Wild Fyre Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  CH.1.Introduction () {

  CH.2.Investigation () {

  CH.3.Learning () {

  CH.4.Jim () {

  CH.5.Everyone () {

  CH.6.Bert () {

  CH.7.Dinner () {

  CH.8.Maco () {

  CH.9.Investigation () {

  CH.10.Staffing () {

  CH.11.Investigation () {

  CH.12.Coders () {

  CH.13.History () {

  CH.14.Investigation () {

  CH.15.MacoAndKevin () {

  CH.16.Investigation () {

  CH.17.EdandMaco () {

  CH.18.Investigation () {

  CH.19.Staffing () {

  CH.20.Assault () {

  CH.21.Staffing () {

  About Wild Fyre

  More by Ike - The Claiming

  More by Ike - Inhabited

  More by Ike - Extinct

  More by Ike - The Hunting Tree

  More by Ike - Migrators

  More by Ike - Transcription

  More by Ike - The Vivisectionist

  More by Ike - Lies of the Prophet

  More by Ike - Skillful Death

  More by Ike - Camp Sacrifice

  More by Ike - Punch List

  WILD FYRE

  BY

  IKE HAMILL

  WWW.IKEHAMILL.COM

  Special Thanks:

  Thanks to Cynthia for the title.

  Thanks to Telly for inspiration.

  Cover design by BelleDesign [BelleDesign.org]

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and events have been fabricated only to entertain. If they resemble any facts in any way, I’d be completely shocked. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the consent of Ike Hamill. Unless, of course, you intend to quote a section of the book in order to illustrate how awesome it is. In that case, go ahead. Copyright © 2015 by Ike Hamill. All rights reserved.

  CH.1.Introduction ()

  {

  Autobiography0();

  /*****

  THE PROBLEM IS, THIS is a complicated story. I’ve got a ton of names and places and events to tell you about.

  Here’s one fact: I call myself Ed Statler.

  Another: I work as an Employment Recruiter. Glamorous, I know.

  Third: I tend to place the same ten guys into job after job.

  Fourth: My friend Jim was murdered.

  People are murdered every day. This is sad, but true. Well, we all say it’s sad, but it’s really difficult to feel the sadness of it until someone close to you is murdered. Then, it’s unbelievable. Next, it’s terrifying. For a while, it feels tragic, and then for just a few months or so it really does feel sad. After that, it’s just true.

  I wrote this for Jim.

  CH.2.Investigation ()

  {

  Execution();

  /*****

  JULY, 2013 (1 HOUR A.J.)

  She was bent at the waist—inconsolable. Detective Aster walked up with authority and stood just far enough away to watch the dual lines of snot-drool dripping from her nose and trailing down to the pavement. His partner approached and meant to put a hand on her back, but Aster waved him off. Trying to comfort her wouldn’t get her talking any faster. It would only make her blubber more.

  “Miss? If we could just get your account of what happened,” Aster said.

  “What happened? You can see what happened,” she said, turning just her head. She was more flexible than a snake. “He exploded. What else do you need to know?”

  Her statement was accurate, but not exactly informative. They had video, witnesses, and more pieces of the guy than they could count, but no good explanation. Aster’s partner came to his side and whispered to him.

  “I figure it was explosive-tip rounds or something. We’ll get an angle and we’ll start looking for where the shots came from.”

  Aster turned away from the folded girl and began walking back towards the set of legs on the sidewalk. He stood outside the radius of blood until his partner joined him.

  “What that guy is about to tell us is that there were at least three different bullets,” Aster said, pointing at a guy who was taking photos. “And what that guy is going to tell us, is that these were not explosive-tip, or hollow-point, or anything else.”

  “How do you know?” Ploss, the partner, asked.

  “Which?”

  “Either one.”

  “The same way: those little flags that Jerry puts where he finds the rounds. Look, he just planted a fourth one. Plus, there’s blood everywhere. I thought you worked corpses before.”

  “Ours were always washed up or executions. Sometimes a strangling. Not much deduction required.”

  “You should feel right at home then. This looks a lot like an execution to me,” Aster said. “Four different shooters hitting the same guy. What else would you call that?”

  “A miracle. And it’s at least five,” Jerry said, interjecting into the conversation. He planted a flag at Aster’s feet.

  “What do you mean?” Aster asked.

  “Heath says they all hit at the same time,” Jerry said. “And all these bullets hit at least one other bullet.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, like they collided inside the guy’s body. That’s why he looks all exploded,” Jerry explained.

  “That is a miracle,” Ploss said.

  “That’s not the strangest part,” Jerry said. “Look at that sign. Do you see it? The big cast iron one?”

  “Yeah. What? The dent? Did one of the bullets hit it after going through the guy or something?” Ploss asked.

  “Nope,” Jerry said. “A bullet ricocheted off of that sign and then hit the guy. Someone bounced a round off of that and it hit the same time as the others.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Aster said.

  “I wish I wasn’t,” Jerry said. “We’re taking twenty times the normal amount of photos because nobody is ever going to believe this. Good thing we have so much video. There are more cameras on this corner than in most banks.”

  “Maybe it’s a new TV show,” Ploss said. He smacked his partner on the shoulder, but Aster was lost in thought.

  CH.3.Learning ()

  {

  Autobiography1();

  /*****

  EARLIER, I SAID I wrote this book. Actually, I only wrote a few pieces, but I hired the people who researched and wrote the rest. I take credit and blame for everything.

  If you’ve already heard of me, let me say this—it’s not how it appears. Here’s what really happened: I wasn’t cut out for college and I’d had enough of school. I barely made it through winter finals, I came back to school with a terrible cold, and my girlfriend broke up with me just before Valentine’s Day. I’d already bought her the earrings.

  And that movie was so good. I won’t mention the title, but maybe you’ll figure out the one I mean. It had a serial killer on the loose and an omniscient psychiatrist locked away who could solve crimes from behind bars. What’s-her-name was the plucky FBI agent. It won all the Oscars. I went to the midnight showing alone on a Thursday in 1991, and I knew I had to see it again right away. Those characters could find the patterns in anything. It’s what I wanted to do with my life.

  So I drove to NYC and found a theater that was showing it all night. I saw that movie twenty times in a row. They never asked me to leave. I went out to the curb after each roll of the credits, ate some street food, and then bought another ticket. I would have watched it another twenty times, too.

  That, as you may know, is when the real FBI showed up. It was bad luck for everyone involved that the TV station showed up at the same time. The FBI wanted to talk to the guy who had such a fascination with serial kille
rs, and the TV station wanted to do a puff piece about the crazy kid who watched the same movie over and over again. Just bad luck.

  Fate snuffed the spotlight on my bright future.

  By the time I finished with the interrogations and psych tests, my face was all over TV. I could barely remember my own name after all those floodlight questionings, but it turns out I didn’t need to remember it. For a moment, everyone knew my name: Edward Sauls Salter. They emphasize your middle name and everyone thinks you’re evil.

  I was merely obsessed with a movie.

  I had to give up the dream of being an expert profiler for the FBI. They made that clear. Honestly, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t go into forensics. I think I would have gotten bored only looking at criminals all the time. I like to profile lots of different kinds of people, and it’s not that much fun working backwards. I’d rather take a person and tell you the things they will do well, rather than look at a bunch of deeds and tell you what type of person committed them.

  After people started to forget about Edward Sauls Salter and I grew a decent beard, I changed my name to Ed Statler and I moved to DC. The FBI didn’t forget about me, but they know how to keep their mouths shut, fortunately. I actually have a decent working relationship with them now. I’m sure it wouldn’t stop them from arresting me if I ever got obsessed with another scary movie.

  I went through a Sherlock Holmes phase, too. Here’s the problem with Holmes—yes, you could take in all that information and deduce those things, but could you so quickly decide which facts are relevant? Doyle is asking you to believe that one man could do three things: observe, contextualize, and deduce.

  Observe—Holmes can spot the scratches on the back of a pocket watch from ten feet away. Contextualize—the man knows everything about everything. He instantly knows which regiment fought in which battle and why it pertains to the scratches. Deduce—Holmes pieces together that the scratches were made by a drunk soldier. I’m paraphrasing, of course. I don’t have that kind of memory.

  Here’s my point—what Doyle never talks about and what Holmes never suffers from is information overload. What if the drunk soldier scratched the pocket watch and it had no bearing on the case? Did Holmes still make the deduction? How does his brain stop from deducing everything about everything and automatically know what’s pertinent? If Holmes were real, then I would suggest that his ability to filter, rather than his ability to deduce, was his real genius.

  I don’t have that genius.

  My genius is different.

  I can look at a person—résumé, attire, poise, charisma, calluses—and I’ll match them to a job. That’s what I liked about that movie. There was a suggestion that the genius psychiatrist was able to solve the crimes because he already knew the psychos. He didn’t merely listen to the facts and deduce that the killer wanted a sex change. He had met the man and formed the opinion in person. Aside from that, his best skill was remembering the guy. I think in the books the author suggests that the psychiatrist really could simply read a case file and tell you where to look for the killer, but I like my version better. Maybe because that’s what I’m good at.

  Unfortunately, all these realizations took me years. I left college, washed out of FBI eligibility before I’d even made the attempt, and found myself as Ed Statler down in DC. By the way, DC is shorthand. I actually lived in Virginia. Washington DC used to be a diamond shape, but before the Civil War, Congress gave the Virginia piece back to Virginia. I think that people in Virginia wanted to keep trading slaves and abolitionists wanted DC to outlaw trading slaves. It’s all very messy. People ask, “Where you from?” and it’s easier to say DC instead of Arlington. There are a million Arlingtons.

  What was my point? Right—I was living in DC.

  Government is a big racket in those parts so I got into that. I didn’t go for big government. I kept it simple. I worked for the Arlington County government. It has all the stifling misery of real government but the buildings are smaller and parking is easier. The hardest work you’ll do for the government is figuring out exactly how much work to do so you don’t get in trouble. If you do too little, you’ll never go anywhere. It’s really hard to do too little though. The bar is low. The problem is that if you do too much, or do your piece too efficiently, you make everyone else look bad and then they make problems for you.

  One guy came in and revolutionized the way parking tickets were processed. He got written up for sexual harassment before the end of the week. Nobody wanted to work that hard, so they got him transferred and reprimanded. I wasn’t ambitious when I worked for the government so I got along okay. I could have lived that way for twenty or thirty years, gradually making more and more money until life nearly became passable. But, unfortunately, I couldn’t turn off my brain. Every time I met some who possessed underutilized talents, I couldn’t help but figure out what they would be good at.

  It’s like a puzzle. You meet a guy with really strong hands, a touch of OCD, and mild agoraphobia, and you say, “Hey, have you ever thought of working inventory control for a supermarket distributor?” I knew the guy who ran three local grocery warehouses, so I got the guy with strong hands an interview. He was a perfect fit. There wasn’t a finder’s fee or anything on that referral, but suddenly both of those guys owed me a favor. That’s the way it worked at the beginning. I wasn’t an official recruiter so I wasn’t in the position to ask for any money, but everyone began to owe me favors.

  The government doesn’t want any superstars. I never helped place anyone in a government job. I always worked the other way around. I’d meet someone who already had a government job and I’d help them find something out in the private sector. I was working the puzzle. I moved people to a place they could enjoy and excel. There was no pressure. If I met someone who was interesting, I’d piece it all together until I figured out where they should work. If I knew the person hiring, I would put a bug in their ear. If I didn’t, it was a good chance for me to reach out and network. After a month or so, it only took one or two phone calls to get an introduction to the right person. They would always ask me, “What made you think of calling?” or, “What’s in it for you?” That was the biggest problem in those first few months. People thought I had an angle, but it was just a hobby for me.

  And it only took a few months before I saw that it could be more than a hobby. The job market was hot, and talent was in high demand. At first, I kept my government job. I set up an office—Statler Staffing—and ran it on the side. My fee was low. I only filled positions for “exempt” employees, and I never worked for the employers. If someone came to me looking for a job, I’d help them find it. If a company came to me looking for bodies, they could go pound. I’d tell them to list their job in the paper like everyone else. I never wanted to be in the position of looking for one particular person to fill a role. That holds no thrill for me. I need to meet the person and then figure out what kind of job they would be good at. That’s my groove. And believe me, I am really good at it.

  It’s a sales job. A guy can be out of work for six months and you’ll still have to sell him on why he should go to work for a credit union. I can’t exactly tell him that his haircut, manicure, gait, background, sexual preference, and cologne make him a perfect fit for ABC company. I have to sell him on the salary, benefits, and environment. Sometimes it’s a hard sell. And sometimes the employer doesn’t see past the résumé and understand that the person I’m sending them will be the best employee they’ve ever had. It’s a battle. Once I get my guy in the room and the chemistry happens, my guy will always get an offer. That’s my magic. I’m going to find a guy so perfect for the job that as soon as you shake hands with him, you’ll know.

  CH.4.Jim ()

  {

  LunchWithJim();

  /*****

  NOVEMBER, 2012

  ED STATLER arrived at the restaurant twenty minutes before their agreed time. He didn’t know when Jim would show up, but he knew it would be before the time
they had agreed upon. And he also knew that the lunch would flow more smoothly if Jim wasn’t the first to arrive. Jim had a tendency to get caught up in his own thoughts if he sat alone in a restaurant. Once engrossed, it might be hours before he became receptive to a normal conversation again. It was one of Jim’s strengths, as far as Ed was concerned.

  When Jim walked in, he strode right by the hostess and came to Ed’s table. Ed stood and slightly bowed. Jim would shake your hand, if required, but it wasn’t his preference.

  “Hey, Jim, thanks for coming,” Ed said.

  “Not a problem.”

  The two men sat on opposite sides of the round table. Ed straightened his silverware and Jim spread his napkin on his lap.

  “What have you been up to?” Ed asked. This question could represent a fifteen minute commitment if asked in the middle of the meal, but because Ed opened with the question, Jim’s answer would be interrupted by the wait staff.

  Jim talked with his hands.

  “I started thinking about how all the molecules of an object are bound together in an array of arrays. They’re subdivided into smaller and smaller systems, and then even inside the atoms those structures are divided and organized even more.”

  Jim’s explanation started there and built into an incredibly complex thesis over the next several minutes. The waiter arrived and stood for a few seconds before he interrupted.

  “Can I bring you gentlemen something to drink while you look at the menu?” he asked.

  “We’re ready to order, I think,” Ed said.

  Jim handed his menu to the waiter and ordered. He hadn’t looked at it yet, but he knew what he wanted. Ed flipped his menu open to recall the name of the salad he was after. Ed got a beer with his lunch. Jim asked for Coke.