NaNoWriMo Novel: The Redactor

Sunday 2 November 2014

The Redactor, Chapter 16

I woke the next morning to the smell of whiskey and a head packed with sawdust.
  “You really slipped in the shit this time,” said Tracey from the gloom, seated in the room’s only chair. Except she would never have said ‘shit’—I berated myself for the off-character dialog.
  I opened the curtains a crack, rode a wave of nausea, and counted the minibar bottles scattered through the room. Apparently it was all of them.
  When I opened my wallet with clumsy hands, I counted the cash and realized I would barely have enough to pay for the bar, let alone the room.
  A bottle of bourbon had a stain of liquor at its base, so I tipped the bottle above my mouth and let the dregs dribble into my throat. I was my own physician, and I had prescribed a dose of hair of the dog.
  At last I tried my voice, which came out in a croak: “How was I to know he would switch train lines?”
  I took hold of my head and spilled some angry tears. Tracey watched in silence.
  When I had sniffed up the last tear, and raked my scalp, forgetting it was bald, she said, “He’s making up the rules as he goes along, Dad,” and for a moment I felt like the child. “Edit, cut, paste. Whatever fits his fancy.”
  In a sudden pique I said, “I’ll kill him.”
  Tracey’s smile was mixed with pity. “No you won’t.”
  Pity from my own daughter. I wasn’t going to take that. I gripped the hallucination in my mind and extinguished it.
  I made my way to the bathroom. It wasn’t much bigger than a closet. I dashed water on my face and rubbed my cheeks. They were rough with stubble, but shaving was the second last thing I wanted to do right then.
  The last thing I wanted to do was get on the telephone. But I might as well charge the call to the room. In for a dime, in for a dollar.
  I looked up the numbers I needed for an international call, put the phone on speaker, and dialed.
  I sat on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands and listened to the phone’s faint hiss and the ping-pong of my call racing through the network.
  A call tone, finally. Four pulses, then someone picked up.
  “Hello?” said a voice.
  “Matt,” (At last) I said. “You need to give the police the passwords—”
  “Mr Griffin?”
  “Yeah,” I said. “Did you hear me? You need—”
  “I got your message,” he said.
  “Well, never mind that. You got there ahead of me. The passwords are working, but I need you to give them to the police so they can look at the blog too.”
  Silence.
  “Mr Griffin...”
  There it was again. Mr Griffin? What the hell was wrong with the kid.
  “I got your message, but I have no idea what you’re talking about. And—”
  “What do you mean—”
  “—the police have been here.”
  “Wait. Wait. Back up. What do you mean you have no idea what I’m talking about? The passwords for Hiero’s blog. Remember? They cycle. You cracked his server.”
  “Mr Griffin,”—Arg!—”those things you said I did, I didn’t do. I haven’t spoken to you since... it must be last holidays.”
  I felt heat flush my cheeks, but my gut was growing cold.
  “I know we haven’t spoken,” I said, voice rising. “I tried to call you. We Skyped, text chat, last week.”
  “No, we didn’t. I was on leave last week. At beach camp. Digital detox. I haven’t Skyped anyone in weeks.”
  “Shit...” I breathed the word, long, like a sigh.
  I must’ve been silent a long time, because Matt said, “Mr Griffin? Are you there? What’s going on?”
  “I don’t know. I thought I’d just stepped in shit, but it seems I’ve been flushed down the toilet.” I lowered the receiver, then raised it once more. “Whatever they say about me, Matt. It’s not true. Don’t believe it.”
  And with those sage words I hung up.
  I sat there in silence and tried to make the world stop spinning. The hardarse in my head reeled off the score.
  I was (mostly) alone in a hotel room on the other side of the world, in an unfamiliar city filled with people speaking an unfamiliar language. I was broke, and suspected of at least one, possibly two, murders. I was doomed with the foreknowledge of another murder about to happen, and my one ace in the hole, my one window into the mind of the killer, which had seemed too good to be true, was in fact too good to be true.
  The blog was a honeypot and I was Winnie-the-Pooh.
  Hiero had somehow intercepted my attempt to communicate with Matt. Had impersonated him and set me up to read his blog.
  But why?
  I suddenly understood those guys you see on street corners and train stations who hit themselves on the head.
  Quickly I packed my meager belongings and descended to the lobby. I stashed Li Min’s journal next to Hiero’s notes into my coat pockets in an attempt to not look like I was skipping out on my bill.
  Before I left I checked the blog again. I read the latest entry with that same car-crash-can’t-look-away feeling:
 
  On to the next adventure. By train, this time, I think. The 08:52 from the Hauptbahnhof on through a cavalcade of German cities, the names of which put me in mind of a dozen B-Grade World War 2 movies, and finally, Gare de L’Est, Gay Paree!
  Not the Orient Express, but the same romantic sense of that old European passage. Wintering trees and cigarettes and cocktails in the dining cart.
 
  And there it was. Hiero’s rampage rolled on again like that train. And now it was almost certain he knew I was reading his account of his exploits.
  Well, I was getting on that train.
  From a boutique telecoms store I bought a prepaid phone, and loaded every last cent onto it, for voice and data.
  I called the Murdoch police station from memory and asked for Thomas. My call was dispatched and seconds later a very alert Thomas spoke. “Tell me you’re on your way home, Griffin.”
  “No, I’m on my way to do your job. He’s killed again, you know. Vienna. Hauptbahnhof station. Yesterday, right in front of me. I’m not going to let him do it again.”
  “What you nee—”
  I hung up.

  Barely thirty seconds later the phone buzzed. No caller id, but it had to be Thomas. I turned the phone off. Let him stew.

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