Page 3 of The Mystery Writer

“Get out.”

“What?”

He finished knotting his tie. “I want you to find somewhere else you can write.”

Theo stared at him, shocked. “But you said I could—”

“You need to have somewhere to go in the morning, Theo. As much as I appreciate this manic cleaning handyman phase you’re going through, you need to find somewhere to write where you won’t be distracted by this moldering pile.”

“Oh.” Theo’s heart steadied. “But I can still live here?”

Gus looked at her as if she were an idiot. “Meet me at the office at six—we’ll go for a drink.” He grabbed his briefcase and sunglasses. “A bar!” he added suddenly. “Always thought a bar would be a great place to write a novel. You should check out a few.”

And so, Theo had gone in search of an office, and she’d found Benders.

CHAPTER 2

Caleb paced the room. It was unbearable to know what was happening and not be able to help directly.

If only he could find out who Primus was—perhaps there would something he could do…people he could watch…or research. He could hack most things, and he wasn’t afraid to stand up and be counted. But, of course, Primus’s identity had to remain secret. Caleb had no doubt the sick psychos behind the Frankenstein Project would kill the man who was telling the world what they were up to, if they knew who he was. Jesus, this was wild.

Caleb sat back down before the computer screen and read the comments on the post—words of support and outrage, corroborative accounts, related reports—a growing movement that would one day save the world against the depravity and evil that Primus called the Minotaur. They were getting ready.

Caleb was compiling a consolidated list of all the corporates Primus mentioned from time to time. Every couple of posts, there was an organization that had not been named before, to add. CrusaderCat15 had created a database of missing persons, particularly children, and was cross-referencing last sightings against the property holdings of the corporates in that area. MoonSoldier1 was doing some work on linking the Frankenstein Project to particular political elites, the powerful men and women behind the Minotaur. There were others going through every post, decoding, looking for hidden messages. They were all working together, sharing what they discovered, and keeping an eye on one another, just in case. Caleb assumed the Minotaur would be looking for anybody helping Primus.

LABYRINTH 32

Experiments on the dead continue. The Frankenstein Project has yielded results and those behind it have been rewarded with gold and power. To date only the dead have been defiled for this purpose, but yesterday it was proposed that living subjects might further improve results. Watch yourselves, and the children. The representatives are complicit. People will start to disappear. The snatchers have been trained by the military in a secret location somewhere in the desert. Perhaps I, too, will be snatched, carved up, and remade. It is for more than myself I fear. I am the only person able to navigate the maze who is willing to breach the secrecy protocols that protect this corporate depravity. The people have a right to know. The sacrifices have a right to fight. Beware the icons: Disney, Coca-Cola, CNN. They are friends of the Minotaur. Prepare. Soon we will rise to lay siege to the Labyrinth. More later.

We Know What We Know.

Primus

Benders Bar in downtown Lawrence generally came to life when the hard drinkers arrived at about five in the afternoon. Until then it was quiet, untroubled by the presence of those who lingered far longer than the odd coffee entitled. The fact that Benders even opened before 11 a.m. was unusual, and the result of a dispute between the Bradley sisters, who owned it, one of whom called it a café, while other insisted it was a bar. Consequently, the hours and nature of the business had been divided, though over the years the line between café and bar had become blurred. The extended hours did however make it perfect for those who required an informal office from which they did not need to decamp by midafternoon. As far as writers’ refuges went, it was very acceptable, if not ideal.

Initially, Theo assumed that the café and bar had been named in honor of simple alcoholic excess, but a plaque just inside the door identified a much more sinister inspiration. Apparently, the Bloody Benders had been a family of serial killers who, in the late 1800s, murdered travelers who stopped at their inn for a meal or drink. It seemed a strangely passive-aggressive choice for the name of a café-bar, but there was a perverse humor about it that reminded Theo of home. And as much as she had chosen this path, memories of home were not always unwelcome.

The establishment’s decor played shamelessly on the dubious notoriety of its namesakes. Dim lighting, macabre memorabilia, and Victorian flourishes—it evoked conspiracy in a less-than-subtle theme-park sort of way. Nooks and booths allowed privacy, even secrecy. A hammer dipped in red paint, a similarly embellished cut-throat razor, and a collection of old arsenic bottles, completed the picture of a murderer’s den.

Within a week Theo had staked an almost inalienable claim on the corner booth. Each day she arrived by nine, ordered coffee, unpacked her laptop, her notes, and the dog-eared Jack Chase novel Airborne, which was her muse, of sorts. It had been signed by the author: “For Theo, May the words come quickly and in the right order. In writerly solidarity, Jack.”

Theo had never actually met Jack Chase, though as a teenager she’d read everything he’d ever written and seen all the movies that had been made from his books. Years ago, Gus had stumbled into a book signing in New York, a day or two after her birthday, which he had until then forgotten. He’d waited in line to ask the author to sign a book for his little sister, who had just turned fourteen. Why Chase had dedicated the book as he had was something of a mystery… Gus liked to claim that he’d said his sister “had a face like a prizefighter,” which Chase had misheard as “prize-winning writer,” but Theo was almost certain he’d made that up. At fourteen the inscription had seemed funny; now Theo thought it prophetic. Perhaps it was simply that she’d read it so many times that she’d come to believe it. Whatever the reason, the book had become her charm.

Soon Theo came to know Laura, the extensively pierced server, who would ask her to say random words so she could hear them in “Australian”; Chic, who liked to listen to true crime podcasts in between and sometimes while she brought customers their coffee; and a couple of the barflies who would come in early to avoid the university crowd. There were others, too, who sat at the tables rather than the bar.

One man occupied the table by the window most days, when she came in to write. She hadn’t known he was Dan Murdoch, of course, not at first. He was just another café refugee seeking solace in caffeine and anonymity. In the beginning, they paid little attention to each other. After a week or two, he’d raise his eyes and nod or smile in some acknowledgment of recurrent encounter. He was older but not old, handsome in a quiet sort of way, with a beard cut close to the planes of his face. The hair at his temples had begun to lighten with gray. He generally wore jeans with an open-collared shirt and a leather jacket; his glasses were modern but conservative. Still, he might have been a serial killer, for all she knew. She’d returned his smile briefly and retreated to her own corner to write. At some point, a quiet familiarity set in. The nods became “Good morning.”

On more than one occasion he was joined by a woman in a suit—beautifully tailored, discreetly expensive. She was so startlingly attractive that she didn’t seem to belong to the real world. Theo tried not to watch them, obviously at least, and yet she knew that he seemed chastised and contrite in the woman’s presence, and sometimes frustrated. Perhaps he was her errant lover, or she his parole officer. But the woman was not there often. Mostly he sat alone drinking coffee and glued to his phone or his tablet. Occasionally, she caught him looking her way, but he’d never hold her gaze long enough to invite anything more than a fleeting smile.

It wasn’t until Theo dropped Airborne as she hefted her laptop and notes into Benders one day, that they had their first conversation. He retrieved the book and carried it to her table. He glanced at the cover as if it amused him. Theo felt vaguely defensive. But he didn’t ask about the book.

“What are you working on?”

She stuttered, embarrassed. “A novel,” she said in the end, cringing at the sound of it. Who did she think she was, calling what she was doing a novel? Surely, he’d laugh.

He didn’t.

“Do you want your coffee here, or at your usual table, Dan?” Chic, the waitress, held up a tray with single cup.

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