Bitter Oracle - Chapter 11 - What about Kyle Murphy?

Mike Murphy has been begging our MP, Bitter, to help him find his big brother. Read Chapter 10 to find out how he finally convinced her.

Mike Murphy was sitting in his car, listening dejectedly to the radio, head thrown back. Through the door, I could hear the loud beats of his music. My arms were full, so I used the bag loaded with drinks and ice-creams to rasp against the window. It made a dull, “Toc toc.”

Mike jumped, then his face lit up.

“Open the door,” I mouthed, pointing down to the passenger door’s lock.

He scrambled to obey. I sat beside him. I stunk of cooking oil and sweat, and I was tired, grumpy. Looking at Mike gave me a headache.

“Wha-What’s i-n the bags?”

“Burgers and drinks, what do you think? You’ve already eaten, what, a dozen small fries?”

“Thirteen,” he replied easily, and dug into the first bag for a Coke.

The next fifteen minutes were filled with junk food. One thing about Mike – he could put it away. I nibbled on a couple of small burritos, but I still wasn’t hungry.

“Tell me about your brother,” I said.

“Kyle,” he gasped, and his eyes widened, all deer in the headlights.

I shrugged. It wasn’t my party. “Unless you’ve got another brother…”

He shook his head. “N-n-no.”

“Well, then, tell me about Kyle.” He gaped at me in a panic. “I get that you aren’t good with words, but I need to know more about your brother. I can’t Trance out of thin air.”

“W-why?”

I sighed. I was very uncomfortable teaching him the basics. Scrying had been part of my life for so long; didn’t everyone know this?

“Scrying isn’t an exact science. Visions are subject to interpretation. If the object of your Scrying is too personal, what you See is skewed. Nobody knows why. We call those Visions – the misleading ones – DPPs.”

“Wh-?”

“DPPs. Divine Punishment for Peeking.”

He nodded to show he understood.

“But, then,” I went on, “if I don’t have enough data to Scry, I start free-Trancing. You’d get nothing. There is a sweet spot right between free-Trancing and DPPs. That’s what we want.”

“I-I-”

“I’m useless if I don’t learn more about him, Mike.”

Gravely, he studied my face for a minute, then he bobbed his head twice, nervously. He pulled his cell out of his pocket and he swiped and typed, before he handed it to me.

“Kyle,” he said, though I had guessed as much.

Kyle was older than his brother, in his early thirties, but the resemblance was shocking: same eyes, same hair, same angular face, same ears sticking out on each side of his head. Kyle wasn’t all that handsome, but he had a charm about him, a wide grin, an air of assurance, of vitality. There was something about Kyle Murphy that seemed to pull together a lot of mildly attractive features into a pleasant whole.

I looked away from his picture. My eyes came to rest briefly on his younger brother’s profile. For all his qualities – I supposed he had to have some, Mike Murphy was a piss-poor source of information.

I sighed. “Come on, Magic Mike,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“Wh-ere?” he asked as he drove us out of the parking lot.

******

“Hi, ma’am.”

I beamed at the lady in the pink robe. She frowned at me. I judged her to be a good match for John Graves: tall, dry with wiry, curly brown hair that just had to be dyed.

“Jenna, don’t open the door in the middle of the night,” came Graves’s voice from inside the house.

“He’s right,” I told Mrs. Graves. “Your neighborhood sucks.”

“I think it’s for you!” she called out and let the screen door slam in my face.

I glanced at Mike, sitting in his car, and faced the door again when it creaked open. A scowling John Graves appeared. I smiled at his outfit – knee socks, shorts and a Blood Quarter tee-shirt.

“Blood Quarter, hm, Graves? Didn’t think you were the fang-banger type…”

The scowl faded even as he let out a deep breath that made his nostrils flare. “What do you want, Flynn?!” he barked.

“I need to talk about the Murphy thing.”

His eyes, which had been roaming over the street even as we spoke, paused on Mike’s car. “Ah,” he said, “come in.”

The door opened into a tidy kitchen and Mrs. Graves hovered in the opposite doorway. After locking up, Graves went to her and gave her a quick, affectionate kiss. “I’m just going to be a couple of minutes.”

She stroked a hand down his arm. “Alright.”

Their obvious fondness for each other made me feel like the interloper I was. Who was I to be all judgmental about people? Maybe they had small physical flaws, but they had to be better human beings than me. They had love – I didn’t.

Graves served me coffee and brought out a thick file. When I reached for it, he swatted at my hand. “Get your paws off my police file. What do you need to know?”

“I don’t know. Before, I only had Visions because I had watched exposés on the crime on TV. I don’t know what part worked, or how to do this shit.”

Some of my frustration seeped into my voice. Mike had given me almost nothing. I could tell he knew things, but I just didn’t have the knack for getting it out of him.

“Well…” Graves cleared his throat and thumbed through the file. “Kyle Murphy. 29. He’s a dental hygienist, works for a small dentist on Fountain Avenue. He had only been working there a month when he disappeared.”

I made a snoring sound. “That’s not helping.”

He glared at me. “Well, it should. One month in a new job. Two months in a new apartment. He also changed his cellphone number fifty days ago. Now, get out of my kitchen and figure it out.”

I went to Mike’s car slowly, chewing on the big clue thrown at my face.

“You-you’re done?”

“No. Where can I learn more about your brother?”

“His place,” he offered, starting up the engine.

I tilted my head to look at Kyle’s picture on the dashboard. I could feel a weak pull, already, not much, and I was curious. I had never visited the place of someone I was looking for. I wondered if it would help.

“Okay,” I said.

Now, Bitter just needs to gather enough information to Scry for Kyle Murphy. Find out how she does that in Chapter 12.