Chapter 6

Author’s note:[ and ] delineate mind-to-mind dialog.

Reflexively, I ducked as the bullet struck me in the forehead. Of course, I was not hurt because I was still in the Multiman persona, but it was the principle of the thing. The shooter had given me no chance to explain myself, much less defend myself. As the saying goes, them were fighting words!

The assailant was a man in his 30s and dressed in normal clothes—no uniform or other means of identification. He had shot me with a Beretta 9mm automatic such as one could buy at a gun shop. I didn’t know who he was, but I did figure that he was a danger to humanity at large.

Before he could get off a second shot, I swatted the gun from his hand and grabbed his balls with my right hand. I was squeezing through his pants, so I did not get wet when he pissed all over himself. He yelped in pain and tried to pull away, but that only increased the pressure on his balls.

I dragged him over to the X-shaped cross by the convenient handle I was holding and locked him to it so that I could be more comfortable while I questioned him. “Okay, you twerp, why did you shoot at me?”

“I’m the security guard, and you are an intruder. I was told to shoot to kill any intruders. I was promised a bonus when I was successful.”

Oh, my God, this guy really was a loser! He was happy to earn a few extra bucks by killing me! That really pissed me off. “You stupid son of a bitch, don’t you realize that you could have bent sent to jail for life if you had been successful?”

“No, I never thought of that. Now, let me go so that I can punch the time-clock. I don’t want to foul up getting paid for not doing my job.”

Dammit, I had hoped to get some information from this guy before I called the cops, but now I wondered how much reliable information I could get from him. He sounded too dumb to come in from the proverbial shower of shit.

“Look, Man, I want some information. Who hired you?”

“I ain’t telling you nothing!”

That was all that I could take. I squeezed his balls again, this time a bit harder than I had done before. Naturally, that produced a scream of pain. “Stop squeezing my balls like that. It hurts.”

“You stupid SOB, it’s supposed to hurt, and I’ll hurt you a lot more if you don’t start answering my questions. Now, tell me who hired you.” The man pressed his lips together and shook his head “no.” This guy’s stupidity meant that I was going to have to get rougher with him. I looked around and found a candle and some matches on the shelf.

I picked up the candle and lit it. “Okay, you stupid bastard, I’m going to set fire to the hair on your balls if you don’t start answering my questions. If that doesn’t help, I’ll burn your cock and balls until you do start talking.”

“Oh, God, please don’t burn me. I’ll answer your questions.”

“Okay, let’s start over. Who hired you?”

“It was a woman named Sharon Oakley. She’s paying me $15 a day to guard this place, and she is giving me a disk every time they make a new one. It’s better money than I can make mugging people, and I like the videos she sells.”

It looked like the threat of burning him got the results that I wanted. I found out that Oakley’s boyfriend is named Ed Ashley, and he was the one who found the victims for Oakley to torture. Every once in a while, they would make a regular porn video of themselves in action, but they never sold one of them—they just kept those videos for their own amusement.

The latest victim of the torture filming had died as a result. The idiot that I had questioned had told me about it. He knew where the body was buried because he had been part of the body disposal crew. He knew that there were two other people involved in the gang, but he did not know their names.

I didn’t get much more from this guy, mostly because he was too dumb to know much about the operation. I used my cellphone to call Capt. Donovan, and this time I managed to get him on the telephone. I told him what I had discovered, and where his men could find the studio and the guy who had tried to kill me. Jake promised to come see what I had and to bring a crew with him to pick up on the investigation.

I also told him what had happened when I had tried to call him earlier. Jake promised to get a phone set up that would always reach him, no matter where he was. I would be the only person who had the number.

I stayed in the persona of Multiman when the cops showed up. As I was, Jake was most interested in going after the man and woman who had murdered the latest victim, the one that the security guard knew about. I gave the three photos to Jake, and he started the routine of chasing down the two people and the car. He also promised to follow up on the child porn ring, so that was where I bowed out of the case. I told Jake to call me if he needed Ring to chase down the two murderers, but Jake wanted to handle it all so that they would be following the regular routine when they finally took the cases to court. He didn’t want to take a chance on muddying the waters. I agreed wholeheartedly on that. Ring teleported me home and back to my Sam Horwood persona.

It took a couple of days to track down the murderers because they were keeping a low profile, but the cops did their job very efficiently. The case did get a little complicated because they were charging three people with murder, but five with producing and selling child pornography videos. At least that very definitely stopped the kidnappings of children.

That was the last time I was needed for a while, so I was able to complete my first year at the Community College. I decided to quit school when I received my diploma instead of attending the regular four-year college to get a BS degree in electronics. I might do that later, but I was anxious to open my own shop ASAP. Mom was kind of upset with my decision, but Dad understood how I felt, so he did not give me much of an argument.

One of the reasons that I was anxious to start my own business was because I had met a girl at the Community College, and “Mary Alton and I were kind of sweet on each other,” to quote Mom. I wanted to show Mary that I could earn enough money to support us. Well, I wanted to show her folks that, too. I was not about to tell them about Ring at this early date and how he could keep us supplied with money.

Once Mom met Mary, she was a lot more supportive of my dreams about Mary. Dad helped me set up shop in a wing Ring added to our garage. Our community was very understanding about businesses operated out of a home, so I got no static from the neighbors or the town about the establishment of “Horwood Electronic Repair Co.” At the moment, I did not plan to sell anything from my shop, but that could change once I had a separate location in the business district.

I wanted to appear to be a normal operation, so I made a trip to the local Chamber of Commerce (CC) to see what I had to do to officially be in business. Actually, there was very little I had to do. It turned out that Mr. Carl Shifton was in the electronic repair business and he wanted to retire. He had volunteered as a mentor for the new owner, and he made me a good price on his existing business.

I took the deal that Carl offered. His shop was grossing about $150,000 a year. That meant that Carl was taking in an average of $50 per hour. Yeah, I know, but Carl put in about 3,000 hours a year as compared to the usual 2,000 that the average factory worker turned in. That was the main reason that he wanted to retire—he was just getting tired from all of those hours.

I got an SBA (Small Business Administration) loan with a lot of people in the town saying a good word for me to pay Carl. He was happy, and so was I. Carl lined me up with a CPA firm to handle my accounting and other such stuff. In only a few weeks, I was just another small business operator. That included joining the CC as a very junior member, but I was welcomed by one and all.