Save Her

Drayden - Chapter 1-2

I open my brother’s laptop and turn it on, and it quickly boots to a screen prompting me for a password. “Damnit,” I say out loud, prompting the driver to look in the rearview mirror. I try Reginald’s birthday, my birthday, our home address from when we were young, and then get locked out from too many attempts. The computer says: “That’s three failed passcode attempts. Try again in five minutes.” I shut the laptop just as the driver stops in front of my brother’s address.

I get out and look up at the beautiful building where my brother used to reside. Fifty stories tall, it’s brick and steel and glass and expensive-looking — much more attractive than my lousy rented apartment in Los Angeles. This place caters to those lucky enough to have money, and I begin to doubt that my brother had really lived here because, as far as I know, he didn’t have any.

Through the glass of the main foyer is a guard-post with not one but two guards, both of whom eye me suspiciously. I open the first of the outside doors and enter into a waiting area surrounded by glass. Both guards watch me. One of them leans into the desk and speaks into a microphone.

“Can we help you?” The voice comes out of a speaker from the ceiling above.

“I’m Reginald Routton’s brother.”

The guards glance at each other.

“I’m sorry. His unit’s inaccessible at this time,” says the guard.

“I just want a look inside,” I say.

They glance again but say nothing, so I leave. I go right and walk the entire block, passing a large bank, a delicious-smelling Italian restaurant that reminds me I hadn’t eaten, and finally back around to the garage entrance of Reginald’s building where a single male guard is posted inside a glass-enclosed booth. He’s looking down at something in his lap, and I think it’s an electronic tablet or maybe his cellphone because there’s a slight glow of light under his chin. My heart quickens. A surge of adrenaline rushes my brain and my muscles as I hurry to the booth. The door is open. I see that he’s about my height with strong rounded shoulders that are evident through the uniform that might be too tight on purpose. He doesn’t see me until I’m too close and then it’s too late for him as I aim my fist hard on the side of his chin, snapping his head sideways and knocking him out like I learned how to do from one of my mom’s ex-lovers when learning how to fight. I move him to the floor of the booth and remove his plastic keycard.

“Sorry,” I say to the unconscious guard.

I’m jogging through the circling parking structure remembering the coroner’s remark about my brother’s Range Rover. I see one, and it’s new and beautiful and steel-gray and expensive, and I’m confused and wonder if it’s Reginald’s and if it is then how had he suddenly gotten wealthy. The parking spot is marked 12B. Through the driver’s window, there’s nothing to indicate it belonged to Reginald. I put my bag down near the front tire and jump onto the hood of the car and up to the roof to the large sunroof and I’m up there, and I see a small camera on one of the beams of the ceiling and know the front guards can probably see me if they’re looking. I hurry and slam my foot on the edge of the sunroof, but that only bends it a little, so I jump high and land with both feet onto the glass. It shatters inward. I do this again until it’s weakened and destroyed and I’m able to push it with my foot into the back of the car. I climb inside. I sit in the driver’s seat and look around but see no movement.

The glove compartment contains proof of insurance showing my brother’s full birth name: Reginald James Routton. In the armrest pocket is an extra key for the Range Rover and a white keycard that looks like the keycard I took from the guard. Clipped to the visor above is a small garage door remote and glued to the inside windshield is a little button with an ‘R’ engraved into it that I think might give access to a parking garage or a gate arm or something. I push the button for the rear hatch and get out of the car and lift the carpet and find nothing. I close everything and grab my bag from the ground and hurry for the elevators. Reginald’s keycard works to open the elevator doors. I hit the button for the 12th floor.

The elevator rises quickly. I prepare for the worst when the doors open and put the bag down on the ground just in case I need my arms free. The doors open and I’m ready, but there’s nothing but an empty hallway. I pick up the bag and run the hall and stop at the police tape outside 12B. I rip the tape and use Reginald’s keycard again. It works. The door opens. I step in and immediately put myself on alert because his condo is wholly ransacked and the lights are on. Most of the kitchen cabinet doors are open, and so is the oven. Dishes and glass are shattered on the floor. In the living room, the couch cushions are overturned and cut open. Part of the couch cushion covers the coroner’s taped outline of where my brother died. I move the cushion with my foot and stare at the lines that don’t make sense. The outline at the legs looks human and then morphs into some odd body shape with an irregular shape to his head, and then the outline of an extended arm reaches out away from the body. I kneel down and touch where his head had been. “Reg, what were you into?” The base of the couch is cut up. Papers are strewn in front of the upturned coffee table.

Dietrick had made no mention of this type of disarray, and I feel like they would have told me if it had looked like a burglary. I put my bag down quietly and take careful steps toward the hallway toward the bedroom to make sure I’m alone. I stop, and then I stop breathing and I listen because I think maybe I heard something. It was as light as a pillow falling, but it could also have been the lightness of a careful footstep on Reginald’s hardwood floors. I peek around the corner of the bedroom hallway and see nothing except Reginald’s open bedroom door. I turn in and move slowly along the wall. I’m careful that my tennis shoes make no noise and I make fists as I step into the bedroom. The mess is the same in here as in the living room and kitchen. Stuff’s strewn everywhere. I’m alone. I let myself a quiet deep breath but then hold it as another soft noise comes from the bathroom. I’m sure I hear something. Someone’s definitely in there. It’s the brushing of clothing against the wall like their back’s up against the wall, leaning, moving, hiding. Unmistakable. I’m sure I’m not alone because of the sound and because I sense another presence and my heartbeat pounds and I think about my capability as a fighter, but Reginald could fight too because we were trained by the same stepdad and I think again about what had happened to him and how distorted his face was.

“Who’s there?” I say. “Get out here!”

I stop and tense and try to calm my breathing and know the longer I stand here, the longer I give for the other person to make the first move and surprise me. At my feet is an empty drawer pulled out from the dresser. I pick it up and am happy with the weight of it. Oak. Solid. A better weapon than nothing at all. I listen and hear nothing anymore except my heartbeat and my lungs pushing air through my nostrils. And then another sound. A drawer closing or a medicine cabinet closing. I move in and lift the drawer up and swing it around the corner of the doorway as hard as I can and it hits the wall and leaves a huge dent because there’s nobody there. I spin around, but it’s just a paranoid reaction because there’s nowhere anyone could be hiding. The bathroom is spacious but open. The shower is a standup with glass walls. I’m alone.

I put the drawer down and look back into the bedroom, but there’s no one there either. My heartbeat pounds. I didn’t imagine the sounds I heard. I open the medicine cabinet and close it quietly. The magnets from the base click into the closing mirror door, and it’s precisely the last sound I heard before entering. I spin again because I don't feel alone. This feeling of paranoia is new to me. I can’t slow my heart or my breathing or the sense of fight. I suddenly feel the overwhelming urge to get the hell out of here.

I’m back in the bedroom and hurrying through the disaster of tossed pillows and books and picture frames and socks and other clothing. A battery-operated travel alarm clock with a cracked plastic screen lays dead next to a hardback Nanobiotechnology book. I pick up the book and flip through it looking for notations, but there’s nothing, so I toss it onto a pillow and look up at the doorway because it sounds like a door closed in the living room. I move to the wall by the doorway and wait. At my feet are scattered school papers and in the middle of all of them is a colorful note that I recognize from a long time ago. It’s a small piece of art of my name I made for him when I was in kindergarten that I wrote with different colors of crayons and outlined with varying shades of magic markers so that the end result looked like capitals and lower-case letters of my name surrounded by rainbows. DRayDEn. I never saw it after giving it to him, and it breaks my heart that he had kept it all this time. I stare at my colorful name and remember myself at eight-years-old trying so hard to be like him, loving him so thoroughly, and then I hear the noise again near the living room. I squat and pick up the art of my name and put it in my back pocket and then tighten the straps of the backpack around my shoulders. I take a deep breath and go into the living room ready for anything. I look around and am alone, but I don’t feel alone. I didn’t get a wink of sleep since getting Dietrick’s phone call, and I wonder if my mind is playing tricks on me.

I go to the kitchen knife block and pull the most massive knife. On the floor amongst the tossed silverware and broken glass is a dog toy. It’s a tightly-twisted bone-colored rope, big enough for a large dog, tattered, frayed, with a good amount of dried slobber. But Reginald doesn’t have a dog. At least he didn’t have one the last time I saw him. I open the refrigerator never taking my peripheral vision away from the rest of the space around me. The fridge is empty, as clean and as new as the day he bought it. On the floor near the tipped trash can are fragments of stripped wire along with folded strips of black electrical tape. I look around and see no dog bowl for food or water, which adds to the puzzlement of the dog toy.

Looking around his nice place and his nice stuff makes me realize how very little I knew about him anymore. I thought his tastes were closer to mine, but everything here is sparse and modern with sharp edges and bright lighting. His approach to decorating is minimalist, with a single tall reading lamp sandwiched between a black leather couch and a love seat, in front of which is a clean glass coffee table. My place, by contrast, is an attempt to fill corners with possessions. He has no big-screen TV, whereas mine is 65 inches. I have a beautiful dining room set with heavy iron chairs that cost me three thousand dollars, whereas he doesn’t have any sort of eating table at all.