Ben Winters - Golden State

The third is at the elevators, between the two shafts and just beneath the keypad, and she sits with legs outstretched and arms slack, and her face turned toward the elevator just to her right, where the fourth of them is wedged between the elevator door and the wall of the car itself, half in and half out, keeping it from closing, inviting me in.

The lights in the elevator car are dim but I can see the button panel, and there is a dark red fingerprint on the button marked 9, a clue so glaring and egregious it has to have been purposeful. A taunt.

Subbasement nine. That’s where you’ll find me. Come along, now… down we go…

I push the button gingerly with my forefinger and it comes away tacky.

At the last minute, though, I don’t take the elevator. I step off before the door can close, step around the fallen bodies of the Librarians, and take the spiral stairs instead.

I go down slowly, one floor at a time with my weapon drawn, and listen at every floor. Pause at sub four, where Silvie’s offices are tucked away. Pause again at sub five and then again, halfway between six and seven, where I hear or think I hear the minute click of a file drawer shifting open. The blood button was 9 and that may be where he is, or it may have been another artful misdirection, another signal rigged to catch my eye and hold it while worlds move in shadow all around me.

One more clue for me to find, one more part of the trap that was set for me, for my clumsy feet to stumble into.

With each footfall the ornate structure of the staircase shimmies beneath my heavy frame. The metal stairs are very old. There is gold detail at every balustrade.

I breathe heavily as I descend.

“I can hear you, Mr. Ratesic. Laszlo.” The, low and wavering in the stillness of the Record. “I can hear you coming.”

I’m halfway down, between sub eight and sub nine, and I stop and perch on the edge of a stair. His gentle creak of a voice echoes from somewhere close by.

“You were never one for sneaking up.”

There are no offices on sub nine, as Silvie’s office sits on four. Just endless intersecting hallways, file rooms, and review rooms. The hallways are dim, lit only by the cool red emergency lights of the Record after hours. Helpless to do otherwise, I go in the direction of Arlo’s voice. And it is even easier than that: there is blood on the floor, dark fresh heel prints on the tile.

I follow those footsteps, still not believing, still not wanting to believe, that it’s him I am following. Still unwilling to live in the world in which he is the villain at the end of the hall.

And yet here he is. Around a corner, the sixth door down. He is seated at a table, examining a file. He looks up and squints behind his glasses, gives me his old fond smile as I come into the room with my gun raised and aimed at his head.

“Get up, Mr. Vasouvian.”

He shakes his head and murmurs, “No, Mr. Ratesic.”

The file on the review desk is deep blue: a CSE. Collated Significant Event. I take two steps into the room. All around me are files. Cabinets full of folders; binders on shelves. Up to the ceiling, down to the floor. Collated truth, running from floor to ceiling and to the ends of the walls.

My gun is aimed at Arlo’s head and I am deciding whether I would really do it.

“You have to get up, Mr. Vasouvian. You have to stand up and come with me.”

“No, no. No, I’m not doing that.”

He seems glad to see me; he seems as he always does. He smiles, and scratches his nose, and sighs. There are flecks of blood on his glasses, a smear on his necktie and on one rumpled lapel of his corduroy jacket. He has killed four people, and left their bodies for me to find.

“I’m not going to do that,” he says. “This is not a normal situation. You can’t think you are going to—what?—arrest me? You will shoot me, Mr. Ratesic, but not right away.”

“Stop talking, Arlo.”

He sighs again. “I’ll tell you what. Come and sit down across from me and we can look at this together.”

“Look at—what?”

“At the file.” He taps it with two fingers, gazing at me evenly. As if he has been waiting for me to discuss it. As if we had an appointment, and I am late.

“Come, Laszlo. I wish you would have a seat.”

He points with his chin to the chair opposite his, and I can feel the energy in the room changing. I am the investigating officer who has come upon his prey, but at the same time I am the younger man, less experienced, a pupil in the presence of his tutor, a child in the presence of the adult.

I grimace, keep my gun up. “You are under arrest for—” For what, Laszlo? For everything. For all of it. “For murder in the first degree.”

“Okay. I plead guilty. We will come to all of that, Mr. Ratesic. Justice will be done. Please. Sit.”

There is a chair across from him. I sit, but I keep my gun out, in my hand.

“This is a CSE file, Laszlo. Do you know the nomenclature used down here? In the labyrinth?”

“CSE,” I say. “Collated Significant Event.”

“Very good.” His smile brightens, gold star for me, and he begins reciting from memory, his favorite trick. “Incidents of self-evident public importance are to be cross-cataloged into a master file, to include all relevant information from all relevant captures, gathered together in a permanent and comprehensive manner to put on Record the full truth of the incident in question.”

Arlo slides his glasses up on the bridge of his nose and turns the file around so I can see it more clearly. He lays one finger beside the title on the tab. “The Death of Mr. Charles Ratesic of the Speculative Service.”

I look up sharply. “What the fuck is going on here, Arlo?”

“So many things, Laszlo. So many things.”

He angles his head, gazes at me thoughtfully through the glasses. It’s the same old head, the same old man, the large ears and small black eyes. His thin white hair is flecked with blood.

The man has murdered four Librarians. He set me up to attack Laura Petras, laid out the bread crumbs that I eagerly devoured. He framed her, framed me, did irreversible damage to the reputation of the Speculative Service he has served his whole life. Him, and me. And Charlie.

I open the file. I close it again, terrified of what it’s inside.

It is cool in here, climate-controlled. I can hear every thump of my heartbeat. I can feel the dull whoosh of my blood.

“Go on now, son,” says Arlo. “Have a look.”

I open it again and begin to turn the pages inside. Transcripts of Charlie on the thirtieth floor, explaining the shocking extent of what he had discovered: the Off Record house, the ring of brazen liars, the clandestine organization calling itself the Golden State. Still photos of Charlie in the Spec Service. Still photos, lifted from video captures, of Charlie in his hospital bed, struggling to survive the multiple gunshot wounds he suffered in the Keller house raid.

While I glance through it all, plunged back into this memory, Arlo speaks softly.

“I, of course, have had extraordinary access to this file. At will access, so to speak. Firstly because I was the senior officer who brought Ratesic onto our force. Secondly because I was the man charged with overseeing his undercover efforts.” He takes off his glasses, idly works at a freckle of blood with his thumbnail. “And lastly, of course, as the author of the novel inspired by these extraordinary events.”

I turn over a page and stop, and read it, and read it again, and then I look up at Arlo, who is looking back at me carefully, very carefully, waiting to see what I will say. What I will do .

The page is a précis, a kind of executive summary, compiled from edited transcripts. It details how Charlie Ratesic was recovering from his injuries until he was murdered by his younger brother, Laszlo Ratesic, who willfully increased the dosage of Charlie’s pain-reducing medication until he died.