Credence Foundation

Chapter Nine



Sunshine Avenue was the legacy of the past modern era.

It was to be found in what little remained of the old city that had survived the Renewal. Its few crumbling, decrepit buildings stood out like jagged, broken teeth against the outline of the City, but there wasn’t any place for them in the urban master plans the administration had developed. Soon enough, they would be taken down and forgotten for good.

You wouldn’t find anything cheaper than Sunshine Avenue, since it had very little of the comforts a modern man has grown used to—a good wireless connection and a clean Jacuzzi in working order.

It was a place for the students, for the low-income elders who refused to enlist in the administration’s rest-house program, and for the renegades of the City who had lost everything and needed sanctuary to lick their wounds, before they were back again.

But Sunshine Avenue was also something else. Since it had the least street monitoring in the whole city, it was the perfect place for small-time hoodlums, dope pushers and chip hackers to run their illegal business. It was a smart, unobtrusive market that bustled and thrived in the quiet hours of the night, while the day was made for studying, recovering from the excesses of the previous night of carousing, or just for hiding.

That’s why it was an almost deserted street which Trumaine drove along that morning.

He pulled to the curb and parked along with a squad car and the same sienna sedan car he had found the previous day in Jarva’s yard—it was Boyle’s car. He climbed out from the electric car and looked up at the building looming in front of him.

Number 1537 wasn’t the most dilapidated apartment building to be found on the entire street; certainly it was the most eccentric and there was no doubt that it had seen its glorious days.

It was an overly-decorated Art-Deco champion heavy with flamboyant stuccoes. It had huge stained-glass panes for windows, assembled with a bizarrely exotic floral motif. A massive dark-green marble staircase with a central, twin railing made of brass led to the masterpiece of wrought iron and brass craftsmanship that was the entrance, above which a gigantic copper plate hung, reading: THE RAMPART.

Everything told a great deal of a gaudy, carefree era when the main pastime of stinking-rich people was to rack their brains and come up with the most quick and showy way to get rid of their money.

Trumaine bounded up the few steps that separated him from the antique revolving doors and slipped inside.

The hall was possibly louder and way more pretentious than the entrance had foreshadowed.

Mahogany panels lined the walls up to four feet’s height, where a molded brass lath marked the boundary with the wine-red velvet that lay beyond it, climbing up to meet a wide floral fresco. Painted against a pale cream background in the darker shades of green, orange and yellow, the mural ran all over the hall and the corridor, including the main staircase and elevators.

About twenty armchairs and a bunch of couches, all upholstered with floral velvet, all stained, threadbare and covered in dust, scattered about in the hall, along with a dozen cracked coffee tables and the same number of dying ferns.

Trumaine sniffed at the acrid, stuffy smell that lingered in the hall—that place could be the death of some fellows he knew that happened to be allergic to dust mites.

A uniformed old man stood behind the reception desk, looking like he was made of the same worn-out velvet of the armchairs.

As Trumaine approached, the man glanced up idly from the electronic pad sitting on the counter in front of him, where a spicy slideshow of hot, scantily-clad girls was playing. He didn’t seem to mind if someone else took a peek at his light literature.

“Do you want a room,” he asked with a slow, croaky voice, “or you with the police too?”

Trumaine didn’t say anything. He just flashed his badge.

“Cop, huh? You’ll have to bring your own chair, I’m afraid. Looks like they’re having a conference in there.”

The man grinned at his own wit, then pointed at the elevators to his left.

“Room three-four-two,” he said. “That would be the third floor, the corridor on the right.”

Trumaine nodded his head in acknowledgment and moved on. Like a turtle, the old man stuck his wrinkled neck out of the counter, looking over at the detective, as if to make sure he was following his instructions.

The brass door to the closest elevator opened with a ding and Trumaine disappeared inside it.

The man shook his head, made a harsh noise with his throat, then went back to reading.

Trumaine emerged from the elevator into a dim corridor.

The wooden flooring was covered with thick, dark-red runners and the walls were paneled in the same mahogany of the hall. Only the velvet on the wall was different—it was green rather than wine-red. Here and there, unlit brass lamps marked the corridor at regular intervals. A couple of leather armchairs stood in front of the elevator, at either side of an oval table complete with an old-fashioned floor lamp with a green shade.

Trumaine took to the right and strode toward the end of the corridor. Before a large window draped with heavy velvet curtains, also green, opened the door of apartment 342.

Two persons stood in front of it: an old woman and a cop.

The old woman wore a cleaning apron and one cleaning glove. The other lay discarded on top of a nearby trolley containing cleansing material. She had taken it off to get hold of a dirty handkerchief with which she occasionally dabbed at the tears that kept flooding in her eyes. When the sobs became uncontrollable, she would bury her nose in the same cloth and trumpet loudly.

The cop was the eager and willing rookie Trumaine had first met at the Jarvas’. The smile had gone from his face, now replaced with sadness. He let out appropriate sighs of condolence in unison with the woman’s sobbing, in the useless attempt of consoling her.

They went for a while, sobbing and sighing, trying different variations in depth and rhythm, as if they were a couple of wind musicians doing solfeggi.

“Firrell?” asked Trumaine.

The cop looked up disconsolately and eyed the door behind him.

“He’s inside,” he whined. “They’re all inside.”

The cop moved out of the way.

To Trumaine’s befuddlement, he took the old lady’s gloved hand in his own and patted it mournfully.

Trumaine rolled his eyes and shook his head. Well, he thought, at least he’s behaving.

The apartment was cramped yet tidy. The entrance door gave onto one room that made for an entrance, a living room, a studio and even for a dining room. In the corner was a small kitchen.

One door opened in the wall to the right, to a small bedroom and to the bathroom.

The living room looked like a library, lined as it was with bookshelves stuffed with real old books of every size and thickness. More books were piled on a desk pushed against the wall to the left. The only chair that furnished the room, a desktop chair, had been moved to the center of the apartment. The man who had lived in there had climbed up that chair, before he kicked it off from under him. He was now hanging limply from a large lamp in the ceiling. A power cord coiled around his neck so tightly, it had broken it.

Trumaine watched as Boyle, who had stepped on a police folding ladder, scanned the body and the clothes of the deceased for fingerprints and any foreign material that might have been clinging to them, occasionally taking a high-resolution picture.

After a while, Boyle looked at Firrell and Diggs, who had been waiting at his feet.

“We can take him down, now.”

They got hold of the corpse’s legs.

Boyle retrieved a pen-knife from his pocket, drew its blade and sawed the cord with it. As soon as the body came loose, they lowered and rested it on the wooden floor.

Diggs bent over the dead man, studying the area around the neck. Then he examined its wrists. Its fingernails. He even glanced inside its mouth—at its tongue.

Once tall and handsome, James John Boyd still wore the spotless-white suit and shoes of Credence’s believers.

“Meet the mortal remains of James John Boyd,” said Firrell. “Apparently, he lived the quiet life. Parents away on exoplanets. No friends. Little interests—”

He pointed around him.

“And a lot of old books that would do very well in an antique museum and that might even be worth a buck. What’s more important to us, he’s one of Benedict’s believers.”

Trumaine didn’t say anything, he just kept looking at the room.

“I checked with Benedict,” continued Firrell. “Boyd finished his shift late in the evening, about when you entered the chamber. He had probably been hanging all night.”

“Less than that,” chimed in Diggs, reading the temperature from the infrared thermometer in his hands. “There’s still some residual heat. He probably died from four to five hours ago. A couple of hours before dawn, I’d say.”

“He must have died quietly,” said Firrell. “The neighbors swear they didn’t hear anything. The cleaning lady found him early this morning. She was shocked to see him like that. She said he was the best tenant in the whole building; always kind, never complained about anything, always paid the rent on the day it was due. Still, she can’t believe he killed himself.”

“Well, it’s all yours ...” said Diggs after he had jotted his conclusions in his pad and had issued Boyd’s death certificate. “Suicide is fine with me.”

Trumaine kneeled over the corpse. Boyd’s pale face was set in stone now. His eyes still bulged a little from below his closed eyelids and his lips were blue, but not even his mother would notice. Apart from the thin, black bruise he had now for a necklace, he could as well be fast asleep.

Trumaine searched the pockets of the suit, but found nothing.

“He didn’t leave a note or anything?” he asked.

“Nothing,” said Firrell. “But we haven’t checked his books.”

Trumaine groaned.

Maybe Boyd really didn’t leave anything. Still, suicides usually left behind a clue to why they ended it all. Be it their will. A late apology. One last farewell. A resentful tirade about the evils of the world. If only to say, “Don’t forget to pay the bills,” they left a note.

“Maybe he realized you were after him,” suggested Firrell. “He felt trapped and flipped out. What if he’s the mole we’re after?”

Trumaine stroked his chin, looking up from Boyd’s blank face. “What if he’s not?”

Firrell shrugged.

It was the same apartment and the same day—just late in the afternoon. The body of Jimmy Boyd had been removed. Gone were Firrell, Diggs, Boyle, the sensitive cop and the sobbing lady.

Only Trumaine had stayed.

He had already inspected and put in orderly piles all the books he had found in the room—there was nothing in there. Now he needed to check the books that were on Boyd’s desktop.

In the dimness that lingered beyond a small corner lamp, the most disparaged titles could be glimpsed. It was a huge, haphazard collection of whatever tome Boyd had been able to put his hands on during his life: from faded children’s books to Shakespeare’s opus, to Lorentz, to Dostoevsky, to Dante, to a decent amount of yellowing and dusty Bibles.

Pulling it by its spine, Trumaine retrieved a large and heavy Bible from the shelf when, suddenly, it slipped from his fingers and landed hard on the desktop.

It opened a dozen of pages or so from the cover, on a rich and beautiful late-medieval two-page illustration in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis.

It portrayed the garden of Eden. The author had clearly taken one too many poetical licenses, for at the center of the garden, where the forbidden tree rose, could be seen not just Adam, Eve and the various accompanying animals, but also a throng of young and old people that shouldn’t be there. They were all taking part in a cheerful, mindless spring dance around the tree, which had suddenly become a tree of life.

Trumaine, fascinated by the extreme detail of the exquisite illustration, couldn’t take his eyes off it ...

Time had flown; it was almost evening now.

Trumaine grabbed one last tome from his left, perused it, then put it on the pile of books to his right. He then lunged toward the bookshelf hanging on the wall in front of him and retrieved the only plastic book sitting on it. He opened it to reveal a recent university yearbook. It contained the many pictures of the alumni of the Marine Biology faculty, at City University.

Trumaine’s finger ran below the many smiling faces, stopping at the familiar features of a younger and smiling Jimmy Boyd. Trumaine studied the face and the smile within the face. Something didn’t add up, he thought—that wasn’t the face of a killer. That wasn’t the smile of a suicide, either.

Everything was possible, of course. Meek individuals pushed to their limit would become ruthless killers, hard times would change a person, envy and spite would do the rest. All the same ...

Trumaine shut the yearbook with a scowl, put it in the pile to his right, then shifted his hand to the desk drawer. He pulled it and rummaged inside it, retrieving a blank notebook and what looked like a large punch card.

He held it against the lamplight, turning it about, then put it away with a yawn.

Trumaine was still in a chair. Only, this time, he was in a modern, bright office. On the polished desk, a billowing cup of coffee waited to be sipped from, while plastic reports and charts on film had replaced Boyd’s books.

Trumaine had returned to Credence and asked Benedict to examine the database on the believers.

“Anything to help,” he had said.

The database contained all personal information regarding the believers, including all tests and the relative scores they had attained since they had entered Credence.

Matthews had been so kind as to stay after working hours to help him extricate from the mountain of data. She had patiently explained to him the points in Jarva’s theories he wasn’t sure about, so that he had now a better idea about how things were supposed to work inside the mind of a believer.

Still, there were many questions not even Matthews could answer. Was there any relationship between being a believer and being a telepath? Could telepathy been born from the mind of an exceptional believer? If talented believers were more likely to become telepaths, was it possible to narrow down Trumaine’s list of suspects to a smaller group of believers?

Matthews entered the room pushing an office trolley containing more folders and documents. She slammed them on the table, causing Trumaine to snap out of his thoughts.

“Here are the folders of the fifth and sixth year,” she said. “Our records include all thirty-two years of Credence’s activity, of course.”

Trumaine looked at the mound of paper in front of him with a groan, then went back looking at the chart in his hands.

“I was wondering ...”

“What?” asked Matthews promptly.

Trumaine pointed his finger at a red line in the chart. The line was positioned toward the bottom.

“This is Jimmy Boyd’s belief chart.”

“Yes?”

“Wasn’t his belief a bit low? I mean, there’s plenty of reports whose belief lines come in the middle or even top the chart.”

“You’re right,” explained Matthews. “Jimmy Boyd had a low level of belief. But it was perfectly within the range that is required to be in the chamber.”

Trumaine stroked his chin, pensive.

“If he were the crawler we’re looking for, shouldn’t he be capable of a higher belief? I’m wild guessing here, but if his brain was so developed to make him a telepath, shouldn’t his thalamus be at least as evolved, hence his Pistocentric stem cells?”

“I suppose so,” said Matthews, “but I’m no expert.”

“If my theory was correct, I would just need to focus on the strongest believers ...”

Matthews nodded her head. “I think so. You should also be aware that one-third of our believers score top points in the test, Detective. I’m afraid that makes—one hundred sixty-seven possible suspects ...”

She was right, it was a dead end.

Trumaine sighed and dropped the chart he was reading. Unexpectedly, the folder hit a stack of nearby computer punch cards, causing them to topple over. One of the cards landed on the chart’s written report, its holes matching some of its words.

Thunderstruck, Trumaine straightened up at once. He grabbed the punch card and shifted it over the report: through the punched holes, he could obtain various combinations single words.

His eyes went wide at realizing that the holes in the punch card could be used as an encoding system.

Could the large punch card in Jimmy Boyd’s desktop drawer serve a similar purpose? After all, there were tons of books in the apartment that could be used for a source. What if one of those thousands of pages he had leafed through matched the holes in Boyd’s punch card, forming some kind of secret message?

“Son of a bitch!” he snapped.

Matthews’s glare of disapproval turned to surprise as Trumaine jerked back his chair, bolted upright and ran from the office without a word of explanation.