

CHICK

by

Christopher Blankley
Chapter 1

People call me Buzz. Yes, like the astronaut. But I'm a girl, not a boy. I get that a lot. You can call me Buzz, or whatever. I don't care. You're here to read about Chick, right? Not me.

I bet you already think you know some stuff about Chick. I mean, you read the papers, right? About all his cases. You want to know how he caught the Wild Side Killer. You didn't just randomly pick up this book in a bookstore and turn to the first page. You're here to read about Chick. Well, just forget what you think you already know.

Who is Chick? What's his process? His secret to criminal investigation? Hell, I have not idea. Chick is...well, Chick is Chick. Nobody thinks like Chick. I mean, nobody.

Okay, maybe he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But Chick would be the first to say it's not about smart or stupid. He's no genius consulting detective or anything. This isn't going to be any Sherlock Holmes story. He isn't stupid, either. No sir, because, when you meet him, you're prone to think he's...but he's not, he's not _dim_...

But then, nobody else ever had to think like Chick – to accomplish what he's accomplished. So, it makes some sort of twisted sense. If Chick hadn't had to be Chick, he wouldn't have had to be Chick. You know? No? No. I'm not making sense.

Okay. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? That old riddle, right? But, in this case it's more like, which came first, Albert Chick or the Wild Side Killer? It's a riddle just as hard to answer. One made the other, you know? And the other made the one. One wouldn't need to exist without the other. Could not have existed.

I'm not helping, am I?

Maybe I should go back to the beginning.

It was the year I dropped out of collage. 1992, I think. I'd moved to Longview in the State of Washington, into my dad's spare room. Flunking out of school hadn't done me any favors. Dad letting me crash with him, hadn't either. I was working a bunch of odd jobs. Stocking shelves, cleaning floors, that sort of thing. I had no direction. Rudderless, mom would have called it, if we'd been speaking. She hadn't taken my sudden collegiate career change well. She didn't think you could make anything of your life without a degree. Maybe she was right. I was sure well on the way to proving it.

Anyway, around the summer of '92, I was working at this little computer store, Nybbles and Bytes, in the mall. Well not in the mall, but near the mall, in one of those strip-mall parking lot deals, on the corner of Ocean Beach and Washington, in between a nail salon and a sticky chicken joint. This was back in the Amiga days, and this place exclusively sold Amigas. Well, perhaps "sold" is too generous. "Stocked" is certainly more accurate. Sometimes, they got units in for repairs and my electronics background and a basic understanding of how to use an oscilloscope kept my busy earning six bucks an hour. The store, in order to make ends meet, stocked a wide supply of non-computer related items that otherwise appealed to Amiga enthusiasts: pen-and-paper role-playing games; remote-controlled toy cars; and Japanese scale-model sets. It was this last item that first brought me in contact with Chick. He would come into the store from time to time to purchase a Gundam.

What's a Gundam? Well, it's...I don't really know. A model of a plastic robot? They have guns and stuff. That'll be important in a bit. Chick liked to put them together. Meticulous. Ordered. Delicate. Just like Chick. He glued them together, but he never painted them. People usually painted them. Not Chick. He always left them as gray plastic.

I had three co-workers back then. Well, two co-workers and one permanent loiterer. I can't totally remember their names, but I remember the user names I gave each of them in my head. I guess it's best I don't use real names, anyway, since I have no idea what became of them. They're probably still there, in Nybbles and Bytes, sipping Coke and bitching about the new _Star Trek_ movie. Maybe the computers they sell have changed. Maybe not.

My boss was Spider. He worked the register and did the hard sell on the Amigas. I called him Spider because, despite only having the requisite two arms and two legs of a human, he moved uncannily like an arachnid, skittering for here to there, suddenly looming over you, as if to strike. His fingers were in almost constant motion, wiggling like tentacles, or ten little snake-tongues tasting the air before him. Maybe that's what gave him the predatory vibe – the inquisitive, searching fingers, always at the ready, as if he might, at any moment, reach out and firmly clamp down on one of your boobs. He never did. Never. Not even as much as a lurid grin. He was an okay guy and all around good boss, but the whole screaming, heebie-jeebie vibe was hard to get past.

The other technician was George McFly. That wasn't his name, of course, but he was the splitting image of the Crispin Glover character from _Back to the Future,_ right down to the horn-rimmed glasses, corduroys, dress shirt and pocket protector. He even broke down into fits of the character's signature laugh apnea whenever he found one of his own, startlingly dry jokes particularly funny. Which was often, and never really funny to anyone else.

He was a good guy, too, and really knew his computer shit. I learned a lot, working at the table next to him in the stores' weird, little raised bullpen that was our workshop. But he pegged high on my heebie-jeebie meter, too, though he was never weird with me. I think he had a wife and kids somewhere he never talked about. Which was weirder than just being a creep.

Our permanent loiterer was the real McCoy. Creep-wise that is. I called him Moist, because he was. All the time. He was a sweaty, little creep who showed up in the mornings with a two-liter Coke and parked his ass at the card table by the door, where kids were supposed to play _Magic: The Gathering,_ and was generally rude to anyone and everyone who came into the store. He'd sit and drink from his bottle and wipe his fat mouth on his sleeve and shuffle through collectible cards and argue loudly about Heinlein or Asimov, or who was hotter, Beverly Crusher or Dianna Troi. He was a friend of Spiders' from Longview High School. I guess they'd all graduated the same year: Moist, Spider, McFly and Chick. But why any of them put up with Moist around the store, I couldn't say. I mean, nobody ever really wanted to buy an Amiga, but with Moist there, it was almost impossible to keep any normal person in the store long enough to give them a chance. Ten minutes after the door chime rang, Moist would be badgering some poor housewife with a baby in stroller about POW's in Indochina or some shit. And all she wanted was some floppies for her son's computer.

They'd all leave angry and insulted and never come back.

Some days I wanted to do the same. But Moist never said a word to me. Not after our one, lone interaction. It was, maybe, on day three of me working in the bullpen. He'd catcalled, as I'd bent over to pick up a screwdriver. I'd straightened up, turned and thrown the Phillips at his head. He still had the scar over his left eye. That was the first and last time he had acknowledged my existence, in the store or out. I didn't speak to him, and he didn't speak to me. That one act of violence, and I got off easy.

But I couldn't help feel sorry for the customers. Even if they already knew about Moist. I felt worst of all for Chick. Moist really had it in for Chick. In the past, there was some bad blood between them, more than just a screwdriver to the skull. Every time Chick came into the store for a Gundam set, Moist was merciless. And Chick, even on a good day, made for a pretty pathetic spectral. Watching him be ridiculed by a fuckhead like Moist...it broke my heart.

That was why, when Chick came in that day with the computer under his arm, I knew I was going to help him, no matter what.

And that's what opened up the whole can of worms.
Chapter 2

"How would you handle the Kobayashi Maru Test, Spider?" Moist asked. "Do you even know what it is?" Spider knew – we all knew, we'd all seen the movie. Many times, in the theaters and on VHS. Spider initially ignored the question. Moist asked the question apropos to something to do with immigration policy. Something Moist had been pontificating on for about fifteen minutes. I wasn't paying attention, I was trying to get a particularly difficult C2000 out of kickstart.

"It's the no-win scenario," Spider finally replied. Spider knew it would do no good to ignore Moist. Moist would just keep asking his question until he got the answer he wanted.

"Wrong!" Moist replied emphatically, slamming his palm down on the card table. This caused his two liter to topple over and fizz wildly inside the bottle. McFly found this instantly humorous, and he began to choke, in his way, on his own laughter.

Moist shot McFly and angry glance. He righted his Coke and went on. "It's not a no-win scenario – never was a no-win scenario. That's what everyone says, but everyone is wrong." His voice was nastily and contrite. Like he was accusing everyone in the room of peeing on his shoes. "You can't win the Kobayashi Maru Test, because the Kobayashi Maru Test is _rigged_. A _rigged_ test. Rigged by Starfleet. Just like the government rigs everything."

Spider just shook his head and returned his attention to his comic book. He was thinking maybe that this was the end of it. If he didn't goad Moist anymore, he might finally shut up.

I just couldn't help myself. "But, isn't that the same thing? Don't they have to rig the test so you can't win it?"

"No, it's most certainly not the same thing!" Moist sounded indignant, but he wasn't addressing me. I didn't exist. He was still talking to Spider. "How did Kirk beat the Kobayashi Maru?"

Spider sighed and answered, not looking up. "He cheated."

"No," Moist shook his head, as if talking to a child. "That's exactly my point. You can't cheat in a rigged test. You can only re-rig it in your favor. Kirk didn't cheat on the Kobayashi Maru, he made the Kobayashi Maru his bitch. That's all I'm saying. The U.S. Government is a no-win scenario. It's the Kobayashi Maru. You can't cheat the U.S. Government, all you can do is make it your bitch."

His point made, Moist finally fell into silence. It was an early summer's day, just starting to get hot. We had the door open and fans running. Moist was moister that usual and wiped his brow with the tail of his dirty T-shirt, showing all and sundry his enormous, hairy belly. A look came over him, as if he was contemplating getting up and taking a shit, or perhaps fishing something half-eaten out of his teeth.

I was contemplating Moist, contemplating his next, disgusting move, when I spied Chick outside the store, crossing the median between the strip malls, as was his habit.

As I said, Chick had been in the store a few times before to buy Gundam kits. Up until then, I hadn't given Chick much thought, beyond just felting sorry and embarrassed for the way Moist, and their others, always treated him. I had noted, however, that he always came on foot. He didn't seem to drive. How he crossed the parking lots and the grassy divides between strip malls was curious; he didn't follow any sidewalk or path, just cut a straight line from wherever he was coming toward wherever he was going.

He was right, if you thought about it. It didn't make much sense. The parking lots of each, individual strip mall didn't connect. If you wanted to go from say, Nybbles and Bytes to the Babies R' Us, you had to get into your car, drive out onto the road and pull into the parking lot next door. There wasn't even any sort of real, pedestrian access, just a dirt, sloped divide. What was that about? How was that conducive to shopping? Even just walking. Chick made his own path, unconcerned for steps or parked cars. He simply followed the most efficient route – a straight line.

My heart sank a little when I spied Chick's distant but distinct shape moving toward the store. Moist hadn't yet seen him. Neither had Spider or McFly. Turn around, go home, I told Chick mentally. Not today. Moist was in rare form. It was just too warm to sit through another one of his self-important fits.

But I had no psychic gifts. Chick was still coming, closing in on the store. And in a part of my brain that I didn't like to admit I had, I agreed with Moist. Just watching Chick walk, you could tell that there was something off about him, something not quite right. He wasn't that fat, but he waddled like he was carrying weight. He walked duck-footed, his knees too far apart. As he closed in, I could spy the heavy coat he was wearing despite the summer heat. What was up with that? Wasn't he hot? And then the headphones, always with the headphones. Not Walkman headphones, but big, bulky cans like the sort you'd see a black kid wearing in a breakdance video. He always had them on. He never seemed to take them off. Even when Spider was ringing up a Gundam purchase, he didn't bother to tell Chick the price, he just waved a hand in front of Chick's face and pointed at the register. Chick would fish a fist full of crumpled bank notes out of the bag around his neck and smooth them out onto the counter. Maybe he couldn't hear Moist's insults over whatever music he was listening to. But I doubted it. The burning look of fury and humiliation in Chick's eyes always told me he didn't have his music turned up nearly loud enough.

As I said, that day Chick had a computer under his arm. That was different. I'd never asked where he was coming from. He always wore scrubs and came from the direction of the warehouses behind the Lamont's. I knew there was a gun range in one of those buildings. With the door open, we could faintly hear the _pop, pop_ of pistol shots. But Chick wasn't coming from there.

If I'd know the Cowlitz County Morgue was back there, too, I might have been a little more cautious.

For an instant, I hoped against hope that Moist's plan to get up and go take a dump was about to materialize. If he was in the bathroom when Chick came into the store, there was an outside chance we could get Chick in and out with a new Gundam before Moist returned to his folding chair. But my hopes were quickly dashed when Moist, choosing plan B, reached a finger into his mouth and began to dig around for something in his back teeth.

Chick came into the store and moved with purpose toward the bullpen. He didn't acknowledged the presence of Moist, Spider, or myself. He just pulled the wide, thick laptop from under his arm and placed it on the rim of counter around the bullpen.

It sat there for a long moment, hovering beside McFly's head. "What?" McFly asked, annoyed.

Chick opened his mouth and stammered something.

"Bur, blah blur!" Moist mimicked, faking a spasm. He laughed at this, then changed tack. "Cluck! Cluck!" he squawked and clapped, like he was selling something Kentucky Fried.

Chick turned and shot him a glare of burning disgust.

"That's a T1000," McFly dismissed, turning his attention back to his green and black screen. "We don't fix those."

"N-n-no–" Chick stammered.

"Chick have computer..." Moist said slowly, then burst out laughing again, "Computer go beep beep!"

"Shut up!" Spider said from behind the register.

Moist continued to laugh at his own joke, but shut up.

"It's..." Chick began again, searching for the words. It was excruciating watching him try and construct a sentence. "Computer..."

Moist, leaned forward and picked up his two liter. "Yes, Chick, you retard shithead. A computer." He unscrewed the lid, and it exploded in a torrent of foam. He shirt was soaked, but Moist seemed unconcerned. He took a long swig.

This made McFly laugh his throttling laugh, pointing a finger at Moist's folly. But Chick didn't move, still holding the laptop on the rim of the counter. McFly gave him a look and sighed. "That's a Toshiba," he said slowly. "This is an Amiga shop. We don't work on those, here." McFly gave the laptop of slight push. "Take it to the Toshiba dealer."

"No!" Chick growled, frustrated.

"Don't waste your breath, George," Moist dismissed, returning his bottle of soda to the table. "The dummy isn't going to understand. Just take it from him before he drops it or trades it for magic beans or something."

"Leave him alone," I interjected, just wishing the whole thing would be over. "What's wrong with the laptop?" I asked Chick. "Is it broken?" I reached for it on the narrow counter.

Chick snatched it up and hugged it to himself. "No, not broken!" he yelled too loud. Perhaps it wasn't quite as loud for him under his headphones. I recoiled, slightly shocked. Chick looked horrified, like he'd kicked me or something. "I'm sorry!" he said, again far too loud. He turned quickly and began for the door.

Moist, the absolute asshole, was ready with his foot extended. Chick tripped over it and landed hard on his folded arms. The headphones came off his head and clattered down onto the concrete sidewalk beyond the door. That's when I noted there was no wire. The headphones weren't plugged into anything.

Chick wailed in pain and pulled the crushed laptop from underneath him. Moist was howling in delight at the spectacle and wasn't ready for Chick's fist connecting square with his left kneecap. There was a hideous cracking sound, perhaps Moist's knee, perhaps Chick's fingers, then Moist flipped back off his folding chair. Screaming in pain, he fell square into a rack of comic books.

"Fuck!" Moist screamed. "My knee!"

After that, we were all on our feet. Spider skittered around the front counter and began to pull Moist out of the comic books. Chick was up and out the door, scrambling after his headphones. By the time McFly and I climbed out of the bullpen, Chick was already gone, Moist was blubbering like a little girl, and the laptop lay in the middle of the floor.

I scooped it up and sprinted after Chick.
Chapter 3

"Hey, wait up!" I called after Chick. He was already halfway up a grassy incline between strip malls, walking head down, shoulders hunched. He couldn't hear me, his headphones were securely over his ears, but something made him falter in his stride. Perhaps he suddenly realized he no longer had the laptop in his hands. Panicked, he turned about and I almost crashed right into him. "Hey, I–" I began, panting. Running was really never my thing.

"What?" Chick interrupted, tilting his head to one side.

"Hey, you forgot this!" I held up the laptop.

"What?" he repeated, louder, as if it was me who couldn't hear him.

"You forgot–" I sighed, frustrated. I pantomimed that he needed to take off his headphones.

Chick got the general gist of my hand waving and pulled of the phones.

"You forgot your laptop," I finished.

"It's not–" Chick began, shouting. "Mine..." he finished, lowering his voice.

"Well, um," I stuttered. I didn't really care who's it was. It wasn't mine, that much I knew. "Here," I held out the bulky laptop to Chick.

He recoiled and stepped back. Each of his hands went instantly into the opposing armpit. He stood there, akimbo, biting his lower lip and staring at the laptop. At the time, I thought Chick had hurt himself when Moist had tripped him, fallen hard on him hands, perhaps. I was quickly to learn that this fingers-in-the-armpits move was Chick's signature stance when dealing with anything even remotely distressing.

"Okay, okay," I was at least empathic enough to realize I'd made some sort of mistake. I lowered the laptop, hiding it behind my back. "Are you okay?"

Chick nodded. His fingers came out from under his arms and reached for the headphones around his neck. His feet were moving, climbing again.

"No, wait!" I called out before he could replace the cans. I was losing him. "Is it broken? I can help. I'm good with computers. Do you want me to take a look at it?"

Chick paused, headphones hovering over his ears.

"I can help," I repeated.

This seemed to sink in. Chick fixed me with an inquiring glare, then tore his eyes away. "It's not broken," he mumbled. "I mean, before I fell on it. I can't get it to start – I mean, I don't know how..."

"I can help," I said in my most calm, caring voice. I'm not sure what I thought Chick was about to do. Runaway, I guess. I just wanted to help him out. I felt so sorry for him. He seemed so terrified and humiliated at the same time. Of course, if I'd know why he wanted to boot the laptop, I might not have been so eager to help. "I had one of these at college," I went on. "They're pretty tough. I'm sure it will boot right up."

I pulled the laptop from behind my back and began to open the screen.

"No," Chick shook his head. "Bring the laptop, after work," he said quickly. "We'll do it then."

"Okay, I said," closing the screen. He was probably right. The battery would be dead. I'd need an outlet. Besides, the sun was too bright to make anything out on the black and green screen. "Bring it where?"

This should have been my first clue that I was getting in way over my head.

"Morgue," Chick said.

"What?" I'd heard him, I just didn't understand.

"Morgue," he pointed at the building behind the Lamonts. The one next to the gun range. "Medical Examiner's Office. I work there. I'm an orderly."

"What?" I repeated. This time I'd understood. I just didn't want to.

"Okay?" Chick nodded, hoping he'd got his point across. He didn't wait until I affirmed. He snapped the headphones over his ears and started up the slope. "After work, okay? Anytime. I'm there all night," he said back to me. I was paralyzed in fright.

Of course you are, I said to myself.

What had I just agreed to?

I walked back to the store in shock, hugging the laptop to my chest. A growing sense of unease was building inside of me. I didn't want to go inside the county morgue. For any reason at all, but particularly not to do IT support. There would be, well, dead people in there. I didn't think I could handle dead people.

I got back to the store and returned to my workbench. Spider was the only one there. McFly had taken Moist to the emergency room. Chick had really done a number on Moist's knee. Probably broken it, or dislocated it, or something. Spider didn't seem overly concerned. Moist had had it coming, Spider commented. He'd had it coming for years. Good thing it was just his knee.

I hid the laptop away in my bag. If McFly had helped Chick in the store, I wouldn't have been facing the prospect of having to go look at dead people.

But then, why had I offered to help? None of it had been any of my business. It, still, really wasn't any of my business. I didn't have to go. Seriously. I didn't owe Chick anything. I'd just felt sorry for him, felt like I could help a guy out. Now I had to go deal with a guy in headphones who spent his nights with a bunch of corpses.

What was the deal with those headphones? It seemed like he hated to take them off. But they weren't plugged into anything. No music. After mulling it over, I asked Spider that exact question.

"He hears things," Spider answered from behind the register, back to reading his comic book.

"What? Like voices?" I asked.

"No, he's not crazy," Spider shook his head. "Just sort of dim. He's been like that since we were kids. We all went to high school together, you know. Well, we did until Chick went to St. Bartholomew's."

"What's that?"

"An asylum," Spider said, matter-of-fact.

"What?" my eyes popped. Great, I was going to meet a psychiatric patient. In a morgue. At night. "I thought you said he wasn't crazy?"

"He's not. But they thought they could fix him. I don't know. Electroshock therapy or something. Didn't work. When he came back, he was worse than ever."

"Jesus." Now I definitely wasn't going to go. Next time Chick came into the store, I'd give him back the laptop. There was no way in hell I was going to meet him after work.

"Why are you asking about Chick?" Spider asked, looking up from the comic book.

"I..." I didn't know how to answer that. "I said I'd help him with his computer."

"Don't know why Chick would have a computer," Spider returned to his comic. "Unless he stole it or something."

I blinked. Oh crap.

"Sometimes they get personal items that come in with the bodies. They're supposed to turn it all over to the sheriff. But, you know..."

I looked down at my bag beside my workbench. Oh, double crap. I was going to have to do it. I was going to have to go over to the morgue after work and give the laptop back to Chick. It was probably evidence in a murder investigation or something.

Out of everything, why did I have to be dead right about that?
Chapter 4

"Hi, I'm here to see..." I instantly felt self-conscious, standing at the Formica counter of the Medical Examiner's Office. Me, in my Doc Martins and Gits T-shirt with my samurai ponytail and the bangs of my hair longer than the rest. I felt like a total freak, walking into the morgue like that. I couldn't have felt more out of place. The heavy, black woman behind the counter raised an eyebrow at me. "Chick," I finished.

"You," she said, incredulously, "are here to see Chick?"

"Yes," I nodded. She looked at me like I was totally insane. I couldn't have agreed with her more. It was totally insane. Nevertheless, I had that laptop in my bag. This shit was going to have to happen.

I could see the wheels turning behind her eyes. Should she call Chick or call the cops? Something about me must have come across as legit, because instead of reaching for the phone, she turned her head and bellowed off into the hallway behind her. "Chick! You got a visitor!"

Chick came scrambling down the corridor almost instantly. He was out of his heavy, winter coat but still in his scrubs and headphones. He smiled and waved to me from behind the glass, then fumbled to open the security door for me.

"Thank, thank you," he mumbled as I stepped into the hallway behind the door. "Thank you for coming."

"Chick!" the receptionist bellowed. "Take off them damn headphones!"

Chick complied.

"You know you ain't suppose to have no guests."

"Sorry, Nicole," Chick replied, contrite. "She works at the model store. She's bringing me a special order."

"Not more of them damn robots!"

"Yes, yes," Chick faked a smile. "Yes, more of them damn robots."

Nicole shook her head. "Well, don't be fiddling around with them all night. Latch of 5C is broken again. You said you were going to fix it yesterday."

"Yes, Nicole, I'll get right no that." Chick nodded, bowed a little, then scurried off down the corridor. I assumed I was supposed to follow. "In here," he said, pointing to a door. That's when I first noted the smell. A mix of formaldehyde and...well, death.

I coughed.

Chick waddled into the small room. I peered curiously around the door.

It wasn't much more than a closet. A desk, a chair, and shelf after shelf of the small, plastic Gundam robots. Chick dropped into the chair and pulled a stool out from under the desk. He tapped it, indicating I should sit down.

I cautiously obeyed.

Only when Chick stood up to close the door did I protest. "Can we keep it open?" I asked. The smell, the tiny room. The creepy robots. At least Chick wasn't wearing his headphones. I didn't have to shout.

"Oh, sorry," Chick sat back down, leaving the door open. His foot began to twitch, osculating his knee rapidly up and down. "So, did you bring it?"

"Oh, of course," I was so freaked out, I'd almost forgot why I was there. I reached in my bag and pulled out the laptop. "Do you have the power cable?"

Chick didn't seem to fully understand, but he shook his head.

"That's okay, perhaps the batteries still have charge." I opened the laptop's screen. "Do you have the disk?"

Chick stared at me, blankly.

"The floppy disk," I repeated. "That you want to read?"

Nothing.

"You don't have a floppy?" For some reason, I felt I need to explain "A Toshiba T1000 has a boot ROM drive, but it's read-only. You need to have a floppy disk to store anything." I pointed at the 3.5" drive bay in side of the laptop.

Chick didn't reply. His fingers shot to his armpits and his foot began to oscilloscope faster.

"What's going on here, Chick?" I demanded angrily, closing the laptop. "Who's computer is this?"

Chick looked at me, terrified. I think he was about to cry.

I climbed to my feet and slammed the laptop down on the desk. I'd had enough. I turned for the door.

"She's dead," Chick said to my back.

I stopped in the door jamb and turned back to Chick. "Who's dead?" I asked. But I already knew the answer.

"The girl. The computer's owner." He nodded toward the wall. I looked in the direction he was indicating, down the hallway. I could see into the examination room from the doorway, at the wall of refrigeration units. "Murder."

"Then, that is evidence! Jesus, Chick! Why are you walking around with this? You should give it to the police!" I'm sure Nicole, down the hall, could hear me. But I didn't care.

Chick shook his head vigorously, his fingers still in his armpits.

"I don't want anything to do with this!" I bellowed. "Leave me out of it!" I made a gesture that was very dramatic and final.

"She's dead," Chick repeated. Now he was crying.

"Yeah, you said that." I rolled my eyes.

"No, not her," Chick nodded to the wall again. "My wife."

What? What the hell was he talking about? Talking to Chick was liking only getting every third word of a conversation.

"Your? Your wife?" I was confused, but I was no longer angry. "I'm...sorry. Is she..." I looked back toward the refrigerators.

"No, she died. Seven years ago," Chick said, choking on his own words.

Seven years ago? Now I wasn't quite as sorry. "I don't understand..."

Chick sucked in a great lungful of air and reached quickly for his headphones. He snapped them back over his ears.

Oh no you don't! The fury welled up inside me again. You don't just drop a bomb like that and pull your little turtle head back into your shell. I grabbed the headband of the phones and yanked them roughly off his head.

Chick leapt from his chair and stumbled back, bringing a shelf of Gundam crashing to the floor. His face wore an expression of infinite, wild-eyed horror.

That had been a mistake. You don't rip the headphone off of Chick's head. I took the mental note for future reference, but I wasn't about to apologize.

"What happened to your wife?" I said instead.

"She was murdered," he answered, robotically, without any emotion in his voice. He was watching the headphones in my hand. As my hand moved, his eyes followed. "Seven years ago. A victim of the Wild Side serial killer."

I remembered the Wild Side Killer, from back in the Eighties, when I was kid. He killed six or seven women, up and down the I-5 corridor between '82 and '85. Then, as suddenly as he began killing, he stopped. No one was ever arrested for the murder. No one was even a suspect.

"Her body was never found," Chick continued. "She was never one of his official victims, but I know. That's why I took this job. To keep an eye out. In case the Wild Side Killer started killing again."

"What does this have to do with the computer?" I still had the headphones in my hand.

"I think," Chick said slowly. "The girl in there was killed by the same person who killed my wife." Chick hadn't taken his eyes of the headphones. Taking mercy, I handed them back to him. He didn't put them on. "I think the Wild Side Killer has started killing again and that laptop was with her body. I wanted to take a look at it, before I handed it over to the sheriff. They don't believe me, you see – the sheriff. They don't think Beth was..." Chick paused and swallowed. "But I know. And they won't believe that girl was killed by the Wild Side Killer, either. Don't want to believe. But I know. I just have to find..." One hand went to an armpit, the other, holding the headphones waved them about. "Evidence. Then they'll have to believe me."

Fuck. He was nuts. Totally nuts. What Spider had said, whatever they'd done to his brain, they'd totally fried it.

Chick was going to catch the Wild Side Killer?

Give me a break.

"Well, the computer's no good without her floppy disks," I said. "You don't have any disks?"

Chick shook his head.

"Then, there's nothing to look at on the computer."

Chick looked deflated. Bested. Whatever investigation he was conducting in his head had crashed hard into the dead-end of reality. It would have been smart just to turn around, walk out of that freak factory and leave Chick to sob in his scrubs. But I still felt sorry for the guy. He was so...pathetic. I just had to toss him something.

"Though maybe," I said and turned the laptop over. "There's something to look at under it..."

On the bottom of the laptop there was strip of paper, taped in place. I'd noticed when it'd been laying on the ground, after Moist had tripped Chick. It was an old trick lots of people did: taping their password to the underside of their keyboard. Easier than remembering. You see it a lot, fixing stuff.

The password was a single word, all lowercase:

w1lds1de
Chapter 5

After his killing spree, and its sudden and unexpected end, the Wild Side Killer entered decidedly into urban legend. If you're not from the Northwest, you probably wouldn't understand. The name of Wild Side Killer came to be one you only had to mention around campfire at night. Sort of a Portland version of Bloody Mary, or the Hook Man. Born with some strangle malformation or something, he was driven insane by the teasing of other children and took to woods to live alone. Alone, at night, he wanders amongst the trees, looking for victims, who's hands he cuts off, and fashions their fingers into jewelry. If you listen very carefully, you might just hear the rattling of the fingerbones on his necklace. But should you hear it, you know it's already to late! (Rattle beans in an old coffee can, here.)

It's all bullshit, just a story told to scare children. The real Wild Side Killer did take necklaces from his victims, but everything was campfire banter. As a password, it made sense for a local. Like JacktheRipper, or SonOfSam.

The question was, password to what? I made Chick promise to turn the computer over to the sheriff and that I'd come back the next day to discuss our options. Not that there were any options, really. A password wasn't much to go on. But I felt like it wasn't hurting anybody to indulge Chick in his Sherlock Holmes fantasy. If poking around some dead lady's computer help Chick deal with the loss of his wife? What was that harm? Maybe there really was a connection between the dead girl and the Wild Side Killer. What did I know?

Not much, it turned out.

The next morning, the whole gang was back in the store: Spider was behind the counter, his fingers dancing like Medusa's snakes, McFly had an Amiga 500 open on his work bench, testing a daughter board with his oscilloscope, and Moist was back in his usual throne, his left knee bandaged up tight, resting on a second folding chair. He had a pair of crutches leaning against the _X-Men_ comics.

Wounded, but not out, nothing could keep Moist from his assigned duties of sitting around and bitching about Chick, Ross Perot and anything else that floated through his consciousness. He'd come back from the hospital with a small vial of pills. As I watched, he struggled with the childproof cap then knocked out two small round capsules, which he washed down with a great gulp from his two-liter of Coke.

"So," Spider said to me, taking advantage of Moist's momentary pause to change the subject. "Did you go help Chick with his computer?"

"I did," I responded, not looking up from monitor. I didn't need to see Moist's reaction, which arrived predictably on cue.

"What?" he belched around a mouth full of Coke. It dripped down his unshaven chin and over his T-shirt. "I hope you punched him in the fucking face!"

"I did not. I shook his hand and told him, 'Thanks for sending Moist to the hospital, I've had a quiet afternoon.'"

Moist was momentary speechless, confused by the sarcasm.

"So, what did he want?" Spider continued.

"That laptop he had...it was from a murder victim," I said it without much drama. Really I was just stating a fact. I didn't expect the reaction I'd get. Everyone groaned in unison, throwing up their hands. "What? What?" I looked around the room, confused. "What did I say?"

"Not you too?" Moist sighed.

"Me? What? What did I do?" I looked between Spider and McFly. I didn't expect sense out of Moist, but the other two looked just as indignant as he did.

"Did he tell you about his wife?" McFly gave me a smile. That seemed ghoulish. And out of character for McFly.

"He did, he said she'd been–"

"Murdered?" Spider interrupted. "By the Wild Side Killer? Seven years ago?"

"Yes!" I was up out of my seat now, really quite alarmed. "What?"

Spider laughed and gave me a dismissive wave. "She's fine."

McFly chuckled too, returning his attention to the 500. "She moved to Seattle to manage grunge bands."

"What?" I said again, this time in a totally different tone.

"Yeah," Moist grunted. "She left Chick's retarded ass. She just didn't have the heart to tell him. She took off one day. Loaded up her Civic and drove to Seattle."

"And...Chick knows this?"

"Of course. He's just made up some story in his head. He's Chick. He's a fucking half-wit. He thinks there's no way she would have left him. So, she must have been murdered..." Moist's sentence trailed off. He yawned and reached for his Coke.

"Back then, the Wild Side Killer was in the news," Spider picked up the thread. "Chick put two and two together..."

Moist laughed. "Yeah, and got five."

"So, she's not dead?" I had to let this sink in. "She lives in Seattle? You've talked to her? Lately?"

"Well no," Spider had to admit. "But Chick went to the cops. They looked into it. She'd always wanted to manage bands, ever since she was a kid. And living with Chick was no picnic."

"I don't understand," I dropped back into my chair, shaking my head. It was all a lie? But Chick had been so convincing, so distraught. He certainly believed his wife was dead. But then did anything Chick believed have anything to do with reality? I felt stupid, stupid for accepting on face value anything Chick had said. He was, after all, not quite right. I should have known better.

"You see," McFly began, paternally, "when Chick came back from the hospital, he was better. Cured. Sort of. After high school, they got married, him and Beth, they got an apartment and life was normal...until is wasn't." McFly gave me sort of a confused shrug, like this subject made him physically uncomfortable. "Chick started to go downhill, was hearing things. That's when he started wearing the headphones."

Spider nodded. "He couldn't have been easy to live with."

"Then, when Beth vanished, he really went over the edge. Screaming that she was dead – the Wild Side Killer had gotten her. That went on for awhile, until the Sheriff looked into it all. When they came back and said she was just missing, he got all quiet. Introverted."

"When the police wouldn't look into it further," Spider added, "he got it into his head that he was going to catch the Wild Side Killer himself."

Moist appeared to have checked out of the conversation, fallen asleep. But at this, he piqued up. "Ha! Remember the summer he walked around in the deerstalker hat? Smoking the pipe!" Spider and McFly chucked at this, nodded. "Thought he was fricking Sherlock Holmes!" Moist guffawed and then seemed to pass out, collapsing back in his chair. Mildly concerned, Spider climbed from behind his registered and circled around to Moist.

"Seriously?" I asked, bewildered. "None of it's real?"

"I'm afraid not," Spider answered as he nudged Moist's arm. Moist didn't react. "Nobody's dead – at least, not his wife. They let him work at the Morgue because it keeps him quiet. And he works hard. But Chick isn't about to solve anything – hey, what are these pills they gave him?" Spider was looking at Moist's meds.

"I don't know," McFly answered. "Pain killers. For his knee."

"He's out cold," Spider nudged Moist again, then read the label. "Oxycontin. What's that?"

McFly shrugged.

"How many of these has he taken?"

McFly shrugged again. Spider put the pills in his pocket. "Maybe I should hang on to these."

"Crap!" I remembered. "I'm supposed to go back and see Chick again, tonight. To talk about the dead girl."

Spider chuckled and nodded at Moist's still form. "As he said, not you too?"

"It's okay," McFly let out a half-choke, half-laugh. "At one time or another, he's convinced us all to help him. Had us wandering through the woods at night, digging holes looking for non-existent bodies."

"He'll get some crazy hair and come storming in here. This time he's really done it! The game's afoot!"

"But it's all..." McFly sounded wistful. "...all in Chick's head. He could no more catch the Wild Side Killer than he could drive to Seattle and find out that Beth is still alive and just does not love him anymore."

Ugh. The bottom fell out of my stomach. It was all so sad. Chick was so sad. Pathetic. He wasn't really lying to me, just to himself.

That was, in so many ways, so much worse.
Chapter 6

I didn't get much work done that day. I just sat at my bench and brooded, realizing that I had the unenviable responsibility to meet with Chick again and talk the whole thing out. His friends weren't much good to him. That I could understand. They weren't much good for anything, truth be told, and they were many decades into dealing with Chick. Me, I was an unknown. An outsider. He'd apparently taken a liking to me, maybe just because I was willing to listen, but it gave me some leverage. Perhaps hearing the truth from me would be...well, I don't know. All I knew was that I wasn't going to dodge the responsibility. If Chick knew the truth, that his wife was okay, perhaps it might bring him some peace.

Yeah, good luck with that, I could hear Moist telling me. If I'd bothered to tell him my plan. If he'd been conscious. Maybe I just wanted to make sure Chick knew that I knew that all his shit was just crazy shit. Then, he wouldn't ask for anymore help. I wouldn't have to go back into the morgue.

One last time and I'd never have to smell that smell ever again.

When I walked into the Medical Examiner's office, Nicole once again greeted me with a single, raised eyebrow. "You? Again?" she said this time.

"I'm here to see Chick," I stated.

"You know he ain't suppose to have visitors."

"I know," I grimaced. I hoped the look correctly conveyed that I really didn't want to be there either. "This will be the last time, I promise."

"Don't you go getting him all wound up again, neither. Yelling? Taking his earphones. He was locked in his little room all night."

"I won't," I said earnestly, know this was a bold-faced lie. "I know better, now."

"Chick, he's...he's sort of delicate," Nicole said, showing a hint of genuine warmth. Then, "Chick!" she screamed down the hall.

Chick bounded out of his room. And, as before, hurried to unlock the security door. "Thank you, Nicole," he mumbled.

"You finish up with your little friend here and get to the lock on 5C, you hear?"

"Yes, Nicole," Chick nodded as he opened the door for me. "Right away."

"Don't be entertaining when there's work to be doing, Chick."

"Yes, Nicole," Chick nodded again. He hurried back to his small room. I followed, clutching at the strap of my bag.

There was nothing to do but do it. Like pulling off a Band-Aid. "I know about your wife, Chick," I said before either of us could sit down.

Chick didn't answer. He dropped into his chair and adjusted the half-constructed Gundam on his desk. "Know what?" he finally answered.

"The..." He still had his headphone on. I didn't want to scream. I motioned for him to take them off. He did. "...the guys at Nybbles and Bytes told me. That she's not really dead. That she moved to Seattle to manage grunge bands."

"No!" Chick shook his head, wild-eyed.

I raised a hand to silence his protest. "I know she's not dead, that she wasn't killed by the Wild Side Killer. And that girl in there..." I pointed toward the wall that, I assumed, the dead bodies were behind. "...wasn't either."

Chick opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking. He appeared to understand that objecting would be pointless.

"I know this now and you need to believe it too, Chick," I said with all the compassion I could muster. Chick didn't look at me, just keep staring at the Gundam. "Chick, are you listening?"

He nodded. A finger came up to his mouth, as if he was about to offer a deal.

I wasn't about to have any of that. "Chick, do you understand me? Your wife, Beth, is alive."

"I understand," he said, finally. "You think I'm making it all up."

"No, I..." I sighed with frustration. "I think you think what you think is true." Chick glared at me and rightly so. I shook my head and powered through it. "But what you think and the truth..."

Chick tapped his lips with his raised finger, sizing me up. "You fix things, right?"

"What?" It was a non sequitur. "Yes, of course."

"Then, you're not like the others."

I growled in frustration. "What are you talking about?"

"To fix a circuit board, a computer, you have to isolate the fault. Observe the error. Limit variables. Proceed methodically."

"Right, but..." Chick was changing the subject. Evading reality.

"In a way, you're a detective." Chick continued, nodding to himself. "You have to think like one, at least, to do your job."

What was he doing? Trying to flatter me into helping him? It wasn't going to work. "So?" I said, exasperated.

"What if I present you with a variable?" Chick answered, look up at me.

"A variable? In what?"

"In murder, of course."

"A variable? You mean, a clue?" I was less exasperated now, more curious.

Chick shrugged. "If you like. Think of it as a fault in need of repair. Would you look at what I have to show you? Would you listen to what I have to say?"

I was shocked. This was an unexpected turn. I'd only known Chick for a day, but I'd expected tears. Screaming. Not evidence. "I guess," I replied, not totally sure what I was getting into.

"Yes!" Chick cheered. "As I said, you're not like the others."

"I'm not going to–"

"No! I don't expect it." Chick interrupted, climbing out of his chair. He stepped around me and out through the door of his tiny room. "Come on."

"Come on, where?" I said in return, suddenly terrified at the answer.

"To observe the fault."

"The fault? Fault in what?" But I already knew the answer.

"Fault in the body of the victim," Chick said, returning his headphones to his head. "The reason they are dead."

Oh, hell no.
Chapter 7

That's how I ended up standing before the refrigerators of the Cowlitz County Morgue, about to do the one thing on the planet I most hoped I'd never have to do in my life: look at a dead body.

The examination room of the morgue was exactly as nightmarish as I'd imagined. Cold, bare, steel tables. A collection of instruments that were more appropriate in a garden shed than a medical facility. Buckets of...well, I don't even want to imagine. But there was blue bucket after blue bucket on the floor, closed and sealed and marked with the twisted thorns of the bio-hazard emblem. One wall of the room was a grid of small, square doors, exactly as envisioned in every horror movie I had ever seen. Five by five. Twenty five slots. The top left was 1A, the bottom right, 5E. Numbers across, letters down.

Chick reached down for the latch of 2D.

"Wait!" I called out before Chick could open the door. "Are we allowed to do this?" There was the chance this was all illegal. That would have been great, the perfect excuse to run out of there, screaming. It was taking all my willpower not to do exactly that. All I needed was the slightest excuse.

"No, it's fine," Chick replied. Damn it! He pulled on the latch of the door and it swung open. Inside was a white, plastic body bag, sealed. I wished to God that I didn't have to see more.

Without ceremony, Chick pulled out the body bag, the shelf under it rolled out into the room. When the bag was completely clear of the refrigerator, Chick unzipped the bag half open and pulled the white plastic aside.

Inside was a nude, young girl. She looked oddly peaceful. Pallid, yes, but silent. Her blue lips were parted, as if she was about to take a breath.

"This was ScareBear69," Chick didn't call her that, he read the girl's real name off her toe tag, but I'm shit with names. I do remember her online handle, though, after all the trouble we had to go to figure it out. So I'll just call her that. "Case six-thirty-seven. The owner of the laptop. Twenty-three. A nurse at the Good Shepard. She was found by a jogger up by the railroad tracks, near Rocky Point, yesterday morning, dressed in her hospital scrubs, with a backpack containing the laptop. She was strangled." Chick leaned in close and pointed out a purple ring around the girl's throat. "By a metal object, thick enough not to cut into the skin but thin enough to leave minimal bruising."

I was feeling sick. I stepped back from the body and tried to find somewhere else to look. The naked body didn't help, I felt weirdly uncomfortable at the sight of the girl's blue, bare breasts and sick to my stomach at the same time. Chick appeared totally indifferent.

"I see the fault," I said quickly, swallowing my bile. "I don't see what this has to do with Beth."

"The Wild Side Killer," Chick looked up from the body. "His victims were all strangled in a similar fashion."

"So?" I looked down at the girl again and instantly regretted it. "Hardly an isolated variable. Lots of people get strangled, most not by the Wild Side Killer."

"No, but the bruising is interesting," Chick leaned in again and looked closely at the girl's neck. "Semi-regular indentations all along the wound. Not a chain, but...jewelry, perhaps? A necklace?"

"Strong enough to strangle someone?" I wasn't looking, but I was listening.

"Exactly," Chick nodded. "With stones or ornaments, laced to it."

My eyes grew very wide. My sickness instantly vanished. I looked down at the dead girl and leaned in with Chick, studying the wound on her neck. "A necklace of..." I didn't want to say it, but I had to. It was staring me right in the face. "...bones?"

Chick stepped back. Shocked. "The Wild Side Killer? Now who's making stuff up?"

I didn't move, looking at the fatal bruising.

"Chick, I'll ask you again: what does any of this have to do with your wife?"

Chick was silent. I looked up from the corpse. He had assumed his signature stance of fingers in his armpits.

"Chick?" I asked, scolding.

His fingers came out from under his arms. He reached into the neckline of his scrubs and came out with a necklace. This, he pulled over his head and held out to me. It was a crucifix on a gold chain. There was a man's wedding ring on the chain, also, but I don't believe that was what he was showing me.

"This was Beth's," Chick began, the pain in his voice obvious. "A gift from her mother for her Quinceañera. It was her most prized possession." Chick paused, choked up.

"And she'd never have gone to Seattle without it..." It was weak tea. I went back to the bruising on ScareBear69's neck.

"No!" Chick snapped. I looked up, shocked. Anger was burning in his eyes. "She had this on, the day she vanished," Chick struggled to get the words out. "Just like she had it on every day I knew her."

"Then, how do you have it?" My eyes were wide, staring at the gold crucifix. I was very worried I wasn't going to like the answer.

"The necklaces," Chick took in a breath, holding back his emotions. "They believe the Wild Side Killer took necklaces as mementos from his victims. Relatives in each of the confirmed cases, note missing jewelry from the victim – necklaces that the victim was known to be, or potentially, wearing. It's about the necklaces." He shook the crucifix in front of me for effect. "He strangled each of his victims, either with their necklace, or one specially made for the purpose."

"Again, Chick," I said, backing up from both the corpse and the necklace. "How do you get that?"

"It came in the mail," Chick was sobbing out the words. "A few weeks after Beth disappeared. The police say she sent it to me, from Seattle, but why would Beth send me her necklace? I didn't buy it for her. It had nothing to do with me. It was _her_ necklace."

"He sent it to you," I said, aghast.

"He sent it to me!" Chick bawled. "To taunt me, to humiliate me. To let me know, he knows, I know what he'd done." He paused, and then continued through gritted teeth. "The police, the guys at the store, you, everyone thinks I've made this all up in my head – invented some story so I don't have to deal with my wife leaving me. But I haven't, I didn't. I don't NEED to make up any of it. I'm not crazy, I'm not an idiot, and I'm not a fool."

"No one said you are, Chick."

"No, but it's what you all think – everyone except him. Don't you see? It's not me who thinks I can catch the Wild Side Killer. I'm not crazy. That's why he sent me the necklace. It's the Wild Side Killer who thinks I can catch him."
Chapter 8

"I'm cold, I want to get out of here," I said, shivering. The body bag containing the corpse of ScareBear69 was still open before me, lit by the harsh lights of the examination room.

Chick was returning the crucifix to around his neck. "Don't worry. They're all dead. None of them are going to jump up and bite you."

I backed up a step and collided with the wall of refrigerator doors.

Then a corpse did exactly that.

"I told you to fix that damn latch," Nicole said to Chick, later, offering me a cup of instant coffee. I took it with both shaking hands and tried to take a sip. Hot.

"I was going to," Chick sighed helplessly. He felt bad enough. He didn't need to be scolded. "I just..."

I'd back up right into door 5C. The one with the bad latch. Next thing I knew, I was under two hundred pounds of deceased logger, all naked, cold and hairy. It'd taken both Chick and Nicole to get the body off of me. I might have been screaming. A lot.

"It's okay, I'm fine," I lied.

"What were you guys doing, playing around with the bodies, anyway?" Nicole started back toward her perch at the Formica counter.

"We weren't playing, we were..."

"Dr. Mandelbrot going to be plenty angry when he finds out."

"Nicole, we were–" Chick began.

"Don't get Chick into trouble," I interrupted. "It's my fault. I asked Chick to show me a dead body. I was curious. It was my idea. I'm sorry."

Chick closed his mouth.

"Yeah, well..." Nicole seemed unconvinced. "You ain't supposed to be in here in the first place. Looking at dead bodies or not. Maybe it's best if the doc doesn't find out."

"Oh, thank you, Nicole!" I gave her a wide smile. "And thank you for the coffee."

"All right then," Nicole nodded as a you're welcome. "But you just drink up and be on your way, okay? Before you get into any more trouble."

"Okay," I nodded back. Nicole left Chick and I alone in the break room, returning to the front desk.

"Thank you," Chick said, when she was out of earshot.

"No problem," I shivered and took another sip of the terrible coffee. "My name is Buzz, by the way."

"I'm sorry?" Chick had his headphone on. He took them off.

"My name is Buzz," I said again. "If I'm going to help you, I figured you might want to know my name."

"Buzz?" Chick snorted. "Like the astronaut?"

"Yes," I answered, coldly. "Like the astronaut."

"Catch? Wait?" Chick sat up in his chair, shocked. "Are you going to help me?"

"Yes I am," I took a gulp of the coffee.

"Then...you believe me?" Chick looked dumbfounded. This was obviously unexplored territory.

"I believe you," I said. But I'm not entirely sure I did. I don't know if I totally bought Chick's noise about his wife's necklace. But I was operating on the assumption that Chick honestly believed his own noise, he was just out of touch with the real world. I wanted to help, but it was more like, if I played along, maybe I could help Chick find his wife. In Seattle. Managing grunge bands. Seattle was only a two hour drive away, after all.

"About Beth?"

I shrugged a non-committal shrug.

"Then..." Chick stood up, but was instantly unsure exactly why. He sat down again. "Now..." he tried, but didn't make anymore headway.

"Now...what are we going to do?" I completed.

"Yes, yes. What do we do next..." Chick looked bewildered.

"You haven't thought it through this far, have you?" I smiled.

"No, no I have not," Chick admitted and reached for his headphones. Just before he snapped them back into place, he paused and looked at me. "Do you have a car?" he asked.

#

Bitch, did I have a car.

Well, to be fair, my dad had a car, but he'd let me use it ever since I'd come back from college with nothing to my name, but the clothes on my back and the strong odor of failure about me. It was his pride and joy, the only thing left in his possession of any real value: a 1979 Chevot El Chupacabra. Jet black with an interior in an off-burgundy.

The El Chupacabra was the largest production automobile ever to roll out of Detroit, or any other car-producing city in the world, an amazing 2.3 tons of hardened steel and soft, Corinthian leather. It was a beast, with a wheelbase of 157 inches, a good twenty inches wider than a full-sized pickup truck. It clocked in at 252 inches long. There wasn't a parking spot in a mall anywhere large enough to hold it. The driver's side window alone was one-and-a-half inches thick. It took a grown man, both hands, to roll the thing up or down. I just left them alone. You could sleep a family of four inside the car and still have plenty of room to comfortably drive.

I, of course, called her Teeny.

I didn't drive her to work, though. The cost of gas would have been prohibitive. So I made plans to pick Chick up at this apartment that evening. He wanted to go check out ScareBear69's apartment. It stood to reason, that if the missing floppy disks weren't in her personal position when she killed, then they'd be back at her apartment. Chick was laser-focused on finding those disks and figuring out what the password taped to the bottom of the laptop unlocked. It seemed like a distraction to me. But I could play along. The missing floppy disks were our only clue, as flimsy as it was.

I didn't mind the idea of a field trip. Anything to get away from the horror show that was the Cowlitz County Morgue. I was a long way from fully recovering from my brief residence in the hairy armpit of the occupant of locker 5C. As I rode the bus home, I was still shaking, despite the instant coffee and the comforting hug from Nicole as I left.

Was I really going to do this? Try and solve a murder, like Jessica Fletcher? That sort of thing didn't really happen, did it? In real life, murderers were caught by the police, not meddling teenagers in a Mystery Machine. It was stupid, crazy, self-evident waste of time. But Chick's sincerity was contagious. He really believed he could catch the Wild Side Killer, that the Killer himself had assigned him the task. And for whatever reason, I felt compelled to help.

I guess I didn't have a whole lot else going on. And a little murder-mystery, as insane as it was, was maybe just the thing to distract me from my shit.

Yeah, my shit...going home to get Teeny meant dealing with that. Shit, indeed.
Chapter 9

My dad's house was lost in darkness, as I walked the half-mile of blacktop from the bus stop to its dirt driveway. My dad lived way out in the woods. It'd been an old farmhouse, maybe. There was twenty acres or so behind it that had long ago gone to seed. The house had long ago gone to seed, too. I think there was more grass on the roof than in the yard. That was my dad's fault. I remember it being a nice place when he'd bought it, after my parents had divorced, and I'd come down for weekends and summer vacations. Back then, he'd still had his shit together some. He'd had a job as a foreman at the docks. But the drinking had cost him that, and a car accident had cost him most of the use of his right leg. Now, he didn't leave the house unless it was to buy booze or cigarettes. And then only on the days after his disability check arrived.

The money never lasted long. He'd drink it away at Maginty's and then stumble home with a bottle. The rest of the month, he'd hardly leave his chair in front of the TV. Since I'd come back from college, I was buying the food, but he hardly ate unless I reminded him. I hefted the latest sack of groceries up onto the front porch and let myself in.

"Hey Dad, I'm home," I called out. I could hear the TV from the living room, smell the cigarette smoke.

There was no answer. I didn't really expect one.

I put the groceries down on the kitchen counter and threw my house keys into the bowl beside the fridge.

"Hey Day, is it okay–" I began, but cut myself off, halfway out of my coat. I could smell the orange liqueur in the air. My dad drank some God-awful knockoff Grand Marnier – to this day, I can't smell a margarita without feeling sick – but it was the middle of the month. The disability check shouldn't have arrived for another week. Where'd he get money for liquor and smokes? I momentary panicked, and thought he'd sold Teeny. I ran to the kitchen window and looked out. No, there she was, sitting in the carport.

"Hey Dad," I started again, hanging my coat on a kitchen chair. "What's going on?"

Dad didn't move from his recliner. He was watching Wheel of Fortune. Or rather, Wheel of Fortune was on, Dad was looking at a spot some where in space between him and the TV.

"Your mother called," he said. His speech was slurred, but then his speech was always slurred, drunk or sober. Between that and his bum leg, it was hard to gauge his relative intoxication through observation. The bottle was always the best indicator. He picked up his glass and took a sip.

"Mom?" I was confused. I far I was aware they hadn't communicated directly in ten years, always using me as an intermediary. That was always fun when you're twelve.

"She wanted to make sure you remember classes start in September. She'd talked to admissions, you're spot is still available. You just need to..." He trailed off, forgetting the lines he'd obviously been coached to recite.

I didn't need to hear anymore. "Mom called?" I repeated. "She gave you money?" I was disgusted. Angry. Why not just hand him a loaded gun?

"No, well..." He started to lie. He was too far gone to make it stick. Instead, he took another drink.

I wanted to scream. But screaming at him wouldn't do any good. I was in half a mind to call up my mother and scream into the phone. But that'd do about as much good as screaming at dad. What the hell was she playing at?

"She gave you money? To talk to me about going back to school?" It didn't take a detective to figure that one out.

"Your mother...she just wants what's best for you. I do too, Honey. I mean, I'm glad you're here. I love having your here. But she doesn't understand – we don't understand, why. I mean, school is just waiting–"

"I don't have time for this," I held up a hand, cutting him off. I didn't want to have that conversation with him when he was drunk. Or sober, for that matter. I didn't want to have that conversation at all. "I need to borrow Teeny," I changed the subject.

"Honey, your mother–"

"No!" I held up a hand for silence. "I'll talk to her," I lied and reached for my coat. I just had to get out of there, car or not. Why had I even bothered to take my coat off?

"Okay...okay then. Good." Dad nodded. His assigned job complete, he returned his unfocused attention to the Wheel.

"Are you going to be okay?" I asked. He didn't answer. He would be. As okay as he ever was. He'd be unconscious before Leno. He mostly slept in that chair, now-a-days. It was for the best. If he puked on himself, he wouldn't choke.

I remembered the groceries. I just took the whole bag and put it in the refrigerator. There was nothing else in there. But before I did, I pulled out a pack of Oreos and put them down on dad's side table, beside the Grand Marnier.

Maybe he'd eat, maybe he wouldn't.

That was my shit – the shit I had to deal with. Good old mom and dad. I put my coat on and scooped up Teeny's keys out of the bowl by the fridge. I didn't say goodbye as I slipped out the kitchen door, into the carport, and opened Teeny's gargantuan driver's door.

How much had she given him? I could only guess. Enough so he'd keep on at me, relentlessly, about collage. Enough that he'd be hoping there'd be more, soon.

My mom, the fucking bitch. Why couldn't she just leave well enough alone? It was always a head-game with her. A tactic. That's how I'd ended up in Computer Science in the first place. Not in welding school, or some voc-tech program where I belonged. Learn to program, Honey, and it will make you rich. Jesus! Now I knew why my Dad drank. I was halfway there, dealing with my mother.

I put the key into the ignition and turned the engine over. Teeny roared to life, like a grizzly waking from hibernation. I flipped on the two, small suns that served as the El Chupacabra headlights and the dirt drive, and the darkness of the country road beyond, were instantly bathed in daylight. I moved the shifter to D and let the car roll itself forward. The tires cracked and popped on the gravel.

I was on my way.

About to get the fuck as far away from my dad's house as I could.
Chapter 10

Chick's apartment was a room on the third story of an old Victorian mansion, maybe once the home of some lumber magnet from the end of the last century. It was an imposing place, built on the hillside overlooking Barlow Point; it looked not totally dissimilar to the house in Hitchcock's Psycho. Chick had a commanding view of the Columbia River from the window of his studio cupola, but his threadbare curtains were drawn across the windows when I first arrived. He appeared almost ignorant of the vista when I threw the curtains back and gasped at the view. I honestly don't think he cared about it, one way or the other. It was there, that was Chick's thinking. No need to talk about it.

The room was cluttered with more Gundam and the boxes they came in. A half-built one was waiting on the room's kitchen table. At one end of the room was a kitchenette and the other, by the window, was Chick's bed. An Army cot, really, covered in a pile of bedding. The room was cluttered, but not messy. Organized, after a fashion, but filthy. The dirt was the next thing I commented on, after the view.

"I found that dirt doesn't cling to dirt," Chick answered. He was dressed in cargo shorts and a T-shirt that read in large, block characters Kung Pao. This was the first time I'd seen him out of his blue scrubs, and it appeared, abstractly, that Chick had some sort of sense of humor. When he pulled on the plaid, flannel shirt and slung the army medic's satchel around his neck, he was almost indistinguishable from any of the hipster, grunge types I'd gone to college with. Even his four-day-old stubble, his crooked teeth, and the headphones fit into the look. God, we were slobs back then.

That the headphones weren't plugged into anything and that satchel was full of loose pieces of notebook paper, bound up with rubber bands, seemed almost immaterial. "If you can learn to live with a certain amount of filth," he continued, "things won't get any dirtier."

"That sounds scientific," I smirked. My eyes left Chick's attire and returned to the lights of the boats on the river. It was breathtaking. How could Chick keep his curtains closed with a view like that?

"It certainly is not," Chick was looking for something in his bag. He was rummaging around, removing papers. "But then, being a detective is not scientific."

It took my brain a beat to process this. "Come again?" I asked. "I though being a detective was all science and deduction and that Sherlock Holmes shit?"

At the mention of the famous detective, Chick looked up and glared at me. "No. In science, you see, you formulate your theory and then test it against the observable facts." Chick returned to searching through his bag. "Should the theory be proved wrong by the facts, you change it. Rinse and repeat. The Scientific Method. In detection, however, you have facts and must make your theory fit them. No experimentation, no iteration. The crime has already been committed, the victim is already dead, the culprit has long ago made all the mistakes he's going to make. The evidence is set. In the past tense. Always imperfect. You can strive to unravel the mystery, but you must accept that your understanding of the crime is almost always incomplete. Best case, you can hope to formulate the least incomplete theory that fits the facts." Chick gave up searching in his bag, returning the loose papers. "Therefore, I suggest that dirt doesn't make a dirty surface dirtier. Is that true? Of course not, but it is less imperfect explanation than dirt does not make a clean surface dirtier. Is it the least imperfect explanation of the facts? No, of course not. But I like to think of it as an on-going investigation."

"Or a good excuse not to vacuum."

"Six of one..." Chick trailed off, remembering something. He pulled open one of the kitchenette draws and pulled out a large, chromed revolver, which his slipped into his satchel with his notes.

I gulped.

"What are you going to do with that?" I asked in horror, pointing at the medical bag around Chick's neck.

"I don't understand," Chick scowled, confused.

"The gun. Why do you need the gun?" I stammered.

"Do you think, if we find the Wild Side Killer, that we're going to ask him nicely to come along quietly?" Chick snorted. "You can't fix a refrigerator with a machete. It's important to use the right tool for the job."

"I..." I shook my head. Shit, Chick was serious. He was read for a fight. Tonight. He was either totally ape-shit crazy, or seriously believed his own noise. It was a sobering moment. "No guns."

"But–" Chick began to protest.

"No guns!" I repeated.

Chick scowled again. He reached into his bag and returned the pistol to the kitchen draw. "If we're both murdered by the Wild Side Killer," Chick grumbled, hurt. "Remember who wanted to leave the gun at home."

"Well, after we're dead..." I rolled my eyes. "...you can tell me you told me so."
Chapter 11

"What's with..." I said and tapped my right ear. Teeny was rolling down Ocean Beach Way, taking up a lane and a half.

"The headphones?" Chick looked at me, then down at the dash, sheepishly. "The doctors call it Harmonic Dissociative Aphasia."

"Harmona-what?" I'd missed it.

Chick sighed. "I have a condition...to me, it sounds like everyone is ever-so-slightly talk-singing everything they say."

I laughed. It was funny. I thought he was joking. I talked-sung, "Oh ye-ah?"

Chick looked at my angrily. "I didn't expect you to believe me."

"What? Seriously? Talk-singing? What?" I was having trouble driving and reading Chick's expressions at the same time.

"Seriously," Chick replied, glumly.

I instantly had a million questions. They all tried to come out at once and all I managed to say was, "What? How?"

"It's not so bad, one-on-one," Chick went on, adjusting the headphones on his head, self-consciously. "It sort of sounds like you're winding up to a musical number. But a conversation between two people, or in a noisy crowd, it's almost unbearable. That's why I keep these on." He tapped his cans. "Dulls the worst of it. Let's me focus."

"So, I sound like I'm singing? Right now? Saying this?" I don't know why I had such a hard time wrapping my head around it. Just imagine how annoying that would be – everyone, all the time, just West Side Story'ing through a conversation. Spider had said Chick heard things, but I thought he meant voices or something. Not this.

Chick just nodded.

"I'm so sorry," was all I could think to say. "I'll be quiet."

"Thanks," Chick gave me a weak smile.

But I lasted about thirty seconds.

"It's just-I'm sorry-I don't know how to–"

"It's okay," Chick didn't look up from the dash. "As I said, it's not too bad when it's just one person speaking."

"Okay, so the disks, right?" I said, now very continuous of the sing-song tone to my voice. It really was annoying. My voice was annoying. I'd never really noticed before, but now...Jesus.

"Yes, the disks," Chick piqued up. I sensed he'd much rather be talking about the case and not his affliction.

"So, you don't think the disks are going to at ScareBear69's apartment, do you?"

"No."

"Because you think her killer took them?" I was starting to understand how Chick's brain worked.

"It is the least, imperfect theory I can come up with."

"But them being in a desk draw in her apartment would be less imperfect, right?"

"Right. I mean, wrong..." Chick through about it. "I mean, you are correct, that would be less imperfect."

"So we eliminate that theory by not finding the disks at her apartment. Right? But what does that get us? You said the Wild Side Killer collects necklaces, not floppy disks."

"Perhaps his tastes are now more high tech."

"Yeah, well maybe. But more likely, there was something on them he wanted. And that's what's leaving me really scratching my head. I sort of remember the Wild Side Killer in the news, back when I was a kid, and he killed women at rest stops along I-5. Random women, right? Nobody he knew. That's why they never caught him – they never even got a good description. Except for that woman who managed to fight him off, kick him in the balls or something. That's how he got his name. She never got a look at his face, but she distinctly remembers him prowling around the rest stop, whistling the doo-wop refrain from that Lou Reed song. Doo, da-doo, da-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo..." I began to sing. Chick winced. I instantly regretted it. "Ooo, sorry..."

"No problem," He adjusted his headphones. Problem. "Yes, your recollections of the case are correct."

"Then...nothing about ScareBear69's murder points toward the Wild Side Killer. She wasn't attacked on or near the freeway. She wasn't a random victim, if the killer took her floppy disks. Yes, she was strangled and she was young and beautiful, but otherwise, ScareBear69 doesn't fit the Wild Side's profile."

"It is a quandary," Chick admitted.

"But, you're still dead-sure her death is the work of the Wild Side Killer?"

"I am."

"But why? The seven year break? The location of her murder? The floppy disks? What makes you so sure?"

"I guess, sometimes you have to trust your gut." Chick turned and looked at me, trying to read something in my expression. It obviously wasn't a skill he had mastered.

"Look," I said honestly, with an accompanying gesture of gravity. "I think we might be onto something here with the disks, something the cops won't bother to peruse, 'cause they don't know a floppy disk from a Triscuit. But I'm not seeing anything to do with Beth in any of this. Somebody killed ScareBear69, probably a boyfriend or something. That just seems less imperfect than any other explanation. But I see nothing pointing toward a serial killing."

"We shell see," Chick shrugged. "For there is one thing about serial killings we can be sure about."

"What's that?"

"There will be a series of them."
Chapter 12

It was a sobering thought: that there might be lives to be saved by catching ScareBear69's killer sooner, rather than later. I wasn't buying the Wild Side connection, but I wasn't totally discounting it, either. If Chick was right about his necklace and ScareBear69, if the Wild Side Killer was killing again, this might not be the last murder in Longview, Washington.

Was I letting Chick's enthusiasm carry me away? I mean, who was I to think I could solve a murder? But ScareBear69's computer and those missing floppy disks really seemed to be something – something the cops had already overlooked. I knew computers, they didn't. If Chick and I could find those disks, I was exactly the right person to figure out what was on them. If the cops found them, they'd just end up in an evidence bag. I know it wasn't my place to go and look for a murderer, but I had halfway convinced myself that I, and only I, had the skills necessary to catch ScareBear69's killer. Conceit, I know, but that's what I was thinking.

Oh, to be twenty-two and that stupid again...

I pulled Teeny into the apartment complex where ScareBear69 had lived. Chick had found her in the book. Apartment 284. We figured out which building was the two-hundreds, and I parked Teeny across two spaces. As we climbed the stairs up to the apartment, I began to wonder to myself which result I was hoping for. If the disks were in the apartment, it meant the killer hadn't taken them off ScareBear69's body. Which meant she'd probably just forgotten them that day, and they were most likely totally irrelevant to her murder. But it did mean that she was still a possible victim of the Wild Side Killer, despite where the body was discovered, and Chick still had an outside chance of solving his wife's murder. But it also meant that we were totally out of clues and at a dead end, with no real means of finding ScareBear69's killer. On the other hand, if the disks weren't in the apartment, they might have been taken by ScareBear69's killer. That meant they were connected to the killing in some way. But it also meant, modus operandi speaking, that we weren't dealing with the Wild Side Killer, and all of this was irrelevant to Beth's murder. And if the disks weren't in the apartment, we weren't about to find them there, which meant, again, that we were out of clues, at a dead end, with no real means of finding ScareBear69's killer.

It was my very own Kobayashi Maru – a lose-lose situation. Where was Captain Kirk when you needed him?

Standing at the door of apartment 284, I rang the doorbell. I'm not totally sure why. ScareBear69, after all, was back in the morgue, not here to answer the door. Maybe it was because I lacked a better option. I'd agreed to drive Chick over; I hadn't agreed on breaking and entering. Fortunately, after a moment, the door swung open.

ScareBear69 had had a roommate.

I'll call her Trixie. She looked like a Trixie. No, that's not fair. A Trixie would have been twenty years older, smoking slim cigarettes in a roadhouse bar, out on the interstate. No, ScareBear69's roommate was much younger. Maybe just as trashy but still young and vivacious. How about Trix? Yeah, I'll call her Trix.

"Hello?" Trix said, looking between Chick and me. We must have made quite the sight. Trix was bleached blonde with a whole lot of curves, most of which you could see under the men's T-shirt she was wearing as a dress. She yawned. We'd woken her up. By her puffy eyes, she'd been crying. "Are you cops?" she asked.

Did we look like cops? I looked at Chick. When he'd caught sight of Trix, he'd instantly assumed his stance, hands in armpits. I thought this was his way of blushing, embarrassed by the whole-lot-of-Rosie that was standing at the door. But then I realize how normal things in the car had been. This was Chick just going back to being Chick. What had been odd, was back in the car. The two of us talking. Chick had been...well, I wouldn't say normal, but...amiable? Here, in front of Trix, he instantly climbed back inside his headphones.

He was no help at all.

"We're not with the police," I began, thinking fast. "We're from the County Medical Examiner's." I slapped Chick on the elbow and pointed at his satchel. He instantly understood and pulled out his Morgue ID. This he held up to Trix, a little too aggressively.

Trix backed up, still half asleep. "The cops were here earlier. I already answered all their questions."

"Yes, we're so sorry," I went on. "And I know it's late, but there's an item of ScareBear69's that we're missing in evidence. We believe the police overlooked it when they were here earlier."

"Oh, okay, sure," Trix said, bewildered. She backed away from the door and gestured for us to come inside. Chick missed the cue and I pushed him forward. He hardly moved, he was a big guy. But he got the hint and stumbled into the apartment, uncomfortably giving Trix a very wide berth. I followed, trying to smile.

"I still can't believe it!" Trix said, beginning to cry again as she closed the door.

"We're sorry for your loss," I said sincerity.

"ScareBear69... just yesterday, she was..." Trix broke down.

"Ask her about the disks," Chick whispered to me. Well, he didn't really whisper. He spoke in a hushed tone that was nevertheless loud enough to be heard outside on the highway.

"Okay," I raised a hand to silence him, annoyed. "We're sorry to intrude, while you're grieving the loss of your friend. But we're looking for some computer disks that are missing."

"Ask her where ScareBear69 kept the computer," Chick whispered to me again, not giving Trix a chance to answer.

"Okay!" I said whispered back angrily, loud enough for Trix to hear me clearly. Oh God, now he had me doing it.

"Huh?" Trix recovered, now more concerned about our behavior that upset about ScareBear69. She looked between Chick and I, confused.

I needed to recover, quick. "Forgive my friend, he's–"

"Maybe she had a computer bag," Chick interrupted, still fake whispering. "Ask her if ScareBear69 had a computer bag."

"All right!" I said loud and clear, no longer playing Chick's game. "She's standing right there." I pointed at Trix. "Ask her yourself!"

Chick seemed to collapse in on himself. His hands went quickly to his armpits.

Now able to speak without interruption, I turned to Trix. "You remember ScareBear69 having any floppy disks for her computer?" I asked, exasperated.

Trix shook her head, still confused. "Everything for her computer she kept that in her room." Trix pointed at a door.

I pointed a scolding finger, mimicking the direction Trix was indicating. Chick, wounded, skulked off. I took a deep breath and tried to fake a smile. Trix returned to sobbing.

"How long did you two live together?" I asked, trying to think of something intelligent to say. What would Jessica Fletcher have asked in this situation? Lord knows I'd watched enough of that show with dad.

"Six months, maybe...we've been friends since high school. You go to Longview High?"

"No, Bellevue."

"Oh," she sounded disappointed. I was getting the feeling everyone in this town went to high school with everyone else, regardless of any age difference. "She was so sweet, I just don't know why anyone would want to hurt her!"

"Did she have a boyfriend? A steady relationship?"

Trix shook her head. "I don't think so."

"No one at the hospital? Did she talk about any conflicts with coworkers?"

Trix shrugged. I sighed. What else would a real detective ask? I spied a photograph in frame, sitting on the bookshelf. I idly wandered over and picked it up. It was ScareBear69 and Trix, and three handsome, young, shirtless men. They were in Cabo, or somewhere tropical, mugging for the camera. I probably should have been studying the faces in the picture, filing them away in some sort of memory bank for future reference, but I was totally distracted by the shirtless chest of one of the men. He had muscles, lots of them, but they only served to highlight how tiny his nipples were. Almost like two moles at the apex of his pecs. I wanted to laugh, but it seemed heartless considering the situation.

"Are you a nurse, too?" I tried.

Trix shook her head again. "I waitress, over at the Hooters in Kelso," she said around sniffs.

Hooters. I should have guessed.

"Did ScareBear69 ever work..." I put the picture down. I started to ask, but then thought it was a silly question. Just because she looked good in a bikini on a beach didn't mean...

"Oh yeah, since high school," Trix piqued up a little. "That's why we decided to buddy up, get this place. Save our tips, you know?"

"She was a nurse but she worked nights at Hooters?"

Trix shrugged again. "Not nights. Well, some. But full time, you know. Then six months ago, she got the job at the hospital."

"As a nurse?"

"Yeah," Trix nodded.

At this, Chick came out of the room. He didn't say anything, just shook his head.

Hooters girl to registered nurse was quite a leap. Maybe she was going to school nights?

"Well, we're sorry to bother you at this hour," I said. I took Chick by the arm and led him toward the door. He'd searched and not found the disks. I figured it was best to get the hell out of there before a real cop showed up.

"That's okay," Trix sniffed. "Did you find what you were looking for?" she asked as I opened the door.

"Yes, thanks," I lied.

To be honest, maybe we had. That's the problem with no-win scenarios – you can never really be sure if you've totally lost, or still in the processes of losing.
Chapter 13

So, no disks meant no more clues. As far as I was concerned, that was the end of little game of Nancy Drew. The next morning, I went back to Nybbles and Bites and fixing computers. But little did I know that investigations have a habit of continuing, even if you decide to stop investigating them. This was, after all, my first attempt to solve anything. Ever. Shit happens even when you're not looking for it. Creepy shit. Really creepy shit.

That next day, while I was sector-testing a dead hard drive, Chick was back at the Morgue, at his usual duties. But an hour after he arrived, he was called into the Medical Examiner's – Dr. Mandelbrot's – office. This was not only unusual, it was entirely unprecedented.

Chick crossed the hall from his small closet, knocked on the doctor's door and waited for the command to enter. Inside the small, cluttered office, Chick hovered over the doctor's desk, waiting to be told to sit down. A full three minutes passed as the doctor worked on some papers. Chick nervously danced from one foot to the other.

Dr. Mandelbrot was a thin man, bald at the crown, with eyes obscured by thick, John Lennon spectacles. He had an owlish look to him, from his long nose and small, pinched mouth. He finally looked up from his papers and gazed at Chick from behind the fog of his glasses.

Chick was simultaneously completely terrified of and totally loyal to Dr. Mandelbrot. Chick knew he owed the doctor everything. It had been the doctor who had taken a risk on hiring Chick, after so many years of unemployment. It was the doctor who had given Chick a job when no one else was willing to take on a burden like Chick. He was working with the dead, sure, but it was honest work that kept Chick close to the goings-on in town. Chick handled the remains of every murder victim in the County, every suicide. He got a chance to examine their cause-of-death himself, refining his investigative skills. Chick owed all that to Dr. Mandelbrot.

But the doctor pegged Chick's heebie-jeebie meter into the red, and Chick could never quite get past it. Maybe it was the fact that the doctor cut up corpses all day, taking out their brains and weighing them. Maybe it was impossible to do what the doctor did and not be at least a little creepy. But Chick didn't handle being in the doctor's presence well. He just wanted to scream and hide in his closet. Today was no exception.

"Sit down, Albert," the doctor finally said.

Chick did as ordered.

"This is very serious," Dr. Mandelbrot began. Nothing good started with the phrase "this is very serious."

Chick reached up and pulled off his headphones. "Yes sir," he said in an apologetic tone. He didn't yet know what he'd done, but he was already genuinely sorry.

The doctor reached for a plastic bag on his desk and held it up. Chick strained to see what was inside it. It looked like...

"Does this," the doctor said slowly, "belong to you?"

Chick leaned forward. He stared. It was a small, gray piece of plastic. It looked familiar. Then it clicked: The LM312V04 Victory Gundam. Its Beam Gun. "Yes, I guess," Chick answered, confused. Why did the doctor have one of his Gundam's guns? In an evidence bag?

"This was found," the Doctor stopped and cleared his throat. "During the autopsy of case six-thirty-seven, in ceruicem," he said matter-of-fact.

Chick was even more confused. "What?"

"Inserted in the vagina, postmortem, of the dead girl in there," Dr. Mandelbrot nodded toward the refrigerators.

"What?" Chick repeated, this time in horror.

"I'll ask you again, Albert – Does this belong to you?" The doctor waved the tiny gun in the bag at Chick.

"No!" Chick replied in complete terror. "I mean, yes, but I didn't..."

"Albert, how could you?" The doctor shook his head.

"No, I didn't! I haven't!"

"Albert, this is very serious," the doctor said again, putting the bag back on the desk.

Chick was up on his feet, hands on the desk, "No! No! I didn't!"

"Albert, there will have to be consequences..." The doctor removed his thick glasses and began to clean them on his lab coat.

"No, sir! Please, you have to believe me!"

"I am obliged to inform the police. Social services."

"Oh God! Please, no! I would never..." Chick was shaking his head, tearing at his hair. Tears were steaming down his face.

"Perhaps it is time for you to return to St. Bartholomew's, Albert," the doctor said slowly, solemnly.

"No!" Chick collapsed back in his chair. "Please!"

"I'm sorry. But if word of this ever gets out. What you've been doing in there. It would mean my career as well."

"Dr. Mandelbrot, please," Chick begged one last time.

"I'm very disappointed, Albert." The doctor returned his glasses to his eyes and stared at Chick through their fog.

#

I was, of course, blissfully unaware of this new wrinkle in ScareBear69's case. Unaware, that is, until a week later, when a small woman in a flowery blouse came into the store. She didn't look like a customer, or anyone who'd be interested in computers at all. Even Moist didn't know what to make of her, staring up groggily, as she entered the store. His leg was up on a folding chair, and he was still on his pain meds. But the correct dosage now, closely monitored by Spider. They kept him quiet, at least. There was that.

The woman's name was Spork. That was her real name, not the nickname I'm giving her. I remember it distinctly. I'm sure it wasn't exactly Spork, there were some floating dots over the o or something. She was Icelandic, or Greenlandic, or Dutch Canadian or something. But she introduced herself as Ms. Spork. From social services. McFly had a good, staccato laugh at that.

She wanted to talk to me in private. There was storeroom in the back full of the Amigas no one wanted. We went in there.

"Ms. F–" she began, taking a clipboard out of the large purse she carried.

"People call me Buzz," I interrupted quickly.

"What? Like the astronaut?" Spork gave me a curious look.

"Yes," I sighed. "Like the astronaut."

That's when she dropped it on me: Chick had been fooling around with the corpses.

I felt sick. Sick and stupid. The others had tried to warn me – that Chick had made the whole thing up in his head. Now this.

"I wanted to speak with you," Spork went on. "Because Nicole mentioned that you'd visited Mr. Chick at the Medical Examiner's Office a number of times over the last few weeks."

"He comes into the store," I answered, shell-socked. "He needed computer help. With a laptop." Was that laptop even ScareBear69's? Were there ever any floppy disks? Probably not.

"What was wrong with the laptop?" she asked, clicking open her ballpoint pen. I realized that this was all about to go down in an official report. I needed to shut the fuck up. None of it made me look good. Or even innocent.

"Nothing. He'd lost his disks," I said. At least that was the truth. Sort of.

"And you returned? Nicole said you were in the examination room?" Spork wrote something down.

"I asked Chick to show me one of the bodies. I had no idea..." Again, sort of the truth.

"And–"

"What's going to happen to Chick?" I interrupted.

Spork looked annoyed. She was obviously used to asking the questions, not answering them. But she answered mine. "The State is evaluating Mr. Chick's current mental state. It is possible he might return to St. Bartholomew's to continue his on-going treatment."

Fuck me, I thought. "Fuck me," I said.

Spork looked even more annoyed. "Yes, well. Current events indicate that Mr. Chick might need to be institutionalized. For his own protection. But, Mr. Chick's former commitment at St. Bartholomew's was as a minor. The process is more complicated as an adult now..."

St. Bartholomew's? The loony bin? Chick wasn't crazy, he was sick. Though if he'd been doing what they said he'd been doing in the morgue...

"...that he's initiated a new relationship with a young, attractive woman." Spork was writing something down.

"Hey!" I scream and jumped up off the monitor box I was using as a seat. "He never touched me."

"Nevertheless..." She kept writing.

I slapped the pen out of her hand. It vanished in among the Amigas.

Now she was genuinely angry. She watched her pen vanish in the garbage and then turned to call me a foul name. Only in that instant did she remember herself. Calmly, she said. "Competency hearing are before a Superior Court Judge. You will be subpoenaed. You will be put under oath. And you will have to tell the truth about Mr. Chick."

Ugh. I felt sick again. I sat back down on my box.

"Look," Spork said, contrite. "It's for his own good. If he can't control himself, its only a matter of time before he hurts someone – someone still breathing. I've seen it happen, it can spiral downhill very quickly." She put her clipboard back into her purse, and pulled it over her shoulder. "If I was you, from now on, I'd stay away from Mr. Chick. If he's going to hurt someone, you don't want it to be you."

And then she was gone, leaving me there, feeling like I wanted to puke. After awhile, I got up and went back to my bench. I just sat there and stared at my tools. I didn't know what to think – couldn't think. Moist was snoring softly at the card table.

"What was all that about?" McFly leaned in and whispered.

"Chick's going back to St. Bartholomew's," I answered.

"What? Really? He hates that place." I looked over at McFly. He looked disgusted. "He'd rather die."

Oh God, yes he would, I thought to myself.

I was going to have ignore Spork's explicit advice and try and find the perverted little creep.
Chapter 14

It wasn't hard. He was in his little room at Barlow Point. He'd redecorated, sort of. All the Gundam were gone. Rueful fit or hiding evidence? Either way, it pretty much left the place bare. Just the kitchenette, Chick's cot and that view. I remembered the revolver in the kitchen draw. I was sure that would still be there. This was stupid – a stupid risk to take. But young and stupid, remember? And there was a part of me that wanted to hear it from Chick. Whatever else might have happened, I really though that Chick was sincere about the whole dead wife, Wild Side Killer deal. He believed it, at least. Why did I?

"I didn't do it," Chick said the instant he opened the door. I knew those would be the first words out of his mouth. Knew it just like I knew he would have never been able to tell me about the accusation himself. He'd been avoiding me all week, waiting for Spork to do the dirty work.

"I didn't say you did," I replied, pushing my way into the room. I'd been rehearsing that all the way over, saying the words into Teeny's rear-view mirror. It was non-committal, but stone cold. That was my angle.

Chick closed the door and dropped he weight onto the cot. He was back in his civilian clothes – the same Kung Pao T-shirt. Headphones, as always. I sat at the kitchen table, strategically between Chick and the draw containing the gun.

"I got a visit from social services," I began.

"They want to send me back there – back to St. Bartholomew's." Chick shivered.

I nodded. "Said they're going to subpoena me to your competency hearing."

Chick snorted.

"Still, it sorta looks bad." It was my turn to shiver.

"I didn't..." Chick growled in anger, then calmed down. "...I didn't do it."

"Then, how–"

Chick sprang to his feet. I almost fell backwards off my chair. He waved his arms wildly, flapping his hands. Then, fighting against himself, he thrust his hands into his armpits. So, that was the purpose of his stance. "Can't you see? It's him!"

"Him?"

"Him!" he repeated. "Don't you understand? He's sending me a message! Again."

"The Wild Side Killer?" I was going to keep all four feet of the chair on the ground from now on, less Chick explode again.

"Who else?" Chick looked incredulous. "Who else had access to her body, other than the killer? Who could have put the gun in there?"

"Well, you," I said flatly.

"But why?" Chick was fighting with his own hands. They wanted to fly from under his arms and flail about. But he kept them tightly under control, pinned under his arms.

I shrugged. Stone cold. "Because you're a fucking necrophiliac."

Chick blustered in disgust. The reaction struck me as genuine. Not the reaction of someone caught with his finger in the pussy of a corpse. "What's less imperfect, Buzz? I get sexual gratification from molesting the dead or a psychopathic killer meticulously profiles and stalks his victims?" I had to think about that one. But Chick didn't give me a chance to answer. "This might be the entire reason that girl was killed! It might have nothing to do with her or her disks. The Wild Side Killer knows I worked at the morgue, knows who I am. Knows my hobbies, my movements. He threw down the gauntlet once before, with the necklace, seven years ago. What if he's grown tired of waiting for me to pick it up? What if he killed that poor girl, just to send me a message? Catch me if you can, or they'll be more like her. But you can't catch me, because you're a sick, retarded, stupid fuck!'" Chick gasped for air, he was fight back tears.

I tried to say something, but I couldn't. I was totally confused. I minute ago, Spork had me so convinced that Chick was a demented divalent. Now, I didn't know what to think. "I'm supposed to stay away from you," was what I finally said.

"Excellent advice," Chick was breathing heavy. He dropped back down onto his cot. "If we do assume that the Wild Side Killer is watching me, he's undoubtedly watching you now, too."

That was a comforting thought. "So..." I climbed out of my chair. I judged the distance to the door, the distance to the draw in the kitchen, and the distance across the room to Chick. Anyway it went down, I was thinking I was going to do pretty good. "We'll call it quits, then. This whole 'lets catch a serial killer' thing? You know, if we had anything else to go on...I mean–"

"Yes, yes, I know," Chick nodded, closing his eyes. He was crying for real now.

"I won't testify against you, even if they subpoena me," I added. "We can keep all this just between us, you know? No harm done, after all."

Chick just nodded. I was almost at the door.

"Well, take it easy, Chick," I said as a way to say goodbye. It sounded terrible as I said it. The next bit sounded worse. "If you ever need an Amiga..."

After that, I just got the hell out of there. I ran down the stairs, climbed into Teeny and fired up that 574-cubic inch engine. I was out on the highway and driving back into town before I took the trouble to breathe again.

Hell, I think I believed him. I had to admit it to myself. The whole "serial killer sent me a message in the vagina of a dead nurse" was a hard one to believe, but it was too crazy not to seriously consider. I wanted to believe it. Believe Chick. I guess I'd got what I wanted out of heading over to his apartment: something that fit the facts, no matter how crazy. I didn't want to believe he was capable of such a thing. I wanted a reason not to.

But it didn't mean I was stupid. There'd be no more playing Nancy Drew. ScareBear69 was the cops' problem. If Chick was right and the Wild Side Killer was profiling him, then Chick would also be right that I'd could be in danger. I didn't need that. I had my own problems. Non-serial killer problems.

I didn't want wake up in the morgue with some plastic robot gun in my cooch. Fuck that.
Chapter 15

I don't want to write about the next bit. But I guess you need to know why I was driving Teeny north on I-5, toward Seattle. Is it enough to say I was driving north on I-5, toward Seattle? No, I guess not. What happened next was so weird, you're going to call bullshit on it all if I'm not completely honest. So here goes...

While I was dealing with Spork and Chick and the whole Gundam Gun deal, my dad had taken the next installment of his newfound windfall and gone for a night out at Maginty's. I didn't notice his absence when I'd gotten home late. The TV was on; I'd assumed he was asleep in his chair. Maybe if I had, I'd have gone and fetched him home. No, probably not. It certainly wasn't the first night out for my dad, and he'd always gotten home safe before. I wouldn't have given it a second thought.

That night, though, he didn't make it back.

At about 3:30 a.m., he wrapped his old Ford pickup around a tree. It didn't kill him outright, but his face and the windshield had a severe disagreement. By the time I got the call, he was in a medically-induced coma at the VA Hospital in Portland.

I drove over the river and spend the day sitting with a pile of bandages. He might have woken up, but they weren't going to let him. Not until they'd put at least some of his face back together. That's what the doctors told me, when they eventually stopped by to look in on him.

It didn't seem like he was a high priority and he seemed stable, so by dusk I climbed back into Teeny and started driving north. There was one person and one person alone who'd but Dad into that hospital, and I was going to bang on her door and scream in her face until I got it through my mother's thick skull to leave me the fuck alone.

I was almost to the rest stop by exit 108, at the Sleater Kinney (rocks!) Road, when Teeny's 574 began to splutter. I was simultaneously crying and seething with rage, and at the sound of Teeny coughing on a vapor lock, I added bewildered to the mix. She'd never acted up before. For a twenty-two year old car, she ran like she was brand new. But there she was, having engine trouble, as I flew alone the highway at eighty in the rain. I flicked the indicator on and pulled off at the exist for the Sleater Kinney (rocks!) rest stop.

Just so you know, he never wakes up. My dad. Back at the VA Hospital, in Portland. There's no teary, hospital bedside, oh, it's a fricking miracle scene at the end of this book. He eventually died, though he hung on in that coma for almost forever. I missed it when it finally happened. We'd moved back to Seattle, me and Chick, and were investigating that whole God's Yottabyte affair. But dad never regained consciousness. And I never made it to Bellevue to tell my mother it was all her fault. The Sleater Kinney (rocks!) rest stop was as far north as I got that night.

Teeny finally died just as I pulled her into a parking spot. The engine cut out and all the electrics went dark – the headlights, the dash, even the radio. Fuck! It was pouring with rain outside, and the car was totally dead. I was crying and screaming and pounding on Teeny's steering wheel. What else could go wrong? I didn't have a coat, or food, or money. I was totally fucked, stranded in the middle of the night at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere.

I had a good cry and then pulled myself together. I fished a couple quarters out of the ashtray and opened Teeny's door. There were a dozen or so cars in the rest stop but no sign of people. It was coming down in buckets. I could just make out the hazy glow of the vending machines and the bathrooms in the distance. I made a mad dash for it. By the time I was undercover, my T-shirt and jeans were socked to my skin.

There was a pay phone by the Men's. I had two quarters. I should have used them to call a tow truck. Instead, I pushed them into the slot and dial my mom's number. If I couldn't yell at her in person, I sure as shit was going to yell at her over the phone.

The line began to ring.

God, it was pouring. And my car was dead. And I was stranded, in the dark, at a rest stop near the Sleater Kinney (rocks!) road.

Ring, ring, ring.

All I could see beyond the light of the rest stop were pine trees and blackness. I could hardly see the lights of the freeway. No one was around. No one. I looked at my watch. 10:30. It wasn't really that late.

Ring, ring.

Fuck, what was I doing? Driving off into the night without even a coat. Did Teeny even have any gas? I hadn't checked that. Maybe she ran out of gas. God, I was being a fucking idiot. It wasn't mom's fault that dad had crashed his truck. I could blame her for giving him that money, but if it hadn't been today, it could just as easily been next week, when his disability check came. What was I doing? What did I think I was going to accomplish? And now I was stranded in the middle of no where, in a rest stop...

Ring, ring, ring.

Oh fuck.

It hit me. The Wild Side Killer, a rest stop along the I-5 corridor. Pretty girl, all alone at night. Car trouble. Unlike ScareBear69, this was totally the Wild Side Killer's M.O. A cold child shot down my soaking wet spine. And I'd driven right into it. Was there really anything wrong with the car? I panicked, the pay phone's receiver still rhythmically ringing in my ear. Had see been sabotaged? Had that even been my dad in the hospital? All I'd seen were bandages.

I couldn't think. I was screaming inside. I slowly pulled the receiver away from my ear. Headlights. I could see headlights approaching. A car pulling off the freeway. My whole body was shaking. Every part of me screamed that I should run for my life. The headlights were coming closer, approaching the rest stop. It could be nothing. Another motorist taking a break. I couldn't make out the car in the rain, just the gleam of the high beams.

Then I heard it, ever so faintly over the thunder of the rain: music. Did I really hear it? I don't know. But in that instant, I had never been so sure of anything in my life.

Doo, da-doo, da-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo...

"Hello?" the receiver said in my mother's voice. What? Who? I dropped it and ran for my life. The sound of Lou Reed on the car's radio was all I could hear. I ran the length of the rest stop and out into the rain. I looked back, the headlights were still following. They hadn't stopped at the bathrooms. I was running toward the on-ramp to the freeway. That would do me no good. I looked back again; the headlights were still there.

I cut hard to the left and into a bank of trees. Off the blacktop, the ground was uneven, and I tripped and fell, rolling in the mud. I regained some of my footing and half crawled through the trees. I looked back. Bright lights at the top of the embankment. The car was right there.

I was out in a lower parking lot now. Where the semi trailers and RV's parked. I was drenched and covered in mud and my left hand was bleeding. There was no one in sight and my eyes were still adjusting to the dark. I paused and took a moment to find the best direction to run. The light above me were fading. They'd be coming the long way around. From that way or that way? I looked up and down the length of the parking strip. There were a number of dark semi trucks. Were there truckers inside them? Should I be screaming for my life? Then I spied a lone pickup truck parked all on its own. That was odd. This lot was for over-sized vehicles. But there was one thing I'd learned, growing up in rural Washington State – every pickup truck had a gun under its seat. I sprinted off toward it, my boots splashing through standing water.

It was a big, old Nissan 4x4 without a tailgate. And it was locked. I tried both doors. I peered inside, through the dirty windows, but could see nothing in the dark. I was looking in the bed for a tire iron, or something, when I noted the curious sticker on the cab's back window. It was right in the spot where a surfer dude would have a "hang loose" or "local motion" sticker. But this one was of a hood, or a mask, or a ghostly face. I didn't think much of it at that moment, since my next realization was that the back window of the cab was slightly ajar.

I was up in the bed, trying to get this window open, when the headlights came around and lit up the lower parking lot. I was out of time. I could hide or I could run. Neither sounded like a great idea. I chose door number two and leapt down off the pickup truck. I started running. Really running. Faster than I had ever run before. Behind me the lights were closing in. I could here the doo, da-doo, da-doo coming from the car's stereo.

I was out of parking lot. It was just freeway down the ramp before me. I cut back up the embankment, though the trees. I stayed on my feet this time. And there she was, as I exploded out of the underbrush: Teeny. Right there, in a spot at the end of the lot.

Except that wasn't where I'd parked her.

I looked back, through the rain at the faint glow of the rest stop. Wasn't it? The angle looked right, just as I'd seen the rest stop when I'd climbed out of Teeny's driver's seat, but...I'd run in the other direction, the headlights had been approaching from the freeway off ramp. Had they? I was all turned around.

I didn't really have time to think about it. The black shadow of a car was coming about, up from the lower lot, its headlights dancing in the trees behind Teeny. I pulled open the car door and climbed inside, hitting the central locks.

The plungers in the doors snapped down. There was power! A scrambled for my keys in my sopping wet jeans. The headlights were back around now, closing in on the car. I fumbled out the keys and struggled with shaking fingers to find the ignition. I was scared and freezing cold. After three tries I had to key in the slot.

Teeny's engine roared to life on the first try, loud and angry. I guess she had gas, too. I slammed the gear shift to R and reversed directly into the approaching headlights. There was an almighty crash that didn't impede the rearward movement of Teeny in the slightest, and then I was shifting into drive and flying forward toward the freeway.

I glanced back, the headlights were gone now. I was merging onto the freeway and heading south before I could really make anything out.

I stepped on the gas and let myself relax. I turned up the heat and the blower and let the Sleater Kinney (rocks!) rest stop fade into the rear view. Slowly, the panic began to subside.

I drove south, back to Longview, back to my dad's house, and back to the shotgun he kept in his closet. Nothing in Bellevue seemed that important anymore.

I had no idea – have no idea to this day – what any of that was, or exactly what had happened with Teeny. But it was all behind me. Teeny was running perfectly again, effortlessly whisking me back to Longview, for a sleepless night in my own bed, relatively un-strangled, curled up tight with a rusty twelve gauge.

I should have stayed in the car. That was my mistake.
Chapter 16

I had a groggy morning at the store the next day. I didn't tell anyone what had happened – didn't know how to tell anyone what had happened. I wasn't exactly sure myself what had happened, exactly how much of it had been real, and how much of it had just been in my head.

I was upset and began to rationalize. Did I really hear Lou Reed, or had I just had that song running through my head all week and my brain had sort of leapt the tracks when I realized what sort of situation I had gotten myself into? I'd panicked, that was for certain. A young girl, with no coat, screaming and running in the rain. That was probably a pretty weird sight. Maybe the guy in the car was just trying to help? And I'd crashed Teeny into him for his kindness. I felt sick. Teeny at least, was undamaged from the incident. Not even a scratch on her rear bumper. Dad would be happy, if he ever woke up. I felt doubly sick.

At lunchtime, I decided that a few cheeseburgers were going to be the only thing that would settle my stomach. I clocked out and was heading across the parking lots, Chick style, toward the Drive-In in the next step mall, when a police cruiser pulled into the lot in front of Nybbles and Bytes. By the time I was in line, waiting for my food, the cop had gone into the store, come out again and pulled away, back toward the highway.

I didn't like the look of any of that, so decided I'd eat my lunch down the way, on the little grassy bit that overlooked the river. Best to leave the cops alone to whatever they were up to. But I hadn't made in twenty feet from the Drive-In before the cruiser came in off the highway. He blipped his lights and pulled up beside me.

Oh shit.

"Miss Bus–" the deputy began.

"It's just Buzz," I interrupted, shifting my cheeseburgers to my other hand. "You know...like the astronaut?" I tried to smile.

The deputy didn't find this funny. "Ma'am," he said in a tone that sounded pretty final. "If you'll come with me."

I looked at the sheriff's cruiser. All lights and Serve and Protect. "Front or back?" I asked.

"Front. For now."

Was this about last night? Already? That was some quick police work. Oh well, it'd do no good to run. That'd just get me thrown in the back. I walked around the cruiser and climbed into the front seat. After I fastened my seatbelt, I began to unwrap my first cheeseburger.

"No eating in my car, ma'am," the deputy ordered, pulling the car away.

I wrapped the burger back up in its foil.

#

The sheriff's office was in the old part of town, on the real main street that was now all antique shops and pawn brokers, but had, perhaps, been the shopping district of Longview once upon a time. It wasn't much to look at, but pretty much exactly like you'd think a police station would look like in small town USA. It was busy and taken back into the station, I assumed to get processed for vehicular assault. But instead, I was deposited in an office, where I waited and ate my cheeseburgers until Sheriff Tush arrived.

Again, not his real name. I don't remember it, but I certainly remember that tush in that uniform. The Sheriff of Cowlitz County looked like some handsome sheriff from a b-roll horror film, jutting jaw, twinkly blue eyes and all. I was instantly smitten, despite the mustard on my cheek. It was even cute how he pointed it out without making me feel self-conscious. I think I even giggled.

I don't giggle.

"Miss Fan–" Tush started, reading off a form.

"Buzz," I was quick to interrupt. "My friends call me Buzz. You can call me Buzz."

"Okay Buzz," he said, looking up from the form and shooting me a hundred watt smile. I giggled again. Oh God, now I giggle. "I'm sorry to send a deputy to your place of employment like that, but we were unsure exactly to your current residence. Our records are...incomplete."

"That's all right," I said. It most certainly was not all right. What was wrong with me? "I was at lunch, anyway."

Sheriff Tush nodded, smiled and leaned back in his large, leather chair. I nodded and smiled, too. I felt uncomfortable, like I needed to fill the empty space between us. "Is this about–" I began.

"Your friend?" he completed.

I shut up. Chick?

"I brought you in to talk about Chick," Tush said.

This wasn't about what happened at the Sleater Kinney (rocks!) rest stop? If he wasn't going to bring it up, I wasn't.

"I assume you're aware of the accusations..."

I nodded emphatically, not wanting to speak, but not wanting to rehash the whole Gundam gun thing, either.

"People have mentioned...are concerned...that perhaps..." He was searching for the right words. Just say it, good-looking. "That you and Chick have, of late, become..."

"Friends?" I finished. "I don't know anything about what he gets up to in the morgue, if that's your question."

"No," Sheriff Tush signed, deflated. He learned forward in his chair and put his elbows on the desk. He looked pained. "I'm sorry, I've know Chick since were kids."

"You're another Longview High grad?" I asked. He nodded. Did this whole town go to high school together?

"I know Chick is a good guy, but..."

"He's never touched me," I said, angry that this was the second time I'd had to say that.

"No," Tush held up his hands defensively, "but you understand. With the charges that have been made against Chick, we are all very concerned."

"You've been talking to Spork," I spat.

"Social services referred the case to us, yes."

"He didn't do it," I said flatly, trying not to look Tush in his dreamy blue eyes as I said it.

He sighed again. "You haven't known Chick for very long, have you?"

"It doesn't matter." I shook my head.

"Is this...did he ask you...is this about his Beth?"

"What about her?" His tone annoyed me. I wasn't a child. Or Chick. He didn't need to talk down to me.

"Look, I worked her case, seven years ago. When I was a deputy. Chick came in here, swearing up and down that she'd been killed. We took him seriously at the time." His hand went to a manila folder on the ink blotter in front of him. It was half-an-inch thick. "We looked into it. You know what we found?"

"That she'd run off to Seattle, to manage grunge bands."

"Exactly," Tush nodded, relieved.

"And you've talked to her? In Seattle? After she disappeared?"

Suddenly, Tush wasn't so relieved. "Well no. It's not easy to find someone who doesn't want to be found."

"Did you even try?" I asked, indignant.

"There are only so many man-hours and only so many tax-dollars..."

"Then, she could be dead? Killed by the Wild Side Killer?" I leaned forward, threatening the sheriff with a finger. I then realized this probably wasn't such a smart idea, considering the incident at the Sleater Kinney (rocks!) rest stop. I put my finger away.

Tush paused, coughed and fiddled some more with the file on his desk. "Yes, well..." was all he said to that.

"What? What is it?" I prodded. I wanted to grab the file from the desk and fling it open. Why was he being so coy?

"I worked the Wild Side Killer case, too. When I was deputy."

"And?" I was going to slug this guy in the face, or kiss him, I wasn't entirely sure which.

"As I said, when Chick came in here with the missing person's report on Beth, we took him seriously. Even the accusation that she'd been killed by the Wild Side Killer. Chick isn't wrong, it is not entirely beyond imagination that she was the Killer's last victim. The problem is..."

"What? What?" I brain was scrabbling for any possible clue to what he was about to say next.

"For that to be true, according to all the evidence we collected at the time, and consistent with all our best, current assessments..." He paused, still fiddling with that fucking folder.

"What?" I half screamed. I could feel my cheeseburgers about to backup.

"If Beth was the last of the Wild Side murders," Sheriff Tush looked me straight in the eye. "Then Chick is, most probably, himself the Wild Side Killer."
Chapter 17

I didn't know what to say. There was nothing to say. I burped mustard and melted cheese.

"The time line fits," Sheriff Tush went on. "The first murder coincides, roughly, with Chick's release from St. Bartholomew's. We all remember, he came back...different."

"No," I shook my head.

"And, as we know, Beth's death coincides with the Wild Side Killer's last known activity. It is possible she was his last victim. Or perhaps she came to understand Chick's...proclivities and she had to be dealt with."

"No," I said again, "no." Shit, that would explain how Chick had Beth's necklace.

"It's possible that that incident caused him to rethink his behavior. That might explain the sudden interruption in the Wild Side Killings."

"If you think Chick's a serial killer–" I yelled far too loud. All the cops outside the office could hear me. That wasn't going to help Chick's cause. I continued, more quietly. "If you think Chick's the Wild Side Killer, why have you been letting walk around free all these years?"

"Because it's just a theory," Tush replied in an equally hushed tone. "The rational explanation is that Beth moved to Seattle to manage grunge bands. We didn't seriously entertain Chick as a suspect at the time. But considering current events...we're apt to reconsider our former suppositions."

"That's insane! You're insane. Chick's been chasing the Wild Side Killer for the last seven years."

"True. And I can believe he genuinely thinks he is. It's possible he doesn't remember any of it. The trauma of Beth's death–"

"You mean, strangling his own wife?"

"Yes. That trauma could have caused a complete psychological break. It's not unheard of. He might not remember what he did, only the vague connection of the Wild Killer to the absence of his wife. New stimuli, however, might be causing feelings to resurface."

"You mean me?" I growled. "You think I caused Chick to fool around with that corpse?"

"I mean, just maybe, St. Bartholomew's might be the right place for Chick."

"Do you have any evidence to back this up?"

Sheriff Tush leaned back in his chair. "No."

"Then you'd be locking him up for nothing."

"Not for nothing. There's still what he did to that nurse."

"He didn't do it!" I said through gritted teeth.

"Maybe. Maybe not. I'm just saying, maybe it'll be best for everyone if you pay Chick a wide berth from now on. I'd hate for you to end up like one of these." He tapped the folder in front of him.

"Is that Chick's file?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

"Yes." He pushed it forward. I didn't even have to ask. I turned it around and opened the manila folder. That was Chick all right. He was even wearing his headphones in the Polaroid, paper-clipped to the first page. There was a lot of stuff in there. "Take all the time you need," Sheriff Tush said, climbing to his feet. "Better that you know too much than not enough." He started for his office door. "Just leave it here, okay? Nothing in that file leaves this office."

Then he was gone, leaving me along with Chick's file. Everything the cops had on him. I just stared at the Polaroid. It was of a younger but predictably terrified Chick. Even back then, trying to report his missing wife, he was way out of his element. Scared half to death.

You are the Wild Side Killer? I asked the old Polaroid.

I closed the folder,

leaned back in my chair, and exhaled. It certainly made a twisted kind of sense, but I just couldn't make the dots connect. The guys back at the store would surely have no trouble believing it. It certainly wasn't any more incorrect than any other explanation of Beth's death. They'd say that they'd known it all along, that there had always been something off about Chick. Heck, after an hour, they'd be begging to believe it: Chick, the Wild Side Killer. News at 11. They'd tie the noose themselves.

Maybe Tush was right, maybe St. Bartholomew's was the safest place for Chick.

Hell, Chick was out of time. Between Spork and Sheriff Tush, Chick's fate was already sealed. If only we'd made progress on ScareBear69 and her laptop. That would have at least been something. But...

I sat up and looked around. But...I was sitting in the Sheriff of Cowlitz County's office. All alone. All his files were in here. Everything the cops knew about ScareBear69 was in here. If they had those disks, they might be in here, too. But where to begin? And how to look around without attracting too much attention. The office door was glass and looked out onto a bullpen of a dozen or so cops.

I reopened Chick's file and pretended to be studying it. I looked around the desk before me. There was one other manila folder, in an inbox on the desk. It was the only thing I could grab without getting up from the desk. I surreptitiously pulled the folder out of inbox and placed it on top of Chick's file. I opened it up and began to read.

It was nothing – nothing to do with ScareBear69 at least. A suicide. Maybe a week ago. Some guy hanged himself in his apartment. I was about to put the folder back, when I caught a glimpse of a photocopy of the dead man's driver's license. The photo looked familiar. Where had I seen that guy before? He was handsome, young. Dark hair and a lot of teeth–

It clicked. Trix's apartment, the picture of ScareBear69 in Cabo. This guy was one of the three shirtless men. The one with the tiny nipples. He knew ScareBear69! This was no longer nothing, this was everything. I pulled the photocopy out, folded it, and slipped it under my shirt. I kept reading the rest of the file. And reading. And there it was, on page three, down in black and white. I took that sheet, too, folding it and hiding it away next to the photocopy.

I closed the folder and returned it to the inbox, no longer trying to be sneaky. I closed Chick's file and climbed to my feet. I had to get out of that police station, and I had to get out of there fast.

I had to find Chick.
Chapter 18

"Mr. Tinynips," I said as Chick opened his apartment door. I didn't say his nickname, I said the guy's real name. I was holding the photocopy of his driver's license up at eye level.

Chick didn't answer. He just looked at the blurry photocopy, confused.

"Don't recognize him?" I handed Chick the paper.

Chick shrugged. "I'm...I'm not good with faces."

"He's a friend – or rather, was a friend – of ScareBear69. There was a vacation photo in Trix's apartment. All three of them were in it."

A smile crossed Chick face as he realized the implications. "Ah, the boyfriend."

"Maybe," I smiled back, feeling very useful.

"Then we need to go to–" He pulled the paper close, trying to read the address.

"No," I corrected, "Mr. Tinynips here, is dead."

"What?" Chick looked shocked.

"Hanged himself. Hung himself?"

"Hanged," Chick answered quickly. "What do you mean, hanged himself?"

"Suicide, I guess. You'd have probably known, if...well, you know...you were still at the morgue." Chick ignored this. "But convenient, no?"

"Convenient?"

"Yes, if you wanted to make a strangulation look like a suicide?"

Chick let this sink in. "But wasn't this," he held up the photocopy. "Our primary suspect? If he's dead..."

"Yes," I could hardly contain my glee. I was getting a sort of morbid thrill from all this. "He was our primary suspect if ScareBear69's death had nothing to do with the Wild Side Killer..."

"Ah!" I could almost see the light bulb over Chick's head. He held the photocopy up again and looked at it with new excitement. "But–"

"But," I interrupted. "I got a look at the police report on his suicide. And–"

"How?" Chick asked.

"I was at the Sheriff's Office for an unrelated issue," I dismissed. "And the police report noted that they are unable to determine the whereabouts of Mr. Tinynips' truck."

"So?"

I took the second sheet of paper out of my pocket and unfolded it. I showed it to Chick. "Nissan Hardbody, 4x4. Maroon. Distinguishing characteristics: ski mask/skull decal in the lower right back window of the cab." I pointed at the rough sketch of the sticker – of the white mask sticker I'd seen on the truck back at the Sleater Kinney (rocks!) rest stop, "I might just know where that truck is right now..."

"Ski mask?" Chick asked.

"Ski mask," I affirmed.
Chapter 19

I was certainly in no hurry to repeat my trip north to exit 108 of I-5. But making the trip by day and in the company of Chick muted most of my fears.

I kept the whole "the police think you're the Wild Side Killer" thing to myself. After all, if he was the Wild Side Killer, I'd surely not live more than twenty seconds longer than it took the words to escape my mouth. If he wasn't, then I didn't see the need to burden him with that added anxiety. The whole town already thought Chick to be a necrophiliatic perv. Serial-killing wife-murderer just felt like piling on.

"There's one thing I got to ask–" we both said simultaneously. We laughed, paused, gestured for the other to go first, both started talking again, then ended up sitting in silence, doubly jinxed.

"I'm curious," Chick finally began. "How'd you happen upon Mr. Tinynips' trunk? This seems awfully off the beaten path." We were maybe twenty miles from Centralia.

"Yeah, about that," I exhaled, checking my mirrors and changing lanes. Teeny glided over into the passing lane. "I was driving to Bellevue, to see my mother."

"Oh?"

"You see," I started, then decided not to get into it about my dad. "Anyway, right around Olympia, I started to have engine trouble."

"Oh," Chick said again. He sounded satisfied with that answer.

"No, you don't understand," I slapped Teeny's steering wheel. "Teeny has never had engine trouble."

"Ever?"

"Ever. Twenty-four years on the road, four-hundred and–" I looked at the odometer. "Twenty-six thousand miles and change, nothing. I don't think my dad has even changed the oil."

"How's that possible?" Chick snorted in disbelief.

"My dad says that Teeny exists in a State of Motor City Grace. Sixty-sixth-thousand Chevot El Chupacabra to roll off the Detroit line. On June 6th no less, at 6 p.m. Teeny's VIN number even contains six 6's."

"That doesn't sound like grace," Chick commented. "More like perdition."

"Maybe, but whatever sort of Hell's Angel has been looking out for Teeny, they've been doing a pretty good job. Dad was always afraid to do any maintenance on her, less he let the magic juju smoke free or something and break the spell. Apart from putting gas in the tank and emptying out the ash tray, Teeny's run without a hiccup for almost a quarter century."

"Until yesterday?"

"Until I was right at the exit where Tinynips' truck was waiting..."

"Coincidence? Fate?" Chick offered.

"How about sabotage?" I pitched.

"By who? Who would want you to find Tinynips' truck?"

"Exactly. Which kinda, sorta leads me to my question." I bit my lower lip.

"What's that?" Chick looked at me, confused.

"You can't drive, right?" I asked. "I mean, I know you don't drive, but you don't know how?"

"No," Chick shook his head. "People with my condition," he coughed. "They don't let you get a license."

"But you never learned? Not when you were a kid?"

"No, I – You think I sabotaged your car?"

"No, no!" I said quickly. I didn't. Well, didn't before. "It's just, there was a car there, at the rest stop, yesterday. It must have followed me up from Portland."

"And you think I was driving it?" Chick was offended.

"No, but I have to rule it out." Chick let out a disgusted sigh. I shrugged. "Come on! Who else knew I'd be driving this way?"

"Not me!" Chick harrumphed. "You were in Portland? This is the first I'm hearing of it."

"No, look," I backpedaled. "I'm sorry, I know it wasn't you. It's just, with everything that's happened in the last few days, I'm starting to think even I might be the Wild Side Killer. I got to rule everything out, no matter how crazy."

Chick's annoyed glare faded. He let out a small laugh. "Welcome to my world," he said.

"I'm sorry, I'm doing a lot of talking. Am I driving you nuts?"

"No, I'm fine," Chick turned his attention back to the road before us. "As I say, it's not too bad when one person is speaking. It's just..."

"Just what?"

"I just wish you'd get to the fucking refrain." A look came over Chick, like he was about to throw up. I swerved toward the shoulder, cutting across two lanes. But instead of hurling, Chick began to sing. Loud. "With cat-like tread, Upon our prey we steal/In silence dread, Our cautious way we feel/No sound at all! We never speak a word/A fly's foot-fall Would be distinctly heard!"

Chick looked as shocked as I felt. "Are you okay?" I asked.

"Yes," Chick looked at me with a smile. "That felt great."

"I like to sing in here, too," I smirked. "Teeny's acoustics are excellent."

"State of Motor City Grace, you say?" Chick looked around at Teeny's upholstery, admiringly.

"State of Motor City something," I smirked.

#

"It's locked," Chick said, trying the truck's passenger door.

"Don't worry, I've got the key," I replied as a hefted a large rock at the driver's side window.

Unlike the night before, the Sleater Kinney (rocks!) rest stop was busy with motorists sipping free coffee and stretching their legs. Breaking the window made an almighty racket, but Tinynips' truck was down in the lower parking lot, away from the covered restrooms. I don't think anyone heard me "unlock" the door.

What? I was twenty-two. I didn't know chain of evidence from a hole in my head. Okay, if I knew where Tinynips' truck was, I should have just told the cops and let them handle it. But I'd just met the cops, remember? Sheriff Tush? Besides, we weren't in Cowlitz County up here on the Sleater Kinny (rocks!) Road. Tush would have had to call the Thurston County Sheriff. Or, what, the State Patrol? It was a federal highway. No, who had time for any of that? It was just easier to break the window and take a look ourselves. I'm sure glad we did.

Inside, I leaned across the broken glass on the seat and unlocked the passenger door. I looked under the driver's seat first. I just wanted to check. Sure enough, my hand came out holding a black Glock pistol in a sheepskin holster. If there was one universal, absolute constant in the universe, it was rednecks.

I showed the gun to Chick, then put it back.

"What are we looking–" Chick began, sitting in the passenger seat. He opened the glove box as he spoke. He instantly got his answer. A small, purple box fell out of the glove box.

Chick picked it up off the truck floor mat. It was plastic, with little daisies drawn on it with black marker. Chick opened up the box. Inside, were nine or ten three-and-half inch disks.

"The floppies!" I gasped. They could have been anybody's, but the black pansies told me they didn't belong to Tinynips.

Chick counted the disks. "There's one missing," he said. I didn't give a shit. ScareBear69's disks – the disks we'd been looking for – were in Chick's hand!

"What? How do you know how many disks there should be?"

"This box holds ten disks." Chick showed me the slight space left by the missing tenth disk. "There's one missing." Chick began to search through the papers in the glove box for the floppy.

"Brilliant, Holmes!" I teased. Chick glared at me, once again angered by the mention of the famous detective. What was that about? "Maybe she only had nine disks she needed to carry around." Heck, back then, I didn't even have a carrying case for my disks. I just carried them around in my pocket. I also had the tendency to wash them with my jeans.

"It's not here," Chick declared, contemplatively.

"Who cares if one disk is missing?" I took the floppies from Chick and looked at the labels. "These really are ScareBear69's disks. This is the clue we've been looking for, Chick. A real lead."

"Yes," Chick allowed. "Now, if we still had the laptop."

I waved away his concern. "Oh, I've got a PC back at the shop that can read these." But then I stopped, trying to remember what this meant to our Kobayashi Maru Scenario. "Wait a minute: if the disks are in Tinynips' truck, then that means–"

"That the Wild Side Killer didn't take them off ScareBear69's body," Chick finished.

"Then these disks," I held up the purple case. "Probably have nothing to do with ScareBear69's murder. She just left them in her boyfriend's truck."

"Who is, may I remind you, also now dead." Chick paused, then added. "By strangulation made to look like a suicide."

"Yeah, but then what are we going to find on these?" I rattled the disks. Chick shrugged. "And what the hell is that?" I pointed at the sorta ski mask, sorta skull decal on the rear window.

Chick turned in his seat and studied the sticker. "Creepy?" Chick offered.

Yeah, creepy as shit.
Chapter 20

It was dark by the time we'd made it back to Longview. Like some sort of reverse vampire, Chick seemed drain of energy as the sun began to set. I dropped him off at his apartment before heading back to the store. Nybbles and Bytes was closed, but I knew where Spider hid the spare key to the back door. I let myself in.

IBM PC's were something of a dirty word around Spider and McFly, but there was a pizza box 386 in the back room that they ran DR-DOS on, mostly so they could play Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe. It had a three-and-half inch drive.

I booted it up and let it cycle through its memory check. When the TSR's had loaded, and the IPX/SPX stack, I was at the 'C' prompt.

I pulled the top disk out of ScareBear69's purple box, slid it into the drive and typed 'A:'

WordPerfect files. Lots of them. Letters to her friends, her mom. The first few chapters of a smutty romance novel. More disks, more of the same. A couple of disks were compressed backups of other disks. I skimmed over it. Maybe there was a clue in there, but I wanted to look at all the disks before I buckled down to sifting through ScareBear69's daily correspondences. One disk, with a broken gate, was a EGA solitaire game. I took a few minutes to thoroughly test it out. Once the Old Maid had me stumped, I moved on.

The sixth disk was the money. It contained a copy of Telix Communicator. I executed it and checked the program's dialing directory. There was only one phone number in it.

Bingo.

I don't know if you remember the universe pre-Internet. I mean, why would you want to? And 1992 wasn't really pre-Internet. We had IP networks at university. You could telnet to the WELL from an X-terminal in the computer lab. The year 1992 was, however, pre-Internet for that vast majority of humanity. AOL was doing its thing, but real computer geeks were still connecting to each other via Bulletin Board Systems. BBS's. Single computers, hook up to a modem, sitting in somebody's spare room. You dialed a phone number and connected directly to the computer running the BBS, one person at a time – a single connection per modem. Maybe, if the BBS was really fancy, or a money maker or something, they might have two modems. But mostly BBS's were single user deals. When you were logged on, you could upload and download files, post messages, that sort of thing. But you had to log off before the next guy could log on, to see any message that you might have posted. You spent a lot of time listening to busy signals.

It was pretty rudimentary stuff. Fun, if you were the kind of guy who couldn't get a date on Saturday night. There were plenty of BBS's just for guys like that. Plenty of like-minded gentlemen sharing more adult content. Heck, if you were willing to pay long distance dialing fees, I bet there was a BBS for just about everybody. Which is why it was so interesting to find the terminal emulator, with the single phone number in its dialing directory, on one of ScareBear69's disks. What sort of thing was she in to? By the look of her dead body, I could imagine she never lacked for a date on any given Saturday night.

I had to run a phone cable out to the bullpen, but Spider's 386 had a modem daughter card. I let Telix dial the number.

The line was free. After the squawks and cracks of the two modems negotiating baud rate, I got a screen full of scrolling text.

It came fast. ASCII art. It took me a second to resolve the series of periods, question marks and backslashes into an image. When I did, I instantly reached for the keyboard and hit Alt-H, hanging up the modem.

I pushed my chair back from the computer screen to get a better look, thinking maybe I was getting a little jumpy. But no, there before me was exactly what my brain had first deciphered: the ski mask decal from Tinynips' truck rendered in ASCII art. Below it, in regular text just above the login prompt, was the phase: Molti nemici. Molto onore.

It looked Latin and very unfriendly. I closed Telix, ejected its disk and put it back in ScareBear69 carry case. That was more than enough for me, all on my own, sitting in the dark. I put the disks in a draw and climbed to my feet.

At the last second, I thought better of it, fished the disks out of the draw, removed the Telix disk, hid it away in my bra, then returned the other disks to the draw. I left the store by the back door, returning the spare key to its hiding place.

I drove Teeny home, trying not to think about the ski mask on the screen. What the hell was ScareBear69 in to? What the hell did that mask mean?

I had another sleepless night with the shotgun as my only companion. Being alone in the house wasn't doing me any favors. Every bump in the night snapped me wide awake. I missed Dad, even passed out in his chair, dead drunk. What with musically-themed serial killers and computer-literate Wild Side Killers on the loose, I could have really used a friend.

I had to settle for Rusty McShootyFace, my twelve-gauge pal. Frankly, he wasn't much of a conversationalist.
Chapter 21

I hurried back to Nybbles and Bytes as soon as the sun came up. I saw no reason to stay, tossing and turning in bed, when there were more disks to sift through. With a travel mug of coffee, I trudged to the bus stop, leaving Teeny in the carport. Forty-five minutes later, I climbed off the bus in front of the store. It took me a second to realize what was different.

Nybbles and Bytes' door was laying on the ground in the parking space in front of the store. Broken glass was everywhere. Someone must have pulled the door off its hinges with a truck. The chain was still haphazardly wrapped around the door's handle.

I stood on the blacktop, coffee in hand, unsure what to do next. I did not want to go inside – I could see that the place had been ransacked from where I was – but then, ScareBere69's disks were in there. What else could the thieves have been after? Come on, who robs an Amiga store?

I decided to chance it. I stepped cautiously forward, my Doc Martins crunching over the broken glass. Sure enough, the place was wrecked – monitors laying smashed on the floor, comic books and Gundam kits thrown about. I climbed into the bullpen and opened my desk draw.

I guess I knew what I'd find before I found it.

Nothing.

The disks were gone.

I exhaled in disgust.

"What the fuck?" Spider was there, standing in the shattered doorway. I quickly pushed the draw closed. Spider had seen the mess. That would mean cops. Cops would mean questions, and I'd just lost evidence in a double homicide. No I hadn't! I remembered, tapping my left breast. I'd put the disk back in my rigging when I gotten dressed that morning. I still had the Telix disk. It still wasn't anything I wanted to share with the police, but the disk was safe. I wish I could say I'd had the foresight to predict the robbery, but it was just dumb luck.

No, scratch that. I'm glad I hadn't had any foresight. The only way anyone could have known the disks were at the store was to follow me there last night. That meant someone was probably tailing me all day, all the way to Sleater Kinny (rocks!) and back. They probably followed me home, too.

God, and I thought I was scared before.

I looked up from my desk draw at Spider. I can't imagine what he was thinking, me standing in the rubble of his store, hold my left boob. I lowered my hand casually, like it was a normal posture to assume. "We've been robbed," I said.

"You think?" Spider shot back, sarcastically.

The deputies were there in under fifteen minutes. The first on the scene was the deputy who's picked me up at the Drive-In, the day before. The mall must have been his beat. He obviously remembered me and why the sheriff had sent him to collect me, because not half-an-hour later, Sheriff Tush showed up in person. I doubted it was standard operating procedure for the sheriff himself to handle a routine burglary.

He waltzed in over the broken glass, all tight buns and squinting laugh lines. I couldn't help a tiny giggle when I noticed him inside the store. What was wrong with me?

He talked to his deputies, each in turn and then slowly, carefully made his way over to the bullpen, taking in all of the store as his did.

A deputy was asking questions and writing down my equivocations in a notebook. He stopped when the sheriff arrived. "You got a sec?" the sheriff asked.

It took me a second to realize he was talking to me, not the deputy. "Sure, what else would I be doing?"

"Can we talk? Someplace, quiet?" he asked, giving me a look that made me wilt a little inside.

"Oh, okay, sure," I stammered. I climbed to my feet and led the sheriff into the back room. The boxes of monitors were starting on a second career as conference room furniture.

When the sheriff was comfortably sitting on one, he began. "What's going on here?"

"I don't know what you mean," I smiled and lied. The lie was intentional, the smile wasn't.

Tush sighed in irritation. I got the feeling he didn't have time for me and my bullshit today. "I know you took reports from that file on my desk, after I specifically told you not to–"

"You told me not to take anything from Chick's file, Mr. Tinynips...."

He wasn't having any of it. "Look, we're aware of his connection with the nurse's case, okay? We're not idiots. What we don't need is you running around, playing detective."

"I haven't–"

"Then what the hell is going on here?" he raised his voice. He wasn't nearly as cute when he yelled. The deputies out in the store stopped looking for evidence and glanced toward the back room. The sheriff continued, lowering his tone. "You're not trying to tell me this is a coincidence?"

If I'd had a brain in my head, I'd have come clean right there and then. Fuck, real, actual murderers were tailing me. The break-in at the store was proof positive. Everything that had happened at the Sleater Kinny (rocks!) rest stop had been real, I hadn't imagine it. Someone had followed me there two nights ago – lured me there with ill-intent – and they'd followed me there and back again yesterday. They'd seen me and Chick get the disks from Tinynips' truck and broken into the store after I'd left to retrieve them. It was only chance that they hadn't broken in while I was still there.

Something on the disks implicated someone in ScareBear69's or Tinynips' murder – something on one of those disks, or the one in my bra. If I'd really had a brain in my head, I'd have handed that disk over to Sheriff Tush right then and there and demanded police protection. But I didn't. I just opened my mouth and tried to think of a lie.

Sheriff Tush just shook his head. "I don't know what you think you're doing, Buzz, but you're in way over your head." He climbed off the monitor box, straightening his gun belt.

"Exit 108," I said to his back, when he was almost back out in the store. Why not? What did it matter now? The disks were already gone.

"What's that?" he turned back.

"I-5, exit 108. The rest stop there. That's where I found Tinynips' truck." I looked at the sheriff for confirmation. He was just staring at me. "The report said you hadn't located the truck. I stumbled across it driving to see my mom in Bellevue. That's it."

"That's it?" the sheriff parroted.

"Yes!"

"Okay, we'll take a look." Sheriff Tush turned to head back into the storefront. "Thanks," he said over his shoulder.

He didn't believe me. I didn't believe me, either. It didn't matter. He'd find the truck and I still have the disk.

I needed to show it to Chick.
Chapter 22

"Someone broke into Nybbles and Bytes," I said, pushing my way into Chick's apartment. "Stole the floppy disks!"

"No!" Chick didn't have his headphones on, his hands shot to his ears, panicked.

"Don't worry," I assured, fishing into my bra. "They didn't get them all." I triumphantly held the single Telix disk before Chick.

Chick looked confused, then took his hands away from his ears. "What's on it?" he asked.

"It's...umm...it'll be easier to show you. We just need to find a PC, the store is wrecked. We should head to the library–"

"No, here," Chick interrupted. We walked quickly over to his kitchenette and opened a cabinet. From inside, he removed ScareBear69's laptop.

"You still have that?" I panicked, screaming. "That's evidence!"

"And that isn't!" Chick pointed at the three-and-half inch floppy.

Ah! He was right, but his was so much worse. It didn't matter. A computer was a computer. I pointed for Chick to put the laptop down on the table. "You got a phone?" I looked around. Chick did, also hidden away, unplugged, in a kitchen cabinet. I removed the wire and plugged the laptop's modem into the phone jack. I pulled out the chair and sat before the computer. Chick found a stool and pulled it up beside me.

"Okay, we take a look at this and then we hand the whole deal over to the police. Okay?" I said, booting up the Toshiba.

"Okay," Chick agreed, watching my fingers as I typed. He seemed mystified that the keys I hit produced resulting characters on the screen. Had he never seen a computer before? He watched the whole affair of starting the Telix executable like I was casting some sort of voodoo incantation. "How do you know what to type?" he asked.

"It says right there," I pointed to a corner of the screen. "Alt-Z for help."

"Alt?" He looked at the keyboard. "Alternate?"

"Alternative?" I tried. "It doesn't matter, it's just a key."

"Doesn't sound very scientific," Chick said with a smile.

"Well, it's less imperfect than just hitting keys at random and hoping for Shakespeare." I smiled back. I had the dialing directory up now, with its single entry. "Okay, here we go. This is what I want you to see." I dialed the number. The modem went through its series of click and cracks, then the text on the screen began to scroll.

Chick watched on, totally focused on the black and green screen. When the ski mask was finished displaying, he let out a shocked laugh. "How'd they do that?" he looked closer at the screen. "That's all zeros and slashes." He was looking at the ASCII part of the ASCII art. Could he not see the woods through the trees?

"Do you see what it's an image of?" I asked.

"Image?" Chick leaned back on his stool. It took him a minute, but eventually he got it. "Oh, it's like a dot-to-dot..."

"Not quite. Can you see it?"

"Yes, yes. The sticker from Tinynips' truck."

"Yes!" I turned the laptop over, pointed at the sticker on the bottom and repeated. "w1lds1de?"

"This is where the password goes!" Chick realized with delight. "What is it?"

"A Bulletin Board System. We're talking to a remote computer."

"Well, put in the password," Chick said, looking at the keyboard, perhaps looking for the 'b'.

"No, it's not that easy," I pointed at the login prompt. "We need to use ScareBear69's user name first."

"Her what?"

"User name. Like her CB handle. She wouldn't have used her real name online."

"But you have her password." Chick wasn't getting it.

"Yes, but that's no good to us without knowing the user name it's associated with. I have to type the user name before I can try the password."

"And how would you know her user name?" Chick asked, still confused.

"I wouldn't!" I rolled my eyes. "That's my point. It's not like it was tattooed on her forehead, or anything."

In fact, it was tattooed on her butt. If I'd bothered to look at the underside of ScareBear69 that day in the morgue, at the tattoo of the vampire Care Bear, dripping blood, I might have make an educated guess at her user name – her tattoo, plus the year of her birth. I'd have stumbled on it eventually, But I hadn't and was, at that moment, ignorant of the fact that ScareBear69's user name was actually ScareBear69.

The fact that Chick was also ignorant of this intimately placed tattoo would eventually be the piece of evidence that would finally silence that nagging voice in my head that wouldn't quite shut up about Chick and the Gundam's gun. I mean, after all the trouble we ended up going to, just to figure out Scarebare69's user name...if Chick had had any ideas at all about the tattoo, he'd have come up with some sort of educated guess right then and there.

Instead, Chick offered up, "Try her first name and last initial."

"It's not going to be–" I started to object, but I didn't have a better idea. I tried it out. Then the w1lds1de password. Nothing. The banner screen of the mask refreshed. "No, that's not it."

"First name initial and last name," Chick went on.

"No, that's stupid," I said, but tried it anyway. Nothing. "What's this," I said pointing at the motto under the mask. "Is that Latin?"

"No," Chick answered quickly. "Italian. Molti nemici. Molto onore. Many enemies. Much honor. It was the motto of Mussolini's black shirts."

"Black shirts?" History was never my thing. "Nazis?"

"Fascists. The Italian kind, not the Nazis."

"Fascists?" I repeated, alarmed. What the hell sort of BBS was I connected to?

Chick looked thoughtful. He climbed out off his stool and paced a little. "Yes...but the motto was co-opted in the Seventies by the white nationalist guerrilla group, The Ran Tan Klan."

Them, I'd heard of.

The Ran Tan Klan was an offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan. More white nationalist that white supremacist (I know, a distinction without a difference), they'd grown sick of all the cross burning and dressing up like human pop-its, and advocated for a more direct, revolutionary, anti-government agenda. This was, maybe, in the late Seventies, early Eighties. By the Nineties, they'd almost completely morphed into a drug smuggling outfit, with the white nationalist, anti-government stuff falling very quickly by the wayside when there was cold, hard cash to be earned. If you bought weed or coke in Longview back in 1992, you bought it from the Ran Tan Klan. Black or white or brown, they served everybody without discrimination.

What was ScareBear69 mixed up in?

Drug was certainly less wrong the serial killers. I gave Chick a look of commiseration. "I'm sorry, Chick. The more we learn, the less ScareBear69's death seems connected to Beth's disappearance."

"Murder," Chick corrected, shortly.

"Murder," I nodded. "If Scarebare69 was messed up with the Ran Tan Klan, she was probably killed over drugs or something."

Chick shot to his feet, clearly agitated. His fingers shot into his armpits. I could tell he was looking around the room for his headphones. But before he could find them, he stopped and turned back to me.

"Wait a minute," he began. "We originally came to the same assumption, correct? That whoever killed ScareBear69, took her floppy disks."

"Sure, but the disks were found in Mr. Tinynips' truck. If he took the disks, he killed ScareBear69."

"Exactly," a hand came out from under an armpit and waved around triumphantly. The conclusion seemed hardly worth the gesture, he was just proving my point.

"Yeah, well, maybe. But Mr. Tinynips can't be the Wild Side Killer. He would have been – what? Eight years old back when Beth disappeared..."

"Was murdered," Chick corrected again. This time I just shrugged. "But Mr. Tinynips is now dead, too."

"Yeah, by someone who didn't want the disks. Left them in his truck, until we came along and got them."

"And then the murderer must have realized their significance and broke into the store last night to get them back."

"Right. And sort of weird behavior for a serial killer who, you say, wants you to catch him, but pretty standard operating procedure for a bunch of racist, drug dealers trying to cover up their crimes."

"Yes," Chick had to agree. He looked deflated.

"Then, we should turn all of this over to the sheriff," I said, waving at the laptop. "We shouldn't have any of it. We're potentially holding onto critical evidence that the police might need to solve ScareBear69's murder."

"No," Chick returned to his stool, and leaned in to study the laptop's screen. "The cops will just throw this all into evidence and let it rot on a shelf. If we can get into this..." he waved dismissively at the ski mask/skull ASCII art. "We can discover ScareBear69's connection to the RTK."

"Maybe there's no connection?" I shrugged. "Maybe the disks are Mr. Tinynips'? Maybe ScareBear69 was holding on to them? Maybe she just let him use her computer? We know he's connected to the Ran Tan Klan from the way he chose to decorate his truck. He'd have reason to connect to this BBS."

"But the password," Chick lifted the laptop and pointed at the sticker underneath.

"Maybe it's a password to something else? Maybe it's Mr. Tinynips'? Maybe the asshole couldn't remember his white supremacist password and had to write it down?"

"Maybe," Chick nodded, then fell silent. I could tell there was more about to come. "Maybe we should ask them?"

"Maybe-wait, what? ScareBear69 and Tinynips? They can't talk, they're dead."

"No, the Ran Tan Klan," Chick said dispassionately.

"Wait? What?"

"Maybe we should ask the RTK about ScareBear69 and Mr. Tinynips."

"How?" I snorted in disgust. "Call them up and ask for their press secretary?"

"No." Chick wasn't joking. I guess he never joked, even when what he said was funny. "We know someone who will know someone."

"We? Someone in the RTK? Shit, I hope not."

"I'm afraid we do," Chick insisted.

"Who?" I quickly searched my internal Rolodex for what piece of shit might be connect to white supremacists, even tangentially. I came back with a blank card.

"Moist," Chick said slowly and carefully.

Ah, there we go. That piece of shit. That sort of made a sick sort of sense.
Chapter 23

"Well, if it's not Mr. Graveyard Grabby himself," Moist snorted from his spot at the card table, his bandaged leg up on a folding chair. Spider and McFly had done a good job cleaning up the store, but the door was still missing, replaced by a sheet of plywood. If we ever got customers, that might have been a bit of a turnoff. As it was, things inside Nybbles and Bytes seemed to be back to normal.

"Where have you been?" Spider asked me as I stepped in to the store behind Chick. "We could have used your help cleaning up."

"Sorry, I was helping Chick," I replied. I had left them in the lurch. And it was sort of all my fault. I should have helped out.

"So, I've heard of getting the cold shoulder," Moist went on, already laughing at his own joke. "But I never heard of anyone liking it."

Chick didn't react. He just walked over to the card table and stared down at Moist.

"I guess it makes sense," Moist went on, chuckling. "With your condition, you don't want a lot of talk. What is it? You like your girlfriends as quiet as the grave? Literally?"

Chick just glared down at Moist.

"How's the knee?" I asked.

Moist stopped laughing.

Without warning, Chick grabbed the chair from under Moist's foot and pulled it away. Moist's heel came down hard onto the floor, sending a spasm of pain up his leg. Chick idly sat down in the now empty chair and pulled himself up to the card table.

I stayed on my feet, hanging back. Chick adjusted the headphones over his ears.

"What? What do you want?" Moist asked, now concerned. I don't remember anyone ever sitting down at the table with Moist. Who would want to? He seemed to find the act just as disconcerting as I did.

"Chick says you've got a cousin," I began.

"I got a cousin, but she's not Chick's type," Moist interrupted, rubbing his sore leg. "Still breathing."

"No, a cousin with the Ran Tan Klan," I finished.

Moist just shook his head.

"Chick says you do. That you all went to high school together," I said to the room. At this, Spider and McFly looked up.

"So?" Moist allowed.

"So, we want to talk to your cousin."

"Go to hell," Moist replied.

"Ask him why he broke into the store last night..."

"What?" Moist looked shocked.

"What?" Spider asked angrily from behind the register. "Moist, is this true?"

"No!" Moist bellowed. "I mean, I don't know..." he went back to rubbing his leg. He reached for his pills on the table. Chick was quicker.

"Maybe we should call him up and ask?" I suggested then raised my voice so Spider was sure to hear. "Why would he want to break in here? What would give him that idea?"

"No, look, I'm sure Atta Boy had nothing to do with this robbery."

"Atta Boy? That's your cousin's name?" It was.

"Yes, look: Atta Boy isn't with the RTK anymore. Hasn't been for years. He's legitimate now."

"A legitimate racist? How does that work?"

"No, legitimate. The RTK isn't, hasn't been for years."

"Hasn't been what?"

"Into that sort of business."

"Robbery? Drugs? Killing?" I asked. Moist nodded. "Then why can't we talk to him?"

"I didn't say you couldn't talk to him!" Moist protested. "You can talk to anyone you want."

"But will he talk to us?" Chick said. His former silence gave his words extra weight. Both Spider and McFly leaned in to hear the answer.

Moist knew his residence there at the Magic: The Gathering table was hanging in the balance. "Sure, sure. I can make a call. Atta Boy will talk to you."

"Excellent." I smiled. Chick rose from his chair and pushed it back beside Moist. Moist wearily lifted his bad leg and returned it to the chair.
Chapter 24

It took a couple days, but eventually, one morning, as I arrived at the store through the newly hung front door, Moist had a folded piece of paper sitting next to his two liter of Coke. I took this without prompting and put my stuff away at my desk. When I sat down, I unfolded the piece of paper. It was just an address, across town, and a time. I looked up to see Moist watching me. He nodded. I nodded back.

Well, that explained the inexplicable tolerance Spider and McFly showed Moist: when your cousin is the local mobster, you don't just tell Moist he can't hang out in your store. You put up with him, at least until that mobster's business literally comes crashing through your front door. After that, what reason do you have to put up with the Mobster's cousin? Not a lot. And as impenetrably dense as Moist could be, I think this fact had not escaped his attention.

Or he was playing me. At the time, I never really entertained that idea. Had Moist known where meeting Atta Boy would lead?

I left work early and took the bus back the my dad's, picked up Teeny, and drove over to Chick's. I tried to call first, now that I knew he had a phone, but it rang busy. I figured he had the laptop plugged into the phone line, trying out potential ScareBear69 user names.

Sure enough, when I arrived, he was typing with two fingers at the laptop. For someone who'd considered computers very near to black magic only a week before, Chick now showed remarkable aptitude at the computer's operation. He was a quick study. If he observed me typing a command once, he seemed to automatically commit it to memory.

Chick has that singular focus that I can't fully comprehend. Almost a photographic memory for the strangest shit. I'm sure he can't remember the name of a single person he ever met, or what he had for breakfast. But, guaranteed, he remembers all those commands from that thirty-year-old computer – every detail of the Wild Side Killer's case.

We loaded up into Teeny and headed to meet Atta Boy, not totally sure what to expect. This was a first for both of us: meeting a real life criminal. I think I was imaging Ray Liotta from Goodfellas, or James Cagney or something. This guy's name was Atta Boy, after all. Maybe a Hell's Angel in leather. Someone bad-ass, at least. Someone named Atta Boy was bad-ass, right? That's how I figured it.

Instead, we got Moist's cousin.

"What are you eating?" I asked, making a turn onto Main, a few blocks from the address Moist had jotted on the note. Chick had brought his dinner along with him. I asked initially because I hadn't. Then I caught a sideways glance at his food and regretted it.

"Cheesy Peasy?" he offered me something half-wrapped in foil.

"What is that?" I asked, trying to both watch the road and see what Chick was eating.

"Cheesy Peasies," Chick repeated.

"Yeah, what is that?" I also repeated.

"Mozzarella cheese stick, in a hot dog bun, with mayonnaise," Chick answered, matter-of-fact.

"You eat that?"

"It's my favorite."

We were at a light. I turned and had a good look at the Cheesy Peasy. Literally white on white on white.

"That disgusting," I retched.

"More for me, then," Chick shrugged. He took the hot dog bun he'd offered me and bit off half of it.

"Maybe we should stop for cheeseburgers," I suggested, the light turning green. Chick shrugged again. "Not into Cheeseburgers?" Chick didn't answer. "But you'll eat that?" I pointed at his half-eaten Cheesy Peasy.

"What? Cheese is brain food," Chick replied defensively.

"There's cheese on cheeseburgers." I feigned an air of condescension.

Chick smiled. He actually smiled. It wasn't pretty, but he really smiled. I think that was the first time I'd ever seen him do it.

"Thank you," He said shyly, as he cleaned up the wrappers of his dinner.

"You're welcome," I replied automatically. "For what?" I had to add.

"For..." he sighed, looking out of the window. "For dealing with Moist. Alone, I don't think I could have..."

"Don't worry about it, he's an asshole, that's all. I know how to deal with assholes. I have a whole family of them."

Chick thought about this for a moment. "No, Moist isn't an asshole. A dick, perhaps, but not an asshole."

"What's the difference?"

"Quite a great deal, to be honest."

"What? I don't understand." I didn't. Chick was about to explain. This was classic Chick – the man at his core – simultaneously intellectually rigorous and totally missing any social nuance.

"An asshole is ethically inconstant. They believe there is one set of rules that govern others and another for themselves. They expect other people to act in a certain fashion, but do not act according to those expectations themselves. A dick, on the other hand, is ethically consistent – they act according to the rules they expect others to adhere to – they just feel they have the right to dictate those rules to others. Moist holds himself to the same standard that he holds other people, he just feels he gets to set that standard. Therefore, dick, not an asshole."

"Well, whatever you want to call it, I got a whole family full of them."

"Still, thank you. On my own..." he sounded sincere, but uncomfortable expressing gratitude. He was watching the street pass outside Teeny's side window. "I mean, seven years and nothing. And since I've met you, all of this..."

"All of what? Two dead bodies and the local drug dealer? Sorry to be a downer, but I can't see that you're any closer to finding Beth's killer than you were before you met me."

"Oh, no, we're getting close," Chick replied, turning his attention back to me. I began to protest, he interrupted, raising a hand. "I know where the evidence is taking us. I'm not delusional. But I still have a feeling. The Wild Side Killer is behind all of this. I don't know exactly how, but I'm closer to him now than I've ever been. When it was just me, he could tease me, but now there's you. That's put him on the defensive. He's on the run. He's making mistakes. I can feel it."

"If the RTK killed ScareBear69..." I hated to rain on his parade.

Chick dismissed me with a wave. "I know. I know. And we have to follow the evidence where it takes us. Still, I can't shake the feeling. We're close and I have you to thank."

"You're welcome," I said again. It was easier to relent than press the issue. But Chick was right after a fashion. We were close to something. Maybe not the Wild Side Killer, but certainly the motive behind ScareBear69's murder. Like Chick, I was on the hook now. We could have just handed off what we knew to the cops, but I had a strong desire to follow things through to the end. I was beginning to think that maybe I wasn't just playing at being a detective, that maybe I actually had some skill at it.

As Chick had said, perhaps detective work wasn't that different from fixing a computer. Follow the symptoms back to the fault. Diagnose and implement a fix. Maybe I had a calling and maybe computers weren't it. Could I really be a detective? I mean, a real one, with a badge and a gun and stuff? No, not if I got caught with a stolen laptop and computer disk and withholding evidence from investigators. But in theory?

It was something to think about. The badge would have been nice. And the gun. Because I was about to get a lesson in what it meant to play detective. What was about to happen next might have unfolded very differently if Atta Boy had been scared of me. And the badge might have scared him.

He definitely would have been scared of the gun.
Chapter 25

The address on Moist's note was a nondescript office on the third floor of a nondescript building, somewhere near the center of town. I had the strangest sensation I was going to see my accountant. Atta Boy's office was between a Dentist and a Reflexology clinic. Hardly the expected HQ of the region's drug kingpin. The sign on the door said Evergreen Pain Management Inc. Was that some sort of joke?

I didn't knock. I just opened the door.

The lobby of the office was unfurnished. No desk, no chairs. The door in the far end of the room was open. Beyond, there was furniture. And a large man behind a desk. He looked up as Chick and I entered. He waved us forward.

"Friends of my cousin?" Atta Boy asked rhetorically, as we entered his office. The accountant vibe was even stronger in there. The papers on the desk and the mechanical adding machine just added to the bland mystique. Atta Boy didn't look like any gangster I'd ever seen in a movie. He was wearing a collared shirt and chinos. Except for the swastika tattoos on the back of his hands, you could have easily mistaken him for CPA or a car salesman. He was finishing up some paperwork and then waved at some chairs. "Please," he said, putting his pen down.

"You're..." I looked around as I lowered myself into a chair. "Atta Boy?"

The large man smiled. He had a few gold teeth. That, at least, was gangster. "Yes ma'am."

"I mean, you're...Moist's cousin?" I asked in clarification. I think I'd been expecting an NWA video. Guns tucked into low-riding pants. Gold and hot girls.

"The one and only," Atta Boy held up his hands like we should behold him in all his finery. "He said you folks wanted to talk to me. About some robbery? I don't usually give interviews, but if it lays to rest any suspicion–"

"Wait, you're Moist's cousin, with the..." I lowered my voice, as if someone might over hear us. "...Ran Tan Klan?" I just couldn't wrap my head around it.

Atta Boy shook his head. "That was a long time ago. We're legitimate now."

"The Ran Tan Klan?" Chick asked. Loudly. I cringed.

Atta Boy gave a dismissive shrug in the affirmative. "We've re-branded."

"Evergreen Pain Management Inc? Is this some sort of front?" I asked.

"No, no front. This is the business," Atta Boy gestured again at the grandeur surrounding us.

"Then, you're out of the drug business?" I asked in a hushed tone.

"Oh no," Atta Boy correct at full volume. "We're very much still in the drug business. We're just legitimate, that's all."

"Legitimate drug dealers?" Chick asked, confused.

Atta Boy nodded. He opened a desk draw and put a pill vial down on the desk. It looked like the one Moist had for his knee. "Legitimate," Atta Boy repeated.

I picked up the pills. "Oxycontin?" I read out loud. Exactly like the vial Moist had for his knee.

"Yes," Atta Boy said happily. "A semisynthetic opioid. It's in clinical trials right now, but it will soon be on the market. Available to all with a doctor's prescription."

"A semisynthetic what?" I asked.

"Heroin," Atta Boy said loud and clear, not mincing words. "It's legal heroin."

"What?" I didn't believe him. "Why would anyone make heroin legal?"

Atta Boy laughed, then said sarcastically. "I'm sorry, did you think the War on Drugs was about getting people to take less drugs?"

"It wasn't?" Chick answered honestly.

"Come on!" Atta Boy dismissed. "But I understand your confusion. That was our mistake all along – people in my line of work. The government didn't hate what we were doing, they just hated the competition. Killing people, after all, being the government's job. Heroin, crack, weed? They're all killers. But make a clean product, market it legitimately, get FDA approval, give the tax man his cut..."

I looked at the pill bottle again. What the fuck? "You're still in the drug business. Just now its the legal drug business?"

Atta Boy nodded. "Have been for years. The Little Valley Lokotes, they long ago pushed us out of the weed business. Bringing it up from Mexico, way cheaper than we can grow it here. You just can't compete with that. Shit, it's a volume business, you know? And if you can't get your supply in volume..."

"But Oxycontin?" I held up the bottle.

"Made in a factory downtown. All the supply you could ever need. Of course, you got to call it 'Pain Management' now. No more tripping balls. But, fuck, the customers don't care. Dope is dope is dope."

"Then, you're saying..." I began.

"That Evergreen Pain Management Inc. would have no reason to commit any sort of robbery, or any other extra legal activity you might think we did. Those days are long past. We're legitimate now. We have a tax ID number. Employees. Fuck, we've even got a dental plan. Whatever you think the RTK once was..."

I looked at Chick. He looked at me. We both looked at Atta Boy in his white shirt and his chinos.

ScareBear69 was mixed up in this? Somehow Evergreen Pain Management Inc. seemed even more scary than the Ran Tan Klan. Gangsters I could deal with but a limited liability company?
Chapter 26

Shit, we were right back into a Kobayashi Maru again: if the Ran Tan Klan hadn't killed ScareBear69 and Tinynips – were completely out of the killing people business – then that meant that Chick intuition about the Wild Side Killer was possibly correct. However, if the Wild Side Killer was behind the killing, ScareBeat69's floppy disks and the RTK's BBS system had jack-shit to do with anything. We'd been barking up the wrong tree – the wrong tree in the wrong forest, even.

No, somebody had broken into Nybbles and Bytes for those disks. They'd taken them for a reason. Had there been something on the other disks in the purple, plastic case that connected ScareBear69 to her killer? Had the Telix disk been the useless one? Maybe. But I didn't think so. The Telix disk had been the only thing out of the ordinary in the whole set. It was a solid clue, but a clue that pointed directly at the RTK. And that was a load of jack-shit I'd already passed by and didn't want to smell again.

Perhaps, if we could figure out ScareBear69's user name, there'd be something on the BBS itself. But it'd take a thousand monkeys a thousand years hitting on typewriters to randomly stumble across the right user name. Chick went back to guessing name combinations at the laptop, but we only had the one monkey, and nothing like a thousand years to try out names.

We were at a dead end, and I didn't like it. Every time we hit a dead end, shit happened to us and that was never good. I think Chick could sense it, back in the car – dark forces were at work, moving while we dithered at the laptop. Going to see Atta Boy had kicked a nest, we just hadn't been stung by the bees yet.

But, the sound of the buzzing finally caught up with us three days later, when Spork came into the store, looking for Chick.

"I haven't seen him," I answered honestly. I hadn't, since our trip to Evergreen Pain Management. It wasn't like we hung out socially or had dinner.

"He missed his check-in, yesterday," Spork said over the rim of the bullpen. McFly, Moist and Spider were pretending not to pay attention but were obviously listening intently.

"Check-in?" I looked up from the motherboard I was working on.

"It's a voluntary thing," Spork said defensively. Her tone told me the check-in was most certainly not voluntary. Not legally binding, maybe. "We've been having Chick come down to the office twice a week. You know, to keep a check on his condition – I mean, his health."

I decided to let it pass. "And he didn't show?" That question was more important. If Chick was supposed to be somewhere, he would be there. Voluntarily or not. He didn't flake.

"No," Spork sounded genuinely concerned, though maybe not for Chick.

"Did you check his place?"

"Of course. There's no sign of him. And his landlady hasn't seen him for days. When was the last time your saw him?"

I shrugged. "Saturday, maybe."

"Did anything happen to upset him?" Spork fished out her clipboard.

Other than talking to the world first legitimate drug lord? "No," I said.

"And he hasn't tried to contact you? Since Saturday?"

"No." Come to think of it, that was a little weird. But we were at a dead end in the case. Without ScareBear69's user name...

"Well, should he get in touch with you," Spork removed a business card from the clip of her board and handed it to me. "Give me a call." I already had one from the last time she was in the store, but I took the new one, anyway. "Remind Mr. Chick that his voluntary compliance with oversight goes a long way to reinforce his claim of competency. Resistance will reflect poorly in front of a judge."

Resistance? I think she meant free will. "Competency? You're not committing him, are you?"

"That's what the oversight was attempting to determine. But if he misses voluntary check-ins..."

Fuck. What was Chick playing at? He was going to get himself sent back to St. Bartholomew's. Spork left the store empty-handed. I took the rest of the day off to try and find Chick.

He wasn't in his apartment. After some fancy talking, I got his landlady to let me in. I maybe, sorta, might have let her believe I was his girlfriend. She found this idea so cute, she almost fell over herself trying to help me. After lots of gushing and smiles, she left me alone in Chick's room.

The laptop and disk weren't out in the open, but I quickly found them both hidden away in a cabinet of the kitchenette. That was a good sign, if Chick had run off, he'd have taken those with him.

I put the laptop and Telix disk in my bag. I figured if I could find them in Chick's apartment, so could the cops.

I then looked around, not totally sure what I was looking for.

I was pulled toward the draw in the kitchenette where Chick kept his gun. I pulled the draw open, not sure if I was hoping to find the gun or not. I did. The shiny revolver sat in the draw. Under it, there was a picture. I pushed the handgun out of the way and pulled it out.

It was a picture of Chick and a young woman in an embrace. Chick looked so young, healthy. Normal. No headphones. He was smiling, the girl in his arms looked blissful. She was round-faced and pretty. The horn-rimmed spectacles and her page boy haircut of thick, black hair made her look a little like Velma from Scooby Doo. This had to be Beth. Who else could it be? Who else's picture would Chick keep in the draw with the gun he planned to use to shoot the Wild Side Killer? The sight of the picture made my chest feel heavy. I put it back under the gun and closed the draw.

Where the hell are you Chick? I asked the empty room. This was a very weird time for him to up and disappear.

I left the apartment with the laptop and no good idea of what had become of Chick.

A possible explanation came the next day. It strolled into the store in his tight pants, with his holster swinging...
Chapter 27

Sheriff Tush paid me a visit. Just like Spork, he appeared at the ledge of the bullpen unannounced, staring down at me.

I leapt back in shock when he said, "Morning," and I let out a little giggle. I had to stop giggling.

"Morning Sheriff," I tried to compose myself. "Are you here looking for Chick, too?"

He didn't answer straight away. I looked up to study the grave expression on his face. "Have you seen him?" =

"No, I told Spork, yesterday–"

"This isn't a matter for social services anymore. I need to find Chick. Can you help me?"

"What's wrong?"

"I have a warrant," Sheriff Tush said slowly. "For Chick's arrest."

"What?" I said in shock. "For the morgue? He didn't–"

"The Medical Examiner swore out a complaint. There's the end of it. There's nothing you or I can do about it now."

That would explain why Chick might vanish without the laptop, if he thought the cops were on his trail.

"I thought he wanted to keep the whole thing quiet?"

"I guess word got around." Tush seemed unconcerned with the politics of the situation.

"What are you going to do?" McFly asked. "Send him back to St. Bartholomew's?"

"I think it'd be the best place for him."

"Shit, no wonder he's run off," Moist snickered.

"Run off?" the sheriff turned. "To where?"

"As far away from St. Bartholomew's as his little duck feet can carry him."

"Look, if anyone sees Chick – hears anything from him – you're to call 911 straight away. Okay? This is a police matter now. Understand?" Sheriff Tush looked directly at me. I nodded.

I let the Sheriff leave, climb into his patrol car and pull back onto the highway. When he was out of sight, I climbed to my feet.

"Where are you going this time?" Spider asked, as I came out of the bullpen and headed out the front door. He had good reason to ask; this was the second time I'd stormed out of the store in as many days. Lately, I hadn't gotten a lot of work done.

"I've got a doctor's appointment," I said and began to make my way diagonally across the parking lot, making a beeline for warehouses behind the Lamont's.

#

"I want to talk to the doctor," I said to Nicole behind her counter.

"He ain't here," she answered. The sight of me in her lobby cast a great shadow of alarm over Nicole's face.

"I want to talk to him!" I thumped my fist down on the Formica. "I'm not leaving until I talk to the doctor!"

"He ain't here," she said again, shaking her head.

"Do you know what he's done to Chick?" I asked.

Nicole shook her head. "I don't know. I don't want to know."

"He's sending him back to St. Bartholomew's! Now Chick has run away, and I don't know–"

"It's all right, Nicole. Send her back," a soft voice said behind her. It took me a second to spy the doctor in the shadows of the hallway beyond the front desk. He might have been standing there the whole time. I suddenly felt ashamed of my outburst. I don't know why.

Nicole buzzed the door open. I stepped through. Dr. Mandelbrot led me back, past Chick's little closet, past the examination room, to his office.

"Miss?" the Doctor asked, sitting at his desk. He gestured to a chair, but I remained on my feet. I'd lost my momentum, what with the doctor lurking in the shadows like that. I needed to get it back. I was angry, damn angry at how he was treating Chick.

"Buzz, everyone calls me Buzz," I replied.

"Like the–" he began, I didn't have time for that shit.

"The sheriff says you swore out a warrant against Chick! How could you do that?"

"I'm sorry, but the physical evidence of impropriety..."

"They're going to send him back to St. Bartholomew's! You know he'd rather die than go back there!"

"I understand your concern." The doctor was speaking far too calmly. It was throwing off my hissy fit. I was having trouble maintaining my self-righteous anger. "Albert is not a well man. Perhaps the hospital is the right place for him."

"He's gone! Run off. No one can find him!"

"He won't go far. He doesn't drive. Or really have any experience of the world beyond Longview. This is the only home he's even known...besides St. Bartholomew's."

"Exactly! They're going to catch him."

"Again, perhaps it's for the best. Ms. Buzz? Is it?"

"Just Buzz."

"Buzz. What with the incident here and his new relationship with you. I discussed it with Albert's social worker and we agreed."

"Chick is not dangerous."

"That might be so, while you're playing along with his delusion. But challenge that..."

"Delusion? Chick isn't Delusional! Okay, he hears things, but–" God, I sounded like an idiot.

"You have been helping him investigate his wife's supposed murder, correct?" Dr. Mandelbrot asked.

"Yes, I mean, no. I mean..."

"You are aware that his wife is not dead?"

"So everyone says."

"That she resides in Seattle? Has a husband and a small child?"

"What? No." I was confused. "You know this? You've talked to her?" I put my hands down on the desk, glaring at the owl-faced doctor.

"Yes. I mean, a card at Christmas. I went to high school with her mother." Of course he did.

"You mean, Beth's alive? You can give me her address?"

"Certainly," the doctor said matter-of-fact.

"Haven't you told Chick this?"

"No," he said, slightly raising his voice. It was the first emotional response I'd gotten out of him. "And that is exactly my point. Chick might appear harmless, but challenge his delusion and there is no predicting how he might react. For your own good, Ms. Buzz, I instructed the sheriff to arrest Albert and return him to St. Bartholomew's to continue his treatment. I couldn't, in good conscience, take the risk that he might hurt you. You were warned to stay away from him. The authorities explained to you the nature of his condition. But you insisted on indulging him in his detective fantasies."

"Don't blame me for this!" I growled, no longer having to fake my anger.

"Ms. Buzz, I hardly see who else there is to blame!"

I thumped my fist down on the table and stormed out of his office. That part of the conversation went off without a hitch. The rest had not exactly gone according to plan.

Was I really that crazy? Was I the only person in town who couldn't see that Chick was a demented menace? They were all so ready to lock him up and throw away the key. I know the facts were not exactly on Chick's side: the Gundam gun, Beth. But, I just could make myself believe it.

Chick was not the Wild Side Killer. I wasn't in danger.

Except I was. Real, serious danger. I still feel lucky that I got out of all of it with my life. ScareBear69 didn't. Or the others.

I could have so easily ended up like them.
Chapter 28

Another day went by with no word from Chick. I drove Teeny to work and cruised around randomly on my lunch break, hoping to spy him walking somewhere. No such luck.

I was starting to lose hope, but I knew he had to be somewhere. Dr. Mandelbrot was right, Chick would never have left town. Not only did he have no place to go, he really had very little sense of the world outside Longview. Portland was a strange and foreign realm to him, despite being half an hour down the freeway. I was sure he was staying out of sight somewhere close, waiting for the police to forget why they were looking for him. But he would still need to eat, even if only the occasional Cheesy Peasy, and that would mean he would eventually show his face. It was only a matter of time before either I or the sheriff found him. I was counting on it being me.

Chick finally emerged the next afternoon, out in front of Nybbles and Bytes. I only caught a glimpse of him, but the silhouette of the headphones was very distinct. I'd parked Teeny at the far end of the parking lot. She took up two spaces and I didn't want to take up premium parking, just on the off chance the store actually got a customer. As I worked at my bench, I looked up and caught sight of Chick slipping something under her wiper.

He was gone before I could get down from the bullpen and outside, but the note was there under Teeny's wiper. An address on Port Way, and a time: 7:30.

A meeting? Chick needed help, but he didn't want to show his face at the store. He'd risked plenty even coming near the parking lot. The deputies had lately made a habit of circling our lot, in hopes that Chick would make an appearance. But he'd managed to slip in and out unnoticed.

I tore up the note and retrieved ScareBear69's laptop from where I'd hid it in the storeroom. Securing it away in my bag, I finished up my work and waited for the store to close. I didn't want to attract attention by skipping out early. But that only left me fifteen minutes to find the address.

It was starting to get dark.

The address was a lumberyard under the Lewis and Clark Bridge, way off the beaten track. A good place to lay low if the cops were looking for you. Unfortunately, it was a big lumberyard. I mean, aches of logs, stacked neatly in piles. I'd passed by the yard a million times, driving to Portland. From up on the bridge, they looked like matchsticks, tidily arranged, awaiting boxing. But up close, they were big. Really big. Towering stack of lumber. Where would Chick be hiding amongst all of them?

And I noted, standing beside Teeny's door, look around and the fences: there were a lot of security. Cameras everywhere. It made sense, the whole waterfront was all about international trade. Ships coming and going, to and from, who knows where. This was where Chick decided to lay low? It didn't make any sense.

Still, this was where Chick's note had told me to meet him. I locked Teeny's door and started to have a look around. There was a structure down by the river, with a number of Caterpillars parked nearby, each with a pincer for grabbing logs. I headed in that direction. I think I called out 'Chick!' a couple of times. But I was still in the field of view of the security cameras. This didn't seem right. This was no place to hide. There were plenty of lights. It was exactly the opposite.

I turned around and started back to the car.

I didn't see him coming. Hell, if I'd seen any of it coming, I wouldn't have been down that dead end road, alone, in the evening gloom. I'd just passed a stack of logs, and he came out from behind it – behind me. Before I could react, there was something around my throat.

I tried to scream, but nothing escaped. The garrote cinched tight, choking. My fingers clawed frantically at the chain strangling me. There was something attached to it, but I couldn't get a grip. I tried to struggle, throw a first, but my attacker just threw me about like a rag doll, slamming against the log pile. My head hit hard, but I could hardly feel it. Everything was going dark. I needed to get a finger under the garrote, give myself a millimeter of breathing room. Just one tiny breath, But it was so tight, I couldn't...

My hands scrambled in front of me, wildly, fingernails scratching at the logs. My right had found something wedged between them – a V of wood, a shim, holding up the pile. My fingers wrapped around it. It was my only hope. With the last of my strength, I gave it an almighty pull. It came free. Suddenly, unexpectedly, I had about two and a half feet of pine in my right hand.

Now, hand most people a club or a bat and they're apt to start swinging it around like they're Babe Ruth. It make sense, it's instinctual. A club is heavy at one end and lighter at the other. You want to use this natural weight to cause as much damage as possible. Problem is, you have to have a good stance and plenty of room to swing. Squashed up against those logs, chain around my throat, feet not even touching the ground, seconds before blacking out, I could have swung that club behind my head and not even knocked off the guy's glasses.

Trick with clubs is they're primarily thrusting weapons. You don't need more than a few inches of stick to do that. So, I grabbed the shim by its thin end, leaving only the thin, wedge end below my hand, and stabbed that back like a dagger into the side of the guy behind me.

He felt that. He grunted and relaxed his hold, ever so slightly, on the garrote. That was enough from me to get one finger of my left hand under it and let in a quick gulp of precious, cold air. He recovered fast, pulling tight. But by then, I had the chain up over my chin. It cut into my face, slicing open my bottom lip. Painful yes, but significantly less dire.

I tucked my feet up and kicked off the logs. He was off balance. When I landed, my left hand was still trapped up between the sharp chain and my bloody face, but my right hand was free. With my feet firmly on the ground, I swung up and over with the heavy end of the shim. Something cracked, and we were stumbling back. He went over, I went over on top of him. But I didn't stop. I rolled, throwing my feet over. And just like that, I was out of his choke hold.

I jumped to my feet, scrambling in the mud, but he caught me by the strap of my bag. I struggled out of it and finally found my feet. The club raised, I turned to face my attacker.

That's when I saw the headphones – Chick's headphones, with their distinctive scratches and the tape holding together the headband. But underneath them, a strange, ghoulish mask. A ski mask, like the sticker on Tinynips' truck. The hollow, empty eye sockets and a necklace of finger bones attached, below it. It was terrifying. Like a nightmare. I screamed.

Chick – the Wild Side Killer – lunged for me. I swung the shim. The headphones came flying off his head.

He hit the dirt hard. I brought the shim down on the small of his back. He screamed in pain. He kicked back and caught me in the shin. I went down sprawling into the mud.

By the time I was back on my feet, the Wild Side Killer had vanished into the log piles. He'd had enough. I panted for air, fell to my knees, as I was overwhelmed by a fit of retching. When I recovered, I spied the headphones in the dirt. They were definitely Chick's. His 1970's retro, Veritas. Next to them lay the garrote. A length of steel wire, threaded through a series of small bones.

It was covered in blood. My blood.
Chapter 29

The screaming terrors and the tears didn't kick in until I was back behind the wheel of Teeny, speeding away from the lumberyard. Jesus fucking Christ, I'd almost been killed. By Chick. I panted and sobbed, trying to catch my breath.

I was screwed the second I'd let him get up behind me. That was dumb. Sloppy. Luckily, he'd gotten cute and wanted to smack me around a bit – throw me up against the log pile. If he'd just held still and throttled the life out of me, there in the clear, they'd have been nothing I could have done about it.

As it was, I was still pretty fucked up. I looked at myself in the rear view mirror. My bottom lip was all busted open, with blood pouring down my chin. I looked like Alice Cooper on a bad day. I think I'd lost a chunk of my left earlobe, but I didn't want to touch it and find out for sure.

That hadn't been Chick. No, I didn't want to believe it. It hadn't been him. Despite the headphones, the mask, the guy's body had been all wrong. Too short and too thin. But those were Chick's headphones, there was no mistaking them. The one thing on the planet that Chick would never be without.

I looked at the passenger seat, where I'd tossed Chick's headphones. There they were, next to the bloody garrote.

That was supposed to be Chick – supposed to look like Chick. But it hadn't been him.

That mean he was dead. The Wild Side Killer could only have Chick's headphones if he'd killed him and taken them off his body. No, my mind was racing, trying to piece things together. He wasn't dead yet. That didn't follow the M.O. It was supposed to look like Chick had killed me, Wild Side Killer style, then Chick would show up dead, a convenient suicide, like Tinynips.

Chick wasn't dead yet.

I merged onto the 433 and gave Teeny some gas. I was heading toward the Good Shepard, then I thought better of it. That was where ScareBear69 had worked. Maybe where ScareBear69 had been killed.

But if that wasn't Chick, who was it? Who'd been under that mask? I couldn't rule out anyone: Sheriff Tush, Mandelbrot...even Spork. They were all so convinced Chick was guilty. Now they had proof. That's why it'd happened out there in the lumberyard, by the international docks: so many security cameras. They'd have gotten that whole spectacle from every angle: Chick trying throttling me to death. But I went and fucked it all up for them, kicked their fake Chick's bitchy little ass. How were they going to react to that? If they had Chick all locked up somewhere? No, I couldn't go to the Hospital. I had to act fast.

I headed back at my dad's place, I fished out a sewing kit and a half empty bottle of Grand Marnier. Dad had been an army medic, and he'd taught me a couple things. Luckily for me, the first thing had been how to fight with a stick. And the second had been how to sew up an open wound. I finished off the bottle of orange-flavor gunk as I threaded a needle. God, it tasted like ass, but it took the edge off. I began to stitch up my lip. Three uneven loops and I had it pretty much back together.

Sure enough, the steel wire looped through the chicken bones of the garrote had lopped off the top of my left ear. It just hung back there, by a string of sinew. I stitched that back into place, too, punching holes with the needle through the cartilage. I got it back in place, but it sort of hung a little crooked. Hopefully, it would heal.

It did, though I've worn my hair long ever since.

There was a gash in my left cheek that I sewed up, just for good measure. There was no sewing up the bleeding loop around my neck. It wasn't deep, but you could see meat. I just bandaged that up. Many years later, my kids would ask about the scar. I just narrowed my eyes and said, "You don't remember me, do you?"

They didn't think it was funny.

I dug a new bottle of Grand Marnier out of liquor cabinet and was just cracking the top when I remembered my bag. Fuck! The laptop. The disk. I lost them both. In the struggle, the faux-Chick had pulled it off my back. He'd run off with it, leaving me with the headphones and the necklace. A lot of good those did me. The laptop and the disk were the only leads we had. How was I going to connect to the RTK's BBS now, without it?

Maybe all the adrenalin wore off at once, or maybe the Grand Marnier finally kicked in, but a warm feeling of clarity washed over me. God, how could I be so stupid? For so long? All those hours Chick had wasted guessing at ScareBear69's user name. Maybe I needed to have the air choked out of me to get me thinking clearly. Or maybe I needed to lose the laptop before I realized that I didn't need it.

I was pretty sure I knew where Chick was. The ski mask my attacker wore, the necklace of bones...I should call Sheriff Tush and tell him, but I was starting to think that would be the quickest way to get Chick killed. The sheriff was most certainly in on it, if only unwittingly. The same with Spork and the doctor. No, I had to got get Chick myself.

I went and got Rusty McShootyFace from dad's bedroom closet and made sure their were four shells in the tube. I pulled Chick's headphones around my bandaged neck and headed for the front door.

Before I opened the door, I stopped in the hall and took a look at myself in the mirror. I had to admit, I was looking fucking bad-ass: my mascara runny and my lip all stitched up and crooked. My Gits shirt all covered in blood. Chick's headphone around my neck and McShootyFace resting on my shoulder. Yeah, that was some Riot Grrrl shit right there.

Half drunk, I climbed into the 1979 Chevot El Chupacabra and drove off into the night. Maybe sober, I'd have been a little more cautious. No, being cautious had almost gotten me killed. It was time to act, take a walk on the wild side, so to speak.

And it was about to get pretty wild.
Chapter 30

I drove to Chick's apartment. I didn't have time to charm the landlady a second time, and besides, she was most certainly asleep at that hour. So I put my shoulder into the door. Three tries and I was inside. I found Chick's phone and plugged it into the wall socket. I dialed *69. The automated voice read off a phone number. It was the last number Chick had dialed – the only number Chick had dialed in the last few weeks: the phone number to the RTK's BBS. I wrote it down quickly on the inside of an old Gundam box and hung up the phone. I then dialed 0, but before I got an operator, I pushed and held #2. Yeah, I'd done a little phreaking back in junior high. Getting a technician's prompt was the first step of making free phone calls, but I just wanted the reverse look-up. I waited for the beep, then keyed in the number *69 had given me. A robot voice read off a street address. It was local but way up in the hills near Coal Creek.

I unplugged the phone and put it back where Chick kept it. There was nothing I could do about the door. I piled back into Teeny and turned her over. Before I pulled pack onto Ocean Beach Way, I looked at my watch. It was going on ten.

It was 11:30 by the time I rolled Teeny slowly down the gravel drive of the dark house. I had the lights off, the engine purring, looking for signs of life. Nothing. I had no reason to believe this was anything more than the other end of a phone line – the physical whereabouts of the computer running the RTK's BBS. But I suspected that I was about to find a whole lot more inside the house. Maybe a dozen or so angry members of the Ran Tan Klan.

I stroked Rusty McShootyFace laying on the bench seat next to me.

There was a detached garage off to the house's right. I parked Teeny behind it, out of sight. I decided to look around back. I shouldered the shotgun and moved quietly over the lawn. At the back porch, I tried the door. It was unlocked. It would be. Nobody locked their doors this far out of town.

I scanned the kitchen inside down the barrel of my gun. Nothing. Just a kitchen. Tidy. A hall leading out into a living room. Chairs, a console television. It reminded me a lot of my dad's place. Worn but neat.

And there, at a desk off to the side of the dining room, a computer. A beige box. I could see it was running by the flashing lights on its front. I hurried over and tapped the keyboard. The monitor flashed to life. That same ASCII ski mask art appeared on the screen. This was it.

I hadn't lowered the shotgun. It was pointing at the monitor when I heard something thump below me. I came around, peering back into the kitchen along the axis of the gun. Another thump. Downstairs. In the basement.

I found the basement stairs off the kitchen. The door was locked. I looked around, thinking maybe the key was hanging on a hook. No such luck. I flicked on Rusty's safety and raised the gun up over my head. I brought the butt down onto the handle of the door. On the third swing, the nob came off the door.

I didn't get a chance to pull the door open. At that instant, something heavy hit the door from the basement side. It flew open with a crash and then two-hundred pounds of body where running me over.

Chick's shoulder collided with my bad lip. I bellowed in pain, and hit the kitchen table as I went down. Chick went stumbling, tripping over McShootyFace and then crashed into a cabinet. But he came up fast, fists up ready for a fight. It was only then he got a look at me.

"Buzz?" he asked, shocked. I had my hand over my mouth. I was oozing blood again. "Buzz! I'm so sorry!" he added quickly. "I thought you were one of them."

He held out a hand. I used it to get to my feet.

"Wouldn't they have a key to that door?" I asked through my bloody fingers.

"Oh, yeah, I guess," Chick scratched his head. I took my hand away from my mouth. Chick finally got a good look at me. "Buzz! What happened to you?"

"I had a run in..." I spat on the floor. I bent down and picked up McShootyFace and put it on the kitchen table. "With you."

"What?" Chick gasped.

"Or a reasonable facsimile. One of your friends playing the role, I'd guess. He was wearing these." I pulled headphone off and held them out to Chick.

He looked at them in silence, considering the implications. "They wanted you to think..."

"They wanted everyone to think that you're the Wild Side Killer."

Chick took the headphones, slowly returning them to his ears. He seemed to grow taller the moment he put them on. I felt like I was returning Superman's cape to him, or Batman his cowl. The source of power was restored.

"It's..." Chick started, but the headlights and the sound of a car coming down the driveway caught both our attentions.

"Shit!" I whispered, reaching for McShootyFace. "Down there?" I mouthed, point at the basement.

"No," Chick mouthed back.

We could have made a run for it, the way I'd come in, out the back door. But then there was still the computer...

I crouched, moving quickly back into the living room. I waved Chick to follow. Back at the computer, I only had seconds. The car's headlights died out. I could hear voices arguing, coming toward the house. The computer was big and all the wires. I noted an external enclosure on the desktop next to the monitor. An external hard drive. That would have to do. I pulled the cables out of the back and picked up its considerable weight with one hand.

I threw it to Chick.

He caught it but fumbled. He caught it again before the steel box hit the floor. As the front door began to swing open, we both dived behind the couch.

"...you clean up your mess," someone was saying. It was Atta Boy's voice. "Best to have all the loose ends tied up before Wild Side finds out how badly you fucked things up."

"Nobody told me she was some sort of ninja," the other voice said back. They were coming toward us, across the living room. I flicked off Rusty's safety. "All back flips and Bruce Lee shit. I think she broke my ribs..."

I couldn't help but smile.

"You got your ass kicked by a little girl," Atta Boy said and let out a dull laugh. "For the second time. If you'd got the job done up on the Sleater Kinney Road..." (rocks!) "...she wouldn't have gotten a chance to crack you in the ribs."

They passed right by the couch and started toward the kitchen. The couch hid us from the front door, but if Atta Boy or his friend turned around, they'd see us crouched there. The smaller man was prodding at his nose. "That time, she broke my nose..." he muttered.

Atta Boy stopped when he reached the kitchen and turned to the small man. "So, put a bullet in the retard's head, and we can toss his body in the river." Atta boy handed over a silver pistol. "The sooner he's dead, the sooner he can't ID either of us and we can deal with the girl. We'll tell Wild Side he got out, we had to shoot him. We'll tell the Bog–" Atta Boy stopped mid-sentence. He's noted the smashed basement door and the blood on the floor. "What the fuck?" he started.

That was our cue. "Go!" I screamed to Chick and sprung to my feet. Chick started running for the front door. I leveled the bead sight of McShootyFace at the two men in the kitchen.

They began to turn. I fired. My aim was way left. The buck shot tore into the drywall, kicking up a great cloud of gypsum. I racked McShootyFace's slide. Atta Boy and the faux-Chick dove for cover.

I fired again, this time dead center down the empty hall. Cabinet doors and china in the kitchen shattered. I racked and fired again. This time, too high. I hit the hall light and glass exploded everywhere.

I pulled one more time on Rusty's slide. But it jammed, halfway open. Damn, rusty old gun. When I couldn't quickly unjam it, I tossed it aside and sprinted after Chick.

He'd left the front door open.

Chick was standing in the driveway, trying to decide which was to run. I flew past him, yelling for him to follow. We circled around the garage and I flung open Teeny's gargantuan door.

Inside, I reached for the steering wheel. But I was sitting in the passenger seat.

I'd happened again. I'd gotten in the wrong door. I could have sworn when I'd pulled the car in, I'd left it pointing away from the road. But now Teeny was all turned around, pointing down the gravel driveway, ready for a quick escape. I'd climbed in the passenger door, thinking it was the driver's side. Now, I had to slide along the bench seat to get behind the wheel.

Chick tumbled into the car behind me, dropping the hard drive onto the floor mat.

I fired up the engine and stomped on the gas. We kicked a great tail of gravel, as we down the drive way.

As we passed, Atta Boy came out of the front door, the silver pistol in his hand. Pop, pop, pop. He was pulling the trigger as fast as he could. Bullets hit Chick's side window, sending the large man diving for cover. But the glass didn't break. Not even crack. I stepped on the gas harder, letting Teeny's engine give out a mighty roar. I looked in the rear view. Atta Boy was still shooting, bullets ricocheting off Teeny rear.

He ran out of cartridges just as I reached the country road. I threw the wheel to the left and let Teeny's rear fishtail out onto the blacktop.

"My Lord! I thought we were dead!" Chick looked back into the darkness behind us.

"Do you still have that hard drive?" I asked, breathing hard.

"Yes, here," Chick kicked the steel brick at his feet.

"You get shot?" I asked, only then remembering to ask.

"No, no," Chick checked his body, then looked at the passenger window. "What is this car made of?" he asked. The glass wasn't even dinged.

"State of Motor City Grace, remember?" I replied. I didn't look away from the road. I was doing ninety down a pretty narrow, dark road. I wasn't about to let Atta Boy catch up to us.

"Sure, but..." Chick tapped the glass with his knuckle. "That's not possible..."

"The glass is an inch and a half thick. This car is so over-engineered, it's not funny."

We just sat there, gasping for breath. The road before us twisting and turning.

"What is this?" Chick kicked the external hard drive with his toe. He didn't have any shoes on. His socks were caked with mud.

"That's our RTK BBS," I smiled. We had it. We really had it. Right there on the floor mat.

"What?" Chick moved his foot cautiously, realizing that maybe he shouldn't be kicking it. "The whole thing?"

"That's my bet."

"But, we still don't know ScareBear69's user name."

"We don't need it, now. Not if we have the whole hard drive."

"No?"

"No." My lip hurt like hell, but I couldn't stop smiling.
Chapter 31

"Ah, wide SCSI..." I noted, looking at the back of the hard drive. It was two in the morning and we'd let ourselves into the store. We were too afraid to go back to Chick's apartment, or my dad's house. The RTK obviously knew about both. So did the cops. The bullpen of Nybble and Bytes seemed like a good place to lay low.

"That a problem?" Chick asked, sitting at McFly's bench.

"Yeah, I don't have a wide SCSI interface," I looked around the office, thinking. Wide SCSI hard drives were server-grade stuff, not crap, Amiga consumer junk. "They're new."

"So? We can't access the BBS?"

"No, we'll just need to buy a daughter board. You got any money?"

Chick looked panicked. "I've recently suffered an interruption in payroll..."

"Yeah, of course." I looked over at Spider's register. I could borrow the money. But we'd have to drive to Portland to find a dealer that carried–

What was I thinking? I knew a computer with a wide SCSI interface we could use for free.

"What happened?" I asked, wiping Chick's muddy footprints off the hard drive's steel case.

"What happened? Where?" Chick answered, confused. He'd taken off his dirty socks. He feet weren't much cleaner.

"How'd you end up in that basement?"

"Ah," Chick exhaled heavily. "They were in my apartment. In the middle of the night. I woke up with a bag over my head. Next thing I know I was in the back of a pickup, someone's foot on my chest. How long was I down there?"

"Two days?"

"It felt like forever."

"The cops, they've got a warrant out for you," I said.

"I'd imagine, if I supposedly did that to you," Chick pointed at my face.

"No, before that," I didn't need the reminder. The Grand Marnier had totally worn off. My face ached like a son-of-a-bitch. And my ear. I was wishing I had some of Atta Boy's legal heroin right about then. "For the stuff in the morgue. The sheriff was around looking for you."

"Really? Right after I was kidnapped? That doesn't sound like a coincidence."

"No, it doesn't. Someone is stitching you up, Chick." I put a hand to my split lip. I shouldn't have said stitch. "Who's got it in for you that bad?"

"As I said, the Wild Side Killer predicted I would be the one to put an end to his career. Perhaps he's had second thoughts, now that he's witnessing his prediction coming true."

"Arrest warrants and staged strangulation seem a little out of Atta Boy's MO. He mentioned something about the Wild Side Killer. Anyone in mask show up at the house while they had you locked down in the basement?"

"No, but Atta Boy and the shorter man mentioned a superior, someone calling the shots."

"You think this was the Wild Side Killer?"

"It would explain the fetish nature of your assault. The mask, the bones..."

"But what would a serial killer be doing heading up a drug ring of white supremacists?"

"A legitimate drug ring of white supremacists, remember."

"Even worse."

Chick shrugged. "I assume drugs are more profitable that psycho-sexual murder?"

He had a point. "The Wild Side Killer is not just a psychopath, he's an entrepreneur?"

Chick snorted. "Killers I can handle. I'm not so sure about capitalists."

"We need to look at this hard drive."

"Yes," Chick agreed.

"Then...how about a road trip?"

"To where," Chick asked, concerted.

"Seattle?"
Chapter 32

"What exactly were you studying?" Chick asked, the Tacoma Dome receding in the rear view mirror. We'd start off from Longview in the middle of the night, once we'd found Chick some shoes. It was six in the morning, and the sun was just coming over the horizon, as we passed through Tacoma, its signature smell seeping in past Teeny's weather stripping.

"Tequila. Frat boys," I laughed. I looked at Chick. He wasn't laughing. It was a serious question. "Computer Science," I corrected. "Artificial Intelligence, specifically."

We were on our way to the University of Washington, back to my old stomping ground. I'd mentioned to Chick that I'd dropped out in my fourth year. That had been about Chehalis. He must have been sitting there mulling that fact over for about an hour.

Chick snorted in disgust. "Then, no wonder you dropped out."

"What? What's wrong with AI?"

"Foolishness," Chick dismissed me and the discipline with a wave of his hand.

"Thinking machines?"

"Exactly. Nonsense."

"What do you know about AI? Do you have a computer science degree?"

"I don't need one. Foolishness doesn't require a degree. Thinking machines. You might as well ask me when a dog is going to make me breakfast."

I laughed, I liked the image. "How's that?"

"Oh don't get me wrong," Chick went on, "I'm sure a sufficiently talented dog trainer could teach a sufficiently talented dog to cook bacon. But what would you have achieved in the task? A very poor means of making breakfast? A dog driven half-insane trying to suppress every one of its natural instincts to perform a task so trivial to its human owner we hardly even consider it work? No, the truth is, we don't need a dog to make breakfast. We cook the breakfast, we feed the dog. We feed the dog, because the dog had talents that we cannot replicate, even though those talents are almost like breathing to the animal – heightened sense of smell, hearing. With computers, it's every much the same; we do the thinking, they do the computing. We don't need – we don't want – them to make the breakfast. They never will. To pretend otherwise is just science fiction."

"I never thought about it like that," I had to admit.

We fell into silence. I kept driving north. We were less than an hour from Seattle, now.

"I don't get you," I finally said. Chick looked away from the scenery. "I mean, that stuff about computers, Chick. You're no dummy."

"Thank you?" Chick replied, not sure if my comment was a compliment or an insult.

"No, I mean..." What did I mean? "The way Spider and McFly talk. They think you're, you know...retarded or something."

"Not exactly," Chick sighed. I was insulting him.

I backpedaled, but the damage was done. "But you're not! I mean, that stuff, you just know, about computers. I don't know if I agree, but that's pretty smart stuff. For someone who doesn't even know how to boot to a DOS prompt, you've really thought about it."

"Exactly," Chick was staring down at the dash before him. "I might be retarded, but that doesn't mean I can't think. Not like Spider and McFly, or yourself for that matter – no offense intended."

"No," I shook my head. Turnabout is fair play, after all.

"All the brains in the world, but do you ever bother to think anything through?"

"I guess not."

"But when everything is a challenge, nothing really is. Does that makes sense?" Chick looked up from the dash. "When you have to think through every step of buying a sandwich at a deli, for example, really weigh the pros and cons of every option – meat, cheese, mayonnaise, bread –thinking through the details to a murder investigation seem almost trivial. Certainly no more complicated. Things comes so easily to people like you, you don't have to think through the small stuff. It just comes to you. So when you're faced with a big question, something really complicated, you don't know where to begin. It's all too much. You don't know how to break it down into smaller problems that you can handle. Like I do. About everything. All day, every day. That's all thinking practice, you know? All I'm doing is thinking. So yes: maybe Spider and MacFly are right, I am retarded. Or something. But that doesn't mean I don't think. Think about everything."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to–"

"No, it's okay, I know what you meant."

"I don't think you're retarded."

"It doesn't matter," Chick said, watching the cars pass on the freeway. "Most days."

"I'm sorry," Suddenly I felt the need to come clean. "When you dispersed, I tricked your landlady into letting me into your apartment. I looked in the draw where you keep your gun. I saw...the picture of you and Beth. You haven't talked much about her."

"What's there to say?"

"In the picture, you didn't look quite so...well, Chick."

"Yes, things were easier with Beth."

I tried to think of something clever to say, something witty. Instead, I said again, "I'm sorry."

"Please stop apologizing."

"I'm sorry," I said one last time and then decided it was probably for the best if I just shut the fuck up for the rest of the drive.
Chapter 33

I kept my promise. Chick didn't complain. We rode the rest of the trip to Seattle in silence. I shouldn't have brought up Beth. But I'd felt bad about snooping through Chick's things and I was curious to get any information about her out of Chick I could. In the end, I just made both of us feel gloomy.

But the sight of the UW campus cheered me up. I had no idea, until I saw it off to the right of the Ship Canal Bridge, how much I'd missed it. The Quad, the fountain, the College Inn. I was suddenly hungry for some Yakisoba noodles on the Ave. And to catch a show at the Sit 'n Spin. I looked at Chick. He was still staring glumly out of the window. That would all have to wait.

"What the hell happened to your face?" Eddie asked, emerging from the rear fire door to the computer lab. I'd called from a pay phone, and he'd come around back to let us in the unofficial way. Eddie was his real name. I can remember that. If I was going to give Eddie a user name, it would probably have been Marty McFly. He sorta looked like Michael J. Fox. A little taller, maybe. And it would fit with the whole Back to the Future theme. But I remember Eddie's real name pretty well. After all, we got married a few years after all this.

"You should see the other guy," I said and smiled. The pain in my lip made me wince, totally destroying the tough-guy smirk. But I never thought I'd ever get to say that line and mean it. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

"Who's this?" Eddie looked Chick up and down. Chick didn't have a coat and he was wearing some sneakers we'd fetched out of a dumpster. Oh, and he'd been sleeping in a dirty basement for two nights. Without a bath. I guess he looked pretty rough and smelled it, too. I think Eddie thought he was a hobo I'd picked up.

"This is my friend Chick," I said, then got to the point. "We need a wide SCSI bus."

"Well, you'd better buy me a drink first," Eddie cocked his left eyebrow. When I didn't laugh, he let the eyebrow fall. He noticed the blood all over my shirt. "Seriously? What's going on, Buzz?"

"We're trying to catch a serial killer," Chick said, without a note of sarcasm.

"With a wide SCSI bus?" Eddie asked. I hefted up the external hard drive and presented it to him. He took it in both arms, confused. "What's this?"

"The Ran Tan Klan's BBS."

"The what? Who?"

"It's complicated," I said and pushed my way in.

"Very complicated," Chick agreed, as he stepped into the computer lab.

Ten minutes of fooling with cables and Eddie and I had the hard drive hooked up to a SGI workstation, one Eddie kept in a back workspace the students affectionately called "The Swamp." It even had some camouflage netting and an old military cot in one corner, all in homage to the doctors' tent from M.A.S.H. It took some effort to get the IRIX OS to read the FAT32 disk, but with Eddie standing at my shoulder, telling me commands, we soon had the BBS disk mounted.

"So, what are you looking for?" Eddie asked. Chick was watching the whole operation from a chair near the Erlenmeyer flask moonshine still (currently non-operational, as per the Dean's order).

"Emails for an account," I said.

"Which account?"

"That's just it, we don't know." I concatenated the file containing the user names and hashed password. There were dozens of them.

"Well, this is going to take forever," Eddie leaned in closer to the screen.

"No, we know the account's password."

"You know the password but not the account name?" Eddie looked at me, head tilted. "How'd you pull that off?"

"It was taped to the bottom of a laptop," Chick answered.

"And you have this laptop?" Eddie asked Chick.

"Not anymore," I replied.

"And the laptop's owner?" I could tell Eddie was reluctant to ask.

"We don't have her anymore, either. These $1 mean MD5, right?" I pointed at the screen, at a string of random characters after a user name.

"Yeah, and between the dollar signs is the salt," Eddie pointed at part of the random string.

"So my password." I typed echo -n w1lds1de. "Plus the salt." I copied the string of characters between the dollar signs.

"w1lds1de?" Eddie asked.

"You heard of the Wild Side Killer?" I piped my echo command into md5sum and got my own string of random characters. I could grep the password file for that string, but then I realized the salt was different for each hash. Damn, that made it a lot more complicated. I guess that was the point.

"Of course..." Eddie's look of curiosity turned to panic. "You're trying to catch the Wild Side Killer?"

I didn't answer. I was writing a quick while loop, reading in the password file, extracting the salt, piping that back through xargs and concatenating that with the w1lds1de string, line by line. The result I sent to md5sum. I hit enter and got a screen full of random characters. I hit the up arrow and piped the standard out to a text file. Now, I just need to find which string in this new file was also in the password file. I quickly piped the password file through the cut command twice and make a third file of just the password hashes. I ran 'comm file2 file3' and got a single string of text back.

That was it, my password, plus salt, md5 hashed. I just had to grep the original password file for that string.

"Jesus!" Eddie was suddenly angry, distracting me from my task. "What's going on Buzz? You come in here, covered in blood, with some bum..." He pointed dismissively at Chick. "...and say you're trying to catch the Wild Side Killer!"

"Yes, that's an accurate summation, Eddie," ," I answered calmly. "Except, Chick is no bum. He's a detective."

"Him? Are you insane?" Eddie laughed and pulled at his hair. It was cute. He cared.

"No," I dismissed, trying to get back to my work. "Well, maybe...here we go," I was finally able to finish my command. Grep returned the matching line in the password file, complete with user name.

"ScareBear69?" Chick read off the screen. "That was her user name?"

"Yep," I nodded.

"We'd never have guessed that."

"Who was ScarBear69?" Eddie asked, a little calmer.

"The Wild Side Killer's latest victim," Chick answered.

"She's dead?"

"Strangled."

Eddie noticed the bandage round my neck. It itched. "No! You didn't! He didn't!" Eddie backed away from me in disbelief.

"No!" I barked. I was trying to bring up ScareBear69's mailbox. "It wasn't...it was someone pretending to be..."

"And that's better?" Eddie yelling was starting to attract attention.

He had a point. "Will you keep your voice down?"

"Me?" Eddie asked in disgust. "You almost get killed by a serial killer, or someone pretending to be one, and you want me to keep my voice down?"

"Yes! Look, we're handling it, okay? Just calm down."

We weren't. I thought it best not to mention the kidnapping, or the warrant out for Chick's arrest. Or the gunfight out in the woods. Eddie was right, I had to be out of my mind.

"I'm calling the cops," Eddie suddenly decided.

"No!" Chick and I said in unison.

"Ten more minutes and we'll be out of your hair, okay?" I added.

"I'm not letting you go back to..." Eddie didn't know how to finished his sentence. "With..." He pointed at Chick.

"What?" Now I was getting mad. "What's wrong with him?"

"I don't know..." Eddie was building up to say something. I was building up to punch him in the ear.

"What's that?" Chick spoke before the fists could start flying. Chick was watching the output on my screen.

I looked back. "The last message in ScareBear69's inbox," I said, calming down. I had to remember why I was there – certainly not to get into a fight with Eddie.

"What is that?" Chick squinted at the text. A time, a date and a word: ENSFIC.

"Is that–" I began.

"The day she was killed? Yes." Chick scratched the week-old crop of stubble on his chin. "But what's that word? ENSFIC? Another MD5?"

It wasn't. It was too short. "Some sort of code?" I hit the Page Up key and went back one message in the inbox. "Here's another one." Different date, a week before and a different word: LKETER. "They're all like that." I scrolled back through the inbox quickly. There were no real messages, no chatting. Just times, dates and weird codes.

"Another code," Chick sighed and sat back in his chair. "It's codes within codes. I'm start to think that it's codeses all the way down."

"We know someone who can tell us what these mean?" I snorted.

Chick knew who I meant. He laughed mirthlessly.

Eddie didn't. "You know someone involved with this murder? Where did you get this hard drive, anyway?"

"We sort of borrowed it..."

"From the Ran Tan Klan?" Eddie was disgusted.

I nodded.

"The white supremacists? The guys who left the KKK because the KKK wasn't crazy enough?"

"Those are the guys," I had to admit.

"But they've gone legitimate," Chick added.

"You're having conversations with them?" Eddie was flabbergasted.

"Well, one of their guys got killed, too."

"Another murder? How many people are dead?"

"That's it. So far."

"So far? So far? Did the Ran Tan Klan do this to you?" Eddie pointed at my face. I didn't answer. Eddie didn't need an answer. "Where were you?" he challenged Chick.

"Locked in a basement."

"What?"

"Look, thanks for letting us use the computer," I said, starting to shut things down.

"I'm not letting you go back to Longview," Eddie commanded.

"I didn't ask for your permission." When the SGI workstation shut off, I began to detach the cables from the hard drive.

Chick climbed to his feet and hovered, dancing from foot to foot, his fingers buried in his armpits. He didn't want to get involved.

"Buzz, look at yourself." Eddie grabbed my arm. I didn't like that.

I knocked his arm away and shoved a finger in his face. "Don't. Touch. Me."

He backed up, hands raised in surrender. When he was clear of the door, I stormed out of the Swamp, hard drive under my arm.

"Thank you," Chick said to Eddie, as he hurried to catch up.
Chapter 34

"Eddie's nice," Chick said, looking back out the rear window of Teeny, as we left the university in our dust.

"Eddie's an idiot," I spat. "Forget about him."

"No," Chick shook his head. "I know a thing or two about being an idiot. Eddie's no idiot. He seemed genuinely worried about you."

"I don't need him worrying."

"Are you two..." Chick searched for the right words. "...a couple?"

"What?" I glared at Chick. "No. What are you talking about?"

"I'm sorry to ask. I'm not very good at social cues, but I'm trying to learn. Observe. I got a...vibe."

"How about you keep your vibes to yourself, okay?" I was still fuming. What the hell did Eddie think he was playing at? Like he had any right to tell me what to do. Later on, with some perspective, I would come to understand where he was coming from: me showing up, covered in blood, talking about murders and white supremacists. I'd have reacted just like Eddie. But right then, I was still way too in the weeds to be thinking clearly. Stop? Now? When Chick and I had come so far? Not on your life.

Chick fell silent and watched the traffic outside his window. I didn't mean to snap at him. I wanted to yell at Eddie some more, but he wasn't there.

"Look, I'm sorry," I finally said. "You're not wrong. Eddie and I...when I was still in school...we had sort of a flirty thing going. So, maybe, yes, you're not misreading the social cues."

Chick looked at me and smiled. I realized I hadn't hurt his feelings by snapping at him. He'd asked a dispassionate, analytic question. He wasn't prying.

"But you..." Now it was my turn to search for the right words. "You were married. You must have navigated some social cues to do that."

"Beth and I grew up together." Chick looked wistful. "We went to high school together. She was always there, from my very first memories. I don't remember their being any flirtation. Seduction. After high school, we just sort of made it official."

"Still, I haven't even got to second base with Eddie. And I'm not going to now. If understanding social cues gets you as far as it's gotten me. Maybe your way ain't so bad."

"I wouldn't count Eddie out of the game yet," Chick looked back over his shoulder again. The University was long gone. "You could do worse."

"I certainly have," I smiled.

"Why did you quit school?" Chick asked after a few minutes of silence. "You seemed so at home at that workstation."

"Has my mother been sending you money, too?" I asked Chick. He didn't get the reference. I hadn't told him about Dad. I wasn't about to. "It's just-I wasn't-I don't know," I had to admit.

"I take it you don't share my distrust of the digital."

"No, certainly not. I like computers. Love them. I like working at the shop. Fixing things. It was school. Classes. Tests. I just never felt like I belonged there."

Chick laughed. "I can relate. You felt like a stranger. Like you were playing a part."

"Exactly," I looked at Chick. Maybe I was more like him than I'd realized.

"I assume your mother is trying to get you to go back," Chick went on. I nodded. "Well, she's right. You'll never make anything of your life working for Spider."

I was insulted. But Chick had just finished telling me he didn't fully understand social niceties. Here he was proving it. "Nybbles and Bytes is a good job."

"The store will be out of business within the year. Then you'll be unemployed. Back to working fast food. It is, by any empiric observation, not a good job. Getting a computer science degree from the University of Washington and getting a job with Microsoft, that would be a good job."

"You are working for mom," I said.

"I have never spoken to your mother or accepted cash from her. And as someone who is a stranger playing a role everywhere, all the time, I can testify that, if you want to achieve anything of worth, you have to go where you don't belong, be that stranger, be the actor playing a role. Your mother is right, there's no future for you in Longview. After we've caught the Wide Side Killer, you should return to school and finish your degree. Get to second base with Eddie."

"Well, I was sort of thinking...when this is all over..." I trailed off.

"What?" Chick asked.

"I mean, we could do this," I said.

"What? What's this?"

"This. Chick and Buzz. Catching criminals. Solving crimes."

"This isn't Scooby Doo!" Chick exclaimed in disbelief. "You're not Velma, I'm not Shaggy. We can't just drive around in a van, solving crimes. That's not a job."

"Sure it is. Private detectives. Consulting detectives. Just like Sherlock Holmes."

"Aghh!" Chick waved me away in disgust.

"What is it with you and Sherlock Holmes?" I asked. I'd noticed Chick grew angry every time I mentioned the famous detective. The stories seemed applicable. I didn't get it.

"He's fake!" Chick bellowed.

"Of course he's fake, he's fictional character!" I laughed.

"No, you don't understand. He's not even a real, fictional character. You can't do what Sherlock Holmes does. His deductions. It's not real."

I still didn't get it. "Of course not."

But Chick wasn't finished. "No you don't understand, when you're like me, reality and fiction are...fluid. I mean, you know the difference, but you don't know the difference. After Beth's death, after I'd decided to focus on finding her killer, I had to start teaching myself how not to be Chick, but how to think like a detective. My only guides were the great fictional detectives."

"Moist said you wore a deerstalker cap for a summer."

"Exactly. I wasted so much time trying to replicate Sherlock Holmes' methods – trying to deduct meaning in the scratches on a the back of a watch, for instance, or the mud on someone's shoes. And you know what? In the real, insanely random universe, there's a million reasons someone's boot might have mud one it. And what you can deduce, isn't really meaningful at all: hey, it's raining out, so his boots are muddy. Crime solved."

"It's supposed to be fun. A story."

"And it has about as much to do with real detective work as Scooby Doo does to paranormal investigation. Both are works of fantasy – not completely unlike the idea of us riding around in the car solving crimes."

"That wasn't what I meant," I backpedaled. But maybe it was. I hadn't really thought the whole thing out. "I just thought, if we catch the Wild Side Killer–"

"When we catch the Wild Side Killer," Chick corrected.

"When. What are you going to do?"

Chick gave that some thought. "You know, I don't know."

"Exactly. Come to Seattle and get your computer science degree? Work for Microsoft?"

Chick laughed. "No."

"Right. Chick, I don't know if there's a future for you in Longview, either. I mean, if Nybbles and Bytes closes down, where are you going to get your Gundams?"
Chapter 35

Fuck Eddie. The bastard sold us out.

Little did I know, while Chick and I were driving back to Longview, he was on the phone to my mom. He told her that I'd shown up with Chick, all beaten and bloody. Mom had hung up and called the Cowlitz County Sheriff's Department.

Sheriff Tush knew right where we'd be. He and half a dozen of his deputies were waiting for us as we pulled into the parking lot of Nybbles and Bytes. They weren't taking any chances with Chick, guns out and pointing at Teeny. I half considered just throwing the car into reverse and testing how bulletproof Teeny's windows really were. But Chick put his hand on mine as I reached up for the gear shift. Instead, I put it into P.

It was dinner time, and I was alone in Sheriff Tush' office. This time, I decided against rifling through his files. I needed the sheriff on my side more than I needed anything else. Chick was downstairs in a holding cell. I didn't need to join him.

Sheriff Tush came in with a greasy bag from the Drive-In. My cheeseburgers. I was so hungry, I was going to eat them in front of Sheriff Tush, mustard on my chin and all.

The sheriff let me eat in silence. The elephant in the room was the steel, external hard drive sitting on the desk between us.

"Buzz," Tush said, as I returned the last foil wrapper to the bag. "I don't know where to begin."

"You need to let Chick go," I started for him.

The sheriff opened his mouth. Disbelief chocked off his words.

"I need his help," I added. It wasn't very convincing.

"I've seen the tape, Buzz. From Peter's Lumberyard."

"That wasn't him!"

"No, I assumed you guys didn't car pool home from your attempted murder."

"Then why do you have Chick in jail and not the Ran Tan Klan?"

"We'll have Atta Boy and his guys soon enough."

"Then let Chick go. He's the victim here. He can help."

"What part of 'this is now a police matter' did you not understand?"

"I–" He had a point.

"What's this?" he pointed at the hard drive.

"It's the RTK's BBS."

"I'm sure those letters mean something."

"Exactly!" I shouted. "Look, we're on the same side here. You need our help. Atta Boy is working for someone who is trying to frame Chick for ScareBear69's murder. You need to be investigating that."

Sheriff Tush gestured that I should calm the fuck down. "Buzz, everyone is very concerned that you're in this way over your head. Yesterday, you almost got yourself killed. And then you drive off to Seattle? You haven't even changed your shirt, Buzz. You need medical attention."

"I'm fine. Why is everyone so concerned–" Then the puzzle pieces clicked into place. "Fuck, my mother..."

"For your own safety, she wants you to return home. To Bellevue."

"I can't go back there now! We're so close!"

"To catching the Wild Side Killer?"

"Yes!"

"Buzz, listen to yourself. You've lost perspective. ScareBear69 and the Ran Tan Klan aside, there's no evidence any of this has anything to do with the Wild Side Killer. A drug deal gone bad, perhaps, But–"

I raised a hand like a kid in school, desperate to be first with the right answer. "No, no – I heard Atta Boy, and the midget with the wire garrote, talking about someone named Wild Side!"

"So?" Sheriff Tush wasn't impressed. "The Ran Tan Klan have used the Wild Side Killer story for years to keep local kids away from their turf – their pot fields. They hang chicken bone necklaces on trees and run around in those stupid ski masks to scare people. That someone in the Klan is nicknamed Wilde Side..."

"But–" I had nothing. My mind went blank. I needed Chick. Maybe I didn't have anything. Maybe this was all Atta Boy defending his drug business. But then, why did he have the hard-on for blaming everything on Chick? And how'd he get that arrest warrant issued? And what was up with the Gundam gun in ScareBear69's cooch?

Sheriff Tush tapped the hard drive with his pen. "This is now evidence."

"No! I need to put that back," I said quickly. I'd added one line to the password file before I'd shut down in Seattle: an admin account for myself, user name: LoppyBuddy01. "If Atta Boy hasn't notice it missing, and I have no reason to think he would, he might still call it up and use it to communicate with the rest of the RTK. It'll be in code, but if we can break it we can track their movements – know where they're gonna be and when. I just need Chick to help me break the code."

"I can't just let Chick go. He's in jail, accused of a felony. He'll have to appear before a judge in the morning. Bail will be set."

"We're wasting time."

"You're not wasting anything. You're going back to Bellevue. It's up to the guys with guns and badges to catch Atta Boy now. Your part of this whole thing is done."

"But, the hard drive," I pointed at the large, steel box.

"You really think they'll call it?"

"That's how they've been communicating. They won't change their habits if we don't give them a reason to."

"Okay, I'll have someone look into it." The sheriff shifted the box on his desk, as if he was trying to figure out which side of it was up.

"Do you even know how to plug that thing in?" I asked, already knowing the answer. "Does anyone here know how to plug it back in?"

Tush didn't answer.

"Look, we should be cooperating, not running around working at cross purposes. You do the cop thing, and I can handle the computers. I just need Chick."

"I can have a word with the judge. Explain the circumstances. But you'll still have to post a bail. That won't be less than ten grand."

"Ten grand?" Jesus.

"I can get you a bond, but that will cost a thousand."

A thousand dollars to get Chick out of jail? Where the hell was I going to get a thousand dollars?

Maybe Tush was right, I was going to have to go home to Bellevue, after all.
Chapter 36

After a little more fast talking, I managed to got out of there with the hard drive under my arm. I know Chick was rotting in a jail cell, but I drove home and went to sleep. I'd been up for forty-eight hours straight, drunk way too much Grand Marnier and spent six hours behind the wheel. I slept like the dead and woke up with my bottom lip fused to the pillow with dry blood.

Once I'd painfully extracted myself from my bedding, I drove Teeny on fumes down to the gas station. My last thirty bucks went into the tank. I hoped it'd be enough to get my to Bellevue. It would certainly not be enough to get me back.

But first, I had a pit stop to make.

I took the winding road out toward Coal Creek. I was unarmed, except for the steel hard drive, comfortable in the assumption that the house out in the woods would be absolutely the last place on Earth any member of the Ran Tan Klan would be hanging around.

I would quickly learn not to make stupid assumptions like that. You know, as a detective. But back then, what the hell did I know?

The front door of the house was still open, just as I'd left it the night before. Atta Boy and his diminutive assassin must have chased us down the hill, never bothering to come back to house once Teeny gave them the slip. This was exactly what I'd hoped for – that they hadn't had time to notice the hard drive was missing. They'd assume I'd come to the house to release Chick, not for the BBS.

Yeah, maybe that was another dumb assumption.

Rusty McShootyFace lay where I'd dropped it on the living room floor. I doubted its serial numbers would have even come back to anyone remotely related to my Dad, but it was one piece of evidence best not left lying around. She was still jammed, half-cocked. I took the time to properly clear it and put the shell in my pocket.

The wires on the desk for the BBS looked undisturbed, still hanging loose from my hurried removal of the drive. It was quick work to hook everything back up. I powered on the hard drive, then booted the DOS box. Everything seemed to come alive, with the screen eventually displaying the creepy ski mask ASCI art.

I scooped up Rusty and started for the front door.

I paused mid-step, listening to the silence.

I hadn't heard anything, I just got a sudden chill down the length of my spine. That's when I knew my assumption had been wrong. Someone was still in the house. I reached into my pocket and fished out the single 12 gauge shell. I placed it directly into Rusty's chamber and slid the fore-grip forward.

I swept the room with the barrel of the gun.

I was getting jittery, but I was damned determined to make sure that the logging yard would be the last time any son-of-a-bitch got the drop on me. I was possibly about as untouchable to the RTK as a girl could be: what with Chick locked up in County Jail, he was no longer any use as the fall guy in any of their murders. But that didn't mean I was alone in the house. It didn't mean they weren't watching.

The kitchen. Whoever it was or whatever it was, it was in the kitchen. My Spidey-senses were tingling. I leveled McShootyFace down the destruction of the hallway. Three volleys of double- aught had done a number to the paneling. I took a step. Then I heard it.

First it was a whir of a motor, then a brief clatter of plastic on plastic. Then, something snapped shut and the soft hush of white noise began.

The base guitar and the acoustic came in without ceremony. Doo, da-doo, da-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo. The open cords of Walk on the Wild Side. I faulted in my step, the cold chill down my spine now an ice bath.

I took in a deep breath and sprang forward, charging into the kitchen with the gun raised. Nothing. The back door hung open, a small stereo tape player sat on the kitchen counter, the sound of Lou Reed's voice was just picking up with the measure.

Holly came from Miami F.L.A.

Someone was fucking with me. In a pointless act of fury, I hit the tape player dead center with the blast from the shotgun. The small electronic device evaporated into a mist of circuit boards and plastic. The shreds of tape whirled about the kitchen like black snow.

I ran to the back door. A figure was halfway across the lawn, running – more like limping – for the tree line. I shouldered my weapon. He turned. That mask – the ski/skull mask. He looked back at me through those dark eye holes. I aimed and pulled Rusty's trigger. Click.

Nothing. I'd wasted my last round on the radio.

The Wild Side Killer turned his attention back to his escape. A second later, he'd vanished into the trees.

That hadn't been Atta Boy's sidekick. The fake Chick. This Wild Side was taller. No, I knew instantly, that had been the Wild Side Killer himself. The real MacCoy, Chick's nemesis and ScareBear69 and Tinynip's murder. And I'd had a clear shot at him and wasted my last shot on a stupid tape recorder. Jesus! It could have all been over in that instant. I was such an idiot!

I was kicking myself for my stupidity as I sprinted back to Teeny. I threw McShootyFace in the trunk, climbed behind the wheel and peeled away. That had been him, that had really been him. The Wild Side Killer. Had it been him, too, that night up at the rest stop, playing the same tape? Had that psychopath been following me around the whole time? No, I'd broken the fake Chick's nose – let's call him McNugget – crashing Teeny into the front of his car. It'd been him that time, but now I'd laid eyes on the real deal. We'd forced him to do his own dirty work. That was something. Maybe Chick was right, he was panicked, making mistakes. If I'd had two shells in my gun... I'd bring extra ammunition next time, I told myself. Those are good words to live by.

But the BBS was back up and running. Had Wild Side seen what I was doing? I'd have take that chance. For now, I'd gotten out of that house alive and I had a full tank of gas. Business required that I be in Bellevue. I drove back to the freeway and pointed Teeny north.
Chapter 37

"I need a thousand dollars, Mom," I said over my noodles. We were in the sticky chicken joint in her office park – a Korean market that also did teriyaki. She was watching me eat and crying. I was starving and happy for the free food. There was nothing I could do about the crying.

"When I got a call from your friend..." She wiped her eyes. "...Freddie was it?"

"Eddie," I corrected after I swallowed.

"I just had no idea..."

"I'm all right, Mom." I lied. The busted lip and torn ear were hard to hide. If she knew I'd just fired a gun at a serial killer not two hours before, she'd have gone absolutely ballistic.

"And now you're asking for money? What's wrong, Honey? What's going on?"

"I need to bail my friend out of jail."

"Is it drugs? Are you into drugs?"

"What? No! Well, sort of..."

"I'm not giving you a thousand dollars to bail your druggy friend out of prison!" she barked, disgusted.

"He's not a–" I sighed. "I need his help to–" Explaining things wasn't going to help, either. Guilt. That's all I had. Use guilt. "You gave dad money."

Mom opened her mouth but didn't say anything. She started to cry again. "I had no idea..." she finally said through the tears.

"A eight-year-old would have known what he'd do with the money. You should have known. You don't remember?"

"Oh, I remember," she said, feigning some self-righteousness.

"Why'd you do it, Mom?" I asked, reaching for the soy sauce. "I mean, if you wanted to talk to me..."

"I tried talking to you – talking some sense into you. But, now look what's happened." She pointed at my face. "And your father and the police and now drugs..."

"There's no drugs. Mom. I'm not using drugs."

"Your friend Freddie is just as worried about you as I am."

"Eddie, and Eddie doesn't know what he's talking about."

"You need to come back," she said earnestly. "Come back to school, Honey. I don't know what sort of trouble you're messed up in, but you should have never been in Longview in the first place. Come September, you can pick up right where you left off."

I shook my head. "I'm not going back to school."

"You'd rather stay in Podunk, Washington? With your druggy friends? What kind of life is that?"

"They're not druggy..." It was pointless to argue, she wasn't listening. "I need a thousand dollars, Mom."

"I'm not going to give your money, dear. I'll give you anything else – help you in every way I can. But I'm not going to give your money. Not to spend in that way."

I'd finished my noodles. I threw my chopsticks down angrily. Where the hell was I going to get Chick bail, if not from mom? "What if I agreed to come back to Seattle?" I tried.

"Go back to school?" she answered, hopefully.

Evade. "Dad's in the VA in Portland. The house is Longview isn't fit for human habitation. I could come back to Seattle, get an apartment."

"You could move home and commute over the bridge to the university. Milly's daughter does it three times a week."

Not on your fucking life. "I can drive down to Portland to see dad. And I'd be out of Longview. For good. I just have to finished what I've started down there, before I go. I can't leave my friend in the lurch. He's counting on me, after all."

"With a thousand dollars?" Mom's resolve was dissolving.

I had to push the deal over the edge. "To get me back to Seattle? Back in school?"

That last bit was a lie, but I was genuine about the coming back to Seattle bit. Seeing Eddie, eating good yakisoba noodles, all reminded me what I was missing while I was wasting my time fixing Amigas for Spider. I could do that in Seattle. I could do that in Seattle and get paid three times as much.

I could come back to Seattle with Chick and solve murders for a living, too, even if that was just a Scooby Doo fantasy I'd created in my head.

"You'll pay me back?" Mom asked. I'd done it! "One day?"

"Of course."

That reminds me, I still owe mom a thousand bucks...
Chapter 38

After the bank and the "Oh, can we make it eleven hundred, 'cause I need gas" conversation, I pointed Teeny south and made directly for the Sheriff's Office. Sure enough, Sheriff Tush's judge friend had set Chick's bail at ten-grand and after a call to a bail-bondsman, and a bunch of paperwork, the sheriff was taking me down to Chick's cell.

Chick was seriously in a bad way. They'd taken his headphones – they'd taken everything – he was dressed in a set of bright orange scrubs. The cells were a mad house: drunks yelling; inmates arguing; a TV blaring over it all. Chick was curled up in a ball in the corner of a communal cell. God, I'd left him down here for almost twenty-four hours. I hadn't even considered how truly awful it might be. It was bad, even for a person with normal faculties, but for someone like Chick, it must have been a living hell.

"Chick? Chick? Can you hear me?" I yelled over the catcalls and general chaos that ensued the moment I stepped into the cells. Chick didn't move. "What the hell! Look at him?" I scolded the sheriff who was two steps behind me.

"I didn't–" the Sheriff began to apologize.

I had no time for that shit. "Open the door!" I rattled the bars. Chick didn't move. I was starting to get really scared. "Open the fucking door!"

Sheriff Tush waved to a deputy. Presently, the door swung open. The other occupants of Chick's cell eyed me and the Deputy's nightstick, warily. I ignored them, running over to Chick and shaking him by the shoulder.

"Chick!" I yelled in his ear. He came to life in a flail of limbs, smacking me in my bad ear. I screamed in pain and the Sheriff and the Deputy were on top of him, pulling him to his feet. When he was erect, I put my face in front of his, holding my bleeding ear. "Chick? Are you okay?"

He seemed to recover some of his wits. "Buzz?" he asked, yelling, confused. "I can't hear anything!"

"It's okay, Chick!" I bellowed, making a pantomime of moving my lips. "We're here to get you out!"

He didn't understand. He shook his head, bewildered.

Sheriff Tush didn't wait for me to explain it again. He and the deputy hauled Chick bodily out of the cell, upstairs, and into the office. Ten minutes of searching, and the deputy found Chick's headphones. I sat next to Chick and held his hand until the headphones arrived. He didn't move, didn't talk. He was a mess. A couple of nights sleeping in a basement, and a night in county, with no shower in between, had done nothing to help his appearance. When the deputy handed me the headphones, I snapped them into place over Chick's ears. His eyes flicked momentarily in response.

"What the hell was he doing down there?" I started, angrily. Now, with the headphones in place, I figured it'd be okay to talk.

"Waiting for you to post bail," the sheriff answered, defensively. "We don't have special cells for people who went to high school with the sheriff."

"It's a madhouse down there! You know Chick's situation."

"If I hadn't talked to the judge, Chick would have been on the bus to the real madhouse. Did you want that?"

"No, no, sorry," I backpedaled. "He's out now. He'll recover...I hope..." I looked into Chick's eyes, looking for a sign of life. He glared back. There he was. "Can I get his clothes? His stuff?"

"They're coming up now. Did you return the RTK's computer?" the sheriff asked, reminding me of the task I'd assigned myself.

"It's back up and running."

"And you think Atta Boy and the others will still use it?"

"They didn't notice it was gone. They have no reason to think we know anything about it." Except, the Wild Side Killer had watched me put it back. I didn't mention that to the Sheriff. The only reason he'd let Chick out of jail was to break the code on the BBS. If he thought it was a dead end, Chick would end up right back down in that holding cell.

"So, once Atta Boy logs in, we'll know where he is?" Tush asked.

"Where he's going to be, yes," I said. "But we need to break the code their using first. For that, I need Chick." I looked into Chick's eyes again. Could he hear any of this?

To decode the messages, we needed to catch a member of the RTK. But to catch a member of the RTK, we needed to decode the messages. It was another Kobayashi Maru, unless Chick could pull something out from between his headphones. Computers were my thing. Technology. Chick was the actual detective. Wasn't breaking codes part of being a detective?

Shit, it was a code thought up by a bunch of hillbilly racists. How complicated could it be? I'd get Chick home and then I'd take a look at it myself.
Chapter 39

Pretty fucking complicated, it turned out.

I got Chick back to his apartment. He seemed to recover some, back in familiar surroundings. I left him with a supply of Cheesy Peasy makings (thanks mom for the loan) and headed back to Nybbles and Bytes. Spider and McFly were there, but Moist was conspicuously missing. Twenty minutes later, he came hobbling in on his crutches and deposited his ass in the folding chair by the door.

I logged onto the BBS. No knew connections since I'd hooked it back up, but I downloaded all of ScareBear69's messages.

The codes: ENSFIC? LKETER? I could assume they were locations, since the times were written out, unencoded. But where to begin?

I moved the letters around like anagrams. Finsec? Ketler? Trekel? Nothing.

Maybe an acronym? Empty Non Specific Franchise In California? Lake Kinney East Town Electric Railroad? No, that was no good. Sort of the point of a code was that the two parties sending messages agreed on the format before hand. Just guessing words at random wasn't going to do it. I needed Chick.

But I knew I had to let Chick sleep off his night in the pokey. He'd looked bad on the ride home. Half scared to death, half sick to his stomach. I was worried about him. Perhaps I shouldn't have left him alone – no scratch that, if I knew anything about Chick, leaving him alone was the best thing for him.

I really had no idea what was wrong with him. I mean, in general, not just because he'd spend a night in jail. Harmonic Dissociative Aphasia? What the hell was that? Was that sick-in-the-head sick, or sick-in-the-head crazy? Was there even a difference? Riding in Teeny, to and from Seattle, he's seemed almost normal. Looking back now, it kind of makes sense. You see, now I have teenage kids. I've learned to have difficult conversations with them while in the front seat of a car. Particularly if they're actively trying not to communicate. They don't have to look you in the eye, that's the trick. They can stare out the window. And then, little by little, you start to get it all. Chick has a lot in common with a teenager who doesn't want to talk about their sex life. He's all inward looking and wrapped in layers of "fuck you" and "you suck." But unlike my teenage kids, there's actually something wrong with Chick – beyond just being an entitled little shit.

Maybe I shouldn't have left him alone? Maybe I shouldn't go back to his apartment until he was ready for company? I didn't know which way to jump. It wasn't like we had a truckload of time. If the Wild Side Killer had been brash enough to follow me out to Coal Creek, he'd be making other moves to cover his tracks or retaliate against us. At least now I had the cops on my side.

I had cops on my side! The plane carrying that realization finally landed. I was legit. Not official, maybe, but definitely legit. This was a real investigation now, not just me and Chick nosing around, looking like victims.

What did I want to know that the weight of "I'm working with the cops" could tell me? ScareBear69? The laptop? The disks? Her apartment? Tricks? Hooters? Nurse? The Hospital! ScareBear69 had worked as a nurse at the Good Shepard. I hadn't followed up on that angle in any fashion – until that moment, hadn't had any means to follow up on that angle. Now, I could waltz into that Hospital and flash my metaphorical badge and they'd tell me stuff. Like a real detective.

I grabbed my keys and started for the door.

"Where are you going?" Moist asked as I passed his table. I think it was the first time he'd directly addressed me since the screwdriver to the skull incident.

"What's it to you?" I replied, surprised.

"Off to see you best friend, Sick Chick?" Moist smirked. "Maybe helping him dig up a date?"

"Shut the fuck up, Moist," Spider said from behind the register.

"What happened to your face?" Moist asked

"Your cousin happened, that's what."

"Word is, Chick did that to you," Moist said in a sing-song voice. I restrained the urge to punch him in his fucking teeth. "Word is, you liked it."

"Moist, you son-of-bitch!" Spider was on his feet now. I raised a hand to silence him.

It disgusted me to do it, but I leaned in close to Moist's greasy ear. "You tell Atta Boy the cops know everything. If he's smart, he'll get out of town."

"Atta Boy is a legitimate business man," Moist replied, not looking at me. "Whatever you've told the cops, it will be his word against yours." He turned his head and looked up into my eyes. "And you're the one fooling around with corpses and Sick Chick. Nicole over at the morgue saw you. Something about a big, fat logger. How's that going to sound in court? You might have the cops fooled, sweet-cheeks, but you're a long way from having anything on ol' Atta Boy."

I could smell his breath and what years of drinking Coke from a two liter did to it. I was frantically trying not to gag. I didn't want to crack my kick-ass facade. But, fuck it, I had to admit, Moist was right. What did I have? Cops on my side or not. Chick's word against Atta Boy's? My word that it was McNugget in that mask, not Chick? No, the fix was already in. Any halfway decent lawyer would have Atta Boy free and clear in a court of law. No, Atta Boy was golden if the Oxycontin really was legit.

I needed the Wild Side Killer. I needed the guy behind it all.

Maybe Moist knew this and that's why he was smiling through his rotten teeth.

I straightened up and walked out of the door.
Chapter 40

"You said you're working with the police?" the Good Shepard's head administrator asked after we'd shaken hands. You wouldn't have recognizes me. I'd headed back to dad's and cleaned myself up. Gone was the bloody Gits T-shirt I'd been wearing for three days. I showered and put on a dress and a blouse. If I was going to pretend to be a cop, I figured I needed to look like one. I pulled out my samurai ponytail and brushed my hair down over my ears. I put makeup on the scar on my neck. There was still the stitches in my lip, but all-in-all I cleaned up pretty well. I, of course, was still only twenty-two and maybe looked like I was thirteen – there was no hiding that – but otherwise I could have passed for a lady cop. The Good Shepard's administrator seemed to buy it.

"Yes, my associate and I are helping the Sheriff's Department with the strangulation murder of one of your employees. We're technical consultants, but I had a few questions for you about the victim."

"Yes, of course," said the Good Shepard's head administrator. I'll call him Shep for short. "It's all so tragic. Please, sit down." He pointed to a chair. I sat. "How can I help?"

"I'm attempting to verify the victim's credentials. Do you know what type of nurse she was? RN? LPN?"

"No, not off the top of my head, but you are welcome to contact Human Resources."

"Would they have records of where she attended school?"

"Of course. All of our staff are fully licensed and vetted." Shep was starting to get defensive. I was not, after all, a real detective. I had no experience asking questions tangential to the information I actually wanted to know. In the years since, I've gotten pretty good at it, but back then, I just asked shit straight out. You can be pretty sure nobody ever answered a direct question truthfully. I was betting Shep wasn't.

"Did the victim's status here at the hospital give her access to drugs? The ability to proscribe narcotics?"

"What? I...what are you implying?" Now I'd really stepped in it, Shep was running scared.

"We're exploring the possibility that the victim was connected to the under-the-table distribution of Oxycontin."

At the sound of that word, Shep deflated in great relief. "Oh, then I'm sorry to disappoint you," he said happily. He wasn't. He was very happy to disappoint me. It was like the word Oxycontin had popped his anxiety bubble. He smiled. "Our pharmacy doesn't carry that prescription."

I was confused. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Oxycontin," he clarified. It didn't help. "We don't have it."

"How's that–" I started.

Shep cut me off. "That particular drug is still in clinical trials. We're not part of the program. I hear the results are promising, but Oxycontin is not yet in general distribution. If you were asking about more traditional opiates, then perhaps my hospital might be the source, but Oxycontin...if you have evidence of illegal Oxycontin distribution, the source will not be the Good Shepard."

Wait? What? Moist and his knee?

I was a fucking fool. Of course Atta Boy's cousin could get Oxy.

"I'm sorry if I implied..." I tried to backpedal. Shep didn't care, he was just happy the hospital was in the free and clear. "Could I get a copy of the victim's personnel file?" I asked, seeing how far Shep's good mood might take me.

"Of course," he said, reaching for his desk phone.

#

Well, that was a waste of time, I told myself, as I sat at the wheel of Teeny, in my itchy dress skirt and blouse, reading the personnel file. It was all gobbledygook to me, acronyms and code words for medical stuff. I could have asked Shep to decode it all for me, but I think I'd expended all the goodwill "I'm working with the cops" had earn me the instant I'd mentioned opioid thief.

If ScareBear69 was a honest-to-goodness nurse, what the hell was she doing hanging around with Mr. Tinynips and Atta Boy? Honest-to-goodness thugs. Tinynips could have been her boyfriend and he was most certainly a card carrying member of the RTK. But ScareBear69? Wasn't there some gangster ethic that you didn't mess around with another gangster's gun moll? Tinynips was still good for ScareBear69's murder. But, then who killed Tinynips? And why? More likely the Wild Side Killer strangled ScareBear69 – the MO fit – and Tinynips took umbrage to this. So, Tinynips had to go, too. That murder wasn't an act of passion, or sickness, and the Wild Side Killer had time to make it look like suicide.

But then there was the matter of the floppy disks. ScareBear69 had left them in Tinynips' truck. Tinynips could have taken them off her, if he had kill her. But if the Wild Side Killer had done the deed, then how'd the disks end up in Tinynips' truck? And all the way up on the Sleater Kinny (rocks!) road, of all places. And what was Tinynips doing up there? If he ended up dead down in Longview?

No, I was missing something. A big piece of the puzzle. Not just a piece, but a whole chunk of the puzzle's blue sky.

I wasn't going to know anywhere until we had Atta Boy, or McNugget, or the Wild Side Killer himself in custody. And we wouldn't have any of them until somebody screwed up and logged back onto the BBS.

And Chick still needed to figure out their meeting code.

And that meant Chick had to get up out of bed.

I was about to put the personnel file away and the keys in the ignition, when something made me stop. It was probably nothing, but one line, on one page of the file caught my eye like a little flash of blue amongst a pile of jumbled jigsaw pieces – listed as a professional reference on ScareBear69's job application was Dr. Mandelbrot.

Chick's boss knew ScareBear69? He hadn't mentioned that. But then, I hadn't thought to ask.
Chapter 41

I drove over to Chick's apartment and let myself in. The curtains were still drawn, and Chick lay in his cot. By all appearances, he hadn't moved since I left him. I checked the refrigerator. Sure enough, he hadn't eaten. I tried to wake him, but he only grumbled, rolling over and trying to go back to sleep.

"You have to eat," I told the back of his head.

He might have said something that was a vulgarity.

Okay, I needed Chick up, out of bed and solving puzzles, but I didn't know him well enough to guess if he was a 'Get out of bed, solider!' kind of guy. I doubted it. Screaming and Chick didn't seem to make a good combination. I looked at his headphones, hanging on hook beside his cot. No, definitely not yelling.

I pulled back the blinds. The afternoon sun flooded in.

Chick stirred, blinded and growled something that also sounded like a vulgarity.

"Come on, Chick," and I shook the socked foot that stuck over the end of the cot. "You can be damn sure the Wild Side Killer isn't sleeping."

Chick rolled onto his back. "The missing floppy disk," he said to the ceiling.

"What? What missing disk?" I asked. "The Telix disk? It was in the drive of the laptop."

"No, the missing floppy disk," Chick repeated. "The tenth disk in the set."

Now I remember Chick noting that there were only nine disks in the box we discovered in Mr. Tinynips' truck. "What about it?"

"Everything up until this point has been about that disk."

"What? How? We don't even know there is a tenth disk."

"Sometimes it is the absence of something that has the most significance. I think the least imperfect explanation for ScareBear69's murder is: there was a tenth disk in that box, its absence is somehow significant to the Wild Side Killer and the RTK. Everything that has transpired since is the result of their attempts to get that disk back."

"What makes you think that?"

"A night in the slammer tends to focus the mind. Unable to deal with the world outward, I was able to focus on the detail of the case, inward."

"I'm sorry," I started. "I had no idea it'd be that bad."

"It's not your fault, you didn't put me in that cell."

"No, but I could have gotten you out quicker."

Chick sat up, reached for his headphones and snapped them over his ears. "You needed money to post bail?" he said.

"Yes," I acknowledged.

"And you got it?"

"Yes," I said again.

"In Bellevue? From your mother?"

"Yes."

"That I can't see how you could have gotten me out of that cell any sooner than you did." Chick kicked his legs from under his sheets and tested them on the floor.

"Still, I'm sorry. It must have been hell."

"As I said," Chick stood up, dressed in T-shirt and boxer shorts. "A chance to review the case inward."

"And you think we're looking for a tenth floppy disk?"

"I do." He reached for his pants and pulled them on.

"Which is where?" I looked at the view out of the window, letting him dress.

"No idea," Chick had to admit.

"Great."

"But we know it wasn't in ScareBear69's possession when she was murdered."

"We don't?"

"We can assume. Or the Wild Side Killer would now have the disk and wouldn't have sent the RTK to break into Nybbles and Bytes to steal the other disks, hoping the tenth disk was still in the case."

"True."

"So the Wild Side Killer doesn't have it. And ScareBear69 didn't have it. And we know that the disk wasn't in her possession when she left her disk case, however inadvertently, in Mr. Tinynip's truck at some point in time before her murder."

"Or else it'd have been in the case for us to find and for the RTK to steal," I finished the loop.

"Exactly."

"Therefore?" I turned away from the window. Chick was dressed.

"Therefore, she disposed of the disk in some fashion prior to her ride in Tinynips' truck."

"What was on the disk?"

Chick looked baffled. As if that was a totally preposterous question. "I hadn't the faintest clue."

"Just that the RTK want it?" I was catching on. "And it's out there somewhere."

"Exactly," Chick smiled.

"Are you back?" I asked.

"I am back," Chick agreed.

"What do we do?" I asked.

"What do we know?"

"Oxycontin."

"Yes, Oxycontin..."

"The hospital doesn't have it."

"Which hospital?"

"Good Shepard. Where ScareBear69 worked. She wasn't stealing Oxycontin from the hospital for Atta Boy. I checked."

"You thought she was?" Chick scratched his chin.

"Someone must be."

"No, Atta Boy was adamant that his operation was legitimate. Stealing pills from the hospital would not fit into the category of legitimate."

"But the hospital said that Oxycontin is still in clinical trials. How else would he be getting his supply?"

"From the manufacturer, I assume," Chick mused.

"And then selling them on to Moist," I added excitedly, busting to share what I'd learned, "who didn't get his pills at the hospital when he hurt his leg. They're not in the clinical trial. He got them from Atta Boy."

"But if, as Atta Boy insisted, his operation is totally legitimate, Moist would need a prescription..."

"And a doctor's prescription..." It sunk in. Who better to pick up an extra prescription pad or two than a nurse in a busy hospital? "She wasn't stealing the drugs. She was stealing prescription pads for the drugs. Atta Boy has the supply, he just needs to make it look official."

"Or better yet," Chick went on. "Steal the curriculum vitae of a whole hospital of doctors. Then, mail order the pads. Might not such information fit on a floppy disk?"

I didn't have an answer to that. Chick might have been on to something. If Atta Boy was running a prescription mill – not exactly legitimate, but all the appearances of being legitimate – that might be reason enough to kill. Chick was right, we needed to find that disk. "How are we going to find it?" I asked, filled with a new energy. Finally, I felt like we might be one step ahead of the Wild Side Killer in this case. Finally, we might be acting and not reacting.

"The answer will be in those coded messages," Chick sat down at his kitchen table, took a ream of paper and a pencil out of his medic's bag and wrote out ENSFIC and LKETER on the top page. He sucked on the end of his pencil, thinking.

"No luck on the codes while you were...focused inward?" I asked, looking over his shoulder.

"No," Chick admitted. "I can't quite figure out where to begin..."

"My thoughts exactly. They're not anagrams. They're not acronyms."

"No, of course not," Chick dismissed with a snort.

I felt stupid. That was an hour of my life I'd wasted.

"But what?"

I could almost see the wheels in Chick's brain turning. This part of the detective process I didn't need to watch. I had nothing to contribute. The disk thing, however, had fired off a dozen ideas that I needed to run down. I made Chick a Cheesy Peasy and put it on a plate beside him. When I said goodbye, he didn't react, still chewing on the end of his pencil.

Maybe he didn't hear me through his headphones. Maybe he couldn't.
Chapter 42

I didn't see Chick again for three more days. I took it on faith that he was working on the codes, not back in his cot fast asleep. I ran down my leads and got nowhere. In retrospect, I can't even remember what I did. Ran around town, looking into this and that, testing hunches. It was shoddy form, not detective work at all. Back then, I didn't know any better. I hadn't been around Chick long enough to formulate any process to my thinking. I just did what popped into my head. Which was no way to run an investigation. Then or now.

Luckily, from all my dozen dumb ideas, one or two actually bore fruit. I checked the FTK's BBS system, with my LoppyBuddy01 account, twice a day. On the evening of the third day, someone had posted a new message. It was from then account I assumed was Atta Boy's, to an account belonging to some random RTK member. I couldn't read it, of course; it was just a time and date that night and a code. But the very existence of the new message meant that the RTK still believed the BBS was clean. They were still using it to set up face-to-face meetings.

I showed a printout of the message to Sheriff Tush, hoping it might prove my worth. He was suitably impressed. So impressed, in fact, that he asked me to put together a drive with all the BBS's messages on it, to pass along to the State Patrol Labs. They had a department that specialized in codes like this. I think Sheriff Tush had come to realize that rolling up the whole RTK might be quite the feather in his cap – future Portland Chief of Police kind of feather in his cap – and was more than willing to throw some public resources into collecting evidence.

The State Patrol Lab never did break the code. Luckily, I wasn't waiting around for them. Luckily, I had Chick.

Chick emerged from his three days of self-imposed hibernation, appearing early in the morning in the doorway of Nybbles and Bytes, headphones over his ears, medic's bag hung around his neck. Moist was mercifully absent. But Chick's appearance in broad daylight, after everything that had transpired, made the rest of us look up from our desks in surprise.

"I solved it," he said from the doorway, not stepping into the store.

"What? Really? Already?" I stammered.

"Yes, come on," he waved.

"What? Come? Where? What do the codes mean?"

Chick shook his head. "I needed to show you. Come on."

I'd asked enough dumb questions. I grabbed my bag and sprang gingerly out of the bullpen.

Chick didn't say a word as we climbed into Teeny.

"Where are we going?" I asked, pulling out onto the highway.

"Rocky Point," Chick answered.

"Where ScareBear69's body was found?"

"Correct."

That was all I could get out of him. We rode in silence all the way out, past Kelso, along Pacific Avenue to Rocky Point. Maybe Chick was testing a theory and didn't want to look stupid if it didn't pan out. Maybe, despite all evidence to the contrary, Chick had a flare for the dramatic. Either way, I drove until Chick called out, "Pull over here."

I did.

We'd just passed under the railroad tracks. We were at a T-junction, overlooking the Cowlitz River. ScareBear69's body had been found down one of the dirt paths near here, maybe down on the river bank, by a woman out for a morning jog. It was a secluded spot, no homes for miles and light traffic.

I could barely get Teeny clear of the blacktop. Hopefully no semis came speeding around the blind corner.

Chick climbed out of the car and stood in the middle of the intersection. He took off his headphones and appeared to listen to the silence. He looked happy. Satisfied. "Here," he said.

"Here? What?" I asked, slamming Teeny's gargantuan door. "This is where they found ScareBear69's body?"

"Yes, down there somewhere," Chick waved at the river. But he wasn't interested in the crime scene, he was looking around at the trees. At least, I think he was looking at the trees. "But here. Here's where they met."

"Who?"

"ScareBear69 and her killer."

"On the street?"

Chick nodded.

"How'd she get way out here?" I looked around, trying to see what Chick could see. "She didn't have a car."

"Presumably, someone drove her."

"But not her killer, because they made plans to meet here."

Chick nodded.

"What does this have to do with the codes?"

"I was having trouble decoding the messages because I was having trouble figuring out where to begin," Chick said, almost announced. He was enjoying himself, explaining the mystery. He was relishing his 'the Butler did it' moment. Didn't like Sherlock Holmes, my ass. "But then I realized, the beginning of the mystery wasn't nearly as important as the mystery's end."

He was talking in riddles. I hate this part of Chick's process. "The end?" I asked, playing along.

"Yes," Chick sucked in a great, happy lungful of air. "The last message in ScareBear69's inbox is, self-evidently, the last message she received. From the time stamp of the message, we know it was the time and date of her death. Presumably, her killer set up the fatal date. And we can assume the encoded location specified the place where her body was found. Dr. Mandelbrot's autopsy, despite uncovering other disturbing facts, showed no indication that the body was moved."

"So ENSFIC is here." I looked around again. ENSFIC? There was graffiti on the railroad bridge, but other than learning that Joey hearted his Sweet Cheeks, I was at a loss.

"Yes," Chick nodded, then added cryptically. "And again, it wasn't the beginning that mattered, but the end."

I turned in the circle trying to find what I was missing. Chick wouldn't be playing this game if the solution wasn't staring me in face. But I just wasn't getting it.

"The end of what?" I finally asked.

"What street is this?" Chick asked, point at the blacktop.

"Pacific Avenue," I answered.

"And that?" He pointed at the other T of the T-junction.

"Ugh..." I squinted to see the street sign. "Cowlitz Gardens," I read.

"Yes, exactly. ENSFIC. The corner of Pacific and Cowlitz Gardens."

I still hadn't gotten it. ENSFIC? PaciFIC. Oh hell! It had been staring me right in the face. Right on the road signs. The end of each street name: ENS – Cowlitz GuardENS. FIC – PaciFIC. That was the code. Man, it was so simple is was insanely complex.

"This is it!" I hopped up and down in joy. Chick beamed in triumph. "This is ENSFIC! You broke the code!"

"I did," Chick struck an almost heroic pose. But the moment was ruined when a car came fast around the curve and loudly honked at Chick. He stumbled off the blacktop to the safety of the shoulder.

I was excited. Exhilarated. Wait until Sheriff Tush heard about this. "Then what about LKETER?" I asked, taking Chick's arm as he skidded in the loose gravel.

"Ah, yes, well..." Chick hedged.

"You haven't decoded that one?" I realized.

"Well, you see, there are an awful lot of streets in Longview..." Chick waved a non-specific wave. "We can assume the codes represent predetermined meeting locations. The members of the RTK only have to test against a few options. We have the whole street alas of Longview to study."

"You don't know what intersection LKETER means? It could be anywhere in Longview?"

"Or really anywhere. Tinynips met his end in Olympia, remember? Since that's where we found his truck. We can assume that rest stop was a prearranged meeting place with its own code."

"Then, you broke the code, but we still haven't really broken it?" Sheriff Tush would be a lot less interested in this development.

"Frankly, yes. I'm sorry." He finally sounded more measured. More humble. He returned his headphones to his ears.

"Unless," I thought out loud as I opened Teeny's door.

Chick paused at his door. "Unless what?"

"Unless there's a database of streets names on a computer somewhere – and there must be. We can enter in our three character suffixes and we'll have our intersection..."

"You can do that?" Chick asked, shocked.

"We can do that," I acknowledged.

"Amazing," Chick smiled.

"Feel bad for insulting computers now?" I asked when we were back inside Teeny.

"No," Chick answered, missing the rhetorical nature of my question. "But I will admit. They are...useful."

I smiled and started Teeny's engine.
Chapter 43

Turns out the Washington State DOT had just that sort of street database and a few strings pulled by Sheriff Tush got me access. Unfortunately, it was just a big data dump, with no serious means to query it – certainly no means to query the last three characters of each street name. And even though the database contained longitude and latitude data, it didn't have any information on which street crossed what. A query against IFC and ENS could easily return a Pacific Avenue and Cowlitz Gardens in entirely different corners of the state.

I was in the process of writing up some Perl code to, at the very least, narrow the focus to streets in the same town, when I got bad news from the VA hospital. My Dad had taken a turn for the worse. I forget what. Blood clot? Embolism? Aren't those sort of the same thing? Anyway, I dropped what I was working on and drove Teeny to Portland.

So, I guess I said there was no teary, hospital bedside scene in this book, but there is this part. But it's not at the end, and Dad never gets better. And I wasn't all teary-eyed. I was just sitting at his bedside as the machines went beep, looking at the bandages over his face. I'm not quite sure what I was doing there. That could have been anyone under those wrappings. He wasn't awake, he didn't know I was there. But somehow, I felt I needed to be by his side.

Twenty minutes of sitting there and I started thinking, who was to blame for all this?

I could blame myself. If I hadn't dropped out of school, mom wouldn't have been bitching at me the whole time and I wouldn't have moved down to Longview to get away from her and mom wouldn't have sent dad that money to talk to me about moving back. Without that money, dad would have never gotten drunk and wrapped his truck around that tree.

No, that just didn't sit right.

I could blame mom. She'd sent him that money. That was like giving a drowning man a glass of water. Without that cash, he wouldn't have been out at 2 a.m., driving drunk.

No, that didn't sit right either. Mom didn't pour the Grand Marnier down his throat. Whatever she'd done, no matter how stupid, it hadn't put dad in the hospital.

I could blame dad. Yeah, that sat much more comfortably in my conscience. I mean, he'd been trying to kill himself for years, what with the drink and the smoking and not eating a fucking decent meal. Today was just the day that he'd finally got the job done, that was all. Crashed his truck into a tree. On a dark, country road in the middle of the night.

But...

Yeah, there was that but bouncing around in the back of my head. He'd spent twenty years driving drunk down that dark, country road in the middle of night. If he had one, real skill it was getting back from a bar alive. Sometimes he couldn't stand, sometimes he couldn't walk, but somehow he was always able to drive.

What had been different that night?

I didn't get a chance to contemplate the answer. A nurse came in and picked up dad's chart. I didn't look up, just starring at my dad's bandages. It wasn't until the nurse pulled up a chair and took a seat at the end of the bed, that I realized something was amiss.

When I saw the shiny, silver pistol, I looked up.

The disguise was pretty good, but the swastika tattoos on the back of his hands were a dead giveaway.

Atta Boy glared at my from under a bushy blonde wig. "You look like shit," he said.

"You look like Kris Kristofferson," I said back.

Atta Boy just glared.

"Shoot that in here and there'll be trouble," I nodded at the gun.

"Don't worry, this is a social call," he answered. "A parley. The gun is just insurance."

"You know the sheriff is on your ass. They know that wasn't Chick at the logging yard."

"We figured. How'd you find the house?"

"You're not the only one who can follow people around. You follow me here?"

"No, I made sure you'd get a call. Come running." I looked at dad, concerned. "Don't worry, he's okay. I mean, no worse than before. I just needed you out of Longview. We need to talk."

"About the Wild Side Killer?" I sat back in my chair. If Atta Boy was going to kill me, he'd had shot me in the back of the head. He was serious.

"About you and Chick backing the fuck off."

"It's not Chick and me you have to worry about."

"Like hell," Atta Boy spat. "You don't think we can handle Barney Fife and Mayberry Gang on our own? Shit, girl, the RTK has been running Longview for the last ten years. Until you showed up and started asking questions..."

And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling kids... Christ. "Chick and I aren't going anywhere."

"You know," Atta Boy pointed at my neck. "The next guy who comes up behind you with a garrote might be the real Wild Side Killer. He won't be so easy to fend off."

"You trying to scare me?" I smiled.

"I'm trying to save your life, girl. And mine."

"A prison cell is a pretty safe place, I hear."

"From the Wild Side Killer?" Atta Boy laughed. "I think you've seen how he handles dissent."

"ScareBear69? Mr. Tinynips? Are there anymore? Is he really the Wild Side Killer?" I asked.

Atta Boy shook his head. He didn't know, or didn't care. "Who he is is someone out to get your friend, Chick. He wants it all blamed on Chick. That I know. ScareBear69. You. All the Wild Side Killings. There's some bad-blood there that goes way back. It's more than business, it's personal."

"With Chick?"

Atta Boy nodded. "All I'm saying is you don't want to get caught in the blast radius, if you know what I mean."

"Everyone is so concerned about my safety."

"No, but let me tell you: this is bigger than Longview, girl. What I told you when you came around asking questions was the truth. This whole business is legitimate now. Legitimate because they say it's legitimate. They get to decide. A couple dead girls aren't going to change anything. A couple dead girls are only going to get in the way. All I'm saying is, that if Wild Side doesn't get you. You're still going to get got for sticking your nose where it doesn't belong."

"Now you are scaring me," I said sarcastically.

"Good," Atta Boy climbed to his feet and returned the silver pistol to his scrubs. "Then you'll take my advice. Be gone. I hear Seattle is calling you. I'd answer that call."

And with that, Atta Boy moved quickly for the door. I didn't get up or try to follow. I just sat there and watched dad breathe.

The words If Wild Side doesn't get you, you're still going to get got rang in my ears.
Chapter 44

I didn't like that. I didn't like the threats, I didn't like Atta Boy showing up in my dad's hospital room. Once the shock wore off, I got mad. I wanted to see those RTK assholes behind bars, and I had the motive, method and opportunity to accomplish it.

But I had to be careful. If Chick and I played the hacked BBS card to soon, the Wild Side Killer could easily slip through our fingers, and all we'd end up with was Atta Boy and his crew. Sheriff Tush would be happy enough, but Chick would be nowhere, just right back to square one. All of this had begun because Chick wanted to catch the Wild Side Killer. If ScareBear69 had really been murdered by him, it meant catching the Wild Side Killer or nothing. I would have to lay off on my grudge. Atta Boy and the RTK didn't really matter.

We needed to smoke out told Wild Side, dangled some sort of carrot out there big enough to attract his attention. And we knew exactly the carrot the might get the job done – though exactly what that carrot was, or rather what was on it, was still a mystery.

If we could find the missing floppy disk from ScareBear69's box, we'd have our carrot, everything we needed to flush out the Wild Side Killer. We just need to find it. And that meant figuring out exactly when and where it left ScareBear69's possession. And why.

To that score, we had no leads.

But we were getting a regular flow of messages through the RTK's BBS. With some time since Chick's kidnapping and the Sheriff's Department was keeping a low profile (at our behest), the RTK were growing bolder and bolder, meeting here and there for this and that. My Perl code wasn't perfect. We were deciphering maybe one in every three or four communications. And when we did get a hit, the lead time to get the authorities in place to stake out a certain intersection was far too long. We missed opportunities as the Sheriff's Department dithered.

It was no way to run an operation. Despite the danger of dealing with the RTK directly, Chick and I soon realized we'd have to take matter into our own hands.

While we waited for the RTK to set up a meetings, we focused on decoding ScareBear69's backlog of messages.

My code was having no luck with the LKETER code. There could have been a typo in the WSDOT's database or something. It took me a while, but I quickly realized that the RTK were spelling out numbered streets without using the ordinal. Fivefive for Fifty-fifth Street, for example. Once I exported the WSDOT data and imported with the corrected street numbers, the code's hit ratio improved dramatically.

Still, that didn't help with the LKETER code.

With other messages, the intersection was easy to decode: 7-Eleven here, bowling alley there. There was a lot of repetition, ScareBear69 had less than a dozen unique locations in the entirety of her message history. Chick and I checked out each one personally, even hanging around in case we caught a break. No such luck. The RTK might have reused codes and locations, but it was possible they changed out the whole set every so often, agreeing to a new batch verbally, in person. New codes coming in did not match up to codes used by ScareBear69.

We did find a code, TONACH, attached to a message dated the night of the break-in at Nybbles and Bytes. It didn't take much guessing what was at the intersection of Washington and Ocean Beach that interested the RTK.

Finally, we got ahead of the curve. A message came in, from the account I assumed was Atta Boy's, to an account I was guessing belonged to the Wild Side Killer. TENTON. I didn't need to run my Perl code to decode that one; I'd seen it before and was starting to get the hang of the codes: Tenth and Washington. The Triangle Bowling Alley. This was it, this was the break we were looking for. Atta Boy and Wild Side out in public, no hiding behind woolen masks. It'd take forever to get the Sheriff's Department geared up for a state-out, but we didn't need them. Chick and I could handle this on our own. We just had to get one good look at the Wild Side Killer, and we could begin the next phase of our plan.

Chick came up with the idea of introducing our own fake codes to the BBS. Technically, it was pretty easy. Fake a message from Wild Side to the Atta Boy, setting up a meeting here or there. Or even better, vice versa and somehow let it be known that Atta Boy had found the missing floppy disk.

Knowing the site of a meeting beforehand would give the sheriff and his deputies plenty of time to setup. We could lay a trap and catch the RTK – Wild Side et al. – unawares. If we did it right, it might mean no shooting. If we did it right, it might mean we could catch the Wild Side Killer alive.

Chick might finally find out what fate befell Beth.

So, that's how Chick and I found ourselves sitting in the front seat of Teeny, way at the far end of the Triangle Bowling Alley's parking lot, with binoculars resting on the dash. The message had specified 10:30, but Chick and I got there at 8 p.m. We didn't want to miss anything. We only paused in our vigil at nine, to eat our dinner: me, my requisite cheeseburgers; Chick, his requisite Cheesy Peasies wrapped in foil.

"Buzz," Chick began to say something. He stopped and changed tack. "You know, I never asked why everyone calls you Buzz? Is it short for something?"

I groaned. This question always came up eventually. I hated it. "Yeah, it's short for Busby. You know, like the fur hat the Buckingham Palace guards wear."

"You're parents named your Busby?" Chick smiled, chewing on a Cheesy Peasy.

"No, that's the family name. The Busby's of Bellevue."

"Then, your dad's Buzz, too? You're Buzz Junior?"

"I guess." I was. I hated it. I think dad had wanted a real Buzz Jr., but he'd ended up with me. Still, it'd meant he'd taught me to hunt and fish and shoot and keep an old car running. None of that was half bad.

"Then what's your first name?" Chick asked.

"My mom named me after her favorite Bobbie Gentry song. You know," and I began to sing tonelessly, "Just be nice to the gentleman Fancy/ And they'll be–"

Chick winced his pain. My singing wasn't bed, but it was torture to Chick.

After adjusting his headphones, Chick contemplated what I'd just said, then ask with disgust, "Wait, your mother named your after a character in a song about a mother selling her daughter into prostitution?"

"Yeah, fucked up, right?" I said around the last of my cheeseburger.

"Wait, so your real, full name is Fancy Busby?" Chick laughed.

"Yeah, fucked up, right?" I said again, with significantly less mirth.

"Oh, Lord. No wonder everyone calls your Buzz."

"Yeah, it makes cashing a check at the bank an adventure."

"It'd be a handicap, I'll give you that."

"I think dad thought it would toughen me up. You know, like the kid in A Boy Named Sue..."

Chick looked at my blankly. I guess pop-folk wasn't really Chick's thing.

I didn't sing this time "I gave you that name and said goodbye/I knew you'd have to get tough or die...but my dad didn't run off when I was three. Sometimes I think I'd have been better off if he had."

"Stern?"

"No, a fall down drunk," I frowned. "He was all right when he was sober. But he wasn't sober much."

"But you moved down here to live with him, no?"

"I did. To get away from mom."

"She drink, too?"

"I wish. Just interferes. One thing about a man who drinks – he doesn't much interfere in other people's business."

"It sounds like your mother wants you to make something of yourself. That doesn't sound like interfering."

"I don't know. I don't know why she can't just leave well enough alone."

"Parents disproportionately feel the weight of their children's successes and failures. Witness how ecstatic a parent is to watch a child walk for the first time. That might be a lifetime ago for the child, but for the Mother, it's only yesterday. She must reconcile that child with the adult the child has become. It distorts the vision."

"Does that turn you into a controlling bitch?"

"If you like."

"I just wish...I just want to live my own life."

"And you will. And your mother will have to come to terms with that. Just as you have to come to terms with your father living his own life. For better or worse."

"I won't for long," I admitted.

"What? Why?"

"He wrapped his truck around a tree, a few weeks ago, before your got kidnapped. He's in VA in Portland."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Chick looked at me, distressed.

"Don't worry about it."

Chick turned his attention back to the bowling alley entrance. A car was pulling into the parking lot. Chick reached for his binoculars. I did the same.

"He's not going to make it," I said as the car's door opened and Atta Boy climbed out.

"Then, you're going to have to come to terms with that, too," Chick replied, not lowering his binoculars. We watched as Atta Boy crossed the parking lot and stepped into the bowling alley. "It's not your fault," Chick said, finally lowering his glasses. "You'll have to realize that and move on. Just as your mother will have to do the same about you and school."

I left it at that. I didn't want to talk about dad in the first place. I don't know why I had. I looked at my watch. "He's early."

"Now, we just need to wait for his compatriot." Chick put the binoculars back to his eyes.

"You stay calm, okay? Atta Boy could be meeting anybody. I'm only guessing that the account this message went to was the Wild Side Killer's."

"I honestly am ready for anything," Chick said from behind his spy glasses. "If Nicole pulled up, I would not be surprised."

I laughed. "I wouldn't put it past her."

We waited. And waited. And waited. No more cars arrived at the bowling alley. I started to get the feeling that something had gone wrong.

"What's going on in there?" I asked no one in particular. "Did Atta Boy get stood up on his date?"

Then, with five minutes still to go before the specified meeting time, Atta Boy came out of the bowling alley and walked back to his car.

Chick lowered his binoculars and looked at me. I looked at him. Shit!

"He was already in there!" I said, reaching for the car door.

The Wild Side Killer had beaten us to the alley. What? Had he been waiting in there all day? We thought we were getting the drop on him, but he'd gotten the drop on us.

Chick grabbed my shoulder, pulling me back. "Wait! Wait, for Atta Boy to leave. If he sees us here, he'll know we've broken his code."

So I waited until Atta Boy had started his car, backed out of his parking spot, driven to the edge of the highway, waited for traffic to clear, then pulled out onto the road.

Then I threw Teeny's door open and sprinted toward the bowling alley. Chick was right behind me. I crashed through the front doors, frantically scanning the room. The place was packed. League night. Perfect cover.

"Damn it!" I turned in a circle looking for any recognizable face.

Chick came in through the front doors, out of breath. Running certainly wasn't his thing.

"It could be anybody!" I waved my hands at the bowlers in disgust.

"We didn't see anybody leave, Wild Side must be here." Chick looked around, climbing on his toes to see over the crowd.

"They set it up like this."

"Do you think they know? That we were watching?"

"No, I'm sure this is how they always operate. If we'd been in here...seen who Atta Boy had been talking to..."

"We can't let him go – we can't let him get away," Chick said, his agitation growing. To know the Wild Side Killer was in the room, but not to know who or where...

"He's gone Chick," I had to finally admit. "He must have slipped out the back."

Chick looked at the front door, contemplating a sprint back to the car. But it was hopeless. "We were so close," he said.

"We were so close," I repeated.
Chapter 45

We weren't, but we didn't know it. We had no idea exactly how many steps the Wild Side Killer was ahead of us.

But we had verified that we'd successfully decoded the RTK's cypher, and that was something. Seriously something. Sheriff Tush thought it was something, too. He'd stuck his neck out for us, what with letting Chick out of jail. Considering the number and nature of the charges against Chick, it was nothing sort of a leap of faith. But the amount of rope that the sheriff was going to give us to hang ourselves was pretty limited. Criminal case aside, Chick was still facing the issue of a competency hearing.

That chicken came to roost a few days after our failure at he bowling alley. Sheriff Tush called me into the station. Waiting in his office, was social worker Spork in all her clipboard glory.

"I thought Chick was a police matter, now," I said as I took a seat in front of the sheriff's desk.

"A criminal investigation does not absolve social services of its duties in oversight," Spork said, already annoyed. I got the feeling the Sheriff and Spork had already had words.

"I told Ms. Spork here that Chick has been very helpful in our current investigation," the sheriff said.

"You mean, that you'd have nothing on the RTK without Chick? Is that what you mean?"

The sheriff didn't answer, but I got the impression that that was about the size of it.

"May I remind you both, that you're cooperating with a murder suspect in the investigation of the exact murder the suspect is accused of committing. Even if Mr. Chick is absolved of all wrongdoing and the actual culprit it brought to justice, any competent defense attorney will have field day with your behavior. You've essentially torpedoed any possible conviction of ScareBear69's killer, Mr. Chick or otherwise. And if Mr. Chick is proved correct and it is the Wild Side Killer...you would both be responsible for putting a serial killer back on the streets."

I hadn't thought of that. I looked at Sheriff Tush. He hadn't thought of that either. We both looked sick.

Spork went on, content with our silence. "All right, after reviewing the security footage of the assault at the lumberyard, I might be willing to agree that Mr. Chick should not be behind bars. But Mr. Chick is a sick man who should be undergoing treatment. His return to St. Bartholomew's would go a long way to prove in a court of law that the Cowlitz County Sheriff is taking this investigation seriously."

"You can't send Chick back there," I interrupted. "He'd rather go back to jail!"

"If Mr. Chick is serious about catching the Wild Side Killer – or putting the whole Ran Tan Klan behind bars, or whatever the end game you all see in this mess – he'd be contributing most from a bed at St. Bartholomew's."

I didn't know what to say. I had no words to express my anger. I looked at Tush, imploring him to intervene.

But Tush had is own tush to consider. If he rolled up the RTK, but they walked because of a hung jury, his tenure as a sheriff would be all too brief. "Perhaps it would be for the best if..." he began.

"No, no!" I said adamantly. "We're not deciding Chick's fate. The three of us, here and now. You can't lock up Chick because him walking around...looks bad..."

"We're trying to catch a murderer here, Buzz," Tush waffled.

"And Chick's done nothing wrong!" I couldn't believe I had to explain this to anyone.

"A voluntarily commitment would certainly have better optics," Spork went on, ignoring me. "If you could convince him..." She eyed me cautiously.

She'd better. If there hadn't been a cop in the room, I'd have punched her in her fucking, smug face. "I won't," I said, point blank. "I need him." I didn't. I could encode and insert a fake message into the BBS myself. In fact, I was the only person who could. But I wasn't about to take Chick out of the game, this close to the final inning. He'd earned the right to see things through. Optics be damned.

"For what?" Spork snorted.

"If we're going to lure out the Wild Side Killer, we need the missing floppy disk that he's been killing everybody to find. To find that, we have to decode one last cypher. Only Chick can do that." That wasn't entirely untrue. Maybe more true that I understood at the time. I didn't know then that the LKETER would lead us to the lost floppy disk, but I had a hunch. "Maybe we should pick up one of the RTK," I said.

Tush and Spork looked at each other. "What? Why?" the sheriff asked. "Won't that expose the BBS hack?"

"No, the RTK can't read each other's messages. We send a code to a low level soldier, it'll look like coincidence that he walks into a dozen deputies taking a coffee break. I can erase the message right afterward, anyway, if they got it in their heads to do some sort of forensics."

"What's that got to do with Mr. Chick?" Spork asked.

"We'll get a member of the Ran Tan Klan to flip, and that will be the evidence presented in court. Chick's involvement in the case will be irrelevant." This was all total bullshit. Just like Atta Boy, no RTK solider was going to flip on Wild Side. They were far too scared. But Chick and I needed McNugget, or some other RTK thug in the pokey to set our trap. So, if I could use something we needed anyway to keep Chick out of St. Bartholomew's, all the better. Two bird, one stone and all that.

I should have gone into politics.

Tush and Spork spent a moment contemplating my proposal. I wouldn't sell Spork. She had some weird hard-on for putting Chick back in St. Bartholomew's. Maybe she really thought Chick was dangerous, or many she was just some pencil-pushing shit heel on a power trip. It didn't matter. The sheriff had the badge and the gun. Chick would go back to St. Bartholomew's on his say so. And Chick and I had one strong check in our plus column – we'd produced results.

"You really think we can get one of the RTK to flip?" Tush asked.

"I think it's a hell of a lot better option that locking up an innocent man in the loony bin."

There was wisdom in those words.
Chapter 46

We set it up for that evening. I used the same code that Atta Boy had used with the Wild Side Killer – the bowling alley. But this time, the sheriff and his deputies would arrive extra early, parking their squad cars around back. They even went to the trouble of renting a couple of lanes and bowling a few frames. We made it look like its was somebody's birthday. Nachos. Cake.

I sent the code to the account I was hoping was McNugget's. If there was one guy I wanted to be sure ended up in jail, it was the little shit who'd split my bottom lip in two. Beside, I'd seen his face that night I'd sprung Chick from the basement. Only for a second, but I was pretty sure I'd recognize him again. Chick had seen him plenty, bringing him food. But the Sheriff was wary of involving Chick anymore in the case, after what Spork had insinuated. He didn't want anything to go down that might force Chick's name to come up in court.

So, Chick sat this one out. I sat in the bar drinking a light beer.

At the appointed time, McNugget came into the bowling alley, still favoring the ribs I'd cracked at the lumberyard and a Band-Aid over the nose I'd broke at the rest stop. I took a sip of beer. I was going to enjoy this.

He looked around, expecting Atta Boy. He spied the Sheriff Department's bowling party. It literally stopped him in his tracks. It was the craziest thing. I'd heard to the idiom, of course, but to see someone literally stop in his tracks. McNugget froze, foot mid-step, like he wanted to put it down on the ground in front of him but dared not. Then he seemed to rewind, like a VHS tape run backward. The stride reversed, the hanging foot returning to the spot where it'd originated. McNugget turned for the door.

There was deputy right behind him. A big fella, with a gray mustache. He even had a plastic cup of beer in each hand. That was a nice touch, even I originally thought it was a coincidence. But the deputy's linebacker stance was a giveaway. McNugget ran right into the large deputy's chest and bounced off. The deputy didn't even spill his beers.

McNugget hit the ground and three deputies were instantly on him. They cuffed him and hauled him back up onto his feet. I resisted the urge to run over there, stick my finger in his face and scream "How do you like that, fucker?" But I knew I couldn't. Any sign that this arrest was prearranged would undermine the BBS hack. I just had to sit there and grin, sipping my light beer. McNugget screamed in pain, complaining about his ribs. The deputies paid him no heed.

"How'd you like that, fucker?" I said into my beer. I couldn't help but take some pleasure in the fact it was me who'd broken those ribs.

With the arrest made, the deputies cleared out of the bowling alley. I waited for the party to be over and walked leisurely back to Teeny, happy in the knowledge that the hunt for the Wild Side Killer had finally bore fruit, no matter how small.

I slowly drove back toward the station, taking a scenic route and contemplating our next move. The fake cypher had been a success. Chick a I needed one of the RTK in custody, so we could leak the fact we had the missing floppy disk in our possession – I mean, after we really did have the missing floppy disk in our possession. But having the opportunity to test out a fake cypher had been important too. There could have easily been something about the formatting or dates of the messages that validated their authenticity. Something we hadn't picked up on. But McNugget had swallowed our lure, hook line and sinker. I could send a message to any member of the RTK, from any member of the RTK and set up a meeting – a meeting where the Sheriff's Department would lie in wait. We had our trap, we now just needed our bait. The floppy disk, the only thing that would bring the Wild Side Killer out of hiding.

Still, neither Chick nor I had any idea where it was or what it was. That was a big, fricking hole in our plan. Without the disk...well, we really didn't have shit. And Sheriff Tush only had so much patience. And when his patience ran out, it'd be a one way trip back to St. Bartholomew's for Chick.

I made a right onto Main, and as I did, I noted a blue Corolla behind me. I'd noticed the same Corolla behind me when I'd left the Triangle Bowling Alley. The Corolla was making a right with me.

My stomach tightened. Ever since I'd agreed to help Chick, that day in the parking lot in front of Nybbles and Bytes, I'd had every reason to suspect that I was being followed. The rest stop in Sleater Kinney (rocks!), the lumberyard, the house up on Coal Creek. The Wild Side Killer and RTK were always one step ahead of me, aware of my movements, ready to beat me to the punch. But this was the first time I'd actually caught sight of my tail. If they'd followed me to the bowling alley, if they knew I was there to witness McNugget's arrest, that meant the whole plan was blown. But with McNugget in custody, who could be driving the blue Corolla behind me? I'd been him up at the rest stop. When I'd backed Teeny into his car and broke his nose. Was this Atta Boy? Another, random member of the RTK? Sure, but I remembered the house out in the woods, the radio in the kitchen playing Take a Walk on the Wild Side. That'd had been him. The real deal. He'd followed me then, shown a special, personal interest in me.

If that was the Wild Side Killer back there in that car...

I quickly contemplated my options. Teeny was surly faster than any 1980s Corolla. I could shake him. But I didn't want to shake him, I wanted to catch whoever was driving that car. I could call the Sheriff, setup a road block. But that'd mean stopping the car, getting out, making a call. God, if we'd only had cellphones back then. I remembered Rusty McShootyFace in the trunk. But I hadn't bothered to buy any more shells. Once again, I had a clear shot at the Wild Side Killer and was inconveniently out of ammunition.

I took a deep breath. I was overreacting. Just because that blue car had made two or three of the same turns, didn't mean it was following me.

I guess there was one way to find out.

I slammed my foot down on the gas.

Until that moment, I hadn't really understood exactly how much horsepower a 574-cubic-inch engine put out. If I had, I certainly wouldn't have floored the gas like that on a busy street. Teeny leapt forward like a greyhound out of the gate. I was hurtling, out-of-control toward the car in front of me. I screamed and somehow managed to swerve into oncoming traffic. There, a pickup truck was bearing down on me. I swerved again, back into my lane, cutting off the car I'd almost rear-ended. It didn't feel like I was driving, Teeny seemed to be dodging through the traffic intuitively, but my hands were on the wheel, my foot on the gas. I looked back. Sure enough, the Corolla was trying to follow.

I threw the wheel hard right – at least I think I did it, it was hard to say exactly if my hands had moved the wheel, or if the wheel had moved under my hands. Teeny hit the curb hard and sprang into the air, flying over the sidewalk and landing in the parking lot of a strip mall. I didn't take my foot of the gas, careening left and right, dodging parked cars. I hit the sidewalk on the other side of the parking lot, caught air once again and landed on Catlin Street, heading back toward town.

I looked in the rear view and could see no sign of the blue Corolla. No surprise, if he'd followed me through that parking lot, he'd have torn off his axles. Only Teeny was stout enough the take such punishment. I eased off the gas and took a right, then a right again and came back onto Main. Sure enough, right in front of me, traffic was piled up. The blue Corolla had cut across traffic to follow, but hung up on the curb.

It was time to turn the tables.

I swerved Teeny up onto the sidewalk, her great engine roaring like a beast as I stepped on the throttle. I could see the passenger door of the Corolla square in the sights of my Chevot hood ointment. Feebly, the reverse lights of the blue car flashed to life the millisecond before Teeny broadsided the import. The car did a three sixty and crashed into the center of the road.

I threw Teeny into park and popped the trunk. I walked around and retrieved McShootyFace and racked the slid, if only for appearances. I strolled over to the blue Corolla, all bad-ass and everything.

I leveled the gun at the smashed passenger side window, bending forward to peer inside. My adrenalin was pumping, I had a gun in my hands. I was ready for anything.

"Mom?" I asked the driver of the wrecked car.

"Hi, Fancy," she answered, blood streaming from her broken nose.
Chapter 47

Yeah, that one was hard one to explain to the sheriff. Luckily, mom was okay. She'd been wearing her seat belt and I'd caved in the passenger's side door, not the driver's. She had a bloody nose, but not broken, and a painful crick in her neck. But otherwise she was okay. The paramedics checked her out and let her go. A tow truck came for the Corolla. Teeny, of course, was totally undamaged. Not even a scratch on the chrome bumper. Before anyone arrived, I pulled Teeny off the sidewalk and into a parking lot and blame the whole thing on a hit-and-run. The sheriff's deputy didn't believe me, but he didn't ask too many questions. Mom backed me up, God bless her.

With two balls of cotton wool up her nose and an icepack for her neck, we ended up back in the bar of the Triangle Bowling Alley, a pair of gin and tonics in front of us.

"I'm sorry," I started. It seemed inadequate.

"What the hell?" mom asked, trying not to raise her voice.

"Why the hell were you following me? Are you nuts?" I was yelling without yelling.

"I was worried! Eleven hundred bucks? Drugs? I came down to see if you were okay, that's all."

"By following me around?" I couldn't believe it. "Why didn't you call? Say you were in town. You almost got yourself killed."

"I didn't want to worry–" mom started and stopped. She was lying. She knew I'd see right through that. She was down here, spying.

"When did you get the Corolla?"

"It's Jim's," her boyfriend. "I knew you'd recognize the Chevrolet." That wasn't too stupid of her. Sneaky. Maybe that's where I got it?

"Tell Jim I'm sorry." I took a sip of my drink.

Mom sipped her drink, too. Then she started to tear up.

"Come on, Mom," I tried.

"Oh, but the gun, Fancy! You were going to shoot me. What's going on? What sort of mess have you gotten yourself into? I'm scared, honey. Scared for you."

"It's okay, It's almost over."

"Is it drugs? I know it's drugs. You don't have to answer. We can get your help."

"It's not drugs. I'm not on drugs, Mom."

"Then, why the gun? Why does my little girl need a gun?"

"It's dad's. It wasn't loaded..." I wasn't going to get away with a lie. She'd see right through it, too. But she wouldn't believe the truth. What was there between the unbelievable truth and the obvious lie? "Maybe you need meet my friend Chick?"

#

"I found it!" Chick screamed out of his apartment window. Mom and I had driven over from the bowling alley. Chick must have seen us coming, opened up his window and was now screaming down at us. Mom looked panicked, as we walked up to the front door.

"Found what?" I bellowed back up.

"LKETER! I found the intersection! We must hurry! I'll come down!"

"No, we're coming up!" I screamed, but Chick's head had already vanished inside.

"I guess he's coming down," I said to mom. She was prodding her sore nose, testing it.

"How do you know this man, again?" mom asked.

"He's the friend I bailed out of jail."

"And why was he in jail if it wasn't drugs?"

"They suspected him of being the Wild Side Killer." My tone was flippant. "Do you remember the Wild Side Killer?"

"Wh-what?" mom said in shock. She was no longer concerned about her nose.

"He's not. That's who I thought you were, following me. That's why I had the gun."

My mom's jaw hung open. I could imagine the million things she was about to say – scream. Luckily, Chick emerged from the front door just in time.

He looked excited, out of breath from running down the stairs. He had his coat on, his headphones in place and his medic's bad around his neck. He was ready to go solve crimes. "Who's this?" he asked, only giving mom a tiny glance.

"My mom," I said. "Mom, this is Albert Chick."

"Oh, thank you," Chick said in a tiny voice, not looking at my mom. She was hold out a hand for him to shake. He wasn't reaching for it.

"Sorry?" mom asked, realizing her hand was going to remain unwelcomed.

"Thank you," Chick said again, this time giving my mom a small bow.

"For what?" Mom looked at me, confused.

"For getting me out of jail. Thank you." Mom still looked confused. "You gave your daughter the money to get me out of jail. Thank you." And then he said to me. "Are we ready?"

Mom looked bewildered. A little insulted.

"You decoded LKETER?" I asked.

"Yes, Delameter and Shulke. Lowercase L's look like upper case I's. Shulke was in the WSDOT database as S-H-U-I-K-E. All caps. Your code was missing it. Our eyes were missing it. But stare at a piece of paper long enough and interesting patterns begin to emerge."

"I'm sorry, what's going on?" mom interrupted.

Chick looked annoyed. "Why is she here?"

"Chick!" I scolded. "This is my mom."

"I have been fully informed of that fact. We must hurry to the intersection of Delameter and Shulke."

"My mother is concerned..."

"That I have the wrong intersection? Ridiculous! We need to get moving!" Chick did an end run around the two of us and moved with a skip to Teeny's passenger door. He climbed inside and sat there, waiting.

"Chick!" I yelled out, now royally pissed off.

"This is the friend you wanted me to meet?" mom asked, incredulous.

"He's..." I didn't know how to finished that. A pain in the ass? Better one-on-one? "Look, I can explain on the way," I gave up, starting toward the car.

"Where are we going?" mom asked, hurrying to follow.

"To Delameter and Shulke," I called back.

"Where's that?"

"I have no idea!"
Chapter 48

"I don't understand, who is this man?" mom asked from the backseat.

Chick put his hands over his earphones. "Can you ask her not to speak?"

"No!" I growled angrily. I was trying to drive. In the dark. "Both of you, be quiet!"

Putting Chick and my mother together turned out to not be such a good idea. I'd forgotten what he was like with pretty much everyone except me. I'd forgotten what she was like, too, pretty much all the time.

"Can you find me a map? I need to know where I'm going." I pointed at the glove box. Chick didn't reach for it. Instead, he reached into his satchel and pulled out a map. He handed it to me. There was a red circle around where we were headed. It was way out there in the woods. It'd take half the night to get there. With these two in the car. Wonderful.

I took a deep breath. "Okay, I got something to say to both of you, and you're both going to shut up until I'm totally done. First, Chick: this is my mother, her understanding of what's going on is limited. It's rude to assume she knows what we know. She needs details, explanations, that only you can give. It's polite to give her all the facts before you dismiss her as an annoyance." Both Chick and my mother began to speak at once. "Shut up!" I yelled. "Mom, this is Chick, my friend. He sees things...different than you or I. But if you want to understand what's going on, quickly, you will have to listen to him. Understand? Don't take offense at his bluntness. It's not personal. Nothing is personal with Chick."

No one moved to speak this time. I wasn't expecting that.

"Okay, Chick," I said, "where are we in this case? One sentence."

"Case?" Mom squawked.

"Sssh," I tapped my sore lip.

Chick took in breath and began. "My wife was murdered seven years ago by the Wild Side Killer, I have reason to suspect that the same man is responsible for the murder of a local nurse. This nurse had links to a local white supremacist group, who are attempting to thwart your daughter and I in our investigation. This has led to your daughter's injuries and my incarceration. We believe we can apprehend the killer and all the members of this white supremacist group, if we can locate a certain floppy disk that was missing from the nurse's possession at the time of her death. Ergo, Delameter and Shulke, the last place the nurse was know to be alive. Sorry, that was five sentences."

"Not bad. I particularly like the conversational use of the word ergo."

Chick gave me a smile.

"You're seriously saying you two are trying to catch a serial killer?" Mom asked, horrified.

"We are," I had to admit. It was her turn to speak. I couldn't shush her again.

"And people have died? And this killer is after you? You thought he was in the car following you? When it was me?"

"I did."

"Have you told the authorities about this?"

"Yes."

"And what are they doing about it?"

"They're letting us try and catch a serial killer."

Mom exhaled in disgust. "You're both insane!"

"No, I wish we were. But everything that's happened has been very real."

"You can't just ride around in this car catching serial killers? This isn't an episode of Scooby-Doo!" she bellowed.

I looked at Chick and smiled. He looked at me, shocked.

"If we find what we're looking for, Mom," I said. "This will all be over. And once it's all over, I'll be coming back to Seattle, just like I said."

"And if you don't find what you're looking for? What if there's nothing out there at Delameter and Shulke?"

"Then we'll keep looking," Chick answered before I could. He said exactly what I was thinking. "Seven years isn't such a long time. What's seven more?"

"Fancy, please tell me you don't think you can really do this?" mom asked – begged – from behind me.

"Do what? Help Chick with people like you? People who think he's crazy? Stupid? Retarded? Sick? Yeah, I can do that."

"No! Drive of into the woods at night! It's a job for the police!"

"It's a job for everyone, Mom. How could we walk around with a clear conscience, if we knew we could catch the Wild Side Killer but didn't because it's 'a job for the police,'" I made air quotes on either side of the steering wheel. "What if he kills again?"

"That's insane!"

"Well, maybe." I let it go. Then, something Moist said hit me. "You ever hear of the Kobayashi Maru test, Mom?" I asked. Chick looked at my, surprised.

"No, of course not!" She was too mad to listen.

"Well, it's a thing from Star Trek. The no-win scenario. They put cadets through it to see how they react – how they deal with a lose-lose situation."

"Are you seriously talking about Star Trek?" she asked, confused.

"Yes and no. It got me thinking. You know, most of life is like that: a lose-lose situation. Roll the dice, the system is rigged against you. Chick, here, has been playing against those odds, he's forgotten anything else. No one believes him because he's Chick, but only because he's Chick does he understand what's going on. Am I making any sense?"

"No," Chick and my mom said in unison.

"Yeah, well, maybe not. But maybe it doesn't really if it's a win or lose scenario, it only matters how we act. Sure, maybe catching the Wild Side Killer is a job for the cops, but we can't just sit by and say we didn't try. Maybe it is all just a weird Kobayashi Maru test – maybe all of life is. But you don't get to sit it out."

"What the hell are you talking about?" mom asked slowly, appalled.

"Nothing," I had to admit.

We fell into silence. I could physically feel my mother's anger.

"You're wrong, you know," Chick said out of the blue, with no further elaboration.

"What? How?" I asked, annoyed. I know I was talking bullshit, but that was rude. I was the one trying to defend Chick.

"You're wrong, and Moist is wrong. There's no lose-lose situation. The Kobayashi Maru is a test, not life. Life isn't rigged against us. We make our own luck, our own opportunities, with what gifts we have. There's always a winning scenario."

I looked at Chick, surprised. He was looking out the window, watching the trees roll by. I'd never through of his as an optimist. But, hell, with the life he's lived, to get up every morning, he would have to be.

"That's the first sensible thing anyone in this car has said all evening," my mom said. I looked at her in the rear view. Her anger had subsided somewhat.

Maybe she was warming to Chick.
Chapter 49

Delameter and Shulke were just two strips of blacktop intersecting in the woods. It was two in the morning by the time we got there. I pulled Teeny to the side of the road, keeping the headlight on and the engine running. No one was understandably in a hurry to get out of the car. Chick dug around in his satchel and came out with a flashlight. I reached over and flipped open the glove box. Dad's giant, iron six D-cell flashlight was in there. Less a flashlight and more of a baton. Only Teeny's glove box was so impossibly over-sized that such an item could fit comfortably inside it.

"What exactly are you expecting to find out here?" Mom asked, looking out of the car window into the blackness with trepidation.

I looked at Chick. He flicked his flashlight on and off, looked at me and shrugged. "No idea," I said.

"Can't it wait for daylight?"

"No," Chick said bluntly.

"How–"

"There's...a certain time crunch to all of this," I waved my left hand vaguely to silence my mother's protests. I tested the weight of Dad's flashlight/truncheon with my right.

"None of this is filling me with confidence," she said instead.

"You can stay in the car," I offered. But I took that opportunity to kill the engine and cut the headlights. Suddenly, staying in the car didn't seem like a very attractive proposition.

"I think it'd be best if we all stuck together," mom said as she reached for the door handle. Chick and I did the same, climbing out of the car. Our flashlights snapped to life as our shoes crunched on the gravel.

"What are we looking for?" I asked, waving my flashlight around.

"How about this?" Chick said, pointing his at a large pine tree. The bark had been torn off up to about shoulder height. The trunk underneath was a mess of splinters and sap.

"Something hit that, hard," mom observed. My mind instantly went to dad, laying in a coma, back in the VA. No, this wasn't where that had happened, we were miles away from either Maginty's or the house, but something very much like a pickup truck had collided with that tree. Maybe not head on, but a solid sideswipe...

I panned around with my flashlight/truncheon. Black, skid marks on the asphalt. Another tree damaged over there. I walked on, it only took me a minute to find where the car had left the road.

No, this was not the site where dad had his terrible accident, but it was very, very similar. Almost the same MO, you might say.

I shone my flashlight into the thicket, where two muddy tracks told me something large had come off the road. I couldn't make anything out in the pitch black.

"Down there?" Chick asked, shinning his flashlight into the nothingness. Some part of me was hesitant to step off the safety of the road. Pitch-black thickets seemed like just the sort of place Wild Side Killers might hide. I paused, Chick stepped forward, his boots sinking into the soft mud.

"You're not going...down there?" mom asked, still ten steps back down the road, careful not to stray too far from the safety of Teeny's interior.

"Whatever hit that tree," I said, pointing my flashlight back at the damaged pine. "Left those tire tracks," I followed the skid marks with my beam. "And went off the road here." I shined the light once again into the nothingness.

"Whatever transpired here at Delameter and Shulke," Chick added. "Came to an end down there."

Still my feet didn't move.

Chick slogged forward, lifting his muddy feet with great effort. I had on boots, but they'd cost me $150 back on Capital Hill...what was going to be down there worth ruining a perfectly good pair of Doc Martins?

"I'll just stay here, then," mom said, still hovering in the middle of the road.

"Here? Without a flashlight?" I asked. "I'm pretty sure that never turned out well for Scooby and Shaggy."

"Then, leave me your light," mom demanded, making grabbyhands at dad's flashlight. I sighed and walked back to her.

"We'll be right back," I said, handing over the long wand.

"Just be careful," she said through chattering teeth. It wasn't that cold.

By the time I returned to the side of the road, Chick had vanished. "Chick!" I called out. A flashlight danced in the underbrush. I took a deep breath and stepped into the muck. My boot sank over the toes. Ugh. I pushed forward, trying to walk without touching the ground. Despite my best efforts, by the time I'd caught up with Chick, my boots were solid with brown mud.

"Look," he said, shinning his light. Something was reflecting it back. Red against the black. We pushed on. As we closed in, the reflection was obviously taillights. I was trying so hard to make out the outlines of the car, I didn't notice when the mud below me transitioned to water. Before I knew it, I was up to my middle in skanky-ass swamp water.

"Oh, fuck!" I called out. It was freezing. Chick didn't see the edge of the standing water either and fell head first. The flashlight went out. It was pitch black. Chick was underwater for a good ten seconds before I heard him coming back up, all splashes and coughing.

"Cold!" he screamed, head out of the water. I reached for him, but the going was no easier in the water. The bottom of the swamp was still a foot of brown mud. I tried to move my left foot, but it was fixed solid, the sucking mud holding it fast.

"Are you okay?" came mom's voice from back on the road. Her flashlight flicked through the brush, casting everything in a ghostly hue.

"Fine Mom!" I shouted. "Stay where you are!" Then, peering though the gloom, I could just make out Chick's shadow. "Are you okay, Chick?"

"I lost the flashlight," he answered. His shadow raised an arm, then there was the sound of a Zippo opening. Grind, grind, grind, grind, then a tongue of flame flickered to life.

I tried to move my right foot, but it was just as struck as the left.

Luckily, we didn't have to move any further, the car was right in front of us, the front lost in the stagnant water, the rear towering over our heads. It'd been there for awhile. The body of the car with covered in a swampy film. But the license plate was still visible. Oregon plates.

"I'm stuck," I told Chick.

"Me too," he answered. "But I think I can slip off my boots..." He held out the lighter. "Here, hold this," he said. He didn't really wait for me to take the lighter. I almost dropped it into the slime. But just before Chick dove back below the dark water, I caught its slippery steel.

Chick went down for another ten, fifteen seconds, then came back up, treading water. "I'm going to check out the car," he said, swimming away from me.

"Wait!" I tried, but Chick was already gone. He left me standing there looking like a soggy Statue of Liberty, Zippo held above my head. I was freezing. My teeth began to chatter. I needed to get out of the water, climb back inside Teeny and turn on the heat.

Where was Chick? He was down under the water. The car shook. I was worried it might sink deeper into the mire. Seconds ticked by, turning into a whole minute. Where was Chick? Was he stuck down there? Was I going to have to swim down and help?

Just as I was figuring out how I was going to untie my boots without dipping the Zippo into the water, Chick broken the surface. He flailed about, frantically trying to scramble for the shore. He was pulling something behind him. Something big.

With all of his might, he pulled himself up onto the bank. With a second great feat of strength, he pulled whatever he was dragging up after him.

"Here," I called out. I closed the Zippo and tossed it at Chick. He must have caught it in the dark, because a second later it flicked to life.

I crouched, sinking all of my body into the putrid-smelling water and reaching for my laces. They were doubled knotted and wrapped twice around the ankle portion of the boot. But I got them undone. I pulled my feet out and swam frantically for shore. I hit mud a few feet from the bank and began to flounder, but one of Chick's large hands came down and grabbed the back of my shirt. He hauled me bodily out of the slime.

That left us both sprawled in amongst the brush, soaked to the bone and gasping for air. Chick still held the lighter before him, casting dancing shadows all around us. I wanted to jump to my feet and run back to the road, back to my Mom and the nice, warm car. But then I remembered the thing Chick had hauled out of the swamp.

I pulled myself up onto my elbows and looked over Chick's prone form.

I screamed.

"What's going on?" Mom bellowed from the road. "I'm coming in!"

"No, no!" I yelled back. "Stay where you are. There's...There's a pond back here – we fell into some water! We're okay!" But I wasn't. I couldn't take my eyes off the body. Chick had pulled someone out of the driver's seat of the sunken car. Or at least, the remains of somebody. They'd been down there in the stagnant water for awhile. The body was all bloated and deformed. I could just, sort of, make out the features of a face. But it was like they'd melted. Everything was loppy and puffed-out.

I wanted to puke. I figured, what the hell? How could any of this get any more disgusting? I rolled over and vomited off into the murky water.

Chick was made of stronger stuff. He had the indomitable will to be able to actually touch the body. I guess he'd gotten used to it, working in a morgue. He'd probably seen worse stuff than this. Car accidents, gun suicides, house fires...still, the body made a horrid squelching sound as he dug through the corpse's pockets.

In an inside jacket pocket he found what he was looking for.

Chick held the soaking floppy disk up to the flickering flame of the tiny Zippo. The writing on the label was all smeared and there was a great deal of mud trapped in its metal gate, but this was it.

The missing floppy disk from ScareBear69's set. Number 10 of 10. We'd found it. At the bottom of swamp, in the pocket of a bloated corpse, but we'd found it. It'd cost me a nice pair of Doc Martins, but we'd found it.

We had our bait, now we could set our trap.
Chapter 50

"Oh Jesus...why is he dancing at my crime scene?" Sheriff Tush asked, pointing over at Chick. Delameter and Shulke was a lot less intimidating in the daytime. The underbrush where the car had exited the road seemed significantly less dense in the light. Enough boots had trampled back and forth that I could now see the red Buick, ass up, from the road. I could even see the edge of the stagnant pool where the car had come to rest. Mom was right, we should have done this is the daylight. It'd have saved me a good pair of shoes.

Police tape and evidence markers traced the journey of the Buick from where it'd evidently collided with another vehicle, past where it'd pinballed into a tree, along where the driver had frantically hit the brakes, to its final home nose-first in the swamp. The driver still lay where Chick had hauled her out of the drink, now covered in a blanket. Chick also, moments before, was wrapped in an emergency blanket. This, however, he'd decided to toss aside, so he could perform some pop-and-locking beside the dead body.

"Don't mind him," I grimaced. "It's...all part of his process..." I had no idea what the fuck Chick thought he was doing. Could he even help himself?

"Chick!" Tush yelled out. "Chick!" He caught Chick's attention, mid-dime-stop. Chick looked back at us, curious. "Stop dancing!"

Chick looked at his own arms, perhaps, for the first time, realizing what he was doing. He waved an acknowledgment and picked up his emergency blanket.

"Jesus fucking Christ!" the sheriff cursed.

"I'm sorry, I'll talk to him."

"Can you get him out of here?" Tush demanded, angrily.

"Look," I shot back, "you wouldn't have a crime scene without Chick. If he wants to dance, he's going to dance."

Sheriff Tush glared at me but had the sense to keep his mouth shut.

"So," I continued, calmer, "who did Chick fish out of there?"

The sheriff unclipped a driver's license in an evidence bag from a clipboard and handed it to me. I read as he talked. "Dorothy Shriver. Reporter for The Oregonian. Listed a missing person over a month ago. Car is hers, registered in her name. Portland P.D. are on their way up. They have an open investigation into Ms. Shriver's disappearance. But I'm guessing you've got a theory or two how she ended up all the way out here..."

"Did you investigate my dad's accident?" I asked.

"No. But I read the report before I had you come in that first day."

"Look familiar?"

"You think the Ran Tan Klan ran your dad off the road? Just like this reporter?"

"I think it's how Atta Boy deals with annoyances."

"Why would he want your dad dead?"

"He didn't. He wanted me on the I-5, heading north. At a rest stop, strangled. Just like the Wild Side Killer did it. They have a spot for it. That's where Mr. Tinynips got it. But I slipped away. The logging yard was their clumsy second attempt. I slipped out of that, too. Dad was just in the way."

"What'd this lady do?" The sheriff nodded at the square of white at Chick's feet.

"Got that disk from ScareBear69." I pointed at the other evidence bag attached to the sheriff's clipboard.

The sheriff removed the bag and held it up to the light. He tried to read the label, but it was long since washed away. "What's on it?"

"The dirt on the RTK?" I guessed. "ScareBear69 must have been informing on their Oxycontin prescription scam. I won't know until it dries out, but I'm guessing its facts and figures. Their books. Maybe ScareBear69 was the RTK's accountant, such as it is, and she was trying to come clean."

"But Atta Boy got wind that ScareBear69 was talking to a reporter and killed them both."

"Killed the reporter first, sure, to shut ScareBear69 up. That's why they had her come out here, to show her the message in person. But Atta Boy didn't want to kill ScareBear69. He must have needed her. Or her boyfriend, at least. Otherwise, she'd have had a road accent just like this. No, she was one of them. Part of the gang. They wanted her alive.

"But she panicked when she saw what had become of the reporter and hid her disks in her boyfriend's truck. Maybe he drove her out here, to make doubly sure she got the message. But no one in the RTK knew she'd already handed off the information to the reporter. When they realized what might be at stake, somebody came looking for the floppy disk. Someone other the Atta Boy and his RTK. When ScareBear69 couldn't hand over this disk, that somebody flew into a rage and strangled her in the park. Still, no disk. Then he had to deal with ScareBear69's boyfriend. He must of reasonably objected to his girlfriend's brutal murder. The RTK took care of that, at their favorite rest stop. But they had the forethought to make the whole thing look like a suicide."

"Then they came after you?"

"Chick was the one to make the link between ScareBear69 and the Wild Side Killer. Nobody would listen to him, but when I was stupid enough to offer to help, maybe they panicked. Or maybe they just wanted to pin the whole thing on Chick. Either way, all they managed to do was lead me to Mr. Tinynips' truck. And ScareBear69's disks. So, they broke in and stole them from Nybbles and Bytes. Sloppy, because a couple of disks were now missing. They must have figured either Chick or I had them. They grabbed him, but came up empty. Then they came after me. Even though I managed to fight off McNugget, he was still smart enough to grab my bag. That got them one disk, but not the one they really needed. The disk with the facts and figures."

"'Cause it was here, safe in the swamp, already in the hands of the press."

"They hadn't counted on that."

"So what do we do now?"

"We let the RTK know we have the disk."

"How do we do that?"

"We let McNugget go."

Sheriff Tush look surprised. "Really?"

"No, but we let him think we're letting him go. We let him make some phone calls. Make sure he knows we have the disk."

"And then?"

"And then McNugget sends a coded message, via the RTK's BBS, telling the whole crew when and where to find the disk. That will bring them all out of the woodwork, all at the same time. All of them, even Wild Side. To finally put this whole mess to bed."

"And we'll be waiting," the sheriff said gravely.

"We'll we waiting," I agreed.
Chapter 51

Somehow, when I'd conceived of the plan to smoke out the Wild Side Killer, I hadn't considered that I might end up as the cheese in the giant mousetrap. All while investigating the Wild Side Killer case, people had been expressing their concern for my safety – Spork, Sheriff Tush, my mother, even Atta Boy, in a weird sort of threat/concern sort of way. But when it finally came down to the wire, when the trap was finally being set, nobody raised any objection to me being dead center to the whole shit-storm. Frankly, neither did I. I'd come this far, sacrificed so much: Dad, my left ear, a descent night sleep without visions of ski masks and bony garrotes. I wanted to see the whole deal through to the end.

Luckily, I wasn't alone. When it came time to volunteer, Chick didn't hesitate. The two of us would see it out. Together.

Okay, not alone, maybe. The Sheriff Department's SWAT Team was waiting silently in the back room of Nybbles and Bytes, all clad in body armor and riot helmets, machine pistols locked and loaded. But it was just Chick and me out there in the front, sitting in the bullpen, pretending to work on the waterlogged floppy disk.

Nybbles and Bytes was the only logical place to use in the encrypted BBS message. It was where I'd have taken ScareBear69's missing floppy disk if I hadn't known the RTK were after it. It's where I had the equipment I'd need to actually get any information off it.

McNugget did his part admirably. The sheriff brought him into an interview room and let me in there, alone. Again, not too concerned for my safety. But I could sense that the Sheriff was more than ready to put a period at the end of the sentence that was the RTK. He could sense the promotion, graduation to a big city P.D. He was willing to take risks, even with my safety. Sure, McNugget was all cuffed down to the table and everything. But he'd tried to kill me twice before.

"Remember me?" I asked as I walked into the interview room.

McNugget didn't look up from the table.

I didn't wait for an answer. "I remember you. How's the rib? And the nose?"

At this, McNugget looked up. He glared, angrily.

"Can't have made you look good. Getting beat up by a girl."

McNugget's expression didn't change: seething hated.

"Well, I'm here to ruin your day, again." I went on. "Reputation wise, that is."

"Fuck you," McNugget snarled. That was a good sign. Any reaction was something.

"You don't want to know what I got? That's fine. I don't have to tell you. I just thought you might want fair warning, that's all. A chance to get out of town before Atta Boy can get to you. You know, we're close, we've been through some shit. I think I owe you."

McNugget laughed.

"Fine, be like that." I shrugged, climbing to my feet.

"You've got nothing. I'm not telling you nothing," McNugget said, just as I was at the door. I cheered inside. I had him worried.

I returned to my seat. "Maybe. Maybe I've got nothing. Maybe I don't need you to tell me nothing. Maybe I got all I needed to know."

"You wouldn't be in here if you did," McNugget smiled. He had more gold teeth than Atta Boy.

"Flip," I said. "Give a statement to the cops. This is the part were you've got a change to make a deal."

"You ain't got nothing," he repeated.

This was it. I had to play this right, or the whole thing would be for nothing. "I got a little, blue floppy disk," I said and smiled.

That got McNugget's attention. He leaned forward in his seat, glaring. Not in anger this time, but somewhere between concern and terror. "No you don't," he tried.

"The one with the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets?" I took a stab. I didn't know what was on the disk. Yet. But Lotus made sense.

McNugget didn't say anything. He probably had no idea what I was talking about. He didn't look like IT support.

"Values? Figures? Transactions? Cargo manifests? Bribes? Any of this ring a bell?"

Then it happened, and I knew I'd fucked it up. McNugget smiled. "You ain't got shit!"

Fuck. What had I missed? I was guessing, but what else could be on that disk? What else was so important that it was worth killing over?

I had to think fast. "I've got the disk," I said. Maybe the truth would work where a lie had not. "It's just a little...damp."

"Damp?" McNugget snorted. "You dropped it in your drink or something?"

"Maybe you did. When you bumped that reporter off the road. She ended up in a creek. She had the disk on her. We've got it now."

McNugget looked like I'd socked him in the gut. At least that had wiped the self-righteous grin off his face.

"Didn't know she had it on her when you killed her, huh? Else you wouldn't still be looking for it. Now, once I let the disk dry out, the cops will have everything on it. Again, smart guy, this is the part where you can make a deal and come out of this maybe a little better off than you compadres. Wait until I get the data off the disk, and the deal will be long gone."

There, that was enough. Say anymore and I was going to put my foot in it again. I rose from my chair and made a quick exit. McNugget just looked stunned. He was thinking it over. I mean, the look on his face told me he was really considering what I had said. He wasn't about to flip, there was no chance of that, but he was trying to think what he could give the cops that would satisfy them enough to make a deal. I didn't care. I just wanted him to call his buddies and tell them the disk was in police possession. The sheriff might have been happy with McNugget's evidence, but I wanted the whole RTK, not just the patsy McNugget chose to rat out.

He didn't disappoint. Late that evening, on the jail pay phone, he called his attorney and told him about the disk. The county monitors all jailhouse calls. We got the whole thing on tape. I could only assume that the attorney told Atta Boy. A saw a few encoded messages come through on the BBS, setting up face-to-face meetings. Word was getting around – I hoped word was getting around.

The sheriff called up the RTK attorney and lied to the fact he was letting McNugget go. No charges to file. After all, being in a bowling alley wasn't a crime. We hoped that fact made its way through the RTK grapevine, too. Even without McNugget actually making a physical appearance outside of jail.

Everything hinged on the RTK believing McNugget was out of jail and knew where the missing disk was. Because when I sent my fake encoded message from McNuggets account, that's exactly what I was trying to tell them: the missing floppy disk was at Nybbles and Bytes. The girl has the disk in Spider's store and was working on extracting its data.

Go get it, before she turns it over to the cops.

I couldn't say any of that, of course, just send the code TONACH – the intersection outside the store – and a time. But I hoped it was the message Atta Boy would read into it. I hoped he'd risk everything to get it back. I hoped the Wild Side Killer wouldn't trust Atta Boy to do something so important alone. I hoped they'd all come and try to kill me...

...in the middle of the night, in the darkened store. With the county SWAT team waiting in the back room. And me and Chick out there in the open, as bait...

Yeah, sometimes you got to be careful what you wish for, because something you get it. In spades.
Chapter 52

"You don't have to be here," I said to Chick, looking up from my monitor. He looked pale, staring off blankly at the far wall. "This doesn't need both of us."

"No, I'm okay," Chick answered after he swallowed a great gulp of air. "I'm just coming to terms..."

"Terms with what?" I asked. I was only half paying attention.

"That this might be it."

"That we might catch the Wild Side Killer, tonight?"

Chick nodded. "Seven years, I've been waiting."

"Don't get your hopes up too high. He might just send Atta Boy and the RTK," I was pantomiming working at my computer. I was too scared to do it for real.

"No, he'll be here. This is the end of the road for him, too. He'll want to see it."

"He seems to come early to every meeting," I said, remembering the bowling alley. "We'd better be careful."

"I have my gun," Chick said, patting the medic's satchel on his lap.

"What? Are you crazy?" I hissed, trying not to shout. I didn't need either the RTK or the SWAT Team to hear what Chick had just said.

"No, never crazy. Stupid, perhaps, but never crazy."

"Chick!" I growled.

"You don't think we're going to arrest the Wild Side Killer here tonight, do you?" Chick looked at me, wistfully.

"That was the plan," I said through gritted teeth. "If you shoot him, they'll..." I nodded at the back room. "...arrest you."

"I told you, in the beginning, it would come down to this." He patted his bag again. "He'll be killed or he'll get away. There's no other option."

"You're the one who said there was always options," I spat. This? Right now? Dear lord! "Always a winning scenario. What was it? In the car? We make our own luck, our own opportunities, with what gifts we have? What happened to that?"

"Perhaps I was wrong," Chick said, not looking at me. "Maybe Moist was right. Maybe it's always been a Kobayashi Maru scenario – the hunt for the Wild Side Killer. One of us will end up dead, the other in jail. All I get to decide is which."

"Don't talk like that!" I didn't have time for this. I didn't have time to talk Chick down off this ledge. "Just don't do anything, okay? If anyone arrives, you just sit there. That's your winning scenario, Chick. That's how you beat the Kobayashi Maru. Sit the fuck there and don't move a fucking muscle. Let the cops do their jobs. And maybe everyone gets to go home alive."

Chick didn't answer. He didn't get the chance.

The bell over the front door began to ring.

Atta Boy stepped in, past the card table by the door. "Hand it over," he said. He'd exchanged his collared shirt and Chinos for flannel and jeans. Finally, he looked every bit the L-town gangster. Especially flanked by the two goons holding handguns. I resisted the urge to scream for police backup. Here was Atta Boy, but where was the Wild Side Killer?

"Hand what over?" I played dumb.

"Don't play dumb," Atta Boy said seeing right through my brilliant evasion.

"It's not here," Chick tried.

Atta Boy answered this by pulling the silver pistol out of the waistband of his jeans.

He leveled the pistol at us. We raised our hands. "I warned you," he said, holding the gun tilted to one side. "That it would end like this." Atta Boy advanced on the bullpen. His two buddies raised their guns, but hung back.

"You warned me," I said, climbing to my feet and backing away from the computer, "that Wild Side would get me. All I see is you and a gun."

Chick remained seated. As soon as Atta Boy climbed into the bullpen, he pulled Chick roughly up out of his chair and shoved him against the far wall. Chick stumbled but stayed on his feet.

Atta Boy looked over my workstation. He eventually found what he was looking for and pushed the disk eject button with the barrel of his pistol.

A small, blue three-and-half inch floppy disk popped out of the drive.

Atta Boy removed the disk and looked at its label.

The front doorbell rang again.

"Is that it?" a husky voice asked.

All heads turned to look toward the source of the voice. A hooded figure stood, holding the front door open. He raised his head ,and I could see the skull-like ski mask under the hood – the hollow, black eye slits and the necklace of bones.

It was him. He was here. McNugget was still in jail. This was the real McCoy. The Wild Side Killer. In the flesh.

He let go of the door and took one limping step into the room.

Atta Boy tossed him the disk. The Wild Side Killer reached up and caught it in midair. He held it before his empty eye holes, then tossed it absentmindedly aside.

"Where's the real disk?" he hissed.

Atta Boy turn to me, raising his gun.

"That's it! That's it! I swear!" I lied. It wasn't. It was a brand new one off the shelf behind Spider's register.

"Where is it?" Atta Boy ask, bringing the gun close. "Give it to him!" he bellowed.

The barrel of the gun touched my forehead. I closed my eyes.

"That's the disk! That's the disk I got from the car!" Chick insisted.

Atta Boy cocked the hammer of his gun. "The disk?" he asked, lowering his voice.

"No," Wild Side raised his right hand. His left hand went into the pocket of his coat. It came out with a long necklace of bones. "We'll take care of these two. Quietly. And then find the disk ourselves."

He took a limping set forward toward the bullpen. He threaded the necklace between his gloved hands, wrapping it tight around his palms.

Atta Boy took a step back, raising the gun from my forehead.

But I didn't notice. My eyes were on the Wild Side Killer. "No, no...you want it? You want the disk? You can have it!"

"Give it to me," Atta Boy held out an open palm. "Now!"

"Now?" I looked between Atta Boy and Chick.

"Now?" Chick looked at me, then remembered. "Oh right. Now!"

The next bit happened really fast.

The SWAT Team heard Chick's signal and kicked opened the door from the back room. There were probably screams of 'Police!" and "Drop your gun!" but I couldn't hear any of it, because on Chick's signal, I leapt forward and grabbed Atta Boy's gun hand with both of mine. The pistol fired an earsplitting shot into the ceiling. That was all the two goons needed. They began to fire wildly. I felt more than heard a bullet whiz past my head.

Machine pistols barked to life, fully automatic. The store's front windows and door exploded in a shower of glass shards. Spider was going to be pissed. The two goons spasmed as the hail of bullets ripped through them. They were both dead before they hit the floor.

I looked up directly into Atta Boy's eyes, the gun was above both our heads. His lips moved, forming a curse word I couldn't hear. He was a foot taller than me and twice my weight. But I had a good, firm grip on his gun hand. I wasn't going to let go for anything. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Chick reaching into his bag. His hand came out with his revolver.

I think I yelled something. "No!" would make sense. I had to stop Chick, but I couldn't let go of Atta Boy's hand. Chick raised the gun. My eyes followed the barrel toward Chick's target. The Wild Side Killer was standing in the middle of the chaos, glass windows cascading down to concrete behind him. He looked calm. Almost at peace, the necklace of bones cinched tight between his palms.

I couldn't stop it. Chick leveled his gun. Wild Side didn't flinch.

Bang, bang, bang came the shots.

But Chick wasn't pulling his trigger.

I think that's about when my hearing began to return.

The Wild Side Killer went down, falling backward and crashing through the card table by the front door. I was about to lose my game of grabbyhands for the gun with Atta Boy. Chick just stood there in the middle bullpen, in shock.

Out of options, I wheeled back my head and brought my forehead down hard on Atta Boy's nose. At least I was aiming for his nose. I wasn't tall enough. I mostly hit teeth. There was a great deal of blood and screaming and Atta Boy topped back into my workstation. Sheriff's deputies were on top of him almost instantly, wrestling him to the floor.

I staggered back, stunned. I bumbled into Chick.

He lowered his gun.

When my whirling double vision began to correct itself, I could see Sheriff Tush moving toward the fallen body of the Wild Side Killer, pistol drawn, whiffs of gun smoke climbing from its barrel. He'd taken down the Wild Side Killer, shot before Chick could pull the trigger. Chick watched on in stunned disbelief as Sheriff Tush approached and kick the prone body. It didn't stir. Wild Side was dead.

And Chick hadn't killed him.

Chick silently returned his pistol to his medic's satchel.

Okay, I know I've made some Scooby Doo references already, and maybe you're thinking not everything in this book is exactly how things happened – that I'm remembering wrong, or exaggerating to make myself look good. But, I swear to God, this next bit happened exactly as I'm about to describe. I kid you not.

Okay, my head had just collided with Atta Boy's jaw, and his blood was in my eyes and a lot of guns had just gone off, and my hearing wasn't exactly at its best. But as I watched, Sheriff Tush holstered his gun, straddled the body at his feet and said, "Now, let's see who the Wild Side Killer really is."

Fucking classic.

He pulled off the cowl.

I think I gasped. I mean, it would have only been appropriate. Somebody gasped. Let's just say it was me.

It was Moist. The ski mask came off, revealing a whole mess of Moist's greasy, black hair. But there was no "and I'd have gotten away with it, too..." speech from this killer. Moist being dead. Really dead. His silent, still lips were slightly parted. His eyes peered blankly at the ceiling of Nybbles and Bytes.
Chapter 53

"You shot the Wild Side killer," I said to Sheriff Tush.

He puffed up a little in pride at the sound of those words. The store was awash in the strobing lights of patrol cars and ambulances. Glass crunched underfoot. They were all dead, except for Atta Boy, who wasn't going to be saying anything until his teeth grew back. None of the cops were hurt in all the shooting. Chick was sitting in a rolling chair in the bullpen, staring vacantly at the wall before him.

"I had a clear shot," the sheriff replied. "I took it." We both looked at Chick then back to each other. I didn't have to say it, what the sheriff had stolen from Chick. He knew. He didn't care. He could already see himself in that Portland Police Chief's uniform, with all the stars on his epaulets. "Beside," he allowed, "think of the holy hell Spork would have raised if Chick had actually shot someone. It'd have been St. Bartholomew's for sure."

I didn't reply. He had a point, but I wasn't about to admit it. After all, Chick had already resigned himself to his fate – come to terms with the reality of the Kobayashi Maru. To have it so close and then snatched suddenly away...

I looked over at Moist's still form. Moist was the Wild Side Killer? I tried that realization on for size. It didn't fit. I guessed that it might take time for reality to really sink in. Moist was some sort of criminal mastermind? Moist was the Wild Side Killer? Shit, it was hard to imagine Moist being able to tie his shoes, let alone kill someone.

"Well," Sheriff Tush took in a deep breath. "That's that, then." He looked around at the destruction. It seemed to meet with his approval.

Was it? Was that really the end?

I looked at Chick sitting glumly in his chair.

No, you're probably guessing that is wasn't.

After that, there were reporters – a whole media circus, really. Sheriff Tush and his telegenic features were perfect in the role of the heroic law enforcement officer who'd gunned down the Wild Side Killer. Moist was ripe for the part of psycho-sexual serial killer, just as Chick had been before him. He was, after all, just another odd-looking loner that nobody liked. People were falling over themselves to believe him in the part. Just one look of his DMV mugshot screamed murderer. The TV and the papers ate it all up – Sheriff Tush flashing his million dollar smile, the many interviews with locals, remembering Moist as "quiet" and "a little weird."

Chick and I were mostly left out of it. That was probably for the best, considering how wrong we got most of it. Nobody cared about the Killer's waterlogged floppy disk anymore. They had Atta Boy on the murder of the reporter and Mr. Tinynips and all the rest of the RTK on conspiracy to commit the same. And Moist wasn't getting any more dead for prescription fraud. But I didn't drop it.

I managed to lift the disk from evidence that next morning while the Sheriff was having a press conference. He trotted me out for color commentary. You know, the damsel in distress saved by the brave, handsome cop. There was no mention of the BBS or the disks. Why muddy a good story with unnecessary facts? But it got me some free time with the evidence for the case, so I can't complain.

I don't think anyone ever missed the floppy. Getting the data off it turned out to be something of a trick. The actual disk inside the hard case had warped from its extended dunking. I had to take it out and build myself sort of a free-floating disk drive. Like an old turntable, with the read head on an arm. It was kind of a cool project. Took a whole day. I didn't have much else to do, what with Nybbles and Bytes a crime scene. But I snuck in the backroom and used the equipment. I had to take apart four disk drives.

Meanwhile, Chick was MIA from reality once again, just like he'd been after I'd bailed him out of jail. Unresponsive. I got him home and let him sleep it off, but there was no more mystery for him to solve – no case to snap him back to reality. While I worked, I contemplated what the hell I was going to do with him. With the Wild Side Killer dead, what purpose did Chick's life have? He'd been denied his revenge for Beth. What other reason did he have to get out of bed?

Hell, I wanted to sleep it off, too. But I had the warped floppy disk to distract me. Chick had nothing. Or so I thought. He might have been MIA from reality, but his brain hadn't stopped turning things over. It wasn't the fastest brain ever, but it was certainly thorough. Moist was the Wild Side Killer? Chick had to come to terms with that reality, too.

Once I had my custom disk drive built, I started pulling files, or bits of them, off the floppy disk. The data was pretty damaged, with dozens of sectors I just couldn't read. But I got raw dumps of the sectors I could. And the file allocation table was still intact. So I started piecing files back together. It was slow work. It was one in the morning that night after the shooting, with the police tape and the evidence tags all around me, when I started to get a clear idea of what I was looking at: doctors' names; addresses; and numbers. That made sense if Moist had been running a prescription mill. But there was more – names of nurses, pathologists, lab technicians and a pharmacist. That didn't make as much sense. None of those sort of people could prescribe pills. And the disk had details of where they went to school and when. Why'd the RTK need to keep track of that? What did any of that have to do with drugs? And there were no inventory or price lists. No list of buyers or sellers, or receipts or manifests or anything to do with any sort of business selling anything. This wasn't the RTK's criminal accounts as I'd suspected. I briefly considered that the whole disk might be a blackmail list. But blackmail for what?

Then, I found ScareBear69's name in amongst the random sectors. A single line, like the others, detailing her education. That one question, from the first day on the case, returned to me – how did a Hooter's waitress find the time to become a nurse? She was the same age as me, and I didn't have a degree. But the answer was there on the floppy disk, on the screen in front of me. It was simple – she hadn't had time. According to the file, she'd graduated from nursing school when she was sixteen years old. She would have had to start at what? Thirteen?

No, now I knew what all the names and numbers of doctors and nurses on the floppy disk meant.

I had to tell Chick.
Chapter 54

But I wouldn't get the chance. Laying in his bed, without seeing the contents of the floppy disk, he'd reasoned himself to the same conclusion as me. I drove straight over to his place in the middle of the night, but he was already gone. His bed was empty. But I knew exactly where he would be heading. I climbed back into Teeny and followed the same streets back to Nybbles and Bytes.

It was the Gundam gun. That's how Chick had figured it out. It was the one clue he couldn't explain away. Moist could have been the Wild Side Killer. The age was right, the creepy disposition. He even might have been the mastermind behind the Ran Tan Klan's move to corner the legitimate Oxycontin market. Though that was significantly more farfetched. The BBS made sense. The RTK would have needed someone technical to set that up. None of the rank and file knuckle-dragging, white supremacists would have had the knowhow to configure a bulletin board system. But Moist would. He'd hung around Nybbles and Bytes enough to pick up a couple things. If Moist was running the Klan, he could have seen the potential in the electronic messaging and come up with the street-end codes to obfuscate the gang's movements from the authorities.

But then there was the Gundam gun.

Chick was right: it'd been placed in ScareBear69's body by her killer. But what he'd assumed wrong was that it hadn't been placed there during her murder.

Moist certainly hated Chick enough to want to frame him as a sexual deviant. But it would have taken an almost inhuman act of precognition to think of framing Chick before the killing. And all evidence indicated that ScareBear69's murder was a rash act. She was found hastily disposed of in a city park. No effort was made to hide how she was murdered. Even Atta Boy had the forethought to disguise his killings as suicides or car accidents. Why not ScareBear69's? Because the killer had acted in desperation, trying to retrieve the floppy disk ScareBear69 had already passed off to the press. The disk contained data so damning that it was worth killing for. To imagine that during all this chaos the killer might, as an aside, place a small, plastic gun in the victim's vagina in hopes of possibly casting a little suspicion in Chick's general direction...well, it was laughable. So laughable, we hadn't seriously contemplated the truth – that the Gundam gun had only appeared after Chick had correctly identified ScareBear69 as a new victim of the Wild Side Killer. The discovery of the Gundam gun had brought the authorities down on Chick, almost gotten him sent back to St. Bartholomew's, and had totally torpedoed his investigation.

Chick had been on to something – the gun had been placed in ScareBear69's body by her killer, but it had been placed there after the body had arrived in the morgue. Somewhere Moist couldn't access.

Moist had not killed ScareBear69, or Beth or anyone else. He wasn't the Wild Side Killer anymore than I was. Or Chick. ScareBear69's killer, the Wild Side Killer, was someone with access to the morgue. Someone who knew Chick's habits – about the Gundams. Someone who'd written a professional reference for ScareBear69, though she'd never actually attended nursing school...

Chick had figured this all this out, independently. And he was already one step ahead of me, heading to confront the Wild Side Killer alone. He wasn't going to take a chance on someone robbing him of his revenge a second time.

I pushed my foot down hard on Teeny's gas pedal. I had to hurry. Seconds might count. Why I'd waste all that time driving across town to Chick's, I don't know. I'd already been right there. If only Chick had a working phone...

#

Chick let himself in, silently through the morgue's front door. He still had his keys. They hadn't changed the lock. The lobby was in darkness, but there was enough light from the loading dock of the Lamont's across the parking lot that Chick could find his way. He unlocked the door beside Nicole's desk and slipped through, pausing in the hall to reach into his medic's satchel.

Dr. Mandelbrot office door was right the, across the hall from Chick's little closet. Chick glanced at the Gundams on his shelves. Which one was missing its little gun? It was the LM312V04 Victory, Chick remembered. He knew the little gun the second he'd seen it. It didn't matter now. Chick removed his own gun from his bag, leveling the revolver at the Doctor's door. Chick reached for the handle.

He didn't see Dr. Mandelbrot lurking in the shadows of Chick's small closet.

Before Chick could open the door, the doctor came up behind him. The cattle prod made a hissing, zapping noise the second before Mandelbrot thrust it into Chick's lower back.

Chick wailed in pain as he toppled, face first, into the doctor's office. He hit the floor, and the doctor zapped him again. The revolver twirled on the linoleum, free of Chick's grasp.

Mandelbrot came down hard, his knee on Chick's neck. The cattle prod clattered to the floor, as the doctor fumbled with something. A sharp pain stabbed Chick between his shoulder blades. Then it was gone.

The doctor removed his knee from Chick's neck, picked up his cattle prod, and walked over toward the gun. Chick painfully pulled himself up on all fours. Something was wrong, he felt dizzy. He climbed to his feet and teetered there. He reached out and collapsed over the desk, sending paperwork flying.

"Sit down before you fall down," Dr. Mandelbrot said. He put the cattle prod down on the desk, freeing up a hand and pushing Chick roughly into the guest chair. His other hand held Chick's chromed .357.

"What did you do to me?" Chick asked, collapsing in the chair, his head spinning.

"Epidural analgesia," the doctor said, leaning in close and examining Chick's face from behind his owl glasses. "If I performed the procedure correctly, it shouldn't stop your heart. But you won't be able to move. Not until I kill you at, least." The doctor appeared satisfied that Chick wasn't going to asphyxiate and was sufficiently immobilized. He put the gun down on the desk next to the cattle prod and removed his glasses. He exhaled on the lenses and began to clean them on his tie. "I knew you'd be coming. I thought I'd covered everything, but some how I knew – hoped that you wouldn't be fooled. I'm happy my faith in you was not misplaced, Albert."

Chick looked up at the doctor with only his eyes. Drool was pooling in the corner of his half-open mouth. Chick couldn't turn his head. He couldn't move his arms of legs. The anesthetic was taking over his whole body. "You killed..." Chick began, but choked on his own spit. The doctor replaced his glasses and shifted Chick's weight in the chair. "You motherf–"

The Doctor raised a scolding finger in front of Chick's nose. "Now, now. There's no need for name calling."

Chick's eyes crossed, staring at it.

"It's you. It's always been you. You're..." Chick gasped for air.

"The Wild Side Killer?" the doctor finished, annoyed. "No. No. Never that. You go to all the trouble to cultivate a persona..." He waved his arm melodramatically. "...to add a little...theater to your work..." He leaned in close, the finger raised again. "...and then you whistle ONE song ONE time," he whistled the Lou Reed refrain: doo, da-doo, da-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo. "A and the media dubs you the Wild Side Killer. No! Damn it! Mr. Albert Chick!"

Chick didn't respond.

The doctor raised a fist and punched Chick hard on the end of his nose. "Whatever you call yourself, you killed Beth," Chick mumbled, his nose bleeding.

Dr. Mandelbrot's anger turned into a self-important grin. "Maybe. I've killed a lot of people."

"But...my wife...Beth..."

"Yes, that was the last time I did it for fun. That way, at least. This..." The doctor waved at Chick's back. "...is much easier. I can have my fun and there's less mess – well, not with you, perhaps. You're not my type. But I'm glad we've having the chance to have this little chat. That you've had this chance to observe my methods. I'd have hated for this all to have come to and end without the two of us being able to talk about old times."

"Why?" Chick managed. He was having a hard time forming words. It felt like his throat was collapsing in. Maybe the doctor hadn't giving him the epidural correctly. But then, what did it matter? The pistol was right there on the desk.

"Why did I kill your wife? I don't know. I don't remember. Does there have to be a reason? I could. I did. Or are you asking why was she the last?" The doctor grinned at Chick, enjoying this line of questioning, even if he was both interviewer and interviewee. "Yes, that's because of you, Albert. You. Congratulations, you can take credit for stopping the Wild Side Killer. Yes you can. Not now. Not here. No, but seven years ago. You were so distressed, so torn up about the loss of your wife. And after I sent you her necklace...well, I realized how much fun the whole game can be with a live subject. I gave you this job and kept you close, where I could watch you squirm on the end of my hook. Oh, you so badly wanted to catch your wife's killer. And he was right across the hall for seven years. Isn't that delicious?"

Chick could only croak.

"Of course, I still had my needs. But you'd be surprised what an epidural and solid reputation with the community at large can let you get away with." The doctor considered his own words for a second. "You see, Albert, it was never really about the killing. You have to understand that. When you're young, inexperienced, and you don't know how to cover your tracks, the killing is necessary. But everyone gets too hysterical about the killing. They ignore the art. With age and position and a commitment to the craft, you learn a thing or two.

"What details can't be mask by narcotics can be influenced by persuasion. There is always a connection to be made here, a favor to be performed there. You'd be surprised what people are willing to overlook for a nice car or a good paying job. At the hospital, perhaps?"

The doctor rose from crouching next to Chick and walked over to his door, looking out at the freezers beyond.

"Of course, with some people, no matter what you do, they remain ungrateful..." He returned to Chick and sat down on the edge of the desk, picking up the gun. "I give your every credit, Albert. You spotting it instantly. That young nurse. My handiwork. It was a foolish mistake. I shouldn't have lost my temper. But she was threatening...couldn't get past the perfect time we'd had. Despite setting her up at the hospital. I've set up dozens like that – hundreds. You wouldn't believe me if I told you how many there were. What started as a favor to my special friends has grown into my most profitable line of business. Better than Atta Boy and his drugs. What use is a white supremacist who gets run out of business by the Mexicans? Seriously. But the girl, she was threatening to expose it all. She'd stolen records off my computer. We caught her talking to a reporter. I had Atta Boy take care of that, but I needed that disk back. Do you know what might have happened if people starting looking into the backgrounds of those doctors and nurses? When people realize who's name is on all those references? No, I needed those records back. But the disk was gone.

"Then, of course, her boyfriend threatened to go to the police. He had to be taken care of, too. And then there was you, doing your Sherlock Holmes impression so successfully. And that girl? Who is that girl? From the computer store? You didn't have to bring her into all this. What will have to happened to her is...unfortunate."

Chick groaned. Inside he was fighting desperately to move a limb, to reach out and grab the doctor by the throat. Choke the life out of him. But Chick couldn't move a finger. He could hardly breath.

"It was, of course, all to easy to blame it on Atta Boy's idiot cousin. I wanted to frame you, Albert. You were such a better candidate. But Atta Boy and his slow-witted Ran Tan Klan can't even strangle the life out of one, tiny girl. Can you believe it? But Atta Boy's cousin made for a suitable replacement. I haven't decided who'll take responsibly for you and the girl. Maybe nobody. Maybe you both can 'move to Seattle, to manage grunge bands,' too. Like Beth. People believed that. Wanted to believe it. I could see that working for you two – that you just both disappear..."

The doctor climbed to his feet and circled behind Chick. He raised the revolver to the back to Chick's head and cocked the hammer.

"...to managing grunge bands in Seattle," the doctor rolled the phrase around in his mouth, enjoying its taste. "Sounds so much more exciting than thrown into the confluence of the Cowlitz and Columbia rivers, with the wheel of the '74 Chevy tied around your neck, doesn't it? Because that was Seattle for your wife, Albert. You'll be reunited soon enough."

This is the part where I rattled on the front door to the Medical Examiner's Office. I wasn't being very quiet. Teeny was parked out front, and I'd retrieved Rusty McShootyFace from the trunk. Before mom had headed back to Bellevue, she'd bought me a new box of double-aught shells. "If you're going to wave a gun around at people," she'd said, "it'd better be loaded."

The doctor froze, gun still at Chick's head. Chick gurgled.

"Who could that be at this hour?" the doctor asked the motionless Chick. "Our little friend? Ms. Fancy? It must be. Perhaps this will be a two birds with one stone sort of evening. Huh, Albert?" The doctor put his thumb on the hammer of the gun and lowered it back to safe. "But with a delicious little thing like her, perhaps I'll have some fun tonight, after all."

Chick's eyes were wild with panic, but he could say nothing.

"Yes, perhaps I'll make this one extra special. Just like the old days. Just like with Beth. You'd enjoy that, wouldn't you Albert? Here..." Mandelbrot pulled the headphones off Chick's ears. "...you'll want to be sure you can hear absolutely everything. Every delicious wail of agony and humiliation. You and I are not so different Albert, do you know that?"

The doctor discarded the headphones and wheeled Chick's chair out of the office. They trolleyed into the examination room and over to the freezers.

"Where you hear music in their voices," the doctor said, opening the draw to freezer 5C, "I hear music in their screams."
Chapter 55

The lobby was dark, except for the strips of shadows cast by the lights of the Lamont's loading dock. I crept inside, with the shotgun raised.

The front door was unlocked. I was obviously too late. Chick had beaten me there. How, I had no idea. He didn't drive. Where there buses at this hour? It didn't matter. Why was I thinking about buses? The Wild Side Killer was very probably inside the morgue here somewhere. Dr. Mandelbrot. I should have known that day I was in his office. Getting Christmas cards from Beth. It was a dead giveaway. I just hadn't clicked to it. But now I had. Here I was, gun in hand. But I had to be careful. Chick was in here, too. Chick and his chromed revolver.

Everything beyond the lobby was silent, which could be both a good and bad sign. Good: no shooting or screaming. Bad: Chick was already dead and there was a serial killer in there laying in wait. I should have called the cops. But what would I have told Sheriff Tush? Oh yeah, you sort of shot the wrong guy, the real Wild Side Killer is your Chief Medical Examiner, and would you please rush over there and shoot him, too? Thank you very much.

No, he'd have laughed and hung up the phone. This was all on me. Me and McShootyFace.

This wasn't going to be as easy as gunning down Moist in the bullpen of Nybbles and Bytes. The doctor was a real killer. Not just dressed up as one. And me? Not so much. This was stupid, this was suicide. But I had to look around. Chick was already in here and I couldn't hear any voices. That was bad. Really bad.

I tried the door next to Nicole's desk. It was unlocked, too. The hallway was beyond, the Doctor's office on the left, Chick's little room to the right. No lights. The examination room was beyond. That smell. It hit me again. That damn smell. Formaldehyde and death. I think I would have been alright if it wasn't for that smell.

I moved forward slowly, gun at my shoulder.

Chick's little room. Empty. I pushed open the doctor's office door. Empty, papers all over. A cattle prod on the desk. That was weird, but I didn't dwell on it. I had to stay sharp.

Chick's headphones on the floor. That was bad. I reached down quickly and picked them up, putting them around my neck.

The examination room beyond. Darkness. The cold, steel tables. The buckets of whatever. The wall of freezers with an office chair in front of them. Weird again, but I didn't brood.

I took a step, sweeping the room with the barrel of McShootyFace. Then another step and another. I didn't notice the shadow behind me moving. I didn't see the hands coming up, the steel necklace of bones strung between them. I took one more step and the shadow moved closer...

Crash!

The noise came from the freezers, causing me to leap back. I collided with something behind me – someone! I caught sight of the gleaming garrote above my head. I pushed off with the butt of the shotgun, against something soft. I ducked and rolled, tucking McShootyFace underneath me. Somebody grunted in pain. I scrambled, slipping on the slick floor until I was behind one of the examination tables.

I took a beat. Something inside the freezers rattled again. Was a corpse trying to get out?

I stole a quick glance around the steel table. A figure in a white coat was hunched over. I'd nailed him straight in the balls. I brought McShootyFace up and drew a bead. The man in the white coat saw this just in time.

Shooting a shotgun in a confined place is loud.

The sound of a .357 isn't much better. He fired two shots back, the bullets ricocheting off the steel table. I was safe behind cover when he did.

I moved Chick's headphones from around my neck to over my ears. I worked the shotgun's slide.

"Good evening, Ms. Fancy!" the doctor yelled out. I could only just hear him through the headphones. "You're just in time to join the fun!"

"Call me Buzz!" I yelled back.

"You're denying me my evening's entertainment, Ms. Fancy. That's awfully rude!"

"Where's Chick?"

"On ice!"

The freezers rattled again. I didn't know it, but Chick had regained very limited control of his left leg. He was kicking frantically at the faulty latch on freezer 5C.

"Cops are on their way!" I lied. "If you want to get away, I'd run now!"

"No, Ms. Fancy." I couldn't see it, but the doctor was moving along the length of his examination table. If he popped out the other side, he was going to have a clear shot at me. "You wouldn't have come in here alone if the police were involved. I suspect you'll be my last guest this evening. I hope you brought plenty of ammunition..."

I hadn't. Three more shots. Shit, I was trapped in here with a serial killer, and he had Chick's gun. I ducked around the table and fired at where I thought the Doctor was hiding. That sound was much more manageable with the headphone on. I racked the slide. Two more shots.

"Who are you going to blame this on?" I yelled out. "The Wild Side Killer is dead! Officially, at least!"

"The Wild Side Killer is an idea, Ms. Fancy, not a man. Something to put fear into the hearts and minds of good, little children. Aren't you afraid of him, Ms. Fancy?"

"No!" I had to admit.

"Well, you should be!"

Mandelbrot came around the end of his examination table, he had a clear shot. He missed it. A bullet whizzed an inch from my face and hit the wall behind me. I fired McShootyFace without aiming, while it lay across my lap. The doctor rolled, scrambling back behind his table. I think I caught him with some buckshot. I scrambled off too, behind the long side of my table. Racking my last shell into the chamber.

"Fuck you, you fucking freak!" I screamed out. It seemed about the right time for some f-bombs.

"Now, now, Ms. Fancy," the doctor answered, but there was an edge to his voice. Yeah, I'd got him good with that last shot. "There's no need for insults."

One more shell. And he had at least three in his gun. I was never good at math, but that addition sucked balls.

The freezers rattled again. I was on exactly the wrong side of the room to help Chick. In fact, the freezers were right above the doctor's head...

That's when it gave out – that faulty latch of 5C. Chick gave the door one last, almighty kick, and the draw came free. Chick toppled out just as the hairy logger had.

But I wasn't under it this time, the doctor was. Two hundred pounds of inert Chick came crashing down onto him.

There was a great deal of screaming. I heard something metal hit the floor. I leapt up, taking me chance and ran to the hall, almost out of the examination room. I could see behind the table, the doctor was pushing Chick's bulk off of him. Chick kicked off, still just that one leg of any use. Mandelbrot scrambled, reaching for his gun. I couldn't get a shot, Chick was in the way. Chick kicked off again, this time at one of the blue buckets. It hit the wall and bounced, toppling over. A great deal of something came pouring out, washing over Chick, the doctor, and the examination room floor.

That smell. It instantly hit me. Formaldehyde.

Turns out, a morgue is a really bad place to have a gunfight.

The doctor had his gun again. He climbed to his feet, soaked in the pee-colored fluid. He had a clear shot at me, I had a clear shot at him. Chick lay on the floor. I didn't raise my gun.

The doctor did. First at me, then slowly he turned it toward Chick. Chick could only lay there. There was nothing near his left foot for him to kick.

The doctor cocked the hammer of his gun.

"No!" I yelled out, but I didn't raise my gun. Instead, I threw myself toward Chick's little closet. The doctor swept his gun around and fired at me. The shot went through the wall and knocked a Gundam off a shelf. The cylinder flash of the revolver set fire to the doctor's formaldehyde soaked sleeve.

Mandelbrot quickly extinguished it, climbing quickly out of his white coat and tossing it clear. But from the doorway of Chick's closet, I'd witnessed it all. The doctor looked at me, I looked at Chick. The whole room stank to high heaven. Moments before, the doctor had been on the floor rolling around in that shit.

I raised my gun.

And pointed it at Chick.

The burning wadding of the double-aught hit maybe two feet to Chick's left. The pool of formaldehyde instantly caught. Only Chick's feet were in it, but Mandelbrot was drenched in the stuff. The fire spread fast, catching on Chick's boots and racing up the Doctor's pants alike a horde of angry ants. Before I could move, the doctor was consumed in an aura of burning flames. Instantly, he was a human torch, his hair catching fire and his glasses melting Indiana Jones style.

I tossed McShootyFace aside and sprinted over to Chick. I grabbed him by the back of his shirt and pulled he feet out of the fire. I had a second to try and put his boots out, but the whole room was going up fast. I was guessing all those other blue buckets were full of formaldehyde, too.

"Get out!" Chick said, hardly audible.

I gave up on trying to put out his shoes. I returned my hands to under his armpits and began pulling.

There were flames on all side by the time I'd pulled him to the hall. Thick, black smoke was filling the top of the room. I pulled Chick out, past his tiny room – the Gundams were already starting to melt – past Nicole's desk and out into the lobby.

I didn't stop pulling until we were halfway across the parking lot. I leaned Chick up against Teeny's right, front fender. He looked at my groggily.

I looked at his feet. The caked-on mud from the reporter's crime scene had done a pretty good job saving his boots from the fire. I patted out the smoldering laces of his boots.

"Thanks," Chick drawled.

"You're welcome," I said and took the headphones of my ears. I returned them to Chick's head, snapping them into place. "He's dead," I said.

"He's dead," Chick repeated.

"It's over."

And it was.

This time for real.
Chapter 56

You know, you'd think it would kill people to say thank you.

After all, Chick and I did put an end to the Wild Side Killer's murderous rampage. Okay, so we did burn down the county morgue in the process. That cost two-and-half million to replace. And things were complicated for us, too. In fact, there was a while there that the authorities were making noises like we were the murderers. But a little sifting through the ashes soon turned up Mandelbrot's stash of souvenirs from his serial killer days – a necklace from each of his victims, minus Beth's that was still around Chick's neck. He'd kept them all, along with copious notes on the many fake MDs and RNs he'd vouched for, secure in his fireproof safe. Nice piece of forethought on the Doctor's part. Considering how he met his end.

Ironic, maybe?

And then there was poor Sheriff Tush, who had to backpedal on his claim of single handedly dispatching the Wild Side Killer. Shooting some unarmed guy because he was wearing a weird mask was not the sort of thing that gets you Chief of Police stars. Portland, or otherwise.

He wasn't exactly the happiest little cute Tush. But those are the breaks.

And then there was Spork, who basically had to admit, in court, that her whole case against Chick had been spoon-fed to her by Mandelbrot. And a violent felon had been able to use the powers of the state to persecute an innocent man for not much more than looking a little weird. And she'd done it all willingly, gleefully, confident in her own righteousness.

Spork wasn't going to see a promotion any time soon, either. Good riddance to her and her clipboard.

And Atta Boy and the rest of the RTK walked. Despite the dead reporter and Mr. Tinynips and the rest, they all went into court and blamed everything on the good doctor. There was no proving he hadn't killed them all.

That got pretty much all of Longview mad at us. And Atta Boy was none too pleased about his missing teeth.

And then...oh yeah, Nybbles and Bytes was all shot to hell and the cops refused to pay for the damage. Maybe that was payback for the amount of crow we'd forced Sheriff Tush eat. That didn't make Spider very happy. Chick and I had picked the spot for that fight. Spider sort of had cause to be sore.

And then there were all those doctors and nurses with fake degrees. It would take years and millions of dollars to figure out exactly how deep that rabbit hole went. When that scandal hit the news, tied to such a sensational character as the Wild Side Killer, every doctor in the state was suddenly under suspicion. Yeah, the doctors and nurses of the I-5 corridor were not exactly slapping us on the back after that. Or the malpractice insurance companies or the hospitals or, hell, I'm sure the chiropractors were pissed at us for something...

But we got the Wild Side Killer. He wasn't, ever, going to hurt anyone else. What's that something? Something to thank us for?

No, I guess not. Luckily, Chick and I hadn't gotten into the mess hoping to be heroes. I'd gotten into it to help Chick, and Chick had gotten into it for Beth.

Portland P.D. did send a diving squad, though. I think that might have been out of some sort of gratitude. They started dredging at the confluence of the Cowlitz and Columbia rivers. And that's where I found Chick that morning – the morning I'd packed up Teeny and was ready to head out. He was standing on the bank, watching the divers in the water. I pulled off the 432, put the car in park and joined Chick at the water's edge.

"Anything?" I asked. The air was cold with the first nip of autumn.

Chick shook his head. His headphones rattled. "The chances are pretty slim. Seven years. The current."

"You never know," I put a comforting hand on his shoulder. I don't think it helped.

"It doesn't matter," Chick said. "Body or no body, Beth's not down there anyway. She never was."

"Managing grunge bands in Seattle?" I tried to crack a grin, but it was pretty morbid humor.

"You know, for so long, I hated when people said that. Now I sort of wish it was true. Beth would have loved that."

"It's not too late." I removed my hand.

Chick looked up from the water, confused. "What?"

"It's not too late for you, I mean. And Seattle." I looked back at Teeny, loaded with my things. Even a car that size looked overstuffed with all my junk.

Chick looked at the car, then back to the water. "You're going, then?"

"I promised my mother."

"Back to school."

"No, I didn't promise that."

"Then what?" Chick looked up, curious.

"As I said before, Shaggy and Scooby," I pointed between Chick and myself. "And the Mystery Machine." I pointed back at Teeny.

Chick shook his head again. The headphones rattled once more. There was something loose in there. They had sort of taken a beating. "No," he said without hesitation.

"What are you going to do here in Longview? You burned the morgue down. I don't think they're going to give you your job back."

Chick shrugged. "I'll figure something out."

"Take Moist's table at Nybbles and Bytes? They have an open position for an intolerant know-it-all? You'd be perfect..."

Chick rolled his eyes. "I'll pass."

I laughed. Chick didn't. It was sort of funny. I exhaled. I could see my breath. I was getting cold. I patted my jacket, looking for my keys. "Okay then, well..."

"Drive safe," Chick said, not looking up from the river.

"Take it easy," I turned and started back to the car.

I had the door open and I was almost inside, when I decided to give it one last shot. "So maybe, Chick..." I began and closed the car door. But the instant I turned around, I knew I didn't need to say any more. Chick had already changed his mind – or at least his body had: his right leg was swiveling, Elvis style. It was soon followed by the hips. Chick was dancing to a music only he could hear.

"Wait? So you're coming? You're really coming?" I cheered as he moonwalked past me, toward the car.

Chick didn't respond. He was completely absorbed in his groove.

"Don't you want to wait and see what the drivers find?" I asked as I ran around and opened Teeny's passenger door.

Chick did a shoulder roll and electric-boogalooed in the front seat.

"Drive," he said, a wave making its way slowly up his right arm, across his shoulders and down to his left hand. "Before the music stops!"

I slammed the door closed, sprinted around to my door and climbed behind the wheel.

I let Teeny's engine roar to life.

We were off. Next stop: Seattle. The Mystery Machine finally had its Shaggy, break dancing in the seat beside me...

...wait, then what did that make me? Scooby-Doo?

Uh, I didn't want to be the dog...

