Book 2: Chapter 44: Drain Bramage (1/2)

Dan stepped out onto the dark streets outside the Pearson. The DVD was tucked into his pocket, and after a moment's consideration, he flicked it into hammerspace with the rest of his valuables. Dan glanced at his surroundings. It was late, the streets were empty. The circumstances were nearly identical to when Bartholomew had stood here.

What had the mad scientist seen?

Dan walked down the sidewalk and stopped roughly in the same spot that Bartholomew had. Then he turned on his heel, and glanced down the street. There were several more tall buildings lining the street, and a dozen businesses besides. An apartment building, some high-rise condominiums, another hotel, a bakery, a post office, a print shop, the dimensional equivalent of a Microcenter, and a handful more that Dan couldn't make out in the dark.

At this time of night, only the hotel and the electronics store were still open. Dan strolled towards the latter purely on a hunch. At this point, he was assuming that it was, indeed, Andros Bartholomew who had hired him to deliver a bunch of half-eaten corpses. Dan still didn't understand why the man had chosen that particular route for vengeance, but he doubted that the mad scientist's motives were comprehensible to anyone sane.

The door to Earls' Electronics Emporium jingled as Dan pushed it open. The inside of the store was impressively designed to look like the guts of a computer. The carpet was a deep green, lined with thousands of circuitry lines that each lead to one of the many shelves dotting the store. Several of the shelves contained black plastic tubs, arrayed in neat rows, seemingly mimicking sticks of RAM. A large fan spun over a section of the store, where everything from Dyson fans to liquid cooling was partitioned away. The customer service desk was a perfectly square chunk of metal with a hollow center, shaped like the inside of a CPU. Dan was honestly pretty impressed by the effort put in. Looking at it from above must be quite a sight.

He approached the help desk, slipping his phone out of his pocket. The employee was a bored teenager with wild blonde hair, tanned skin, and a pronounced slouch. He stood at the center of the CPU desk, one hand in the pocket of his cargo pants, and the other holding his phone. His head was bowed, staring down at the screen as he scrolled past whatever social media site teenagers in Dimension A favored.

Dan rapped his knuckles against the desk, and the young man flinched so hard that his phone flew out of his hands. It clattered against the metallic surface, skidding towards the edge until Dan snatched it up. He passed it back without glancing at the screen—That was a rabbit hole he absolutely did not need to explore—and the younger man shamelessly pocketed it.

”Welcome to E-three,” the teenager greeted, looking for all the world like he was in his own bedroom. His slouch dipped even lower, even as he met Dan's eyes. ”How c'nuh help ya, boss?”

”Nice place you've got here,” Dan commented, glancing around. He squinted at the boy's name tag. ”Waylon. Hi there Waylon.”

”Hullo.”

”You usually work night shifts here, Waylon?” Dan probed.

The teen frowned. ”I s'pose.”

Dan unlocked his phone and flicked through his photo gallery. Some of his own Southern drawl slipped out as he asked, ”Were you working, day o' the attack?”

Waylon peered at Dan with suspicion. ”Why you wanna know?”

Dan found the picture. He put his phone down on the desk and spun it around. ”This fellow was creeping on a lady friend of mine, day of the attack. Standing outside her window, looking in for almost an hour. Got me a bit worried.”

The younger man blinked at Dan, then glanced down at the picture.

”That's bad,” he commented.

”That's bad,” Dan agreed. ”I got him on video doing it, too. I'm thinking I can go to the police with it, but I need a little more than a video. A name, hopefully, or an address. Otherwise they can't do much.”

”Ok,” Waylon said, peering at the picture with a furrowed brow. ”So what?”

”Well,” Dan continued, ”in the video it looked like he came this way after he left. I was hoping you might recognize him.”

”I dunno,” Waylon replied. ”We get a lot of people in.”

Dan glanced pointedly around the empty store. Waylon shrugged, and Dan mentally translated the previous statement into 'I don't pay attention to the people who come in.' This was looking like a bust. It had been a long shot anyway. Bartholomew would have had to be completely insane to come here after busting out of prison, rather than hiding out somewhere safe.

”Well shit,” Dan said, scratching the back of his head. ”Thanks for your time, I guess.”

”Sure.”

Dan stepped back, then paused. He cocked his head. ”Say, y'all don't sell surveillance equipment, do you?”

”Cameras and shi— stuff?” Waylon clarified.

”Yeah. And whatever else you'd need to set it all up.”

”Sure,” the teen replied. ”What'choo looking fer?”

Dan tried to recall what he'd seen. They were all just wires and cameras to him. ”I don't really know. Anyone bought that kinda thing recently?”

The employee shrugged his shoulders apathetically. Fuck's sake.