Gary A. Braunbeck - Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys

Just spreading my sunshine. Hence the daily doses of Zoloft.

I was about to go into this woman’s home and remove her body. The last goddamn thing I needed to hear was that she kept some of her neighbors awake because she cried every night. It was just too much.

“Yeah,” said Mole when I made no response, “that old gal could caterwaul with the best of ‘em, I swear. I mean, some nights, she’d wail like nobody’s business.” He stopped talking for a moment, something having just occurred to him. “Huh. You know, now that I think of it, it seems like the worst nights were those right after she got a big delivery.” He narrowed his eyes, thinking hard, then nodded his head. “Yes sir, that’d be right. Anytime she got a big package delivered to her, you could count on two things: the power going out, and her crying up a storm. Like I said, she was an odd’n. You got any idea if someone from her family’s gonna be dropping by for her stuff? Don’t mean to sound morbid, but I’d sure like to get a look at whatever it was she had going on in there.” This last said in a tone suggesting Miss Driscoll had some kind of juicy, dirty little secret that he was just dying to be the first to know about.

I felt even more nervous now. “I, uh…as far as I know, they’re still trying to track down her family.”

“Damn shame. Don’t think I ever saw a visitor come to her door, aside from the delivery people.”

“That’s what I heard.” I wanted him to go away. I was trying to think of a tactful way to tell him as much when Officer Seiler stepped in to serve and protect.

“Come on, Mr. Boyle,” she said, gently taking his arm. “Let’s stay out of their way so these two gentleman can do their jobs.”

“Damn shame,” he said again as she led him away.

“It sure is,” she replied, casting a quick glance over her shoulder and winking at me. Even packing heat, she looked so gorgeous right then I wanted to bear all of her children. “You ready?” asked Dobbs, opening the door. “No.” “Good answer.”

We righted the gurney and rolled it into the apartment, closing the door behind us should any curious eyes decide to sneak a peek. I found myself hoping that Officer Seiler hadn’t actually left, that she’d stick around long enough to make sure no crowd formed in the hallway, that maybe she’d thought it over and decided I was just the guy to carry her offspring.

The apartment had a small foyer with a polished wood coat rack, telephone stand, and single chair for callers to use. A framed photograph on the wall over the phone showed a very striking woman surrounded by what looked like dozens of children, all of them smiling the type of forced, could-you- hurry -up-and-take-the-picture- puh-leeeeze smile that we’ve all plastered on our faces at one time or another as suited the occasion. I wondered if Miss Driscoll had been a grade-school teacher at some point in her life, because all of the children in the photo looked to be between the ages of 7 and 12. The glass covering the photo was cracked, the break running down the center of the woman’s face. I wondered why Miss Driscoll had never bothered replacing the glass.

“All right,” said Dobbs, letting go of his end of the gurney and walking into the living room, “let me make sure we’ve got a clear path before we…”

“Before we what?” I asked, trying to squeeze around the gurney to join him.

“… hol-ee shit… ”

“What is it?”

“You are not going to believe this.”

You heard it here first.

I honestly don’t know what I was expecting to see—a room filled with stuffed animals, or priceless antiques, maybe porcelain figurines of angels or those little statues of children with those really big eyes that are supposed to warm your heart but personally give me the creeps; whatever it was, it’d be something lonely-old-lady-like, that was for certain—

— I’d sure like to get a look at whatever it was she had going on in there —

—but I think even Mole a.k.a. Mr. Boyle would have started at the sight of what took up a full eighty percent of this old woman’s living room.

Table-mounted HO slot-car racing tracks.

It wasn’t just the sheer amount of track—though that in itself was enough to drop your jaw (lay all the individual pieces end to end, and my guess is you’d easily have a quarter-mile or more of the stuff)—but the configurations. These tracks weren’t arranged in anything so banal as circles or ovals or figure eights, but in complex, looping, multi-layered patterns, complete with overpasses, off-ramps, and even rest areas. Model buildings were placed at various points along and around these tracks (there were a half-dozen tracks set up throughout the spacious living room) depicting small townships and bigger cities, including HO-scale trees and human figures.

“Good Christ,” said Dobbs, looking around the room. “There must be about three or four thousand dollars’ worth of track and…stuff.”

“At least,” I replied, still trying to absorb all of it. Then thought: No wonder the power was always going out.

The biggest track—a four-lane job—was wired for individually powered lanes, with power taps located at three different points around the track, all of the wires running underneath the table to a variable 20-amp power supply that was mounted to a small metal shelf running between two of the table’s legs.

I used to be a slot-car racing fool when I was a kid, and I knew damn well that you can only run a power supply for so long before it starts to really heat up, and if you push your luck (like I always did) you were apt to blow a fuse before you were done.

And if for some reason you had several tracks and power supplies running at the same time…you could blow out the electricity to the entire floor of an apartment building.

I was so caught up in my own amazement that I didn’t even realize Dobbs had left the living room until he came back in and said, “Oh, man , you gotta see the rest of this place! She’s got tracks mounted everywhere —in her bedroom, the guest room, the kitchen…hell, she’s even got a little one set up in the bathroom! ”

“We’re never going to get the gurney through here,” I said. “There’s barely room to walk around.”

Dobbs nodded his head. “Yeah, I already figured that out. We’re gonna have to move a couple of these tables. But not just yet.” He squeezed past me, pressing the clipboard into my hands, heading for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“You just stay here, all right? Miss Driscoll’s laid out in the bedroom, so you wait and take a look around. I don’t think she’s gonna mind.” He stopped, then turned to face me. “I got a digital camera in my bag down in the wagon. I have got take some pictures of this place. My wife’ll never believe me.”

I stared at him, blinked, then asked: “Why would anyone working a job like this carry a camera with them?”

He grinned. “Because every once in a while I come across something really weird , and my wife requires proof.”

“Do you lie to her that much?”

“I don’t like to think of it as lying . I…embellish. I embroider. I exaggerate.”

“You lie.”

“I lie. Just to keep her guessing, mind you. Believe me, after 32 years of marriage, nothing I do surprises her anymore, so I gotta do something to make it interesting for the old gal.” “So you carry a digital camera to work in case something weird comes up.” “That’s it. Don’t you ever fib to your wife?” “I’m divorced.” “Oh, sorry. Well, didn’t you ever fib to her when you were married?” “Probably.”