The picnic pavilion of Clawson-Burnley featured spacious wooden tables and a flat roof to keep the sun at bay—not to mention the occasional lazy breeze to break the summer's heat. Poker was the game du jour, and a game was nearing its final stages as the boys chatted on. Shaun controlled a meager stack of chips, his stake in the game barely hanging on by a thread. Wade and Parker each held only a small amount more, roughly tied with each other. Skinny's stack stood taller than the previous three at a respectable third place, but his was dwarfed by the stacks of Ronnie and Logan, both of whom clearly controlled the largest portion of wealth in the game. They were the only two in this round, everyone else having already folded.
Ronnie frowned as he inspected his two cards, trying his best to guard his expression. He held an ace of hearts and a queen of hearts, a statistically strong hand on its own. The flop on the table only made things better: near the waterbottles glistening with condensation and the wrapper of a fast-food burger polished off, there sat an ace of spades, a nine of clubs, and the ace of diamonds. Ronnie held three of a kind of aces with queen high, an excellent hand. Logan's pre-flop betting suggested he held a pair of some kind, sure, but he couldn't be holding aces, as three were already accounted for, and Ronnie could stand to beat any other pairs.
Ronnie's fingers flicked about methodically, sliding imaginary abacus beads as he ran some mental calculations. He then slid his stack of chips towards the center of the table, where they toppled and spilled to the floor between the cracks on the planks of wood. "All in," he said embarassedly, the collapse stealing from much of the moment's gravity.
Logan thought for a moment, lips pursed. "I fold," he finally said, sliding his cards face-down towards the rest of the deck. Parker gathered them up and began shuffling while Skinny helped Ronnie tend to the chips scattered across the pavilion floor.
"Just putting it out there," Wade began, "isn't it a tiny bit unfair letting Ronnie wear his ring while playing?"
Parker began dealing out cards to each of the players. "I mean, if Skinny were to take his out, it'd be game over for everyone," Parker added. He then flipped three cards over into the table's center: an ace of spades, an eight of clubs, and a three of hearts.
"Now that would be somethin'," Skinny agreed. "I've got in my pocket here the fanciest poker strategy guide the world has ever known. If I took this baby out, ain't nobody here gonna stand a chance."
"Betting is to you, Logan," Parker said.
Logan smiled, an idea forming. "Well hold up just a moment, what do you say we have you put your money where your mouth is?"
"What do you mean?" Skinny asked.
Logan carefully slid his chip stack forwards, raising an eyebrow in challenge. "I'm all in." He then took the Empathizer and pressed it to his side, toggling the button to charge a battery a blue-ish color none of the boys had seen before. His face was the image of absolute neutrality, expressionless and still as though rendered in marble. The boys folded, one at a time, until the bet passed to Skinny.
"Go on, lift your device," Logan challenged. "Let's see how much good it does you."
"Nah, come on man, can't we just play the game normally?" Skinny asked, shaking his head.
"Come on… I'm curious," Logan said levelly.
With a sigh, Skinny removed the Thought-Enunciator from his bag and pointed it towards Logan. He squeezed the grip and waited for the familiar stream of sound to his ears that were the target's unfiltered thoughts. His face fell to a look of confusion and then concern as the device only returned gentle static, as though listening to a radio between station tunings. He pointed it towards Ronnie and immediately heard the boy's thoughts clearly in his mind as though spoken softly right into his ears: what's going on here? Are they having some kind of mental conversation? Then, knowing that the device was still working, Skinny pointed the device back at Logan. Again, soft static—no help with the cards.
Skinny squirmed for a few seconds, knowing that he couldn't spend all day deliberating or waiting for a lifeline… he decided to go with his gut. He slid his chips forwards with newfound confidence. "I'll call your bluff," he said, leaning back with a triumphant cross of the arms. Excited buzzing broke out across the table as the last players folded, leaving just Skinny and Logan in for the round.
"Alright, boys, flip," Parker said, picking up the deck. Anticipation hung thick over the group.
Skinny flipped over his two cards first, revealing an eight of spades and an ace of clubs. He triumphantly pushed them forwards. "Two pair, aces and eights," he declared.
Logan, with a deadpan expression, turned over his two cards: the two red eights. The group erupted into a stunned, excited buzzing.
"Three of a kind beats two pair," Parker said, picking up the cards. "And all four eights are on the board. Let's see the turn and the river."
"Come on!" Skinny shouted, leaning in.
Parker flipped over the fourth card on the table, revealing a seven of diamonds.
"Come on…. gimme an ace, gimme an ace," Skinny chanted, rubbing his hands together.
Parker flipped over the last card, revealing a six of clubs. All the boys exhaled and slumped back with a tremendous, shared shout of aww!
"Logan wins with three of a kind, triple eights," Parker said, collecting the cards. Logan scooped up the spilled chips scattered across the table into one massive treasure hoard and began sorting them into stacks.
Skinny only shook his head. "Man, I really thought you were bluffing."
"Don't take it too personally… it's all in the Empathizer."
"Dude, you were right," Wade said, shaking his head in awe. "That thing is the best for a poker game."
"He was literally in your head and couldn't figure out what you had!" Shaun piped in, clapping Logan on the back.
The excitement gradually slipped away from Skinny's eyes as he watched his friends surge around Logan and buzz about the exchange. The static he heard had been unsettling, to put it lightly. It wasn't just the noise, but a sensation that had come in with it like an uninvited wind. Skinny had felt something similar just last summer when he had been heading through the Blue Ridge mountains with his family. His pops's health had improved, so they all decided to take a roadtrip to celebrate. Somewhere on the road at night winding through the mountains, the car had started making a strange buzzing sound under the hood… the kind that spelled trouble. So his moms had pulled over at a scenic overlook to take a look at the engine. It would take a while, so Skinny was restless. There were no lights on that cloudy, moonless night, leaving Skinny to stumble through the dark with only the faint starlight to guide. He had made his way to the overlook and sat there on a wall at the edge, letting his feet dangle into the black. He heard the sound of the empty yawing open in front of him, felt the unsettling, clammy grip of void and heat. It set him to shivering on that wall in the warm summer's night, feeling the massive impenetrable dark swallowing the whole world just beyond the ledge he sat on.
He didn't sit there long.
Back in the present, he shifted uneasily as he watched Logan round up the last of his chips. Something about that memory itched its way back into the present… the pang of empty, the unsettling sheer magnitude of the void. He felt a touch of that sensation when he read into Logan. He felt an expansiveness nothingness, and found that the echo of the place set his skin positively crawling with unease.
"You ok?" Parker asked, jolting him back into the moment.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
"Yeah," Skinny said, shaking his head free of the memory. "Just a bad beat is all."
* * *
Shadows lengthened as the day marched on. Ronnie watched a leaf detach from a high branch as a breeze stirred the trees. The leaf meandered as it fell, flipping and flitting lackadaisically. It landed softly onto the table, where Ronnie brushed it off with an open hand. He and Parker were clearing off the table, collecting chips into color-sorted stacks and gathering up all the loose cards. The rest of the boys were off in the distance, tossing a football back and forth.
"Logan with that machine is just insane at poker," Shaun mused, shaking his head.
"You know, until that four came up, I had a 95% chance of winning the hand," Ronnie replied.
"I'd never go all in on a 95% chance. Knowing my luck, I'd lose to the 5% every time."
"That's… not quite how statistics work."
"Well, like, what are the chances we'd have found these things? I'd say it's definitely higher than a 95% chance the average person would live without ever hearing of these things—and yet, here I am."
Ronnie smirked to himself, imagining the 'Shaun Valdez Postulate' making quite the splash in the mathematics world. Entire decades—no, centuries—of mathematical understanding would be suddenly overturned on that fateful day where mathematicians discovered the more unlikely a thing was, the more likely it was to happen. "One lucky happenstance doesn't make you statistically immune," he responded. "Pardon the morbidity, but there's a 100% chance we'll die some day in the future. Those are odds nobody can cheat."
"Oh, you just watch me. You say 100%, but all I hear is a challenge," Shaun replied.
At that point, Wade sauntered over to the table. "What are you two ladies talking about here?"
"Shaun here is apparently immortal… or, so I've been told," Ronnie said.
Wade flaunted his Protectionizer and pointed a finger at Shaun. "Hey, now, you stay out of my domain or I might just have to prove your mortality, if you know what I mean," he said with a laugh.
"We've still never tested you against a nuke," Shaun said. "I might just know a guy."
"I'm quaking in my literally-invincible boots," Wade retorted. "Who's your guy?"
Shaun cracked a mischievous smile. "Hey Ronnie, you brilliant physicist you, what's the status on our bomb? On our Manhattan Project… the Boone Project?"
"Going great," Ronnie played along, "until the sleeper Soviet agents stole my notes, which puts us a few months behind schedule."
At this point, Parker also joined the table. "I heard Ronnie's pissed off the Soviets again?" he asked, having a seat at the table. "What, they want their stylish jewelry back?"
On the other side of the field, Skinny and Logan continued tossing the football back and forth in long, wide arcs. It was a fair distance, making casual conversation between the two impossible without practically shouting to the whole of the park. Skinny thought that was very much intentional on Logan's part, which is why he was surprised to see the boy begein to close in that distance as Skinny stepped to the left for a nearly missed catch. Logan raised his hand and again Skinny threw the ball with a clean spiral, aiming a little behind him as a test. Logan backed up to catch it and then once again continued forwards… so he's trying to close the distance, Skinny though. Olive branch? Over the next few tosses, Logan continually advanced until the two were hardly ten feet apart.
"So, I've been thinking a lot about what you said and what I said yesterday," Logan began. "I wanted the chance to apologize and talk to you about all of that. Everything. Think you could stop over my place tonight for a couple'a hours?"
"Wouldn't your pops get real sore about guests being over late?"
"Oh, he won't be any trouble. My parents are headed out to some kinda dinner thing. Won't be back 'till nearly midnight."
"In that case, I'd love to stop by. What time did you have in mind?"
"Oh, say, 8 o'clock?"
"That sounds good to me, man."
Logan tossed the ball again to Skinny, but, before he could catch it, Wade sprinted by at full throttle and snagged the ball mid-air, barely keeping his footing as he stumbled out further into the field.
"Interception!" Wade shouted over his shoulder, carrying onwards. "Ladies and gentlemen, he's runnning past the 20, the 10, and TOUCHDOWN!" Skinny laughed and watched Wade spike the football into the ground, beginning some strange kind of victory dance. Skinny watched, amused, before turning back to Logan. The boy watched Wade's dance as well, but Logan's expression was fixed neutral: no half-smile of amusement, no eyes widened in surprise, no anything to be seen at all.
* * *
Nora pulled her squad car off to the side of the road and parked it just behind Coulter's. She switched it off and withdrew the key, gathering her thoughts for a moment. She then grabbed her notebook, one of the myriad pens in her glovebox, and stepped out into the summer heat.
She stepped over the low rail as Coulter had instructed and began to wind her way downwards on a thinly defined trail, dipping into the buzzing swarms of gnats and making her way towards the babbling of water just beyond. A bug flew into her face, leaving Nora swatting at her lips and spitting onto the dirt trail. Once she'd recovered, she started counting off the months until winter's temperatures drove them out and made the outdoors tolerable again. She was still trying to remember the average temperatures of mid-October when the trail leveled off towards a bank of the South Fork New River. The river was never a particularly formidable thing, especially in dryer portions of the year, but at this particular bank the river temporarily widened out and sputtered along pathetically shallow depths. By the water's edge, Jim Coulter picked his way through waterlogged garbage using a handkerchief.
"So this is what I had to come see? Garbage? I never pegged you for an environmentalist," Nora said.
"Believe you me, when I was sent here to check out a littering complaint, I was none too excited neither," Coulter said. "Family out here by the name of Landry owns this plot, and they were complaining that someone's been illegally dumping waste into the river." He gestured down at the soggy cardboard at his feet. "River here is flowing out of town, so he figured it was someone closer in to main that's doing the dumping."
"On the radio, you said you think this connects to one of my cases?" Nora asked.
"You have no appreciation for the dramatic… I was getting there, but fine, Nora 'straight-to-the-chase' Campbell. I was picking through the shit when I found that box over yonder," he said, gesturing to a wet box that was dragged onto the shore nearby. "Go take a look."
Nora walked over and bent down over the wet remains of the box. It had no branding or design on the plain cardboard beyond a white label still taped to the top of the box. She walked around the box to read that label rightside-up. Water had let most of the ink run out into unintelligible stains, but an address line remained readable at the top. "That's the address for the Coffee Street warehouses, isn't it?"
"The very one and same that was set on fire, yes'm."
"And this, is this a serial number? Shipping number?" Nora asked while reading a string of digits that ended in an indecipherable blur. It started 060100, but beyond that the remaining four or five digits were anyone's guess.
"Yeah, they use those to track what's in what box. I just hung up with the owner minutes before you showed up. Says he had boxes in the warehouse that night with numbers starting just like this one, 060100, but depending on how it ends that could be anything from radio sets to flashlights. But, and here's the kicker, most of the boxes with that number will still in warehouse. Unsold. Meaning…"
"You think these were stolen some time before the fire?" Nora finished.
"Right before. As of close of business the night of the fire, they were still acknowledged and registered in stock. Then the place burns down, and then we find this…"
"You think the fire was started to disguise the theft? To hope nobody can tell something's missing in the ashes?" Nora asked, puzzling her way towards an explanation.
"Conjecture, currently, but it'd be a damn sneaky way to get away with theft, that's for sure."
"Was it just the one box here?"
"None of the other labels are readable, and the boxes are frustratingly nondescript, but we've got two more boxes of similar dimensions and the same grade of cardboard right over there," Coulter said, pointing at two boxes comprised of mushy panels of dirt-stained cardboard.
"I gotta admit, it's weird," Nora said, surveying all the scattered junk at the shallow riverbank. "But something's still not adding up. It's that big question: why? Why go through all the trouble of burning the place down for a few boxes?"
"Was wondering the same thing… I asked the owner how much money one could make disappearing three or so boxes that started with 060100. Owner said that if it was the radio sets, a thief could've made out with five or six hundred bucks, all tallied."
"That's no small payday," Nora said, frowning. "But is that enough to warrant burning the place down?"
"Harder to sell stolen radios if the police know a box of 'em just vanished," he replied.
"Are there any other good guesses to what they might have stolen?"
"I mean, they were storing electronics. Just about every item on that list is desirable to steal, if you've got the inclination…"
"We'll want a list of all products in boxes starting with those numbers. Did you write them all down?" Coulter nodded, so Nora continued on. "I'll put word out with pawn brokers and resellers to keep an eye out for suspicious amounts of anything on that list." Nora then frowned, thinking. "Our witness to the possible suspect after the warehouse fire… he didn't see the teen carrying any boxes, did he? It'd be hard to make a getaway carrying three of those," she said, gesturing to the box by their feet.
Coulter thought, scratching at his nose. "Maybe our perp stashed them in the woods nearby, then set the blaze, and then fled in a different direction, returning sometime after the fact to retrieve the goods?"
Nora fished out her notebook and began writing all the relevant facts down. "It seems like a longshot, but let's entertain the possibility. I don't know how much info forensics can get from wet cardboard days after a dunk in the river, but we'll see what they can find. I'm gonna go head over to the warehouse site and try casing the nearby woods for anything suspicious at all. Do you have a lot on your plate right now, or can you help out with this?"
Jim Coulter spat a wad of tobacco onto the ground and offered a wide smile. "For you, ma'am, I will make some time in my exceptionally busy schedule. What do you need me to do?"