“Detective,” I say, freeing my gun from the leather. “Now get your ass outside. You’ll see my associate sitting in a blue unmarked police car. I want you to get in the backseat and stay there until I come get you. Tell her Merriweather gave you the marching orders, got it?”
The proprietor unlooses his limbs with a nod and makes his way around the counter, heads for the door. I wait until I hear it slap closed before I approach the storage room. I should absolutely be calling for back-up, but I doubt my guy is armed since he just dashed here straight from his desk. I bang on the door with purpose and stand to the side. No sense in not being careful.
“Mr. Harris? This is Los Angeles police. I’m a detective, Mr. Harris, and I only want to ask you a few questions. If you come out of there, we can talk right here. If I have to come and get you, we’re gonna have our chat at my place, the one with the cages and bad coffee.” I wait, listening, but he plays mute, so I raise the gun, flip off the safety. “Okay, we do it your way.”
I reach the handle, twist, and yank open the door. No shots are fired so confidence is high as I spin into the darkened entryway, half-crouched, exposed as a paper target at the shooting range. I fondle the wall for a switch and find bupkis. Great.
I stay low and let my eyes adjust to the dark, the musty light coming through the open door a beacon of futility when it comes to illumination.
Shelves line all four walls, but otherwise the space appears empty except for thick shadows and a couple wooden crates.
I don’t see my man anywhere.
The word trap hits my brain like a bell and before I can curse my stupidity the door slams shut. The dark takes over and I feel a rush of panic as I lunge for the door. As I’m scrambling for a handle, I hear the scrape of a heavy object being dragged and the thump of said object coming to rest against my planned means of exodus. I’m just thinking things are getting bad when I hear two pops of a small caliber. Pigeonholes of light appear like magic and a bullet whizzes by my ear like a hornet with a head cold. I finally get that curse out and drop to my belly, make like a starfish against the dirty concrete.
When I hear the patter of fleeing footsteps, I say a silent prayer that Rose will be careful and not put herself in harm’s way. Then I get off the floor and shove into the door, which doesn’t even flinch. Whatever Gemini Harris stuck out there it’s heavy and immovable, which leaves me in the awkward position of waiting for help to arrive. I double-down on the prayer that Rose keeps her distance and calls for backup, preferably a fire team with axes at the ready to chop me to freedom.
Frustrated, I turn and study my surroundings, grateful there isn’t a ceiling of spikes lowering toward me. Small blessings, I suppose. With the quarter-size breathing holes Harris left in the door, and the adjustment of my vision to cave-dweller setting, I can make out the goods on the shelves fairly well now. I pace one wall, clocking the rusted old metal toys—Jack in the Boxes, creepy clowns, cars and robots among other detritus—and the array of wooden figurines, mostly circus animals and…
Oh no.
…dolls. An entire fucking row of white faces—the flesh a variety of porcelain, wood, and plastic—with wide eyes, chipped red lips, frayed dresses. Blood rushes to my head and I feel faint. My hands are trembling, so I put the gun away, lean against the shelves and breathe in deep.
That’s when I hear the voice—squeaky and teasing—in my left ear.
“You again.”
I turn my head toward the shadows of the rear wall. Sitting on a shelf at eye-level, slumped into the corner like he’s having a smoke, is my nightmare.
Charlie.
Well, probably not my Charlie, because this dummy’s wearing a different suit. Blue, I think, with ruffles at the chest. This bowtie is bright red and real. The eyes are wide and angry, bright green irises glaring daggers.
It could be him, sure. Different clothes, new paintjob to bring out the rose in his cheeks, the white of those chunky teeth.
My heart picks up the pace and terror plucks at my nerves like a six-fingered banjo player at a Friday night barn dance. I want to turn and run, to get away, to get out of this room, but I can’t move. Can’t even imagine such a thing.
The dummy’s eyelids do an up-and-down and I feel my bladder swell. Sweat breaks out on my forehead and neck and I can’t tell if I’m still breathing. That wooden jaw stays still but I hear it speak to me nonetheless, like it’s throwing its voice directly into my head. I can almost feel the tickle of its wooden breath on my ear.
“I knew I’d see you again. I knew I’d get you sooner or later.”
I open my mouth and squeak out a reply. Somehow, I manage to turn my body and stagger, knees buckled, feet cement, toward the door. I fall into it and bang my fists against the wood, not caring if bullets start flying, not caring about sounding like a coward, like a terrified child. Just wanting out. Needing to get away from this horror.
There’s giggling from behind me, like a gaggle of tin-throated children laughing it up, and I know it’s the dolls entering the show. Wanting a little playtime with old Dixie. I twist my head back and see the shelf where the dummy was sitting is now empty. My eyes leap from shadow-to-shadow, breath hitching in my chest. I listen for the sound of feet scraping against concrete.
I spin and pound double-time, yelling now, screaming for help.
Something tugs at the back of my pant leg, and I kick away, moaning. More laughter and I throw my shoulder into the door so hard I skid and fall on the rebound, banging my head on the floor hard enough to bring stars.
A wooden stare fills my vision and hard little hands grip my neck and squeeze with the strength of a gorilla. I gag and swipe my arm but catch nothing but air.
There’s a pounding in my head. A sky-splitting scream fills the room but it’s not me, it can’t be me because I can’t even breathe—my burning throat tied like a shoelace into a tight, painful knot. My eyes bulge wide as I choke and gag; there’s a crash and a burst of white light and I figure it’s my brain saying goodbye as I slip away into the abyssal dark with the horrible knowledge that the little bastard got me after all.
“IT WAS HIM ALL RIGHT.”
I nod as the impish, bespectacled man behind the large desk stares at his private screen, soft fingers gliding over the activity glass at a mesmerizing speed.
“To be honest, Harris was already under scrutiny, and while we knew he was doing things he shouldn’t be doing, we never expected murder. If we had, well hell, we would’ve involved the police from the start. We just thought, I don’t know, that he was stealing code, maybe theft of intellectual property, but we had to nail him cold. I’m sure you know what I mean.”
He looks at me and smiles, like catching murderers and rapists and kidnappers is somehow the same as catching a programmer stealing a line of data for some extra cash. But I nod back, happy to oblige his fantasy. And besides, I’m wiped from the drama at the toy store.
I hadn’t even known what happened until I opened my eyes to dazzling sunlight and the worried faces of Rose and some guy I’d never seen before. Rose was holding my hand while the guy pressed plastic to my face and pinched my wrist for a pulse.
Apparently, he found one, because a dirty sidewalk is no substitute for heaven, or hell for that matter.
Turns out I’d passed out in that storage room. Firemen had chopped into the door just enough to watch my limbs noodle and switched from axes to an electric chainsaw, splitting the heavy door in two, worried I’d had a heart attack. Lucky for me it was just a good old fashioned, brain-squeezing, chest-crushing anxiety attack, severe enough that my consciousness took five while it rebooted a few popped breakers.
They dragged me outside, put the oxygen mask on me and hoped for the best. I was feeling almost normal until Rose asked about the red marks on my neck, and I had to relive a few colorful childhood emotions before settling back into the easy gray dusk of adulthood, where the supernatural is kept to storybooks and dolls don’t come alive.
Even worse than my short-circuit gag was the bad news that our perp got away. Rose had grabbed the old man with the beret all right, but when she heard shots she ran for the store, catching a hard shoulder of Gemini Harris as he barreled out the front, knocking her clean into the street.
By the time she got her bearings, he’d done his Houdini bit and was on the run once more.
After catching my breath and giving my memory of that storage room a good mental bleaching, I’d staggered back to the Maytime offices. This time getting to see the inside of the elevator and the plush carpet of the fourth floor, where Jim Hernandez, Vice President of Operations of the whole shebang, brought me into his office to discuss the electronic warrant he’d been served only minutes prior to my arrival.
Turns out Gemini Harris isn’t such a great guy, and in even better news he’s been vaulted to the top of my suspect list. As a matter of fact, he’s got the whole damn page to himself. Lucky guy.
