Project Purple

43 - The Detective

'This phone only sends, don't bother trying to reply,' Felix typed.

Rigor had just gotten home and was about to scan the various websites for videos of his captive colonials, when Felix broke in on FaceBook Mesenger:

'They got Groucho, they took him-He's dead, kidnapped, he's gone!'

"How do you know?" Rigor typed into the box, ignoring Felix's forewarning.

'...Listen to me, if they can get to Groucho, we're NOTHING. He's a big fish in this virtual macro-spider web matrix.'

'Maybe we're just small peas,' Rigor typed, 'they don't really want us.

'You're probably trying to text me, even after I explained. Listen-Your problems, they're starting...'

Before Rigor could think of something clever to text back, Felix went on, 'I've already been on your computer, tried to wipe the shit clean for you, but they're too good. Talk about a smoking gun. They've set you up massively for the whole thing. The kidnapping of the girl, Groucho's death. You're going down for abduction, kidnapping, extortion-Rigor, don't you see? The money you say you sent them to protect the chick, that 'angel doe' that you sent to Antigua...?'

Rigor typed back: 'What do you mean I said I sent them?'

'...They never touched it. You opened it, but someone else has been sweetening that pot, not you...'

'I'M the one who put that two thousand in, no one else.'

'...You have two HUNDRED thousand-in your account. They've screwed you upside-down. This is bad, it's evil. They probably stashed kiddy porn in a file somewhere...'

Rigor stopped typing and sat back, "Oh, no, that'll never stick."

'Sorry, Rigor. I warned you to stay away from these people. Not only have you been fish-line-sinkered, you been gutted, too. Before they finish, you'll be on every post office wall in the country. Get out of the apartment now! GET OUT NOW!'

Rigor knew a lot of good lawyers. Was that his next move? If Felix was right, he'd better start thinking defense...

'GET OUT NOW!'

He looked over at the open bedroom door-a door he always closed before leaving the apartment. Felix's frightened warnings to get out unnerved him, like SWAT would burst through the doors and windows any moment. But someone had already paid Rigor a visit, and he reached behind him, unholstered his piece, and shuffled along the carpet to the bedroom.

Rigor had never fired his .38 off of the range, and for a silly moment he wondered if he would be responsible for the damage if he had to put bullet holes into the walls of his own apartment...

When he slipped into the dark bedroom, he saw the gleaming blade of the sword-his ceremonial samurai sword, something he bought at a Japanese cultural expo in the 90's.

Rigor flicked the light switch.

The sword had been sharpened, too, he could see that-making it a proficient killing tool, making it a real sword. It was inside of somebody now, or what used to be a somebody ...What remained of Doogan, now suspended abobve the bed, accommodated the sword, which pierced the body through the stomach, exiting the back in some kind of monstrous aerial theatrics-with Doogan, strung up like something depraved from the depths of Hell. The body of his partner, his best friend, sliced, hovering, ritualized, in some dangling sculpture; the sword through his midsection coordinating with the wires that held him up...

Intersections at random angles, no exit...

It was the artwork on the walls of the Royal Pacifica ballroom!

But Rigor looked past Doogan, at the collage of photographs that stood on the bedpost against the wall. It was only about two-feet high, but they were all pictures of Angela, his sister-happy, seven-year-old Angela, before the vanishing.

"Meow!" the cat looked at him from the doorway, the diode eyes.

And while the fresh blood dripped onto a white sheet that had been spread out on the bed like some maniacal art piece, Rigor studied the photos of long lost, surely dead (no?) Angela, his little sister, his only sibling, who had wandered off the Yosemite trail some thirty years ago. Poor, sweet, little Angela...

'What do they know?'

That was the beginning of Rigor's transformation; when he ceased to be himself; when he became someone else, someone more to the liking of the Rhizome.

He saw the blood-splattered key then, in the middle of the sheet. He picked it up, and the tag said: 'Thank You for Using Los Angeles International Airport'.

It was a locker key. Everything would be waiting for him, he was sure of that. They had this planned to a tee.

So, was he now free to do what he did best-find people?

He remembered wondering if his Goatwench had any idea he'd be coming.