by Kevin Fox
“So, if you hear anything about these two… You’ll call?” I asked, knowing that I was pushing my luck.
“What do I get out of it?” He asked, looking around to make sure no one was listening too closely to him making a deal with a cop.
“Me owing you a favor.”
“A legal favor?”
“That’s the only kind I do.” Anthony sighed as if I was wasting his time.
“Yeah. Shit. I heard that about you. That why they call you ‘Righteous Kill’.”
“Nobody calls me ‘Righteous Kill’.”
“Maybe not to your face.” He grinned, enjoying himself. I turned to walk away. Now he was wasting my time. I needed fresh, or at least fresher, Staten Island air than the human smog wafting through the gym.
“Hey, Kill, wait up. Maybe I saw them girls talking to this one woman.” I stopped and turned back to see if he was messing with me. Didn’t look it. “She’s from down by Wolfe’s Pond. She’s some kind of Voodoo Queen or Wiccan or Kabbalah priestess or somethin’. Wanders the woods, eats the wild berries. You know the type. All of ‘em live down by Wolfe’s Pond, Lemon Creek – in mutant territory. Some people livin’ near them swamps is old school Staten Island. Creepers. Boo Radley lookin’ guys that might be keepin’ all kinds a ugly in their basements. Maybe even them girls.”
“Boo Radley?” I asked, impressed by the reference.
“Hey, I read. Just ‘cause I got this accent don’t make me a fuckin’ mental midget. No offense to the little people. But yeah, all sorts live out there. Creepy guys that got like limps, and hunchbacks and one-eyed wonders.”
“You seen a one-eyed guy?” I asked, aware of the statistical unlikelihood that was a coincidence.
“Not personally, no. But you hear shit,” he said, disappointing me. “Anyway, the Wiccan Woman, she was talkin’ to them girls, next thing I knew they was gone.”
“Describe the Voodoo Queen. The Wiccan.”
“She’s a fine piece, just scary. Sorta hot. Intimidating, like you’d never have a chance to fuck her – but she might fuck you.”
“Got a cell I can borrow?” I asked, suddenly remembering that mine was under my back seat, where I’d left it before going into the emergency room.
“Where’s yours?”
“Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean,” I lied. Anthony pulled out a cell phone, but didn’t hand it over.
“This another favor?” he asked, negotiating. I was tired of the game.
“Sure. Here it is – I won’t bust you for the ‘roids in the trunk of your car,” I told him, watching him go pale before he caught my bluff.
“You’re guessing, right?”
“I was. But now I know. Get rid of the juice, before I have to do something about it.” I put out my hand and he slapped the phone into it. I dialed quickly, hoping I could reach Kat. If anyone on this Island had an in with a Voodoo Queen, it would be her.
The phone just rang. Damn. I hoped my house hadn’t gotten flooded. Anthony saw my look.
“Whoever she is she’s probably fine. A lotta the phones ain’t workin’,” he reassured me. His accent certainly didn’t make him stupid.
“What makes you think it’s a she?”
“I dunno, what makes you get tense when it rings off the hook?” Anthony asked. His aptitude at reading me pissed me off. I handed his phone back and started to walk away again. Kat was probably just hung over on my beer with my stereo jacked up loud, hooked into Call of Duty.
“They really stab you?” Anthony called after me.
“Bounced off a rib.”
“Still. I know guys that’d throw ‘em a party.”
“So do I.”
I was almost to the gym doors when a familiar woman with a face that I couldn’t quite place grabbed my arm. Maybe I went to school with her, maybe I arrested her. It was hard to tell the difference sometimes.
“Detective… Is it true they’re using I.S. 24 as a morgue? Storing body bags in the basement? I heard there were bodies all up and down Yetman, Seguine, and Barclay.”
“I wouldn’t believe everything you hear,” I said, gently pulling my arm away.
“Is it true The Annex is gone?” she asked, more desperately.
“Yeah. I saw that myself,” I told her. Her eyes welled up with tears, and it occurred to me that they were the first tears I’d seen all day. I touched her shoulder gently and stepped outside, trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. A lot of memories had been made in The Annex, and a lot of the kids in that gym were probably conceived in the parking lot. Maybe there was good reason to shed a tear for the old bar…
Hell, I might have been more upset myself if I wasn’t worried about the condition of my own house. Between Hurricane Sandy and Kat, I didn’t know what to expect when I got there, so I got my phone out from under the back seat and kept trying her the whole way home. No luck. Hopefully when I got there I would find Kat hung-over, but sober enough to give me a line on this Witch of Wolfe’s Pond so I could find Alina and Dariya before Josef Markov did…
There was a clock on it. All the bridges to and from the island were still closed, but they could reopen any time. Once they did, Markov could get out. Until then, I still had a chance. The girls were on their own when they got to the High School, but two redheads with strange accents wouldn’t get very far on Staten Island. They’d need help, and it sounded like this witch-woman of Wolfe’s Pond had taken them in. I needed to track her down. Fast.
Chapter Nine
Nelson Avenue, Cleveland, and Hillside were all dark except for a few bonfires illuminating backyards. Branches littered the street and lifeless power lines stretched across standing water. The Island, always on the brink of being a dystopian mess, had lost all its pretenses. I was only going home for a moment, figuring that I could get a shower and dry clothes and see if Kat knew this ‘Witch of Wolfe’s Pond’, I could get to her before Josef Markov. If anyone knew a Wiccan priestess, it’d be Kat.
I wasn’t worried about getting a hot shower or having power either, since I had generators and gas. My oil heat I had was old school and didn’t need electricity to function – but as I trudged up the sidewalk, I noticed that the front door wasn’t latched.
I approached slowly, pushing it open slightly and saw what I expected: A puddle in front of the door, and smaller puddles leading away from it into my place. Kat had gone out to play in the rain. I could hear the shower running and felt the heat hit me like a wall, carried on a stiff breeze. She must have turned it all the way up and then opened a window to ‘take the edge off and get some real air’, which was a phrase I’d heard far too often. Goddamn Kat with her ‘real air’. I followed the footsteps toward the bathroom, noticing that all my beers were gone, nacho crumbs were everywhere, and the television was turned cockeyed, almost pulled off the wall.
I stopped as I got far enough in to see the kitchen.
The refrigerator and freezer doors were open and everything that had been in the freezer was on the floor. I glanced back at the living room, noticing now that I’d gotten in this far that my couch cushions had been sliced open and there were holes in my sheetrock every few feet.
My hand went to my gun, and I stopped to listen.
I heard nothing except the shower and the wind.
I tried to put the pieces together – it wasn’t looters – my television, computer and electronics were still here. It couldn’t be Kat, she’d never make this mess without taking credit for it immediately. The place had been tossed. Someone was looking for something specific – but what?
I reached for my cell, about to dial nine-one-one, but couldn’t get a connection. The landline on the counter was also dead, so I took my gun out, moving quietly on the creaky old hardwood. As I slid along the wall toward the bathroom, I tried to take a quick inventory, but couldn’t find anything that was missing. I opened the closet where the gun safe was kept. It was open – but all my guns were there.
This wasn’t making any sense.
<
br /> I did another visual, looking for signs of a struggle. There was no blood, thankfully. Looking down, I saw that the water on the floor had started to bleach out the wood. It had been lying there for a few hours at least, so there was a chance that whoever tracked it in was already gone. I hoped. Shooting somebody and filling out all that paperwork was a chore that I didn’t have the energy for at the moment.
I made a quick turn into the hallway, sighting down my pistol, but it was empty. The doors to the basement, bathroom, and bedroom were all closed. The first door was the bathroom. I touched the knob to see if it would turn. It did. I hesitated. If Kat was in there, I didn’t want to walk in on her naked in the shower. Knocking wasn’t an option, because if it wasn’t Kat in there, I’d just be warning them. The lesser of two evils was violating Kat’s privacy, so I took a deep breath, readied my pistol and shoved the door open –
—Only to be blinded by steam, being blown into the hall by the wind from the open bathroom window. The shower was empty and the linen closet was ajar, with every towel I owned dumped on the floor. I backed out, leaving the shower on in case anyone in the basement or bedroom was listening, then turned to the basement door, opening it quickly.
There were puddles on the stairs, and the light from the hall illuminated a mess below. Storage boxes had been ransacked and ripped off the shelves that would have kept them above the water that now covered the floor.
If I found the guy that did this, I was definitely going to shoot him. I was about to go down into the stagnant water in the dark when I heard her ear-piercing scream, shrill and harsh, setting my nerves on fire –
– Kat was in the bedroom.
– Shrieking as if a hot branding iron had been shoved right through her. I ran, not thinking, pacing it out so my right foot hit the closed-door mid-stride, splintering the frame, sending the door bouncing back off the wall. I started to scan the room for threats, but stopped as I saw her tied face down on the bed, yelling bloody murder. She saw me and yelled –
“—Next to you!” I turned, catching sight of a shotgun butt just before it met my temple. A bright sharp pain radiated out from where it hit, sending arcs of throbbing agony through my head as my neck snapped back. I slipped on the wet floor, collapsing as everything drifted efficiently to blackness.
…It always seems to happen when it rains. My world melts and becomes a steaming, slippery brown mass of pain and complications that sucks me under…
…I couldn’t have been out for long, because I heard the front door slam just as I opened my eyes. The blood was painfully pulsing through my retinas, causing my vision to blur with each excruciating heartbeat. I wanted to move, but my body was in revolt, not quite receiving the messages my brain was sending.
“Are you going to just lie there?” Kat asked, with just the slightest hint of concern in her voice.
“Why don’t you get up and help me?”
“I’m all tied up at the moment.”
I tried to get to my feet but slipped again, and the stitches in my chest started to compete with my head for attention as they stretched with the effort.
“You hurt?” I asked Kat.
“Not hurt, just pissed off.”
“If you’re not hurt, what’d you scream for? I could’ve had the guy if you didn’t scream.” I told her, reaching under the mattress for the hunting knife I kept there in case of emergencies. Like I said, I’m paranoid. I reached for her wrists and started to slice the rope.
“I’m here tied up half-naked in your bed and you’re worried about getting a guy? You sure you’re straight?” She asked. I was sure. Kat was wearing one of my t-shirts and not much else. I was so straight I had to keep my eyes on the knife – and only the knife – to prevent any accidents. Kat also looked at the knife and then at me, as if I’d betrayed her.
“Was that under the mattress the whole time?”
“It’s for emergencies.”
“Might’ve helped if I knew that.”
“I couldn’t tell you. One of these nights you might have been the emergency. Just tell me what happened.”
“I was on COD mowing down some noobs with the headphones on when he grabbed me from behind. I managed to give him a glancing blow to the nuts before he tased me. I coulda kicked his ass if it wasn’t for that thing.”
“A Taser? Really?” I asked, shocked. “What kind of guy uses a Taser?”
“What kind of friend doesn’t tell me about his emergency knife? If I knew it was there…”
“He might’ve shot you if you had a weapon. Besides, you and sharp objects are a dangerous combination. Did you see his face? Was it fucked up?”
“No. I don’t know. He grabbed me and tased me. And it was dark, so don’t give me shit. You didn’t see his face either, did you?”
“Did he do… anything?”
“Yeah. Almost bored me to death asking questions about you.”
“About me? Nothing else?”
“You mean did he ‘have his way with me’? Do you see his blood anywhere?” The question was obviously hitting too close to something Kat was sensitive about.
“Then why’d you scream?”
“I was afraid he was going to kill you.”
“Why would he kill me? Did he say something to you?”
“Yeah. He said he’d kill you if I screamed.”
“Seriously? And then you screamed?”
“I figured he was gonna kill you anyway. Screaming was to even the odds. I knew he couldn’t tase you ‘cause he ended up using all his Taser cartridges on me,” she explained, pulling up her shirt to show me the characteristic burn marks. “I wasn’t exactly cooperative.”
I was not surprised. I looked away quickly, trying to avoid the free show Kat was giving as I finally cut through the last rope.
“Where the fuck have you been anyway? Leaving me here all alone.”
I didn’t answer, but her eyes went wide as I straightened up, focusing on my chest where I’d torn my stitches and somehow lost the bandage.
“Oh, God – you’re bleeding. Are you shot?” she asked, moving too close for comfort. I pulled open my shirt and looked down at the wound, seeing it for the first time without a bandage. Burke was right. It really didn’t look like much of anything, even if it did hurt like a bitch at the moment.
“No, not shot. Stabbed.”
“He stabbed you? But he had a gun.”
“Not him. The girl. From the boat.”
“What girl?” Kat asked, a hint of anger in her tone. “You went out on a boat in this weather? Like on a date?”
“No, Kat. Maybe your dates end in stabbings, but if I get stabbed – it’s not a date.”
“I was just asking. Anyway, she’s obviously not gettin’ a second date after acting like that.”
I turned and left, headed toward the kitchen, not engaging Kat’s insanity and she followed me down the hall, looking around my place as I walked through.
There was a half-full, warm and skunky beer on the counter, the last visible alcohol in the house. I needed it. Medicinally. I took a swig, ignoring Kat as I tried to wrap my mind around what the hell was going on.
“There was just one guy?”
“That’s all I heard. The lights were out and the storm was loud, but that would be my bet.”
“What was he looking for?” I asked, taking in the mess. Everything seemed to be here. In the wrong place, but not missing.
“Do I look like a fucking detective, Detective? I woke up hog-tied, face down in your bed. It was like all of my dreams but without the happy ending. The old bastard was tearing the house up, asking me about where you kept stuff.”
“Old bastard? What makes you say he’s old?” I asked, trying to swallow the fetid beer.
“He smelled old. Sounded old. How the fuck do I know? He was old. Didn’t say much, and when he did, he muttered. Like he didn’t want me to be able to ID him by his voice either. He was a pro. Maybe even ex-military.” I didn’t doubt Kat. She was hy
per-observant in the way many survivors of abuse and terrible childhoods are, but I was curious about the old guy. Josef Markov was young. One-eyed Willie was old – if he was even real and not a figment of my fucked-up imagination.
“How long ago did he get here?”
“Jerkoff, I’ve been tied up, blindfolded and hung over – and you think I’ve been watching the clock?” She had a point.
“That’s it? There’s nothing else you remember?”
“Yeah. He took your decoder ring. Asked where you got it.”
“My memento mori?” I asked, confused. A coincidence linked to my dreams and the past – but what did it have to do with me, Russian oligarchs, kidnapped kids and drug smuggling?
“Memento mori? Is that what you call it? That’s grim.”
“You know what it means?” I asked, surprised.
“Now you’re insulting my intelligence? Four years of Latin, Classics Institute, Tottenville High School. Not to mention a Masters in Classical Literature from—”
“—You have a Masters?” I asked, astounded.
“G.I. Bill. And technically I’m four credits short. The Dean and I had a disagreement over what constituted obscenity so I showed him my performance art. After his wife walked in on us, I was asked to take a break. The idiot –”
“—All right, forget it. My apologies. Back to my… ‘decoder ring’,” I told her, afraid we’d go off on an hour-long tangent. We had that tendency. I needed to know why I had been called personally to the scene. It felt like a set-up, but a set-up for what? To get me out of the house so whoever was behind this could steal some trinket I found in the woods?
“He said the ring was stolen. That it belonged to an ‘old friend’ and that he’d get something out of returning it, but you’d have a lot to answer for. Like where you got it.” So maybe that was why I was involved. Whoever took the ring thought I had a memory that would tell them shit even I didn’t know…