Hush Hush by Erik Carter (best short novels of all time .TXT) 📗

black screen with a flashing, pixelated, green cursor at the top, blinking.

Brett typed what he’d typed before, what he’d entered into Yahoo!, which appeared on the screen in green block text.

“ray beasley” orlando

A line of text immediately appeared below.

SCNND RSLTS — SPCLST APPRVL

Strange. And oddly technical looking, esoteric. Jonah’s lips parted. He turned to look at Brett.

“What is this, Brett?”

He stared at the side of Brett’s face—which was squinting, as though dissatisfied with the computer’s results—and waited for a response.

Didn’t receive one.

Brett drummed his fingers.

The growl of an espresso machine, quiet conversations and laughter.

A new question.

“Who are you?” Jonah said.

Again, no reply from Brett.

Brett was just about to type again when there was a shrill, electronic BEEP.

Jonah jumped.

The sound hadn’t come from the computer. Brett pulled a pager from his pocket, looked at the small screen.

“Excuse me,” he said.

He rose, leaned in front of Jonah, blocking his view of the computer monitor, and pressed command–Q on the keyboard, closing Netscape. The computer’s desktop image showed again, a flat, turquoise field with small tilde shapes and an icon in the upper righthand corner that said Macintosh HD.

The mystery program was gone.

Chapter Fifteen

Silence stepped outside to the sounds of plodding traffic on the four-lane street in front of him.

The coffee shop was in a ubiquitous area of commercial urban sprawl, all the brand names and recognizable logos that one could imagine lined up and down a street that was technically a highway but in town was constricted by numerous traffic lights. Strip mall after strip mall. Fast-food joint after fast-food joint. Utility lines dangling from an endless procession of wooden poles.

And someone watching him from a bench in front of a jewelry store, hidden mostly, but not entirely, by the trunk of a crape myrtle.

Mr. Honda Accord, no doubt.

Silence hadn’t seen the man at Beasley’s townhouse, but if he’d followed Silence here, that meant he had to have trailed him to Beasley’s as well.

The guy was good.

C.C. had taught Silence how to tame his wayward thoughts, so he knew how to stay focused on one task while not forgetting about the others on his list.

He made a mental note of Mr. Accord’s position and continued with the task at hand.

His beeper still in his left hand, he retrieved his cell phone with the other. The number on the beeper’s tiny, brown LCD screen bore an 865 area code.

East Tennessee.

Lola.

Or, more likely, Mrs. Enfield calling via Lola’s cellular phone, as Mrs. Enfield didn’t have a cell of her own.

A single ring, and his call was answered.

“Si!” It was Mrs. Enfield. One syllable. That’s all it took for him to tell she was in hysterics. “They took him! Surgery. They’re cutting him up! My Baxter.”

“I’m sorry.” He swallowed. “What happened?”

He strolled away from the café entrance, along the sidewalk bordering several metal tables full of chatty, coffee-sipping patrons. Silence always paced when he “talked” on the phone. He’d had the habit in his previous life, when he had a normal voice, but now as a near-mute, he phone-paced even more, his idle energy agitated further by a hampered ability to take part in the conversation.

He kept Mr. Accord visible in his periphery.

“They…” Mrs. Enfield stopped, shuddered, cried. “They think he swallowed something, that something’s stuck in his tummy.”

“Will be okay.”

More sobs, fading away. A sniffle. And a sigh. “I hope you’re staying safe. Are you drinking?”

When Silence and Mrs. Enfield first met, when the Watchers moved him into the house next to her, it had been only a short time after C.C. had been brutally murdered. He lived a largely drunken existence in those days, and though he’d since quit binge drinking—doing so largely at Mrs. Enfield’s insistence—the old woman still monitored him, all these years later.

“Yes,” Silence said.

“Silence Jones! What are you drinking?”

“Coffee.”

A groan. “Don’t sass me, boy. I’ll tan your rear end as dark as mine. I don’t care how old you are.” She took in a deep breath, and when she spoke again, her voice had returned to melancholy. “Oh, my poor little guy! Cutting him up. They’ll have to shave his belly, you know?”

“Yes.”

She shuddered again. And was quiet. The phone’s scratchy speaker relayed a tinny version of the sounds of the veterinarian’s office waiting room—telephones, dogs barking, a receptionist calling for a patient to be seen.

She spoke again, but muffled, indiscernible, pulled away from the phone, talking to someone else.

A moment later, her voice returned with clarity and volume. “Lola wants to speak to you.”

Silence didn’t respond.

Ear-splitting distortion as the phone traded hands. Silence pulled his phone away from his face.

“Hi, Si.”

“Hi.”

“They think Baxter swallowed something.” Lola’s tone was more serious than it had been at Mrs. Enfield’s house that morning. “Like a piece of plastic or something. They’re gonna do exploratory surgery.”

“I know.”

“Your voice sounds a bit different to me than the last time I visited Mrs. E. Have you been doing vocal exercises? Physical therapy?”

Silence’s voice did not sound different. It sounded like a construction foreman with a bad head cold doing a terrible Barry White impression through a scratchy, malfunctioning megaphone. As always.

Lola was just trying to spark conversation.

“No,” Silence said.

Lola didn’t respond immediately. Just the sound of dogs barking around her. Then she said, “I’ll take good care of your neighbor. We’ll keep you posted on Baxter. Goodbye, Si.”

“Thanks. Bye.”

He ended the call and immediately pressed the 2 button, held it for a couple seconds—speed dial.

A Specialist answered after one ring.

Silence identified himself by codename and number. “Suppressor, A-23.”

The Specialist confirmed.

“Information retrieval,” Silence said and swallowed. “On the fly.”

The Specialist asked if he wanted the information sent through the electronic system that Silence had already been using.

“Yes. Ray Beasley. Orlando. Former cop.”

The Specialist asked if Silence suspected the former police officer of corruption or other foul play.

“Yes.”

The Specialist told him information would be available in five minutes.

Silence pressed the red END button, collapsed the phone and dropped it into his pocket. He turned for the coffee shop’s entrance and was two steps toward the