The Enigma’s Anomaly

“This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. This is worse than being shot at multiple times. This is worse than fainting in my public speaking class in ninth grade. This is worse than walking in on my boss having an affair.”

I stop him and ask incredulously, “you walked in on your boss having an affair?”

“Well I told you that the villain in my comic book was based on a twisted son of a bitch, didn’t I?”

“I can see why you left that job,” I answer.

“Among other reasons. That was the last job I had before my comic book hit it off,” Gerard says. He’s looking a little better after sleeping, but he still looks uneasy. There’s no way for me to understand what he’s going through. I’ve never been almost assassinated before, and I don’t have a brother so it’s completely alien to me. What I do know is that Gerard is upset by it so I’m upset by it. Also I kind of like Mikey, he seems nice. A little quiet, but nice.

Mikey calls again a little after lunchtime and he reports back what’s happened. You wouldn’t be able to tell what time it is though because the sky is a dark and greyish blue with obvious signs of oncoming rain.

As it turns out, not much has happened.

“They said that I faked that note to the assassin or something,” Mikey explains, “said I had a friend write it to throw them of their course. Apparently that’s obstruction of justice as well as conspiracy to commit murder, but I didn’t do either of those things.”

“What do they think your motive is?” I ask.

“Jealousy? I don’t know, I didn’t do anything!” he says.

“Well do they have an explanation for why you’d have the gun? Why would you have the gun if you hired an assassin?” Gerard questions.

“Apparently I asked for a gun so I could do it myself? I don’t know, but that’s the plot they’re floating by me now.”

“That’s stupid. This is all speculation, how do they plan to hold you on purely speculation?” Gerard asks.

“I don’t know, but they’re going to try. I think they said they can’t hold me for more than 24 hours without more solid proof, but they’re pretty confident that they can find some. I think what they were doing was running fingerprints or something.”

“Okay, well had you ever touched that gun?” I ask him, “if you touched it then they’ll find your fingerprints, but if you didn’t then there’s nothing linking it to you.”

“No, I’d never seen it before they showed it to me.”

“Tell me exactly what happened then. Why did they arrest you in the first place?”

“Um,” Mikey says and he starts thinking, “okay well I got home and the lock was broken on my door, okay? So I went in and I didn’t know if anything was missing or anything, so I called the police before I did anything at all.”

“Well that’s good at least, you didn’t touch anything?” I ask.

“Not much,” he replies, “Maybe the door knob, but other than that I left everything alone.”

“Okay, they might find prints if whoever broke in was an amateur,” I say, and Gerard looks at me puzzled. I realize that I’m way too knowledgeable about all this than I should be.

“Uh, I watch a lot of cop shows,” I say to Gerard and I hope it’s convincing. “What happened after they got there?”

“Well there was only one police officer and he came in to file a report or whatever and he looked around quickly. That’s when he found the gun in one of my drawers, and I didn’t know it was there. He like, asked me if it was registered or something, and when I told him it wasn’t even mine, he told me to go down to the station. They looked through my home while I was there and then told me they found the messages to and from an assassin on my computer.”

I think for a minute and then say, “Well if those messages were downloaded off of a flash drive or something then they’ll have a time stamp. It should show that they were new, and weren’t sent from your computer originally.”

“They’re checking that now,” Mikey tells me, “said that it takes a little while to check those sort of things. Same with fingerprints.”

“Just keep quiet and listen to whatever the lawyer says,” Gerard instructs.

“Okay,” Mikey says, and then he’s rushed away from the phone a minute later.

“That’s good then?” Gerard asks, “Mikey didn’t touch that gun, so he can’t be connected to it? And those files? Those weren’t his, so...?”

“I mean, I’m just trying my best here,” I have no clue how to help him though. I wish I did.

“Well his building has camera’s right? They must’ve caught the break in then, right?”

“No I-” shit. I broke the cameras when I broke in myself, and I doubt they were ever fixed. What do I say to finish that sentence that doesn’t tell him exactly why they won’t help?

“I don’t think that they will, um, have any use. I mean I highly doubt that they were aimed directly at Mikey’s apartment,” it’s an okay recovery, but I wish I hadn’t almost worked myself into the corner with that one. I have to be more careful with what I say.

“Right about now would be a great time for someone to shoot me then, because then Mikey would be cleared.”

“Gerard, don’t say that!” I tell him. The very idea of him being shot makes my skin crawl, and I’ve done it twice.

“Well why would someone point the finger at Mikey?” Gerard asks after a few minutes. “What purpose does it solve to implicate my brother?”

“Well if I wanted to hurt you, and I didn’t think that I could actually kill you then I’d make things as bad for you as I could,” I tell him. “Mikey is the closest person in your life so if they can’t actually kill you then it seems like the next best thing is to hurt you.”

“They succeeded in that then,” Gerard says. “The only thing that could make this worse is if they hurt you as well.”

I blush a little at the fact that I mean enough to him that it would hurt him for me to be gone. That would definitely make things worse though so he’s not wrong.

“So do you think they’re going to try to stop killing me then?” Gerard asks.

“If Mikey is convicted then I’d say probably. Otherwise they’d be vindicating his innocence. He can’t really pay the assassin if he’s in prison, and the assassin would have no reason to keep trying to kill you if he can’t get paid. At least that’s what the cops will think.”

“This is awful,” Gerard says, and his head falls against the counter.

“I know, Gerard,” I say rubbing his back, “I’m so sorry you’re going through this.”

“It’s not your fault,” he answers with a strangled voice. It kind of is, but I don’t tell him that.

“Hey Gerard, it’s okay. We’ll clear Mikey up. I know it.”

He doesn’t say anything but I hear him sniffle so I suspect he’s crying again. I have no way to show him I’m sure, but I hope he knows how much I care about him.

The worst news comes an hour later though. The computer they found with the messages on it has the time stamps, but they’re from a month ago. They match up with the times when Gerard was shot. It’s not Mikey’s computer at all. It’s a stolen computer so there’s no way to trace it back to someone else. They now have proof that those messages were sent from that computer and we have no proof that it wasn’t Mikey who sent them. We have no proof that it isn’t even Mikey’s computer. And who knows, maybe it is Mikey computer.

“Gerard, I’ll go make some coffee. Then we can think about what to do, okay?” I say.

“Ran out of coffee,” he mumbles.

“Alright well I’ll go pick some up and be back in a few. You stay here and make a list of anybody who could have framed Mikey.”

He nods noncommittally to that, so I get up and kiss him on the cheek before leaving his apartment.

I walk down the steps quickly and out the front of his apartment. The sky is still dingy, and I hope I’m not going to need an umbrella. I get all the way to the corner before things get weird.

The next thing that happens is all so quick that I don’t even know if it’s real or not. It doesn’t seem real, but I think it is.

A dark black van pulls up to the curb right in front of me. Before I can react to its presence a masked man jumps out and he’s on me in a flash.

I try to yell or do something, but a cloth comes to my mouth and it blocks out the sound. I don’t know what to do! He’s got me in a chokehold with the material at my mouth. I try to scream, but I just end up sounding muffled and I can’t get a breath.

I struggle for a moment and then start to feel tired. My fingertips go numb swiftly and the rest of me feels like it’s been sitting in a dentist chair with a bit too much nitrous oxide. It smells kind of weird. Kind of chemically and pungent. It’s almost sweet smelling.

Is that chloroform?

I don’t have any more time to think about it before I drop.