Continued from Part 1, here.

I sat at my desk, my fingers interlocked in front of me.  My cup of coffee, the third one of the morning, slowly grew cold beside me.

The body was down on the slab in Samuelson’s back room, and I’d carefully locked up that briefcase in our evidence locker.  Lewis had helped me put the thing in there, although neither of us spoke a word for the entire ride back to the station.

It was only after the thing was out of sight, under lock and key, that we started to drift back to normal.  I gave him a couple tasks to do – run down the prints off the dead body, try and get an ID, check for a wallet or other personal items – and sent him off.  Maybe we’d get lucky, find the guy in the system.

I, meanwhile, had a tougher decision to make.

I held the position of senior detective for our precinct, not that the title meant much.  When the county’s only got the money to pay four of you, not counting Marian’s volunteering on the weekend to sort through our files, the rank of “senior detective” is a bit like being the tallest kid on the playground.  Sure, it sounds nice, but it’s not worth printing up on a business card.

My boss… technically, I figured that would be the county sheriff.  Alan Hayfield was a nice enough fellow, bit forgetful these days, but he always showed up to the local school to encourage them to say no to drugs.  Still, he’d be just as over his head in this as me.

I drummed my fingers against the scratched wood of my desk, thinking hard.  I could still see the slight glow of the contents of that case, could feel the weight of its contents.  That case didn’t belong out in a field, in the middle of nowhere.

So what was our dead man doing with it?

And, perhaps more importantly, what was I going to do with it?

Fortunately, Lewis came barging into the station, breaking me out of my looping thoughts.  I stood up as he stomped his feet against the welcome mat, knocking off caked-on snow and huffing as he unzipped his heavy jacket.

“Any ID on the stiff?” I asked, giving him a hand with his coat.

Once he’d managed to remove a few heavy layers, Lewis nodded, looking a bit happier.  “Yeah, he had a wallet on him,” he replied, pulling out a plastic baggie containing the item in question from a pocket.  Detectives always looked happier with a lead..

I took the baggie, fumbled to manipulate the object inside until I had it flipped open.  “Bill Loonan,” I read, and chuckled at the resemblance.

Lewis frowned at me.  “What’s so funny?”

I thought about trying to explain to him how the dead guy had reminded me of Biff Loman, the dead salesman, but decided not to bother.  Lewis’s reading mostly consisted of the articles in the nudie mags he furtively bought at the gas station down the road and hid in the bottom of his desk’s drawer.

“Nothing,” I replied.  “Let’s run it.  See if there’s any missing persons out on a Bill Loonan.”

I fired up our office’s single, boxy computer, pulling out the brown-tinged keyboard.  Lewis dropped into the chair across from my desk.  When I looked up, he was frowning.

“What?” I asked, as I waited for the old machine to load.

“The car,” he said slowly, looking out past our front door.  “That farmer, Ewan, said he hadn’t seen any car.”

“So?”

“So how did this Loony guy get out in the field?  We both saw his shoes.  Leather dress shit.  He didn’t walk there.”

I shrugged.  It was a good question.  “Maybe someone dumped him there.  Wasn’t much blood underneath him on the field.”

But Lewis was already shaking his head.  “Who’d dump him, but leave, well, that?” he asked, leaning on the last word.

He didn’t have to say what he meant.  We both knew.  I didn’t have any answer.

Thankfully, the computer beeped a minute later.  I typed in Bill Loonan’s name and hit Enter, waiting for the machine to creakily send off the request.  When I’d first arrived here, I asked the town council to increase our budget so we could get a faster network, a better computer.  I had young, big ideas about improving the police force.

A decade later, we had the same connection and the same computer.

While I waited, I retrieved my coffee cup, frowning when a sip revealed that the liquid had gone cold.  I didn’t feel motivated enough to pop it into our food-splattered microwave, though, so I just took a few more sips, grimacing at each one.

Finally, the computer beeped back.  No results.  I glanced at Lewis, and he nodded, sighing.

“Looks like we’re stuck with old fashioned police work,” I said, turning the computer off.  “You got a picture of the stiff?  Head and shoulders shot, one folks might recognize?”

He nodded, pulling out his camera and loading up a picture for my approval.  I took a look, and gave it a nod.  It was clear upon close examination that the guy was dead, but he still at least looked human, apart from that hole between his eyebrows.

“What about, well, the briefcase?” Lewis asked, as I reached for my coat.  “Are we just going to leave it locked up?”

I grunted.  That damn briefcase.  That was the worst twist of all with this mystery, so far, and I didn’t even know how to deal with it.

“For now, yeah,” I finally said.  “Maybe, as we find out more about this Loonan guy, it will make some sense.”

Lewis nodded, trusting his boss, but I wished that I had more conviction behind my own words.

A phone rang, three short, sharp trills, before a hand picked it up.

“Yeah.  Someone searched his name?  Police database?  From where?”

A brief pause, as if the speaker needed a few seconds to adjust.  “What?  Really, from there?  Who even has an internet connection out there?”

Another pause, followed by a sigh.  “Well, get someone out there, for God’s sake.  Shut this down, get it all cleaned up.”

“And whatever you do, make sure you recover that goddamn briefcase.”

The phone call ended.

We got the call fairly early in the morning, according to the front desk’s note.  Some farmer found the body, out walking his dog.

And that was lucky, too, I thought to myself as I rubbed my hands together.  I always chose the thinnest pair of leather gloves I could find, for dexterity, but they didn’t hold in heat worth a damn.  The engine on my unmarked car was running full blast, but the heater always took twenty minutes to warm up.

Sitting beside me, Lewis stamped his feet on the floor and huffed into his own cupped hands, making a sound a bit like a coughing dog.  “Gah!  Is it always this cold?” he complained, wriggling his fingers.

I glanced sidelong at the man.  Close to a decade younger than me, he was new blood, only just transferred up here.  I didn’t think he’d last long.  I wasn’t privy to whatever mistakes got him transferred out to the country, but I didn’t need my detective skills to see that he was a city boy, through and through.

“We’ll get some heat once the engine’s warmed up,” I commented, keeping my eyes on the road ahead of us.  The uneven gravel of the road often hid treacherous ice puddles.

“And how’s long that gonna take?”

“Maybe ’bout twenty minutes.  ‘Bout the time we get there.”

Lewis huffed in frustration, and I let myself grin ever so slightly.  Guy was definitely young; he hadn’t mastered the art of letting all the bullshit of life roll off his back.

Sure enough, just as the car’s air vents began to puff out warm air, we reached the edge of the field.  “Corner of Harris and Ewan’s lots,” the report waiting for me at my desk had read.  No street address.

To someone new, like Lewis, that might have been nonsense, but I knew the farms around here well enough to get there without much trouble.  Comes from spending my years out here chasing down cows and lost cats, I guess.

Ewan was standing there, his breath coming out in hazy clouds as he gave me a wave.  His dog, a coon hound of indeterminate age and ancestry, bayed as we approached.  I could see Ewan’s shotgun hanging down from his other hand.  At least he wasn’t pointing the damn thing at my car.

I pulled over, leaving the keys in the ignition and the engine running, and climbed out.  My boots crunched on the icy crust atop the snow as I trudged over to the farmer.  I could hear the clumsy plodding of Lewis behind me, trying to not get too weighed down in the thick snow.

“Ewan,” I greeted the farmer with a nod, one he returned.  “What’ve we got?”

Ewan didn’t respond immediately.  He glanced over at Lewis, sizing up my younger partner, and I saw his lips curl ever so slightly.  “Who’s this?  New guy?”

“Yeah.  New guy.”  At least Lewis didn’t try and start a fight.  “Now, what the hell are we doing out here?  I can feel my balls turning blue as we speak.”

That, at least, got a little snort out of the farmer.  He turned and stepped out into his field, his dog keeping at his heels.  He didn’t say anything, but Lewis and I followed a few steps behind.

There were no crops in the field, of course.  Nothing grows in the dead of northern winter.  The ground had frozen in rows of ploughed furrows, however, and we had to watch our step as we climbed over the ridges.

We didn’t have to go far.  About ten rows into the field, we saw the disturbance in the snow, a rectangular corner of something sticking up through the crust of snow.

“You go any closer?” I asked Ewan as we stepped up to the object sticking out of the snow.

He shook his head.  “Course not.  Sparky ran ‘cross it, though.”

I nodded.  I could see the dog’s tracks going over the surface.  There were no other treads, however, no other sign of disturbance on the snow.

As I crouched down, peering across the three feet or so that separated me from the object, I carefully categorized my first impressions.

It was a briefcase.  That much was clear.  It looked like a nice affair, too, leather, with brass corners.  There might be something engraved in the top, right by the handle, but I couldn’t read it with the crust of ice that had formed on top of the leather surface.

My eyes moved over to the hand that still clutched the handle of the briefcase.

It was definitely a hand.  Human, white male, maybe in his forties.  It was tough to say more.  I could see the glint of a gold ring on the fourth finger.  Married?

Like a good partner, Lewis had pulled out his camera and snapped a couple dozen pictures.  I glanced over at him, and he nodded.  I could approach.

Carefully, I stepped closer, reaching out and picking up a frozen chunk of corn stalk, left over from the harvest in the fall.  Bit by bit, I swept away some of the snow, uncovering the man underneath.

He didn’t look like much.  I thought briefly of good ol’ Willy Loman, from Death of a Salesman.  Our corpse looked to be in his late forties, dressed in a gray overcoat over a cheap looking suit.  He wore leather shoes, although the material looked cracked and worn.  I swept away snow from his head, revealing thinning hair, a scraggly little excuse at a beard – and a small hole drilled right in the middle of his forehead.

As I uncovered that hole, I glanced up at Lewis.  The younger man’s mouth tightened, but he lifted the camera and snapped a picture.

Murder, then.

“So what’s he doing out here?”  Ewan hadn’t moved any closer, but the man kept on peering with interest over our shoulders, trying to get a better look at the corpse.  “It’s not like we’ve had any visitors.  And I didn’t see a car or anything when I came out here.”

The snow covered the man with a solid, unbroken crust, I thought to myself.  He’d been here a while, probably weeks.  We didn’t have a real coroner, but Samuelson, the mortician in town, might be able to pin down time of death a little more.  I couldn’t see much n the way of blood spatter, but it might just be frozen further down, underneath him.

As I’d mused, Lewis had picked up his own corn stalk, clearing away more of the snow.  “Hey, Harry,” he called out in an undertone to me.  “Look what he’s got over here.”

The stiff had fallen in a weird sprawl, his arms pointing off in opposite directions.  Lewis swept away the last of the snow from the man’s other outstretched arm as I glanced over.

“That doesn’t make sense,” my partner said aloud, as we both looked down at the newly uncovered object.

In the man’s right hand, he held a blued steel pistol.  I’d have to check back at the office, but it looked about the right size to put the hole in his forehead.

Suicide?  It didn’t make any sense.  Or had he been shooting at someone else when he went down?

I shrugged.  Get him back to the station, run his records, try and figure out who he was.  Who he had been.  I stood up, stretching out my already stiff knees – but then paused, looking down at the poor sod.

One quest kept on poking at my brain.  I knew I was breaking protocol, but hell, I was the ranking detective out here.

I glanced over at Lewis.  “You get a good close picture of his hand?” I asked, pointing down at the hand clutching the briefcase.

My partner nodded, but he shot a few more, just to be certain.  He didn’t say anything, but I could see his curiosity plain on his face as well.  He stood back, letting me do the honors.

Carefully, lips pulled back slightly from my face, I tugged the man’s fingers away from the handle of the briefcase.  I heard a couple uncomfortable creaks and pops, but nothing fully broke.  After a minute, I tugged the case free, setting it down on the snow beside the corpse.

Turning the case so that Ewan couldn’t see the contents, I pushed at the latches.  They popped open obediently, and I lifted the stiff lid.

For a moment, both Lewis and I froze, staring down at the softly glowing contents.  “Well, shit,” the younger man exclaimed, the words spoken in half a whisper.

I nodded – and then, even though I had to fight to pull my eyes away, I pushed the case back closed.

“Well, this got a bit more interesting,” I said softly…

Continued here.

“So, Mr. Carlyle, is there anything else I can get you?” the young woman asked, making sure that her breasts, hanging heavy in her low-cut blouse, just barely brushed against the man’s suited shoulder.

The man, however, didn’t glance up from his paperwork.  “No, Missy, that will be all, I think,” he said, waving one hand vaguely in the air.

Missy felt a little put out, but she straightened up carefully, making sure to accentuate the long, slender lines of her figure.  Her mini-skirt ended only a fraction of an inch below the perfect curves of her ass, and if Richard Carlyle happened to slide one hand up along the inside of her perfect bronze thigh, he’d soon find a very distinct lack of underwear beneath…

The man didn’t even notice, however.  Missy was pretty sure that she could have been wearing a chicken costume, and the man wouldn’t have noticed!  She threw back her long blonde waves over her shoulder and let out a snort as she stomped out in her high heels.

It’s not easy to stomp in high heels, but the buxom blonde bombshell managed it.

As she slammed the door to his office shut behind her, Carlyle glanced up, his brow furrowing briefly.  Was something bothering his secretary?  He felt much more comfortable reading a financial report than another person, but she seemed annoyed somehow.

He glanced down at the fresh stack of documents that Missy had delivered to him.  She’d left a pink sticky note on top, complete with her phone number and a couple of Xs.  That was thoughtful, Carlyle noted absently to himself.  If she’d left anything out, he could call her about it.

He wasn’t sure about the Xs, but interpreted them to mean that she wasn’t going to strike out if she could help it.

Real go-getter, that Missy, he thought briefly to himself before his mind filled up with numbers.

*

“Your coffee, sir- oh, no!” Missy suddenly exclaimed as she tilted the cup forward, spilling the brown frothy liquid out all over the man in front of her.  “Oh my, I’m so clumsy!  I ought to be spanked for it!”

“Oh, that’s all right, Missy,” Carlyle replied quickly, standing up as the coffee poured down over his crotch.  “I’m sure you just tripped-“

Missy had already dropped down to her bare knees on the carpet, bending forward and rubbing both her hands over his crotch.  “We need to get those pants off of you right away, sir, so they don’t stain,” she insisted, her nimble fingers flying to his belt and tugging it free.  “Come, now, let’s get you out of all those wet clothes!”

She had the belt undone, the button open, and her fingers were on the zipper!  Finally, she was going to get the man naked – and then it was just a matter of wrapping her lips around him.  Missy knew that, once his dick was inside a girl’s mouth, no man would ever pull away-

“Here, no need to worry!”  Suddenly, Carlyle’s hands were down beneath her shoulders, lifting her back up!  “Let me show you something.”

Before she knew what was happening, the man was stepping away from her – and pulling open one of the wooden panels that lined his massive office, he revealed a small closet, full of clean hanging suits!

“You see,” Carlyle explained, grabbing one of the fresh suits off of the rack, “I tend to sometimes have a little accident with lunch.  And vinaigrette is impossible to get out of white linen – I know, I’ve tried.  So I keep a couple extra changes of outfit here, just in case.

“But here,” he finished, handing the coffee-stained pants to Missy as he pulled on the fresh set.  “You can take these and get them dry-cleaned for me.  Put it on the company account, of course – anyone could have slipped there!”

Met with that well-meaning, innocent smile, Missy couldn’t think of anything to do but nod and accept the stained garment.  “Of course, sir,” she sighed, turning and heading back out of the office.

Carlyle smiled as he gazed after her.  What a thoughtful young woman!  She was clearly loyally devoted to him.  She must have known that he had an investors’ meeting this afternoon, and wanted him to be both alert and spotless.  She deserved a raise, he noted to himself.

“Excuse me!”  The call stopped Missy in her tracks, halfway to the door to the man’s office.  “Missy, I think there’s been some mistake!”

She turned and glanced back at Carlyle behind his desk, biting her lower lip seductively.  “What’s wrong, master?” she asked.

Carlyle flicked through the stack of papers she’d just placed in front of him.  “Yes, Missy, this is the Kleiberson report.  I need the Daniels report.”

“Oh no, I’ve made such a mistake!” Missy exclaimed, dashing back and dropping to her knees beside the man.  This time, her low-cut top was held up only by the thinnest of spaghetti straps looping over her shoulders, and it offered an expansive view deep into her cleavage.  She’d carefully picked out a top a full two sizes too small – and with no bra, her nipples stood out like quarters through the thin, sheer fabric.

“Now, now, that’s okay-” Carlyle began, but Missy had already pushed him back in his chair from the desk, pushing herself forward and into his lap.  “Missy, what are you doing?”

“Oh, I’ve been a bad girl,” his secretary cried, wiggling forward so that she lay across his lap.  “Please, master, you need to spank me and teach me a lesson!”

Carlyle blinked as the woman wiggled her perky round ass up at him.  She’d chosen another short little miniskirt today, this one little more than a belt.  “Spank you?  Missy, I don’t think that’s necessary-“

“Oh, please, if you don’t, I’ll never learn my lesson!” the woman cried dramatically, managing to twist so that, even with her ass right in range of the CEO’s hands, she could give him another beguiling glimpse down at her full breasts.  “I’ve been such a bad girl, and you need to punish me with a good spanking, right on my tight little ass!”

Missy mentally crossed her fingers.  This had to work!  How could any man resist her, in his lap like this and begging for him?  This would make most men blow a blood vessel and collapse right there!  When she came in for work this morning in this outfit, two of the security guards had suffered spontaneous bloody noses!

But incredibly, Carlyle just stood up, gently easing her off of his lap.  “Now, now, Missy, I would never hit a woman,” he chided her gently.  “I’m very progressive like that, but I believe that chivalry is a lost art these days that needs to be revived.”

“But master, I’ve been bad, and I need to be punished-“

“Nonsense!” Carlyle insisted with a broad grin as he helped her up to her feet.  “You’re a wonderful secretary, and you shouldn’t punish yourself like this.  Any man would be happy to have you working for him!”

“Now,” he went on, as Missy blinked and tried to understand how she’d been so kindly rejected, “if you could go bring me the Daniels file, that would be perfect.  There’s a good girl, then!”

Wondering if the CEO had somehow lost his penis in some sort of yacht accident, Missy tottered out of the room, defeated.

Carlyle shook his head as he watched her go.  A fine girl, he thought to himself, but she needed to shake those old-fashioned notions of punishment.  Maybe he needed to sign her up for a woman’s empowerment course, give her a bit of self-confidence.

Normally, I’d consider the curved samurai sword out of place.  Who expects to find an actual sword in an office building, even in a gigantic executive’s office like this?

At the moment, however, the sword looked like salvation – if I could only reach it.

Trying not to draw attention to myself, I flexed my arms, testing the ropes that bound me to the chair.  The coil looped around me several times, but I could feel it budge ever so slightly when I strained my muscles.

Maybe, just maybe, I had a chance.

“And now, Mr. Smith,” spoke up the man standing in front of me.  “What in the world are we going to do with you?”

He’d been turned away from me, staring out the massive floor-to-ceiling windows that made up the entire far wall.  Dressed in a suit as dark as midnight, he looked as though he belonged in this setting.  Only the dark, dangerous little glint in his shark-like eyes revealed that he was no corporate executive.

The man stepped over to stand in front of me, crouching down slightly in his elegant black suit.  He shook his head back and forth, spreading a sorrowful expression across his face.

That expression never quite managed to touch those flat black eyes, however.

“And it’s repeated offenses, too,” he sighed.  “Sneaking around our operation multiple times, taking pictures.  You’re going to have to tell me where you sent those, by the way.  This underhanded dealing – it’s just not how things should be done.”

I tried to stare back at the man, but my eyes must have flicked over towards the sword on the wall.  The man caught the look, and he stood up, stretching out his knee joints as he walked over to lift the blade off the wall.

“Not bad,” he commented with a note of approval, swinging the sword in a lazy circle.  “Of course, I doubt the man who owns this office has ever put it to use.  Probably just enjoys the delusion of imagining himself as an assassin.”

In a sudden movement, faster than I could blink, the man had the blade of the sword pressed up against my neck, its tip digging into my soft skin.  “Rather ironic, that is,” he continued, allowing himself a small smile.

I tried not to swallow, feeling that cold steel point digging into my skin.

“Now, once more, Mr. Smith,” the man repeated, moving in closer as he held the blade against my bare neck.  “The pictures.  We both know that you’re going to die tonight, but there are so many appendages I can remove before that finally happens.  Let’s be civilized, here.”

One of the burly, muscle-bound thugs standing at the doorway behind me sniggered.  I hadn’t seen them move since they’d dumped me in the chair, but I knew they’d stuck around.  “Civilized,” the man grunted to himself, apparently enjoying the joke.

I saw the shark eyes flick up, and I knew the thug had just made a mistake.  Again moving with that blurred, unbelievable speed, the man lunged past me, and I heard a sniggering cut off with a wet gurgle.

“Something funny?” the man in the suit hissed, some movement of his eliciting another gurgle.  “Come now, laugh!  A severed carotid, isn’t that hilarious?”

A moment later, I heard the thump of a heavy body dropping to the floor, and I knew that I was out of time.

The samurai sword appeared once more, this time draping across my shoulder from behind me.  I could see dark red blood staining the gleaming silver of the blade.  “Now, Mr. Smith,” the man in the suit hissed, his breath hot against the ear.  “I’m very quickly losing my patience.”

I nodded – and then threw my head back, putting as much force into the movement as I could manage.

The man almost dodged.

He pulled his head out of the way, at least, so my backwards headbutt didn’t smash in his nose and face as I intended.  That sword drew across my shoulder, leaving a burning line of fire.

But he couldn’t get all the way out of my path – and the back of my chair slammed into his shoulders, knocking him backwards onto the ground.

And a moment later, I fell on top of him.

The chair cracked from the blow against the floor, and I felt sudden slackness in the bonds around me.  I tugged my arms free and struggled to free myself, even as the man trapped beneath me howled and furiously clawed at me to get free.

He managed to pull out from beneath me, but I had both arms and one of my legs disentangled from the broken chair.  The man rolled in a somersault and burst to his feet, his teeth bared in a twisted grimace, but I kicked myself free as he turned to face me.

The sword was still clutched in the man’s hand, and he spun it in a silver flurry of metal.  “Come here, Mr. Smith,” he hissed, death leaping through the air in front of him.

I turned tail and ran, past the corpse of the thug behind me and his shocked companion.  My foot caught at the raised mantel of the office’s entrance, but I caught at the door, keeping myself from falling and throwing it shut behind me as I fled.

A split second later, with a sound like an axe striking a tree, the samurai sword pierced through the door.  I stared back at the solid foot and a half of quivering steel poking through my side of the office door.  The blade’s point terminated less than an inch from my wide eye.

And then, after that brief instant of paralyzing fear, my body recovered, and I hurtled myself away, back down the empty office building towards the ground floor and escape.

Back up in the office, the man stepped forward and, with a slight grunt, wrenched the sword free of where his throw had embedded it in the door to the office.  The remaining grunt watched him, trying to evaluate his own chances of surviving the next five minutes.

Those chances looked slimmer by the second.

“What now, sir?” he ventured.

The man in the suit sighed, brushing one hand over the fine fabric to remove a few specks of dust.  Even when he’d slit the throat of the first thug, he’d avoided getting a single drop of blood on his clothes.

With practice came experience, he supposed.

“Now?” he repeated back.  “Now, we wait for Mr. Smith to return home – and then we follow the tracker in his pocket to him.  It’s a bit like mice.  Do you know how to kill a nest of mice?”

The thug shook his head, wondering where this was leading.

The man in the suit grinned.  “The best way, in my experience, is to strap a small explosive to one of the mice – and then let it go,” he said.  “The mouse will retreat back to its nest, where the explosive will kill not only itself, but also its brethren.  Quite an elegant solution.”

“So that Mr. Smith is the mouse,” the thug guessed, trying to follow the metaphor.

“Yes,” the man in the suit confirmed.  He stepped over to behind the desk and bent down.  When he stood up, a gray brick sat in his hand, with a small electronic attachment embedded in it.

He stepped over and handed the brick to the thug.  “And you,” the man concluded, grinning, “are the explosive.”