Episode 13: A Lost Odyssey
Part 4
The two-story pale blue colonial home with acres to spare and a large American flag seemed exactly like the plain white bread home a CIA agent would choose, especially one related to K. At first, Drums rolled his one good eye, but sneered when a twinge of pain jutted through his skull. Though fleeting, fragments of feeling sometimes coursed through the filaments keeping his skull in place. Fragments that Dr. Rough had at least attempted to save.
As he slammed his car door shut, he patted the pistol in his pocket. While FANS’ work to dismantle HimTak was slow, this would hit K where it hurt – especially if it drove Brian away from the CIA and into FANS’s claws.
Drums scrutinized the front door. Too obvious an entry. That was when he spotted it beneath his foot: a small paw print. A clue that this house probably had a dog door in the back. He skulked around the side of the house, ducking under the sightline of each window. When he reached the porch swing on the back, he pushed it against the house, rattling the structure, then hid around the corner. He slid the pistol from his pocket as he peeked around the edge.
The back door swung open, and a green-eyed woman with dripping wet long dark hair peered out. “Tyk?” After shaking her head, she gently shut the door, but the quiet click of the lock didn’t follow.
Wut kinda whack name is ‘Tyk’ fer a guard dog? Drums thought to himself, tiptoeing toward the door.
Of course, that was when the ferocious beast hopped up the back porch stairs — all six inches of it.
With his good hand clenched on the pistol, Drums silently turned the knob with his untraceable robotic hand. The steak-sized dog bounded inside, and he followed, leaving the door ajar behind him.
Inside, the kitchen was as plain as the house outside. Yellow wallpaper with tiny petals on it wrapped the walls. Blue curtains tied back with ribbons framed each window. A bowl of fruit sat on the counter like they lived in a television show. Magnets covered the fridge, giving the room a homey feel, rather than a pristine one. Drums silently groaned at the suburban home, thinking about how whickety-whack it all was, when a grocery pad on the fridge caught his eye. Scrawled on it was a note: “I’m going to stay with my sister for a couple of days so I can think. I love you. See you soon.”
Drums smirked. Opal had already done half his work for him.
At that moment, she rounded the corner wearing an emerald green bathrobe with his unwitting minion in her arms. Opal gasped as Drums aimed his pistol at her.
“Da boss is lookin’ fer clues, and you got paws on dis mystery, yo.” He motioned toward the door with the gun. “Git in da car.”
Opal slowly backed from the kitchen, glancing between him and the open back door. “What if I refuse?”
“Den Pearl gets it. Bangity bang, dawg.”
After setting Tyk on the floor of the kitchen, Opal pressed her lips in a thin line. “Okay. I’ll go. Just let me lock up.”
Drums followed Opal as she locked the back door and doggy door. Then held his pistol high as she turned the corner into the living room and grabbed a key chain from a small bowl on the coffee table. Painstakingly slowly, they made their way toward the front door, which she locked once they exited.
After traipsing down the stairs, he opened the back door of the car, shoved her into the seat, and handcuffed her to the handle above the window. He slammed the door closed, grinning from ear to ear. That was the easiest kidnapping ever; if only he had a notebook to write down the specific steps. Drums laughed to himself as he flopped into the front seat and started backing out the driveway. Dat Steve probably gots one back at da Airbnb, he thought.
***
The bedroom at Dr. Rough’s rented cottage was decorated in shades of purple, from the plush lavender carpet to the lilac and white polka dot wallpaper. The wooden bed frame had been painted periwinkle, while the bedspread was a darker shade of plum. The alarm clock on the matching bedside table was mauve with violet numbers on its white face. Even the picture frames on the walls were purple.
Of course, this had been another selling point for Dr. Rough when he had looked at the listing online, for purple was his favorite color. But, in hindsight, he wished he had picked a place that appeared a bit more menacing. This room was rather frilly for an interrogation. Perhaps that was why the woman chained to the bedposts wasn’t talking.
“Let’s try this again,” growled Dr. Rough, his eye twitching furiously as he turned to face her. He held his laptop in front of her face, showing her one of the files he had opened from the flash drive Drums had stolen. “What do these symbols mean?”
“I told you, I don’t know!” Opal replied, shaking her head. Her eyes, the same shade of green as her satin bathrobe, were brimming with tears.
“You do know!” Dr. Rough barked at her, causing her to flinch. “I heard from a very reliable source that you and Professor Pearl finished decoding the alien language.”
Opal’s eyes narrowed as she frowned up at him. “Who told you that?”
“I’m the one asking the questions here!” Inwardly, Dr. Rough cursed himself for inadvertently revealing to her that he had an informant. Hopefully she would think he was just bluffing and not suspect that someone on the inside was leaking confidential information. “WHAT. DOES. THIS. MEAN?!”
“I. DON’T. KNOW!” she shouted back, squaring her jaw in defiance. Yet her chin quivered, betraying her fear.
“LIAR!” His hands clenched into fists as he clutched the laptop, fighting the urge to bring it crashing down over her head. He knew it wouldn’t help to kill her or his computer. He needed information from them both.
“I’m not lying!” Opal insisted. “Even if I wanted to tell you what it means, I wouldn’t be able to do it from memory. It’s a complicated language! Pearl and I have been working on it for over a year now!”
Searching her eyes for signs of deception, Dr. Rough decided she was telling the truth. She didn’t know the code by heart. “Then tell me where to find your translation!” he demanded.
She shook her head. “It’s stored on a secure server, only accessible by federal government employees with the proper credentials. You won’t be able to get in.”
Dr. Rough raised his right eyebrow, the left one wiggling as the lazy eye underneath it winked away. “I will if you give me your credentials.”
“Sorry, no can do.” Despite the tears trickling down her cheeks, Opal’s voice had taken on a tone of calm resignation. “I’d lose my job for leaking that kind of classified information.”
“You’ll lose your life if you don’t!” he retorted, brandishing his gun.
“Then I guess you should just go ahead and kill me,” she said quietly, lifting her chin to look at him, her head held high. “Go on… Get it over with.”
He hesitated. She seemed to be goading him, as if she knew he was only bluffing. He couldn’t kill her until she gave up the information he needed. If she died now, his chances of getting it were all but dead, too. At that point, his only option would be Professor Pearl, and as his informant had told him, she was much better protected. Patience, he told himself, slowly lowering his gun. He tucked it back into the inside pocket of his jacket just as he heard a knock at the front door.
“Drums!” he hissed. “Drums, block the d–”
Too late.
The lock clicked, and the door creaked open. “Hey, Howard?” a friendly voice called into the house. “I’m heading to Whole Foods! You need any more coffee?”
Dr. Rough took deep breaths, trying hard to keep his composure. “It’s Dr. Rough,” he growled back. “And no, thanks. We’re good.”
He thought Steve would take his cue to leave, but instead, the mild-mannered yet meddlesome host seemed to mistake it for an invitation to come in. “Oh, of course, Dr. Rough! Sorry, I keep forgetting,” he said with a shrug, striding into the bedroom before Dr. Rough could slam the door in his face. “All you academics have such a weird vibe.”
Dr. Rough did not reply but reached into his jacket pocket again, his fingers brushing the barrel of his gun.
Steve looked around the lavender room, his brown eyes widening when he spotted the scantily clad woman splayed across the bed with both wrists bound. “Oh, sorry… am I interrupting something here?”
Dr. Rough didn’t know what to say. He and Opal both stared at Steve, temporarily stunned. But Steve’s eyes had roamed across the room to the camera Dr. Rough had set up to record the interrogation and capture any important information Opal revealed.
“Are you, uh… are you filming pornography?” asked Steve. His face was bright red.
Dr. Rough’s eyes widened. “Why, yes… yes, as a matter of fact, we are.” Catching Opal’s eye, he shook his head a fraction of an inch, sending what he hoped was a clear message: If you cry for help, you’ll both die.
Opal’s bottom lip trembled, but she kept her mouth shut.
“Oh, okay… cool! No judgment here,” said Steve, holding up his hands. “We can do anything that we wanna do! But, uh… would you mind turning Tickety Tock toward the wall? She really shouldn’t be watching this.”
Dr. Rough blinked. “Tickety… Tock?”
“The clock.” Steve brushed by him and picked up the purple alarm clock off the bedside table. He gave the bells on top a friendly pat as he put it back down, now facing the opposite direction. “There! That’s better! Well, I’ll let you get back to it. Bye-bye! See ya later!” he called as he jogged out of the room.
Dr. Rough just stared at his retreating form, holding his breath until he heard the front door close again. Then he rounded on Opal again. “It was wise of you not to say anything,” he told her, his voice low and silky. “I don’t wish to kill you, you know. All I want is information.”
“You won’t get what you want,” said Opal, softly sniffling.
He bristled. “We’ll see about that!” Then he turned on his heel and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him. He needed time to think. He slumped down into Steve’s thinking chair and rested his chin in his hands.
“How’s it goin’, Dr. Rough?” asked Drums as he came out of the kitchen, carrying a large plate. “Deviled egg?”
Dr. Rough frowned as Drums held out the plate full of hard-boiled eggs, sliced in half and filled with a yellow yolk paste. “What’s that red powder sprinkled on top?”
“Paprika!”
He wrinkled his nose. “No, thank you. What possessed you to make deviled eggs in the middle of one of our plots?”
Drums shrugged. “I dunno. Must be dat bright yellow kitchen. It’s homey as fuck in here, yo! Got me feelin’ all domestic and shit, so I decided to make me some deviled eggs.” Balancing the plate on the palm of his robotic right hand, he picked up one of the eggs with his left and took a big bite. “Mmm… dat’s some good shit right there! Now I jus’ need me some milk to wash it down wit. I asked dat mothafucka Steve to get us some at da Whole Foods.”
“You did what?!” Dr. Rough groaned. “Damn it, Drums! I told him we didn’t need anything! Now he’ll have another reason to come back!”
“So? I don’t think he suspected nothin’,” said Drums, licking his fingers. “Dat clown ain’t da brightest bulb in da box, you know what I’m sayin’?”
Dr. Rough nodded. “The man’s a fool, no doubt, but if he keeps coming back and finding more clues, he’s eventually going to figure out what’s really going on here!”
“Jus’ get da info outta dat bitch so we can get rid of her already,” Drums said over his shoulder as he walked back into the kitchen.
“What do you think I’m trying to do?! She won’t talk!”
“So? Make her talk! You a supervillain or what, dawg?” Drums called. Dr. Rough could hear him running water. “Damn, dis soap be slippery, yo!”
Dr. Rough rolled his eyes, the left one still twitching. “Shut up, Drums!” he shouted. “I need silence now.”
His mind raced as he sat back in the thinking chair. If Opal refused to give him her credentials, he was going to have to get them another way. Maybe he could collect enough information to hack into her account.
“Yes…” he murmured, an idea dawning. He opened the side table drawer and took out a handy dandy notebook to jot down more questions for his interrogation.
Half an hour later, his hostage looked up as he returned to the room where she was being held. “What was the make and model of your first car?” he asked her calmly.
Opal cocked her head, staring at him in confusion. “Why do you care?”
Dr. Rough offered a casual shrug. “Just making conversation.”
“You had your wannabe Terminator sidekick kidnap me, and now you want to make conversation?”
“Just answer the question!” he snapped.
“Fine! It was a Toyota Corolla!” she cried, tossing back her long, black hair. “But too bad for you — that’s not my security question.”
He frowned. “Very well. Where did you go to high school?”
“None of Your Fucking Business School.”
“Insolent bitch!” he hissed, slapping her across the face so hard that her head snapped back against the headboard with a dull thunk. When she straightened up again, her eyes streaming, he saw his own perfect handprint standing out, bright pink, on her cheek. “Tell the truth!”
“Lincoln High,” she whimpered, wincing in pain.
“That’s more like it. What is your favorite pizza topping?”
“Anchovies.”
“LIES!” he exploded again. “No one actually eats anchovies on pizza!”
“I do.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, wondering if she could actually be telling the truth. What kind of monster was he dealing with here? “What is your mother’s maiden name?!” he shouted at her.
“Don’t you dare bring my mother into this!” she hissed back.
“Tell me your mother’s maiden name, or I’ll track her down and send my best minions to murder her and feed her dismembered body to my ferret. Dr. Twitches does enjoy Indian food.”
Opal flinched, her lip curling in disgust. “You’re sick!”
“And your mother’s maiden name is…?”
“Patel,” she whispered, hanging her head.
“Very good. And what is the name of your favorite pet?”
“I don’t have any pets.”
“DON’T LIE! Drums told me about your little rat-dog — Tyk, is it? Tell me the truth, or Tyk will die, too!”
Opal glared up at him. “Tyk isn’t mine. He belongs to my b–” She suddenly stopped, cutting herself off, but not before Dr. Rough began to smile.
“Ahh, yes,” he replied. “Your boyfriend… Officer Littrell of the CIA, I believe? We haven’t been formally introduced, but I’m familiar with his work. He and that damn 00Carter destroyed my ice lair in Antarctica.” He decided not to mention Littrell chasing him through the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disney World; the memory was still too triggering. “Of course, that was before I nearly destroyed him with my FANthrax virus. I wonder what he would do if he knew you were here…”
She stared down at the purple bedspread and said nothing.
“He would come to your rescue, of course,” Dr. Rough continued. “And I would kill him… right in front of you. But that’s only if you refuse to cooperate. Tell me what I need to know, and I’ll let you and Littrell live.”
Opal sniffed. “What do you want to know?”
“Where did the two of you meet?”
A tear dripped down her swollen cheek. “We met at work. He was in L.A. on assignment. He needed the help of a cryptographer to decode a piece of intelligence his department had intercepted, so he came to see me at my West Coast office.” She closed her eyes, a tiny smile tugging at her lips. “He charmed me right away with his smile and sense of humor. I thought he was so cute. And that sexy Southern accent of his…” Her smile faded as she trailed off, opening her tear-filled eyes to meet Dr. Rough’s once more. “I’m never going to hear his voice again, am I?”
“Not if you don’t tell me how to access those files,” he replied, trying to contain his excitement. He felt triumphant, as if he was on the verge of getting what he wanted out of her. She was going to tell him. He could feel it.
And then he heard another knock at the door.
“Hey, Howard! Sorry, I mean, Dr. Rough!” Steve called cheerfully as he trotted into the cottage. “I brought some milk for your special friend! I also picked up some more toilet paper to restock the bathroom!”
“Thank you, Steve,” Dr. Rough replied stiffly, forcing a tight smile onto his face as he turned around.
Steve stood in the bedroom doorway, still wearing his big, goofy grin. “You’re welcome! Anything else I can do for you while I’m here?”
“No, Steve. We’re fine, thanks. You can go now.”
But Steve wasn’t looking at him. He was staring over Dr. Rough’s shoulder at Opal. Dr. Rough shifted his eyes to the picture frame on the wall next to the door frame. Reflected in the glass over a painting of a blue, spotted dog, he could see Opal’s right hand pulling on the chain that held it tight to the bedpost, her fingers moving rapidly to form distinct shapes. She was signing something.
“What?” said Steve, his eyes widening. “You wanna play ‘Blue’s Clues’?!”
Dr. Rough whipped around, glaring at Opal, whose face went pale. He reached for his gun. But before any of them could say or do anything else, they were interrupted by the random harmony of a barbershop quartet singing, “Mail time… mail time… mail time… MA-AIL TIME!” Bewildered, he turned back to see Steve taking a cell phone out of the pocket of his khaki pants and realized it was a ringtone.
Steve glanced down at his screen and gasped. “The mail’s here!” Without another word, he turned around and ran out of the house.
Frowning, Dr. Rough followed him as far as the living room and looked out the window to see Steve dancing around in the front yard. He was swinging his arms, shaking his butt, and singing at the top of his lungs:
“Here’s the mail, it never fails, it makes me wanna wag my tail! When it comes, I wanna wail, ‘MAAAAAAAAIL!’”
As Steve made jazz hands on either side of his face, Drums came up alongside Dr. Rough, drinking a cup of milk through a straw. “Yo, you want me to bust a cap in his ass?”
Having resisted the impulse to kill Steve for as long as he could, Dr. Rough nodded.
Setting down his cup, Drums opened the front door, drew his gun, and fired a single shot into the side of Steve’s head. Steve dropped to his knees, then fell face-first onto the lawn and didn’t move again.
“There’s a shovel in da backyard,” said Drums, dropping his gun back into its holster. “I’ll bury da body unda da sandbox.”
Dr. Rough nodded again. “You do that. Thank you, Drums.” Then he turned and went back into the bedroom. “I just saw a murder…” he sang under his breath.
Opal stared at him, her eyes wide with terror.
“A man is dead because of you,” he told her, keeping his voice low and deathly calm. “Do you want your lover to be next?”
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head.
“Then tell me how to access your translation. No one else needs to die if you do as I ask.”
“But why would you let me live?” she asked in a tiny voice. “I’ve seen your face. I know your name.”
“I want the world to know my name — and to fear it,” said Dr. Rough with a sinister smile. “So go to the feds if you wish. Tell your coworkers, your friends, and your family what happened here. Let them hear how I held you against your will… made you fear for your life… but ultimately showed you mercy. Then maybe they’ll finally give me the respect I deserve so that, one day, I will rule the world!”
Opal hesitated, her whole body trembling beneath her skimpy bathrobe. Then, slowly, she nodded. “Alright… I’ll tell you.”
As she talked, Dr. Rough took notes in his handy dandy notebook. “Thank you, Ashavari,” he said when she was done. “You’ve been very helpful. I’m going to have Drums drive you home, where you will hand over your laptop. If the information you’ve provided proves useful, you’ll be able to go on with your life as normal. And if not… well…” His lips curved into a wide, malevolent grin. “We’ll end it.”
He was just about to unlock her chains when he felt his wrist cuff vibrate. What now? he wondered, glancing down as the hidden panel slid back automatically and the black screen embedded inside it beeped to life.
“This isn’t a good time,” he said in a low voice as the face of his informant appeared on the screen.
“It’ll just take a minute, Dr. Rough,” replied the mole, his voice blaring out of the built-in speaker. “I wanted to update you on the latest at HimTak. They still haven’t figured out it was me who broke into Pearl’s lab and took–”
Dr. Rough hurriedly covered the cuff with his hand to try to muffle the minion’s words, but he was too late. One look at Opal’s wide eyes and open mouth was enough to confirm what he had feared: she had heard the whole thing.
She recovered quickly, rearranging her face into an unreadable expression, but Dr. Rough was convinced she had recognized the voice coming from his communicator. As he closed the panel to cut off his mole, his mind contemplated this new problem. What was he going to do with the cryptographer now?
He decided he would have to change his plan. He could still let her go… but he could not let her live.
***