s lawn. Staying away from the streetlamps pouring glow down onto the asphalt, she tracked across grass in search of better vantage.
She double checked her holster, her revolver secured. In one of her jacket pockets, she had a speed-loader.
Halfway between the car and the houses, she found a driveway that gave her lines of sight through windows and into interiors. Squinting at one house, she saw a couple toasting champagne for some special occasion. At the other, she saw a teenage boy at a computer upstairs and a whole floor lit up below him. She swiveled her gaze between the two settings, waiting.
“Hey,” Paul whispered.
She jumped. “Jesus.”
“Are we sure about this?”
“What—we’re already here.”
“Yeah, but you’re not the one with the knife.” Paul carried a six inch knife when he imagined he might need protection. He’d once owned a small three-shot pistol, an antique, but had allegedly lost it while allegedly drunk on a boat with other alleged university faculty. Deirdre hadn’t asked for the whole story and he’d never offered to tell it.
“That’s why I take point.”
A sharp noise clattered distantly.
“What was that?” Paul asked.
Deirdre brought the binoculars back up to her eyes. The celebrating couple still seemed celebratory, drinking bubbly and laughing. At the other house—
She dropped the binoculars and unbuckled her holster.
She started running before thinking to answer. She didn’t even notice Rehani’s engine rumbling as the car pulled away. She didn’t hear the thing Paul whispered after his question, either. She snatched her gun out of its holster and sprinted for the house.
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