Radio: Chapter Six: The Steampunk House

Chapter Six: The Steampunk House

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    “Don’t you know it’s illegal to show disrespect for an officer of the law?” Vince actually opened my door for me like he was the kid at the snooty restaurant doing the valet parking.  

    “Oh yeah?” the chill of the Sunset pierced my windbreaker. “No wonder the jails are so overcrowded.  Sounds like a good special report to me.”

    “Seriously Sean,” Vince paused as we reached the house’s front porch.  “You know the JJ’s are pissed at you about this?”

    “What did I do? Just answered the phone like you did.”

    “You know how cops think,” Vince gave me another version of the stare.  “If they get too out of hand, let me handle it.”

    “I get it,” I glanced up to see a plane ascending from SFO banking towards the Pacific. “I guess I’d be pissed too if I was them.”

    “Good,” we moved onto the porch and Vince hit the doorbell.

    Hector Jones blocked all light from inside as he answered the door.

    “You, stay here.” Jones wrinkled his nose like he was still walking a beat in the Tenderloin next to some homeless outdoor outhouse. “Captain, a minute?”

    While Vince and Jones huddled on the other side of the wooden bench hanging from chain on the porch, I looked inside the house.  It was dark in there with a very uncomfortable looking couch dimly lit by a small red-shaded lamp perched on an Edwardian side-table.  A woman in her late-40’s dabbed at her eyes while staring at Tommy James.  The detective wore his trademark khaki pants, white shirt, and red and blue striped tie under a faded yellow blazer.  His graying hair was maybe a half an inch longer than regulation in back, perhaps his way of trying to stay “hip”, never mind that no one had used that term for at least 25 years.

    “You must be Mr. McKay,” the woman stuffed her handkerchief in the front of her red apron as she waddled from the couch to the door.  “Thank you so much for coming.”

    “Hey asshole, I told you to stay put,” I could hear Hector Jones’ voice flare as I stepped past the woman into the house. I looked back to see Vince’s hand gripped onto his detective’s right upper arm to restrain him.

    “This nice lady is inviting me in and it would be rude to say no, don’t you think Detective?”  Vince and Jones were right behind me as we all crowded the small living room.  James stood up.

    Now that I was inside, I had a better view of the small house.  A threadbare rug covered the hardwood floor.  A green and gold patterned wallpaper was broken only by a couple of framed photos.  Could have been Pappy and Mammy Druthers or just something they picked up at a long forgotten garage sale.  

    “Okay,” Tommy James spread his arms like a preacher anticipating a bountiful collection plate, “now that we’re all here, maybe we can get started.”

    “Yes ma’am, I’m Sean McKay,” I ignored James and shook hands with the woman.

    “And I’m Sally Druthers,” her handshake was strong despite the moistness on her hands from gripping the wet hanky. “I believe you knew my little brother, Clarence.”

    “Yes ma’am,” knew was probably too strong of a word for my relationship with Clarence Druthers but this hardly seemed like the right time to bring that up. “I am so sorry for your loss.”

    “Thank you,” the hanky was back in her hands dabbing at her face. “I still can’t believe this is all really happening.”

    “Now that the introductions are out of the way,” Tommy James tried again, doing that thing with the preacher arms, this time like he was welcoming a potential new and wealthy member of the flock. “Let’s all have a seat and get started.”

     I started to sit on the far end of the couch but stopped in mid-squat when I saw the indecision on Ms. Druthers’ face.

    “Actually,” she raised a finger and pointed it at my nose, “I think I want to talk with Mr. McKay first in private.”

    “Now wait a minute,” Hector Jones made no effort to restrain his anger. “This guy’s not a lawyer and you’re not a suspect.  Or maybe you want to be?”

    “Detective,” Vince’s tone of voice and the grimace on his face were real and not just good cop-bad cop posturing.  “That’s not necessary.”

    “Ms Druthers,” Vince’s voice was now soothing.  I had heard this same approach from him when he was making the move on coeds back in college.  “I know you want to find out what happened to your brother just as much as we do.  The truth is the faster we can learn what you know, the better chance we have of solving this case.  We’ve already delayed this interview so Mr. McKay could be here.  We really need to get started.”

    Vince’s glance turned to me pleading for my help.  

    “I won’t be bullied, Mr. Cop,” before I could say anything to assist Vince Sally Druthers crossed her arms over her ample chest, spread her legs and assumed the stance of a linebacker preparing to take on a blocking fullback.  “I either talk privately with Mr. McKay or you can all leave my house right this very minute.”

    I shrugged my shoulders and Vince gave me a barely perceptible nod.  

    “Perhaps you can show me Clarence’s room,” I put my hand on Sally Druthers’ shoulder blades and turned her away from the placating Vince, the steaming Jones, and the insincerely smiling James.

    “He always wanted to show you his study downstairs,” Sally Druthers led me into a dark corridor.  More paintings of the long-dead lined the walls while ancient brass electric fixtures cast anemic flickers of light on another threadbare rug on the floor.  I couldn’t quite place the smell that grew stronger the deeper into the house I got.  It might have been cinnamon mixed with toasted cat litter.  I wrinkled my nose to keep from sneezing.

    I nearly bumped into her when Sally Druthers stopped in front of a white wooden door and pulled a wallet from the front pocket of her apron.  She extracted what I first thought was a gold credit card then realized was one of those old-fashioned calling cards people used to leave with their betters’ butlers.  Sally waved the card under the shade of a brass lamp attached to the wall.  I heard a faint click and the door popped open.

    I followed the victim’s sister down the stairs into the most bizarre room I have ever been in.  My first reaction was to look for Captain Jean-Luc Picard traipsing through the holodeck on Star Trek in his Sherlock Holmes get-up.  The space was decorated in late-Victorian style with lots of leather, brass, and dark paneling.  Those old world accoutrements sat side by side with plasma screens, rack after rack of computer processors, audio and video equipment, and gadgets about whose purposes I could only speculate.

    Sally Druthers offered me a surprisingly comfortable stiff-backed chair then settled into a rolling leather desk chair.  She picked up what looked like a medium-sized music box, opened the lid, and pushed several buttons inside.  Three of the plasma screens came to life.  One showed the street in front of the house.  The second offered a view of the backyard while the third showed Vince and the JJ’s looking bored in the living room.  From the angle of the shot, I figured out the camera had to be in or around one of the bizarre portraits on the wall.

    “This, um, is quite some place,” my head swiveled around the room taking it all in.

    “Have you ever heard of Steampunk, Mr. McKay?”

    Actually I had, not because I’m that cool or knowledgeable of a person but for the usual reason for someone in my line of work, I had covered a story about it.  Six months earlier I had pulled a rare weekend shift and been assigned to cover an event called “Maker Faire” at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds.  I had had a lot of fun getting sound effects of flying chairs and exploding bottles of Diet Coke mixed with Mentos, and my personal favorite, the power tool races.    

    Steampunk had had its own building at Maker Faire.  Apparently it was this entire movement dedicated to dressing up modern technology in the look and feel of the Steam age of the 19th Century.  I said as much to Sally Druthers.

    “Steampunk is actually much more than that,” she said.  “It’s also a literary movement that some people trace all the way back to H.G. Wells’ Time Machine.   As you can tell, Clarence was rather obsessed with it.”

    I couldn’t really tell from her tone of voice or mannerisms just how much Sally shared that enthusiasm.

    “So why did you want to meet with my brother last night, Mr. McKay?”

    “What?” I dropped the steel ball bearing I had picked up off the table in front of me.  “I didn’t.”

    Sally hit another button inside the music box and an e-mail message popped up on the plasma screen nearest me.  I recognized the message as identical to what was on the back of my business card that Vince had showed me at Red’s.  

    “Ferry Building, 2 a.m., come alone and await instructions.”

    “Clarence traced the routing on the e-mail and said it appeared to come from your station account.  He was so thrilled that you seemed to finally be taking him seriously.”

    Sally Druthers’ voice had grown cold at that last sentence.  I started to wish I hadn’t agreed to leave Vince and the JJ’s up the stairs and on the other side of an electric locked door.

    “Now look Ms. Druthers,”

    “Don’t you Ms. Druthers me,” the woman had those linebacker eyes on display again. “My brother respected you.  He said you were the only reporter in this god damned town who wasn’t on the take or who wasn’t seduced by the mayor’s impish smile and bonhomie.  He really believed you two could work together as a team to expose Jingleheimer for the tool of the corporate class that my brother believed our mayor to be.”

    “Ms Druthers,” I tried again this time keeping my voice flat and level.  “I would have loved to work with your brother on my stories but he seemed, how should I put this?, a little short on specifics the time I met with him.”

    “Then why have you sent him all of these e-mails encouraging him to keep digging?” She hit another button in the music box and the latest e-mail disappeared at the end of a long list of correspondence that appeared to go back and forth between my e-mail account and Clarence’s.  They appeared to start the day after Druthers had first appeared at my office and I had blown him off.

    “Ms. Druthers, may I call you Sally? You may call me Sean,” she nodded but the football player eyes remained in place. “I met your brother once.  Since then he has sent me six or seven e-mails.  I replied to one of them.  Frankly the last few e-mails from him didn’t make a lot of sense.  I assure you that I haven’t mailed him anywhere near that many times and I promise you I didn’t send him that message to meet at the Ferry Building last night.”

    I expected her to call me a liar and start screaming at me.  It crossed my mind for a flash that I hoped she wasn’t armed, perhaps with a 19th Century dueling pistol.  Instead Sally Druthers put her head in her hands and started sobbing.

    “Ohhh no,” she was dabbing at her eyes with the hanky but it was no match for the flood of tears, “I was afraid of that.”

    “Sally, why don’t we both go back upstairs and tell all of this to the police.” I glanced at Vince and the JJ’s stewing in that creepy living room on the plasma panel over the fireplace.  “They should know what’s going on.”

    The sobbing continued unabated but now she was shaking her head from side to side.

    “I don’t trust those cops.  I can’t tell them any of this,” Sally raised her head from her hands.  Her puffy red eyes stared at me with a startling intensity.  “They work for the mayor.”

    “I know,” I held her gaze with one of my own.  “But I’ve known Captain Smith since we were both teenagers.  I trust him implicitly.  And just between you and me, he’s no great fan of hizzoner either.  You can trust him.  I would stake my life on it.”

    “What about those other two?”

    “They’re both good cops and they’re not politically connected,” at least as far as I knew, I thought.  “Why don’t we invite the Captain down here to join our conversation.  We’ll see what he says about bringing in Detectives James and Jones.”

    “Don’t touch anything while I’m gone,” she shook a finger at me then pointed at the screen showing the three cops in the living room, “because I’ll know if you do.”

    “Yes, ma’am.”

    I stood as she left then made a wide circle of the room careful not to leave fingerprints on anything.  I took a closer look at the magical music box.  It had obviously started out as a real antique.  The cover was blue and red with a gold inlaid pattern.  The side included a real-looking silver wind up switch.  I used a pen from my pocket to open the cover a little wider.  Inside green felt covered everything including what appeared to be four valves from a trumpet.  The felt concealed what must have been wires that led to the electronic workings buried deep inside.  I pulled out my cell phone camera and snapped a couple of shots of the box both inside and out.  I’m not sure why I took the pictures other than some vague sense that I wanted to have a record of this place.  I started to upload them to my server when I noticed I had no cell phone or Internet reception inside this room.

    I glanced up at the monitor showing the living room.  Even though the sound was off, it was clear the JJ’s were none too thrilled at the idea that they were going to be left out of whatever was going on the bowels of this home.  Vince appeared reluctant to pull rank and order them to stay behind.  I was confident he would convince them to go along with the program eventually.

    That’s when I noticed movement on the first plasma screen, this one hanging from the ceiling just over the fireplace.  It showed the scene on the street in front of the home and appeared to be using a camera placed above the house, perhaps at the top of the chimney serving this very fireplace.  I could see my red Focus covered with station decals and that of the sponsors who got on-air credit at the beginning and end of our live reports.  Vince’s command SUV sat hard against the bumper.  Then my greatest fear, okay my second greatest fear after Sally Druthers’ potential dueling pistols, appeared on the screen.  A van covered with the white and red decals announcing Channel Five news, complete with microwave mast blocked the view of both vehicles then pulled in front of my car and stopped.  While the technician worked to set up the shot, Cynthia Ito and her photographer, Fred Jenkins got out and started towards the Druthers home.  I’m sure two of Cynthia’s first questions were going to be why my car was here  
and where the hell is McKay?

    “Sorry Guy,” I thought as I saw the JJ’s head outside with a new task facing them, “looks like I’m going to be the story after all.”

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