Author: Joseph Carrabis

The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 11 (was Chapter 8 long, long ago, now modified)

The Alibi – Chapter 11

 
Briggs Lane stood at the window of his Lane, Cuomo, and Greenberg top-floor corner office. He held a pair of MIL710 Optical Enhancers to his eyes and focused on Innovation Square. “That stupid bastard. Didn’t he know enough not to shit where he eats?”

He placed the MIL710s back in their padded box, placed that in a desk drawer, closed the drawer, and pressed his thumb against what appeared to be a lock. The drawer hissed as the desk sucked it a microscopic inch or two further in and sealed it in place.

He stepped around his desk – mahogany and large enough to play shuffleboard on – and past a five hundred gallon salt-water reef tank dominating a windowless wall and custom made by a team from the New England Aquarium in exchange for time, materials, and an anonymous ten million dollar donation towards unspecified marine research.

A post-doc from NEAQ came in once a week to make sure the tank and its highly illegal denizens were in good order. Lane ran his hand along the side of the tank and something flashed out from under the reef. It smashed itself against the tank’s clear acrylic wall and Lane smiled down at the circular rows of teeth before continuing on to the wall opposite his desk. Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa hung there. He smiled, lifted his fingers to his lips, kissed then touched his fingers to the carving’s frame.

The wall opened and revealed what Lane’s deep intimates referenced as variously “the weapons locker,” “the Predators’ trophy array,” and “Elon Musk’s wish list.”

That last one always gave Lane a chuckle.

Musk was an ass.

Never invited Briggs to any parties, never accepted Lane’s invitations to dinner when he was in Boston.

What a fucking ass.

Lane lifted a smallish disco dance club’s glitterball from its birth in the hidden compartment to reveal a small, gold nameplate with HIVE engraved on it.

Lane turned the glitterball over and placed his hand inside. A moment later the HIVE – a prototype Human Immersion Visual-audio Enhancer – hummed and Lane fitted it over his head.

The HIVE’s separate facets, much like an insect’s compound eyes, captured video-audio feeds from whatever was available – a newscast, a store camera, municipal video, people livestreaming, devices uploading to the cloud – and built a real-time 3D immersive environment for the wearer. Tilt your head forward and you walked forward, lean forward and you ran, turn your head and you saw from side to side, tilt your head back and you looked up, down was down and so on.

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Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery):

Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery)

And Deer are such dears, as well

All of The Wild are precious to us.

Some are more deer than others.

Clever way I did that. Did you notice?

Either a pun or a misspelling, depending how gracious you are to me.

Or how much of a yutz you think I am.

We’ve been graced by Deer as of late.

And it’s always joyous when they join us.

 

The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 10 (was part of Chapter 5 long, long ago. Maybe this is an example of authorial inflation?)

The Alibi – Chapter 10

 
William “Bill” Cranston grabbed the railing as he jogged up the stairs to Precinct House 17. He may have been a linebacker in college, but that was thirty-five years ago and now he needed to pull himself up inclines when he jogged them.

He snapped his hand back as if he touched a high-tension line.

The railing was shaking?

Sure, ’17 was one of the oldest precinct houses in Boston, still brick-and-mortar as they say, and with wide-paneled hardwood floors and high ceilings and big fans hanging down because putting AC in a building about to be decommissioned was a waste of tax dollars, but that decommissioning order had been on the books for twenty years Cranston knew of once. The city discovered it would cost more to put up a new precinct house rather than get rid of this old one, but somehow the money set aside for a new precinct house never made it into a working AC system.

Cranston made it a point to dig deep whenever he had to investigate a city or state official. He was going to write a book once he retired. Fuckers I have known, he was going to call it.

Old or not, ’17 was still solid. granite anchored the railings. They could shake? Like that?

He looked up and down the street. No fifty-three foot TT or heavy construction vehicles in sight, but dogs barked and pulled on their leashes. Pigeons, robins, and starlings took flight. The leaves on sidewalk maples, willows, and elms shivered as if chilled by a late October wind.

He touched the railing tentatively, one finger stretched forward, his body slightly turned and ready to pull away.

Nothing.

He shrugged and continued up the stairs. The desk sergeant looked up and nodded as he entered.

“You feel that?”

The desk sergeant shook her head. “Feel what?”

Cranston continued up the next flight to the offices. His phone vibrated in his pocket. A moment later he heard his daughter Leddy’s distinctive TXT ring and read the screen. “U OK?”


Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery):

Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery)

Erasmus is such a dear

We last encountered Erasmus about two months back (posting time).

We know Coyote been around. There signs are easy to recognize, step in, or slip on.

Still shy (and rightly so), we know there’s a pack near us. We can hear them at night.

Lately we’ve heard one and their call is so mournful we worry.

But until we learn more, there’s Erasmus.

And she’s such a dear.

 

The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery) – Chapter 9 (was part of Chapter 4 long, long ago, now modified slightly)

The Alibi – Chapter 9

 
Thorne let the Lady Eglesia‘s systems bring it into the harbor while she dozed on the deck, barely moving from where she slept through the night. She headed out to deep water after hallucinating being back home and visited by her people’s mythical water being, the Bunyip.

Those hallucinations were becoming more frequent.

Usually a quick trip home cured such things. She’d take AirCon’s corporate jet and be there and back in four day’s time. One day to get there, two days with her people, one day to get back.

But who to leave in charge?

Shaul. Not here next-in-command but capable never-the-less.

The Eglesia’s alarms sounded. A shoreside distress signal. Somebody breaking into AirCon HQ and caught in her team’s latest tech gadgets?

She sighed and her eyes fluttered open to the Boston skyline, the the morning sun at her back.

Something bobbed in front of her boat. It looked like a man in the water. It faced the same direction she did.

It turned towards the Eglesia as if suddenly realizing it was there. The sunlight shone off the water making it difficult to see.

Thorne shaded her eyes then opened them wide. “What the – ”

Her mobile alarmed.

The thing in the water dove and was gone.

Thorne read the message on her mobile. She shaded her eyes and looked towards AirCon HQ.

A cloud of gray smoke climbed the thirty story Innovation Square tower. Swirls of denser smoke pulled and pushed the cloud up the side of the building like some Wind Spirit King Kong waving its arms and legs.

Previous entries in The Alibi (A John Chance Mystery)

The Alibi Previous Chapters