Clement watched Pav dig through the trunk. She tucked a nondescript pistol into a hidden leather holster he caught a glimpse of beneath her jacket. Then she went fishing and with one hand pulled out a large rifle-looking gun with odd edges at the wood stock and an engraving of some big bird on the patch box. In the other hand was a big square box. She closed the trunk and placed the gun stock on it as she opened the box. Shotgun shells.
A hand tugged on that grand artery at Clement's heart. "What— I get the pistol; you all carry that. What the hell is that long rifle for?"
She turned to him. "Rifle?" Then she turned to continue what she was doing. She grabbed one shell at a time and fed a depression covered by a thin metal underneath. It clicked each time. "This is no rifle." Click. "This is a Browning Automatic 5 shotgun." Click. "A marvel of modern engineering and the first of its kind." Click. "It doesn't hold much, but it doesn't have to." Click.
She pulled back the latch, then fed one more shell into the underbelly. "I'm somewhat of an antique collector, you see. They stopped making this guy before the turn of the century." She wrapped the gun strap over her shoulder, and it held the gun level at her waist in a graceful rest. "Come on, now."
They walked side by side through the alley to the front of an off-color building that needed a power wash, with bars on the windows and an ordinary single door. Pav's arm held up blocked Clement from taking another step. "You see that there, Clemy?"
"See what?"
She motioned with the barrel of the Browning while pressing a button on its side with her thumb. "Look. At the bottom of the door there. That's a 12-millimeter-wide hole."
He saw a hole where a calf might be, but Clement wasn't sure how she could tell its size. Next to it was a small stain. As Clement caught a glimpse of it, he could see that a faint trail flowed from it down the steps.
Pav let out a couple clicks of the tongue. "Clearly didn't stop our interloper from making haste." She resumed her approach right through the bloodstain in expensive-looking boots. Something told Clement she knew and didn't care; he walked around it.
Pav stepped to the left of the door, pointed to the other side for Clement to move, and knocked three times. "Hello! A friendly and her friend have arrived! You're not gonna shoot me if I come in to help, are you?"
A yell came from inside. "I don't know you! Don't step through that door, I will fucking shoot you."
"Woah, buddy, I just said we're on the same team. I'm guessing someone came on in, maybe the people I'm after, pretending to be aloof about the hunt, and rocked your world, huh?"
"Fuck you! You said same team? I'm fucking…I'm bleeding everywhere. I'm going to die. And you're making jokes!"
Pav cleared her throat. Addressing Clement she said, "Seems I've made a little bit of a tonal error there, huh?" She turned back to yell at the man past the door again. "Okay, I'm sorry about that, friend. Look, I got my medallion and whatnot. It's not a common one. Pretty sure even you'd doubt it was stolen. I can toss it in for you to see, but I need to open the door just a little."
"You open it, and you die!"
Pav scoffed. "Jesus man, okay, well tell me at the very least, how's Ferdinand?"
"Who?"
"Oh sorry, I guess he'd have gone by the name…uh… Ed? Eduardo? Your boss."
There was a momentary silence. "He's dead man."
"Dead? How dead? Dead how?"
"I–I shot him. By mistake."
"Wha— you shot Ed? Is that some attempt at humor? It's not funny. I like that guy." She took a deep breath. "I can't believe you admitted it too. How much blood would you say you've lost there?"
The man took a second and yelled back again. "Open the door a crack. I'll tell you if it's too much. Stick your hand in with the medallion. I'm not lett…I'm not letting you in if it's not gold at least."
"Alright." She began taking off her right boot.
Clement leaned on the rail and was taken aback by Pav's hiding place for the medallion. 'In your boot?"
"Yeah, they don't exactly reissue these." She flipped her boot over and into her hand fell an emerald-green medallion with a more subtle minimalist symbol than the hawks and skulls Clement was used to seeing.
"Okay, Mr. uh, what was your name?" she asked.
"Juan."
"Okay Juan, I've got the medallion, I'm opening the door now." She put the boot down and flicked her hand, and like a magic trick, a key fell from her sleeve into her hand. She unlocked and opened the door, ebbing it forward.
"That's plenty." He let out a couple wet coughs. "Show."
Pav stuck in her hand holding the green medallion, and immediately the pair outside heard a disarming click.
"I hadn't ever seen one of those in person before. I—I'm sorry. I'm just—I'm scared. I don't wanna die. I didn't mean that kind of disrespect."
"No worries." She pushed the door, and it glided open. "I'm more concerned on how Ed was accidentally shot. Where is his body?"
Juan was hunched over a plain wooden chair. Blood dripped puddling around his feet. Clement looked saw a room in complete disarray.
"He's… in the supply room. P—Please help me. I'm. It's dark along the edges."
"In a moment." She walked past Juan and disappeared through a giant metal doorway.
Clement took involuntary steps back. The metallic smell in the air hit his nose, and he felt he knew what Juan meant when he said the edges were dark. His vision was constricted. Then he buckled under his knees and regurgitated bile and spit. It didn't help that he fell into a small dried up puddle of red, which only kept his retching going.
"Jesus Juan," Pav yelled from the supply room. "You forgot to mention him missing his entire forehead. How'd that even happen?"
"Please ma—" Juan coughed up blood and leaned back on the chair. "I—I can explain everything if I need to—be—I need to breathe. It's hard to breathe." His gurgling stopped him.
Pav appeared in the doorway and walked towards Juan. "His body is lying down on some clear film to the right-hand side. You meant to kill someone walking through that door, but someone wasn't supposed to be Ed clearly. You didn't even ID the guy walking in before you melted him, and you murdered the boy? A boy above you in rank, which I suppose would make him a man to you. How unsightly" The barrel of her A5 rested at the nape of his neck.
Clement watched Juan's eyes widen and his jaw twitch. Juan breathed heavier, which started another coughing fit, but Pav talked through it. "You probably know I have full authority to act based on these facts."
Juan didn't seem to have the motor control to hold his bladder anymore and urine diluted the blood making it drip faster, and he fell forward off the chair cheek-first into the pool of his own fluids. Pav walked around, crouched down beside him, and pushed him over on his back. "However, I'm not a fan of being a judge or jury. I only fulfill the third role." She fished through her leather bag and retrieved a medic kit. "So, people above me will decide what to do."
By the time Clement had recovered, Juan was stabilized and wrapped in bandages. Pav finished her final injection of a syringe and stood up. Juan seemed to be sleeping peacefully.
"Okay Clemy, time to play detective. First stop: the Corner Office."
Clement didn't move much when Pav made her way to what might have been a corner office, but the walls were just blinds free floating with the glass wall spread across the ground behind them. The wooden door into the office was inundated with small pellet holes. Pav opened the door and walked in.
Clement felt like the walls were watching him. Rough and ugly cement beaming from the light of long fluorescent lights, one of which buzzed on and off like the flies watching him from the walls. Some CRT monitors lay scattered apart on the floor and the cork of partitions submerged the floor, but one monitor, still on, stared at him from the first cubicle. Then he blinked and looked at Juan. Clement blinked again before his heart could catch up to his eyes, and Juan still lay there sound asleep. He had to go join Pav.
He rushed in a tiptoe to the corner office and came behind Pav who faced some wooden desk. The room was destroyed. Diploma frames with holes in the ground atop sheets of glass shards and splinters of wood from the desk. The back wall consisted of metal filing cabinets looking like Swiss cheese, some drawers protruding and manila files laying everywhere.
"A mess, right?" Dahlia asked. She turned around, her thinner profile allowing Clement a view of a heavy-set man leaning back on a leather chair with a matted handle protruding out of his throat. Clement assumed that the deep flowing indentation through his right eye was made by the same knife.
He looked away. If Clement had any more sick to give, he would've on the floor once more. But instead, his eyes grew heavy, like under the paperweight of a sleepless night.
"Poor A. Head. Didn't like him for the one time we met, but he didn't deserve this." Pav walked around the desk and crouched down. Pav stood back up with a gaudy pistol between three fingers that Clement recognized.
"A… gold and silver pistol?" Clement asked.
Pav squared her shoulders and turned to Clement. She had this artfully hideous grin on, and he didn't know what to make of it. If a devil had to show glee before raining damnation, it might've been by her lips right then, and if an angel had to show joy before delivering salvation, they may have commissioned the very same smile. "You know something about this… art piece?"
Clement wasn't scared. Or he wouldn't put it like that anyways. He just felt strongly compelled to answer with the truth. "Yes. D—Do you want to—um— know about it?"
"Yeah," she said softly.
"W—Well, there's someone I worked with. Never got along well. Stephanie. She does— did — back half nights. Anyways… that's hers. She loved that thing. Never seen her apart from it." Clement scanned the room hastily. "Did… did she do all this, Pav?"
Pav was just staring at the dead portly man. "Seems you're more useful than you think." She rotated the gun in front of her and read some engravings. "Latin. A memento of someone lost. How sad. How fundamental to the human condition. This isn't a gun, Clement."
Clement was trying to soak in her words and was rubbing his shiny forehead with his palm, but he couldn't figure out her meaning. "What're you talking about?"
She took out a thick cloth and a thin rod from her bag, and she began shoving the cloth down the barrel of the gun. Or what she said wasn't a gun. "This is an urn containing love's ashes. Tell me Clemy, would you leave your wife to dine with death? Or, say, in the blood puddle of an Atticus fiddler?"
"What?"
"Would you leave a treasure of yours in this shit show?"
"No."
She let the silence linger and placed the gun back on the floor where she found it. "Memories are our only bridge to metacognition. We don't need them to be sad or angry, or happy or hopeful. But we need them to know that we are."