Chapter 8

  I had wanted to know why Jade had stolen Sven’s laptop, but twenty minutes into her story all I’ve heard about is how her brother was missing, police wouldn’t do anything and the investigation that she had undertaken on her own, with a suggestion from Gemini to talk to the landlord. I still want to know why she stole Sven’s laptop, but at this point I might really be more invested in where her brother was. Sven was a jerk anyway, he had accused me of stealing it and hadn’t apologized when I proved that I hadn’t taken it. So I wasn't that worried about how fast I got the laptop back to him. Besides I’m a sucker for a story, I own a bookstore. What else could you expect?

  “As I opened the door, I was terrified I was going to find his dead body on the floor. I stepped into the hallway expecting to smell death in the air. But the apartment was clean, with no odor of death hanging in the air. I quickly searched the place from one end to another. I noted that all of his luggage remained in his closet. It looked like all of his clothes were in there too. It certainly looked like my brother had not simply gone off on vacation and disappeared. He had disappeared before said vacation had even begun. After the bedroom, I checked to see if he had taken any shaving supplies or toothbrushes. His electric shaver lay on the bathroom counter just waiting for its next use, the toothbrush sat in its holder. In the kitchen I checked the freezer first. Half the time on detective shows the sleuth finds something in the freezer. Something weird like a lone finger or toe and they don’t explain it until I had already forgotten that they found it. The point is I searched the freezer because it seemed like a good place to hide things and I had been through most of the apartment and I hadn’t come up with anything except his luggage was still here and frankly I think I was getting frantic.”

  This I could relate too, last weekend I had rushed around trying to keep Pappy out of prison and it seemed that I was going to fail. So I really understood the frustration and fear for her brother that she felt.

  “I went out and plopped onto his couch, I was suddenly really tired. Relieved I hadn’t found my brother dead but devastated that I hadn’t found anything pointing to his whereabouts. Worse actually that luggage in the closet makes it seem like he never left. But his phone and his laptop weren’t here. So why didn’t he answer or at least post something unless he couldn’t. He had been in an accident and the phone and laptop were damaged. That was something I hadn’t done, hadn’t thought and neither had Gemini. I hadn’t called the hospitals to see if anyone with amnesia had checked in in the past two months. I dragged out my phone to begin calling when I noticed a framed photo in the bookcase of my brother and a friend with their arms around each other's shoulders. It looked like they were in the woods and both of them had on a camo shirt. I had no idea who the guy was, but I snapped a photo and texted it to Mike, Ethan’s best friend along with a message asking who this guy was. If they were new friends maybe he had an idea where Ethan had run off to. While I waited to hear back from Mike I called a few of the hospitals. Almost every hospital told me that due to HIPPA regulations they were only able to give information like that out to the police. They suggested I contact the police. I told them that the police had been as unhelpful as they had, before hanging up. My next thought was maybe if I went around to the hospitals with a picture of Ethan maybe they would like to know who some anonymous patient was so that they could bill his insurance. But I was too exhausted, so I just went home and went to bed.”

  I feel like shaking her and telling her to skip all the bits about how she found him,I’m really hoping at this point that she has found him. Just tell me the spoiler, I feel like screaming. But it seems that she wants to tell this in a very detailed way, so I should probably just let her keep going. It sounds like she is at her lowest point. This is right where the fictional detective would solve the case. Exhausted they would go to bed and during the night, the eureka moment would hit and the case would be solved time for the big denouncement.

  “When I woke up the following morning I’d had a text from Mike, he had no idea who the guy was and he wondered how the guy had ever talked Ethan into going to the woods and wearing a camo shirt. I had been so tired when I had taken the picture they only thing that had registered with me was my brother and the strange man. My brother had never been in the woods in his life, he didn’t really like going outside. He loved his office and his job and his apartment and all of his videogame consoles. He would love to have his apartment in the same building as his office with maybe a pizzeria on the bottom floor so he would never have to go out in the sun again. I couldn’t believe I had missed that. I wondered what else I might have missed. I had asked Gemini what to do and it gave me a decent suggestion but it dawned on me that live people may be more helpful. So I sat down and typed up everything that I knew about how my brother had gone missing then I went onto reddit a searched for true crime found a sub that had been founded fifteen years ago with over a hundred thousand members, I posted what I had written up and attached the photo asking if anyone knew who he was. Then I went to all the major hospitals in the city with a picture of my brother to see if they would HIPPA me to my face. They were all a lot more helpful when I stood there in person, but no one matching my brother's photo, age and race was anonymously in a coma in their hospital.”

  I couldn’t hold myself back anymore, this was almost as frustrating as if I had gone through all of that and not found the guy. “Jade, did you find him, Ethan I mean?”

  “No I haven’t but today is as close as I have come, and now if you turn me in for stealing his laptop, I might never find Ethan.”

  “First Jade, I never said that I was going to turn you in and second what does that laptop have to do with Ethan’s disappearance?”

  “When I got home from the rounds to all of the hospitals I checked my computer for any replies to my post. Hoping for a fresh idea, a thread I could pull on. There were lots of posts, many good wishes, a few snarky, a few down right rude but I also received one direct message from a castle420. I took the liberty of doing a reverse image search of the attached photo. The man to the left of your brother is Sven Brennan, castle420 had helpfully included a link to Sven’s blog. Sven is a fascist of the highest order.”

  She fired up her own laptop and took me directly to Sven’s blog. He apparently hates trans, gays, jews, and liberals in that order. But in his last post he boasted that while I wait for my alt history Germany won World War II novel to be published, this weekend I’m attending a writer’s workshop in Lake Placid.

  “Laura, when I saw his latest post, I knew I had to come here. I was hoping to find my brother. I thought I was going to some kind of compound in the woods, where he and his fascist brothers got together to burn books. I thought your collective was going to be some kind of nazi sleeper cell. Instead I get her and you are all some kind of neo-hippies. So I had to think up a new plan. If I could steal his cell phone, I would have GPS data so maybe I could find their camp. But I searched his room. Aside from the grubby clothes the only thing in the room was the laptop. But it’s password protected.”

  “Well I might be able to help with that, as long as he didn’t encrypt the drive, we can look around on his laptop for any evidence. If we don’t find anything or if it’s encrypted only Microsoft and the feds can decrypt it. You return the laptop to the motel desk, say you found it in the parking lot when you were walking by. Deal?”

  She agreed and I went upstairs to get my Slack pendrive. Microsoft passwords are useless; unless the hard drive is encrypted, if you have a flash drive and a linux distro.

  I came back powered down the laptop plugged in the linux pendrive, then booted it back up while holding the F4 key, instead of trying to boot up Windows from the hard drive, it instead booted up my linux distro on the pendrive. Then all I had to do was mount the hard drive’s window partition. Sven didn’t want to take a chance on encrypting the drive. Encryption keeps your data safe but if you lose the password, it’s bye bye data. It also slows everything down, especially on an old laptop like his.

  We were in and first I opened up the documents folder under the username Sven. There were lots of receipts for guns, also a folder called A Brighter Germany, I assumed that was his neo nazi novel. It’s fun to say all those n sounds but terrifying when you think about what the words actually mean. Will fascists have a resurgence every hundred years, will the forces of democracy win this time. Will the United States under Trump be the fascist nation that no one else can beat? He wants to cancel the midterm elections even though he has no authority to do so. He imposed tariffs even though he has no authority to do so.

  I jump from the documents folder to the pictures folder. It’s stuffed full, lots of young men all in camo. Lots of tattoos and so many guns. Then there are pictures of Sven holding plastic 3d printed guns, I know those are illegal. I can’t say about all the guns the other guys were carrying around. I’m not a gun person. These guys don’t strike me in the least as a well regulated militia.

  “Those are three d printed guns that Sven is holding. This laptop needs to go to the cops, but before that we need to protect ourselves, Jade. Keep looking for your brother in those photos, while I get us some legal help.”

  I called Eve and it went to voicemail so I left a detailed message that I was in deep trouble and needed some legal advice. After that I called Anais.”

  “Aren’t you having a writer’s retreat hippie?”

  “Anais, I’m in trouble and need some legal advice and Eve’s phone is going to voice mail.”

  “She’s at your retreat, she should be giving a speech currently about copyright. I’ll be over in five minutes.”

  “We are in the stockroom, just come on in.”

  Anais was precise as usual and for once I wasn’t going to complain about it. So I quickly ran through the whole story.

  “Didn’t you realize that you’d be committing a felony by looking at the contents of the hard drive?”

  “Yes, but her brother is missing and there might be evidence on there that helps Jade find him. Besides, if we didn’t find evidence on the hard drive that Sven was committing a crime, we both agreed that Jade would take it to the motel and give it to the manager saying she found it in the parking lot. But we have to report that Sven is either making or has access to ghost guns.”

  Jade found a couple of pictures of her brother. So at least she knew that he was alive and well. Until the cops raided the place. Well from the look of all these guys it was going to be an all out war. Wherever this place is I hope it’s far from Lake Placid. I may not always get on with August but he is blood and the only blood family I have left. So I don’t want him to have to go after the nazi’s.

  Then Eve came in, she’d heard my panicked voice mail and Anais had texted her where we were and that we needed her help. We both gave Eve a dollar. Eve packed up the laptop into a box and then gave us some very specific instructions. We were not to engage with Sven if we could avoid it, but we were to resume the writers workshop. I was to text Eve if it looked like Sven was getting ready to bolt. It would go much easier for both of us if he was arrested then Jade and I would be seen as assisting the police instead of committing crimes.

  Anais was to act as Eve's legal assistant, so the both of them left, taking the laptop with them. Next Jade and I emerged from the stockroom and a concerned looking Lucy said, “Is everything alright, Laura?”

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  “It’s fine Lucy, I’ll tell you all about it, tomorrow night. Was anyone snooping around looking for us, especially the one I told you to keep an eye on?”

  “No he hasn’t been in here at all, at least that I saw, it’s been kind of busy.”

  “I’m sorry Lucy, between the workshop, hiring Zoe and then buying all those books on top of it all. I shouldn’t have sent Lis to Saranac, Zoe could have counted the books on her own.”

  “No Laura, it’s no problem, I wasn’t complaining, I’m just saying that I can’t say with one hundred percent certainty that he wasn’t in here. But I can say that I didn’t see him. In addition I got a text ten minutes ago that Zoe and Lis were on their way back here with the first batch of books. Where do you want the used books to go?”

  “That is a decision for the manager, but please leave the reading nook and my view of the lake alone. We don’t have to start with a whole lot of used books at first. Even just one bookcase for each genre would be great.”

  “I wouldn’t dare touch the reading nook, your chair or hinder the view, I like working here. I certainly don’t want to be fired on the first day of being made manager.”

  “Perfect, just remember the priority is Laura’s reading. The rest of the store is now in your very capable hands.”

  By the time I reached the tent and had taken my seat Monique was heading into the closing of her talk about graphic novels. She had been using Scott Pilgrim as her example about how a graphic novel can be much more than just muscle men and women in their underwear. Finally she ended her talk with an appeal for a co-writer.

  “If any of you want to get into the comics or graphic novel market but can’t draw, I’m always looking for writers to collaborate with.”

  Monique came over and sat down next to me.

  “Monique, I don’t know why you are looking for collaborators all of the time. I think you are a great writer, very natural.”

  “Thanks Laura, but I always learn something when I work with another writer, you know, and it’s a whole lot easier if someone else comes up with the story and I can just focus on the artwork. You know Bianca even got me to set up a website to sell bookcovers.”

  “I saw it, and it’s terrific. I love the artwork you did for classic novels. Lucy downloaded all of them and is making epub files with your covers. We will be giving the books away in our physical e-Book store, hopefully within a couple weeks. Each one that uses your cover has a page crediting you as the cover artist and includes your bio from your website, and a link to the site as well. Let Lucy know if you want anything changed on the page or would like anything else added.”

  “Does it have any information about the writers collective?”

  “No, I don’t think that it does.”

  “Laura, I think that every eBook you give away should have a page dedicated to the collective and ‘Genres’. First you wouldn’t be giving away free eBooks if it weren’t for the fact that Genres exists, and Genres was started as part of the collective. The writers used to work in the store, at least that’s what Bianca told me.”

  “Yeah, my Aunt told me the same thing. Aunt Nan dreamed of being a great novelist. But when it came right down to it, she hated writing. She stuck with it for three years, but the process of writing made her physically sick. When her hair began to fall out in clumps she finally quit. Up to that point the collective ran the store together. After that she took over the store full time. Her health issues vanished and I have twenty plus years of hard cover notebooks that she filled with what her days were like, story ideas and full blown stories that would probably make really great books if they had been fleshed out. Feel free to come into my room anytime if you’d like to read them. If you find an idea in there and feel like using it, run with it.”

  “I could never steal someone else’s work.”

  “First off it wouldn’t be stealing, it is freely offered. Just look at Shakespeare almost everyone of his plays points to a work published earlier by another author. Homer wrote the Odyssey and Lucas wrote Star Wars, they both followed the famous hero’s journey structure. Homer probably didn’t invent that structure; he cribbed it from someone else, maybe Gilgamesh. Aunt Nan would love that her work was helping to inspire new stories ten years after she died. You want to collaborate with someone, she would be the perfect person to work with. You two write a novel together, she would finally get to be a published author just like she wanted. If you’ll write it I’ll edit it, I’ve never edited a graphic novel before.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely, I’ll even write a afterward about Aunt Nan if you’d like. That is if you even can find a story in her journals that you want to work on.”

  “That’s incredibly generous of you.”

  “No Monique, it’s selfish really, I’d just love to see her name on a book. I often thought about doing the same thing myself, but I’m a much better editor than writer.”

  Bianca took the mic from the holder and announced the next workshop activity.

  “Alright there is an online tool called the Writer Igniter, it randomly selects a character, a situation, a prop and a setting. Just to get you writing and thinking creatively. So I’ve already used it to select the following writing prompt. The character is a Taxi Driver, the situation gets a cryptic letter, the prop is a lucky penny and the setting is a rainy street at night. Please try to keep the story under five hundred words.

  ***

  Travis sat in his taxi at the red light, he didn’t have a fare right now so he took the opportunity to read over the latter again.

  Tonight you are to receive an award from the Taxi Drivers of America. Please be sure to bring a copy of this letter and your license, for identification purposes.

  Travis had never heard of the Taxi Drivers of America, maybe that is who is in charge of the union. The union takes a third of his wages, which seemed like a lot to him. But the dispatcher assured him that it was a standard fee that all unions charged. But the government took another third. The dispatcher assured Travis that was down right cheap, the local government takes eleven percent, the state government takes eleven percent, and the federal government takes eleven percent. That left thirty three percent for his family. Every Friday he stopped at the remittance office to transfer seventy percent of what he had to his family back home.

  Some nights he literally ached to be in his wife's bed, but he hadn’t seen his wife or any of his children in over ten years, aside from the weekly video call at the remittance office. There was never a private moment, anymore between the two. It felt more like a business call because there was always a line behind him of other customers waiting to make their calls. The lighting was horrible and bright, his wife looked older and more haggard each week. He wondered how she had the wherewithal to continue.

  As he walked out of the remittance office back out into the rainy night, something glittered at his feet. He bent to pick it up and found it to be a shiny penny, a lucky penny, one of true luck, it was heads up. Any penny you found was lucky, but finding a heads up penny. That meant twice the luck, heads down meant half. He wondered if he should skip supper and buy a lottery ticket. He hadn't eaten since the day before yesterday, he hadn’t minded, he often didn’t eat in the days before a payday. His money would be used up paying for a shower. He found that after not showering for so many days in a row, customers would refuse to use his cab. So he was forced to spend money on a shower that he would have preferred buying food with.

  But if he bought a lottery ticket with the little money he had left, and he won, he’d be able to buy food everyday and every third day take a shower and one day he could even rent a room with a bed, so he could sleep lying down, not sitting up in his cab.

  All these wonderful dreams flowed through his brain as he bent over to pick up the lucky heads up penny. Just before he touched it, he saw the president's self satisfied grinning face. He bolted upright, he had almost touched the cursed thing, banging into his friend Hector who was coming out of the remittance office behind him.

  “Travis, what’s wrong, hey it’s a lucky penny quick grab it before someone else does.”

  “It’s not lucky, Hector, it’s a Trump penny.”

  Hector backed away from Travis.

  “I didn’t touch it Hector, I swear.”

  Trump the man who discontinued the penny and drained all the luck from the United States. Even though he signed the order to discontinue the penny, the egomanic couldn’t resist having that ugly grinning puss stamped on the last batch of pennys to be minted. Jesus, I didn’t touch it did I. No, I'm sure that I didn’t. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t. Fifty years after he left office and forty nine years after he died, still the most despised man in the world.

  Travis hopped into his cab and drove to the spot where he was to receive his award. Maybe it’ll be a cash reward for a job well done. When he arrived a smiling man asked if he had his letter and license and the man took both. Then two men from Canadian Immigration and Border Control, grabbed him.

  “We’re very sorry Travis, but you are in our country illegally.”

  Travis was put in the back of the bus, which pulled away immediately. Oh god he thought as he looked out the side window, the Rainbow Bridge. The driver announced we’d all be back home in Buffalo within an hour. How would his family eat now? With no money coming in. He must have touched that damn penny. He’d never be able to sneak back into Canada. He just wanted a job, to help his family. Just because he was from the United States, he wasn’t even born when Trump was president. It’s unfair that the whole world still hates us.