Save Her

Drayden - Chapter 2

Drayden - Chapter 2

My cell phone rings a few times from an unknown 412 number. It’s gotta be Detective Dietrich trying to locate me, so I ignore it. Sure enough, my voicemail prompts me, and I listen to it: “This is Detective Dietrich. Call me as soon as you get this. We need to talk.”

I’m in Oakland near Reginald’s school in a coffee shop where students mill about with backpacks just like mine, textbooks and electronic tablets under their arms, and I felt like I could disappear amongst them. Reginald’s Range Rover is stashed in the corner of a dark parking lot. I feel entirely anonymous as I sit with a large black coffee and open my brother’s laptop, turn it on, and then plug it in while it boots. It prompts me for a password, so I get out the little brown book.

At the top of each page is listed the heading for the passwords listed below. It starts with bank passwords and then follows with a grouping of pages under the heading ‘syncme.’ The password for the laptop is nowhere inside the book, and I can see from the complexity of the other ones that it would be impossible to solve. Meaningless words connected to + and - symbols, # signs, @ symbols, and I’m certain his brain would have concocted a complicated algorithm impossible to decipher. He had hidden the little brown book in the ceiling for a reason — he had secrets he didn't want discovered. It makes me certain he had taken great precautions to protect the computer from getting hacked. If it belonged to anybody but my brother, I would have started by booting up from a Linux live cd to get direct access to the computer’s desktop. From there, the rest would be cake. But this was Reginald’s, and even though I’m the computer whiz in the family, he was as smart as me and would have encrypted his files strongly. That meant even if I could use a copy of the system rescue cd and download the .iso file and recode that with a new partition, it still might not work. I don’t put it past him to have bugged his computer from unwanted access by destroying files that were trying to be accessed by any unauthorized user. That would be disastrous. Right now the files inside this computer are everything. If worse comes to worse, I’ll have to dump the registry hashes for cracking, but even that gives me pause because I don’t want to compromise a single file.

I push the palms of my hands into my eyes, overwhelmed at the day. Exhaustion takes over, and I think the coffee will not be enough because the room blurs too long as my eyes try to refocus. I think of Adderall and try to push the thought out of my head. Getting back into that is not what I need. It’s the last thing I need. It’s part of what got me into so much gambling trouble. I sip my coffee, but it’s not the same. It’s not doing the trick. I want my Adderall.

I force myself to think about Reginald, and then his destroyed body fills my thoughts. My heart races again, but my mind still lags, and my body is tired. I wonder if sleep will be possible tonight. Just four hours is usually enough. Two tonight would refresh me enough to figure out the best way to proceed. Who would kill him? Why would somebody want him dead? What was he into? What did I not know about him anymore? Did I really even know him at all? And then — “Did your brother have any enemies?” I recall Dietrick asking me. No, of course he didn’t have any enemies. He was the best person I ever knew. So kind, so loving, the best half-brother any brother could wish for. He adored me so completely, even after mother told us we weren’t entirely related.

I look up directly into the light bulb above me and hope for inspiration and sigh and then exhaustion causes me to lean back in the hard wooden chair. When I do, something crinkles in my back pocket. I sit up and pull out the stub from my airline ticket and the kindergarten art I picked up at Reginald’s. In different colors is my name staring back at me. At the password prompt, I type DRayDEn.

I’m in.

“Drayden, I hope it’s you,” his laptop speakers say in Reginald’s voice. I look around the room quickly. Nobody’s paying me any attention. I go into my bag and pull out my headphones and plug them into the laptop. “If it’s you, then type in the box below where you lost your first tooth.” He sounds apologetic, though he would never say he was sorry because mother had taught the both of us that that word was a sign of weakness, and would, therefore, never be heard in our household. I look again around the room. Most of the patrons wear earplugs or are otherwise engaged in conversation or are on their computers.

I smile at the memory of losing my first tooth. We had been living in Aurura, Chicago, but that wasn’t the right answer, because the day I lost my tooth was a snow day, and despite the bitter cold and below-zero wind chills, I was determined not to stay cramped indoors with my mother while Reginald was outside building a snow fort. I threw on a coat and gloves and ran through the knee-high snow and joined Reginald who was packing snow tightly into my wooden step-stool he had taken from the bathroom we shared and turning it upside down to make a wall of snow bricks.

“I want to do it!” I said like a brat.

“Say please,” Reginald said.

“It’s my stool!” I said.

“Still, you have to say please,” he said.

“Give it!” I tried to grab it and whined, but he was too strong and refused to hand it over.

“This fort is a place for men, and only if you stop crying and learn to be polite will you be allowed to enter,” he declared, which made me cry louder.

I tried again to grab the stool, and this time pulled really hard. It slipped out of his mittens and knocked me right in the mouth. One of my front lower teeth took the brunt of the hit and fell out into the snow followed immediately by drips of blood that speckled the snow with red. I remember looking up at Reginald’s completely terrified face as we both processed the trouble he and I would get into if Mom found out. I stopped crying.

“Oh my god, are you okay?” He asked.

I felt the gap in my teeth and the squishy little hole that used to hold my tooth and looked at the red snow and laughed. Reginald smiled a frightened smile. I spit blood into the snow.

“Can I help now? Please? I’m not crying anymore,” I said.

“You are the king of this city,” he said as he reached over the wall and lifted me inside. “Only someone as brave as you can be the ruler of Igloosburghia.”

We finished the fort, and he never instructed me not to tell Mom what had happened, and neither of us ever said anything to her that day, like we both knew we had to protect each other at all costs. Mom never looked at my mouth close enough to notice my tooth was missing. That night after the rest of us had fallen asleep, Reginald must have gone back out to Igloosburghia with a flashlight and somehow found the baby tooth and put it inside a small envelope with a five-dollar bill and put it under my pillow.

The next morning I felt the paper envelope and opened it and ran immediately to Reginald’s room holding up the five dollars in one hand and my little tooth in the other to tell him the Tooth Fairy had visited and left me a ton of money. I did it too loudly because Mom came in and saw the tooth and the money and we both got in trouble because she said that she was the Tooth Fairy and that we were never ever to keep secrets from her ever again.

The city where I lost my tooth is a password only Reginald and I know. I type IGLOOSBURGHIA into the computer and hit ENTER.

A video window opens. Reginald appears. He's sitting in the middle of a vast green meadow, speaking to me from the dead. He looks younger than I remembered, clean-shaven, and his head as bald as can be. He tries to smile, but his anxious nerves get the better of him. He’s in a hurry, and I can tell immediately that something’s wrong. I could always read him like a book. Reginald’s poker face is not as good as mine.

“Hey, Dray. If you’re watching this, then that means I couldn’t get away. Please don’t tell Mom about any of what I’m about to tell you because you know how she is. I got myself into trouble even though I had only the best of intentions when I started, and I need you to do me a favor and just not tell her. Thanks. And I need another favor. A big one. It’s dangerous, and I’m sorry to put you in this position, but it’s more important than I have time to explain right now. I need you to go to my school as quietly as you can and get into my office. Inside the back of my desk is a gray steel box. Take it. Hide it. Destroy it when you can. Whatever you do, let no one see you. Make sure the vials inside are destroyed as well. That’s it. That’s all you have to do, but do it soon, and be careful. Please, Bro, be careful. I have money waiting for transfer to your name at Pittsburgh Bank, account number 674890724145543. Password is Sodapop. It’s about twenty-six million, and I’m giving it all to you because Mom doesn’t need it. Use it to hide for a while. Use it to hide and then use it any way you want.” I scribble the bank information into the last page of my brother’s brown password book as he looks behind him and then back at the camera and hesitates as if he’s not sure he should say anything more. “I meant to get you involved sooner than this in a different way entirely because with your skills and mine the combined result would have been beyond this world, but things quickly got out of my control. I’m sorry, Drayden. Please hurry. Be very careful. Trust nobody. I love you, Brother.”

The video ends abruptly. I shut the laptop and unplug my headphones and take them off and look around. Nobody’s paying any attention. Reginald had meant for only me to see this message. He knew I’d crack the password, and if I didn’t, then someone else would fail enough times, and the computer would be locked out forever. But the small leather book remains a mystery. Had he meant for me to find it? Someone else? And twenty-six million? How was that possible? Where did he get that much money?

I open the laptop and get to the guts of the computer and see he created the video yesterday at two-thirty-three in the afternoon. At that time, I was in my advanced algorithms class bored as hell because I knew it enough to teach it. It upsets me to think my brother had been preparing his last message while I was letting my mind wander about going to my card game and making enough to cover my tuition. I should have checked in with him instead of waiting for him to check in with me. If I had, I wonder if he would’ve told me anything.

I wonder what Reginald was involved in. Apparently it was something the cops could not be entrusted with. So then why hadn’t he contacted me before? What kind of danger could a steel box contain, and who would want it bad enough to kill Reginald?

I shut the laptop again and look at my watch. I have to get to my brother’s school and get to his office. An office. That’s interesting because he was a student. When did he get an office and why? That strikes me as interesting because he couldn’t have been more than a senior in credit hours, and what senior in college has an office? I type Carnegie Mellon University into my smartphone’s maps tool. His school is less than a mile away.

He warned me of danger. Since he’s dead, I know he wasn’t paranoid, so I can’t be too careful. I put everything — including the little brown book — inside the backpack and go to the restroom. I lock the door and stand on the toilet seat and reach up and move the ceiling tile out of the way. I remove the laptop and the little brown book and the two cords and rest it all on the strongest area of the criss-crossed metal that holds up the ceiling squares and then close it up. I look up and make sure it’s unnoticeable. Nobody would be the wiser. The stuff is hidden.

No time to waste. I zip the empty backpack closed and leave the bathroom. I go calmly and take in my surroundings and see nothing out of the ordinary. I’m back into the Range Rover when my cell phone rings and I know that it’s Mom. I silence the ring and think about whether to answer. I decide not to put it off.

“Hi, Mother.”

“Do the police know anything yet?”

“Somebody killed him. That’s all they know.” Reginald had wanted me to keep secrets from her, something I had no problem with whatsoever. Mother and I have a relationship of timed revelations, but Reginald’s secret was one I would probably take to my grave. I won’t tell her anything about the money or about my day at his place or the computer or the video. Her first-born son is dead, and nothing I can reveal will help her or Reginald at this point. I’m sure she knows I’ll be tight-lipped about anything additional, but she will ask anyway. She’s like me in that regard, and won’t stop asking questions until she knows something that satisfies. But I know when it’s best to keep things quiet.

“You know something, don’t you? What have you figured out?” She asks.

I feel like the mystery of his death has compounded since yesterday, but that kind of answer leads to way more questions than I have time for. I need to fulfill my brother’s last request, and that’s it.

“Mother, I know nothing.” I pull off the side of the road. The car behind me blows its horn as it passes.

“Huh.”

We had suffered through many silences over the years, but they weren’t the uncomfortable silences I hear about. With my mother, the silences are strategic, as she and I both ponder what to say. If I was in a bad mood, I might say something to purposefully push her buttons. Her replies usually hit harder because she was the Champ. I knew whatever she was thinking, whatever she was preparing, would piss me off, would hurt, and I would have to think quickly to hurt her back. I thought it would be something in line with how she had loved Reginald more. That was the worst she could do, I thought.

“You and your brother are from the same sperm-dad,” she says. My silence is pure because she had stunned me completely. “You’re full brothers. One-hundred percent.”

I look at the phone and watch it count up the seconds of the call. One-minute forty seconds, one-minute forty-nine, two-minutes seven seconds. Time skips forward. I hear my heart. The phone shakes in my hand with every hard beat. She had done it. She had cruelly maintained her control over us. All this time she had tried to separate us while Reginald and I had continuously tried to grow closer. I realize she’s saying my name. I lift the phone to my ear but say nothing. She must hear my quickened breath through the receiver because she speaks:

“Find your brother’s killer, Drayden. I don’t care what you have to do. Avenge your brother.”

She hangs up. I stare at my cell phone’s screen that has reverted to its home screen background of a photo of Reginald and me standing in front of the ocean, each of us smiling big and holding up Coors Light Banquet cans. The phone screen times out and the picture of my full brother and me suddenly changes to blackness and breaks me out of my trance. The windows are fogging, and I notice it’s cold inside the car. I wipe my forehead. It’s wet with perspiration. My right cheek feels like a tiny spider is crawling down it, but when I push it off, I realize it’s just a tear.

Full brothers. Reginald had known all along. Somehow he had known. I know that now as I replay in my head how he had always looked at me and had always tried to involve me in things, despite the times my mother would urge him not to. Like the time he was building his derby race car, and I wanted to help, but Mom told him not to let me. I remember how he disobeyed her as soon as she went shopping and made me promise not to tell her. It was brotherly love. It was the love given from one full brother to another. I had lost some of that when mother had told us about our different fathers. At that moment, she had torn away something from me. She had tried to rip out love, and she had partially succeeded because that’s when I started to feel separate from him. My mom’s skinny, envious fingers had reached down into my soul and taken what was rightfully mine. Before that, Reginald and I had been close, spending more and more time together and leaving her to clean and read and deal with the solitude of falling in love with the various monetary support mechanisms she called husbands. Reginald and I played, sported, and laughed together without her, and that had been too much for her to take. She was out of the jokes, and maybe that made her feel like she was becoming the joke? I sat in the car wondering why. Who could explain my mother? Certainly, she couldn’t, because nobody would believe her. I wouldn’t, anyway. Not now. Not after this. I think about how Reginald’s love for me never wavered, even after my Mom’s bombshell news, and another tear falls onto the same cheek, and it makes me wonder why it’s always my right eye that sheds pain first. I remember back to the day she lied and told us we were only half-brothers. Reginald was twelve, and I was eight. The mall was busy and mother’s husband at the time was trying on black leather jackets while Reginald and I played hide and seek in the clothing racks. I was still young enough that I left my feet on the floor instead of climbing onto the bottom metal support bases, so it was always easy for him to find me. He always caught me quickly and then it was his turn to hide. I’d cheat and watch him enter a pants rack that was near him, and I remember giggling quietly as I neared where he had entered. But when I reached in, he was gone. I went to the one next to it, and he wasn't there either. That’s when Mom’s voice interrupted my giggles. “He’s in the one behind you,” she said from behind me with an annoyed voice. She grabbed my arm and then grabbed him through the rack and pulled us close to her and put her oversized purse on the ground. She hunched her back and took turns looking at each of us dead in the eyes. “You have different fathers. Drayden, yours was an engineer. Reggie, your father was good at math.” I remember pulling my arm away from her grasp, and how at the last minute she had tried to hold on and pinched my skin. It hurt and later left a bruise, but not nearly as bad as the conversation itself. I remember needing to look away from her staring eyes. I looked at Reginald who was as confused as I was angry. “Don’t worry, Honey,” mother said to him. “I’m still your mother,” as if that made everything okay. “Is Drayden still my brother?” I was so glad he had asked because I don’t think my mother had expected the question. “He’s your half-brother. Not any more than that and no less,” she said to him before picking up her purse and walking away. I didn’t want to play with him after that. The game was over.

My phone interrupts my thoughts. I wipe the wetness from both cheeks as I look at my phone and the Unknown Caller. I expect it’s Detective Dietrich, so I answer.

“Yes?” I say.

“Drayden Routton?” Says Detective Dietrich.

“You have an update on my brother’s killer?”

“Your brother’s body was stolen last night.” He pauses. I say nothing as I process it. “Where are you?” he asks.

“I’m in Pittsburgh. How could you let somebody steal him? Isn’t that place locked at night? What did your coroner say?”

“We need you to come in. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Ask your coroner. He seemed pretty interested in my brother.”

“Whoever stole your brother’s body murdered our coroner. Where are you? I mean exactly.”

“I’m at the corner of exactly none of your business and screw off. Are you implying I stole my brother’s body and killed your coroner?”

“Did you?”

“Again, screw off.”

“I expect to see you here in the next hour. Oh, and you had better bring the laptop back,” he says.

“Yeah, well, good luck with that.” I hang up on him. It sounds like I had suddenly become a suspect and that fuels my fire to get to the bottom of things as quickly as possible. Dietrich has nothing to offer regarding my brother’s killer, which means going to the precinct would be a complete waste of my time. Plus, they might arrest me. Enraged at the thought of someone stealing Reginald, I pound my fist on the dash until my hand hurts.

Time is wasting. I had to help Reginald and do what he requested of me, and as soon as that’s done, I’d find his killer — not for my mother, no not at all for her, but for my brother. Only for him. I owed him that. Because all his life he had known enough to see through her, but I had been blind to mother’s lies. His love for me had always been full, had never wavered in the slightest, whereas mine for him had been cut in half. Everything about the way I treated him after that day was halved. Now I could change that. I would give him my full attention and my complete love, and I would avenge his death, just as a brother — half or full — should.

Why would somebody take my brother’s body? The coroner had obviously gotten in the way, and that was why he was killed, but my brother’s body had been the prize worth killing and killing for? Is the person who killed him the same who took his corpse? If so, why leave my brother’s body in his condo? Not enough time to move him? Something else? Every question led to more questions, like what had the murderer used to make my brother’s body so grotesque? Was it poison, and if so, could they have traced it? I wonder how the coroner had been killed, and figure I might as well ask since at least that question could be answered with a simple phone call. I pull out Detective Dietrich’s business card and dial his number. He answers on the first ring.

“How did the coroner die?” I ask after he answered gruffly with just his last name. “This is Drayden Routton.”

“I know who it is. Where are you?”

“I’m close,” I lie. “How did the killer kill him?”

“I’ll tell you when you get here,” Dietrich says.

“Okay, good. According to my navigation system, I’ll be there in 1.2 minutes,” I lie again. You should see my poker face. It’s solid. If I could only stay away from bad hands, then I’d be onto something.

“Good. See you soon.”

I hang up. If Detective Dietrich is dumb enough to think I’ll show up at the precinct, then I really am on my own to find Reginald’s killer. But first I have to destroy the gray steel box for my brother. After that, I’ll find out who killed him and avenge his death.