by Kevin Fox
“…And he doesn’t deserve the least bit of compassion and love before he goes?” she asked, shaming me for my aversion to his wounds.
“I… I’m… cold… But it… doesn’t hurt… any… more,” Anton interrupted. Kat brought him closer, holding him as he shivered.
“He’s in shock. The nerve endings were burned off,” Burke stated in a flat tone, just watching, seemingly unaffected.
“Shut the fuck up.”
“I’m just being practical, Collins. It doesn’t hurt, let him talk. In case you ain’t figured it out, this looks an awful lot like that case Joe Corrigan was working when he died. You deserve to know –”
“I said shut the fuck up –” I yelled, as Kat gently stroked Anton’s face where it had escaped the worst burns, whispering to him, saying things that I couldn’t hear, sweet nothings that she pulled from somewhere deep inside.
“Tell… Alina… that I…”
“I will,” Kat assured him, and then Anton turned to look at me, clear-eyed for a brief moment.
“You… remember …He wants what you know.”
His words knocked me off balance. “Sure, kid. Take it easy,” I told him, but his eyes got more intense and his voice got louder.
“Find it…” he spat out, using his last breath before beginning to choke, the air rattling as he struggled to breathe. …And then he gasped and caught his breath, struggling. Kat kissed him, gently, barely touching her lips to his. I swear he smiled, just a fraction, looked as if he was about to speak...
…And then he was gone. Nobody said a word for a moment. We just listened to the wind moving through the trees, causing the water to fall from their leaves like a phantom rain. Finally, Burke sighed, looking at Anton.
“Well, at least that’s over. But we’re still fucked,” he muttered, with all the emotion coming straight from his black heart.
“No, he’s fucked. We’re still here.”
“Still here with a roasted teen and a dead Russian thirty yards that way. How do we explain any of this? Neither one of us was supposed to be investigating. The Feds are gonna shit.”
“Why do we need to tell the Feds? For all we know this has nothing to do with that yacht,” I said. Burke shook his head, not buying it.
“You saw Markov.”
“Did I?”
“And how are you going to explain that dead Russian back there? You’re fucked –” Burke reminded me.
“He had a gun, if I didn’t –” Kat said, starting to defend me, stopping herself before she completely fucked up our story. It didn’t matter. Burke wasn’t stupid. Kat caught his look and knew immediately that she’d blown the whole scam.
“You two might want to get your story straight,” he advised us. “Bringing your girlfriend on cases where guys get killed is frowned upon, Collins.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I told him, sounding pathetic even to myself.
“She’s no random stoner either, is she?”
“Stoner, stalker – she’s both. I can’t be blamed for her.”
“It’s true,” Kat chimed in, trying to help. “I was stalking him. I was afraid to be alone.” Burke just shook his head, sympathetic to my problem.
“Christ, Collins, you got issues on issues, don’t you?”
“You have no idea – but I also have questions. Like how did Rigan Kelly end up with these kids and where the fuck is all the heroin that was on that yacht if the Russians are still looking for it?” I asked, turning to Burke.
“Don’t look at me. Maybe the Feds have it. Maybe Rigan Kelly grabbed it when she went back for the kids. You never know with these do-gooder types. Half of them are in it for the wrong reasons. Like priest-pedophiles, power-hungry police.”
“Did you get a look inside her house?” I asked.
“It was completely cleaned out.”
Damn. The wound on my chest was starting to throb again. This night was turning to shit. I was out in the rain, soaking wet, with two dead bodies, two kidnapped girls, and a woman in the hands of a Russian lunatic – and I had no real leads on where any of them might be.
I hate the rain. Nothing good ever happens in it.
Finally, I looked back at Anton. “We’re going to need to call Lieutenant Demetrius and a crime scene unit.”
“Yes, we are,” Burke agreed reluctantly. “…I got it. And don’t worry, I’ll cover for you – because of your old man and your uncle, but don’t lie to me again.”
Burke walked away, dialing his cell phone. I looked for someplace to rest, finding a mossy log not far from where Anton lay, and I sat watching the vapor drift off his cool body. Kat came over and settled in next to me. The close warmth of her body was soothing, although I’d never tell her that.
“You all right?”
“I will be,” I assured her, checking to make sure she was all right. There were tracks where her tears had run through the dirt she’d gotten on her face.
“You, know, what you did for that kid…” I shrugged, not able to compliment her the way she deserved without getting overly sentimental.
“We don’t have to talk about it.”
“No… But it was the right thing to do.”
“I know…” her voice trailed off and Kat looked me in the eye. It was an honest moment, and not one I was comfortable with, not with her. “…I just kept looking at him and thinking about you. He had eyes like yours. Isn’t that strange? I kept thinking that you might’ve looked like him when you were that age.”
I looked away. I didn’t need to identify with some dead kid in these woods. I’d almost died here myself and I didn’t really want to start thinking about it again. After a moment I looked back at Anton, unable to resist, finding it hard to breathe in the thick air, dense with mist and fog and the smell of burning death. It filled my lungs and gelled there. I needed to move, but when I shifted my weight, I winced from the sharp pain caused by stretching my stitches.
“Your chest?”
“Yeah. It’s just been a long day. Should’ve been taking painkillers.”
“My grandmother used to tell me that when things were at their worst, I should look for something beautiful – that God put beauty in painful moments to remind us that we could get through them,” Kat told me, getting up and reaching out for a tall, brightly pink flower perched at the end of what looked like a weed.
“I’ve never seen a flower like this before,” she said as she reached for it.
“You shouldn’t be seeing it now. It’s only supposed to bloom in spring, but thanks to our freaky weather it’s confused.”
“What is it?”
“Helonias Bullata – Swamp Pink.” Kat turned at that, recognizing the name from my story.
“The stuff those guys were digging for?”
“So they said.”
Kat nodded, pulling at the flower, inadvertently tugging on its notoriously extensive roots as well. She stopped as it came up, still looking down at something, frozen in place.
“Kill, you might want to look at this…”
“I’ve seen Swamp Pink before. The roots are always like that.”
“It’s not the roots,” she said softly, moving aside. The roots had pulled up the soil around them and had uncovered something dark and leathery, with moss growing on its surface.
I got up to look closer, pulling leaves and moss off, thinking that it might be an old discarded coat from when this area was used as an illegal dump, but then I started to recognize the shape and features of what it was. It wasn’t a coat. It was too hard, and it was shaped like a rock. I had to dig my fingers into the wet clay to scrape around its edges, finally getting enough out from around it to see what it was.
When I did, the dream came back unbidden – and unwelcome.
…The man who had chased us was on top of me as something warm and wet dropped onto my cheek and I fought to get out from under him. When I did, I glanced over to see him looking back at me… with one eye. Where the other had been was the tire iro
n. I wiped my cheek, smearing the vitreous fluid that had flowed from his eye off of my face and looked back down at –
—A human skull, its empty eye sockets looking back at me, one with a tire iron going right through it...
…It was no coincidence that I was on this case, or that I ended up here.
Chapter Sixteen
“Great, first floods, now fire. What’s next, a plague of locusts?” Lieutenant Demetrius muttered from where he stood under the warm glare of the work lights that illuminated the woods and the crime scene techs that had flooded the area. A half dozen of them were going over Anton’s body and the site of the fire, and through the woods I could see more lights and could hear the other CSU team going over the scene around the Russian’s body.
“You’re gonna have a plague of Feds is what you’re gonna have,” Burke answered from where he sat comfortably on a crime scene tech’s portable stool.
“Did I ask you, Burke? You think I need this shit from the two of you? In the middle of cleaning up from Frankenstorm?”
“I like ‘Stormzilla’ better,” Kat offered, but stopped talking as Demetrius glared at her. She was sitting next to me on the decaying log, watching the crime scene unit carefully dig up the body with the tire iron through its eye.
I took it all in, fighting every instinct I had to get out of there, especially when I saw that there was still hair on the cadaver’s head, matted around the skull, preserved by the clay it was buried in. It somehow made his death seem more recent and real. His leathery skin was loose around the muscle that had withered away beneath it, but the features of the face could have been those of the man from my dream. Maybe I had witnessed his murder all those years ago and had incorporated it into my dream – or maybe I even stumbled across his body in the days that I was lost in these woods.
I was trying to rationalize it, but no matter what I did, I kept seeing the arc of a tire iron in my hands, felt the jolt of it as it struck the man and the warm fluid leaking onto me as he collapsed. As I saw them brush the dirt off his body I was sure that I didn’t dream I’d killed a man –
– I remembered that I did.
“You all right, Kill?” Kat asked, putting a comforting hand on leg. I didn’t pull away this time, afraid that showing any emotion would make me look guilty.
“I’m fine.”
“Liar. You look like you just woke up from one of your dreams,” she said. I turned to her, wondering if somehow she knew. I couldn’t remember if I’d told her about this particular dream, but when I looked in her eyes, all I saw was concern.
“Didn’t we both? Wasn’t this just like a bad dream?” I deflected.
“I guess. But we’re not the ones buried or burned, right?”
I shrugged. It was cold way of looking at it, but she had a point.
“You getting anywhere? I ain’t got all night.” Demetrius grumbled at the crime scene guys, jumping up and down to stay warm as he watched them meticulously dig out the body.
“We’ll have him out in the next ten.”
“How long has he been there?”
“Awhile,” grunted a tech, annoyed, as usual, by detectives and cops who have no respect for their science.
“That’s not helpful. Can you give me a guess?” Demetrius asked, trying to be patient. The CSU tech shrugged.
“It’s the conditions here. Damn thing’s like a bog body.”
“Bog body?” asked Demetrius, completely lost.
“Naturally mummified bodies found in bogs – like swamps – all over Europe. It has its skin and organs intact because of the highly acidic water and lack of oxygen in the soil. It’s the amount of clay. If you wanted to mummify someone, the South Shore of Staten Island is a great place to bury them.”
“Good to know. How old is it?”
“A guess? Somewhere between fifteen and thirty years old,” the crime scene tech answered, giving in.
“So, I guess I shouldn’t ask for a specific time of death?”
“This isn’t a lab. The other two I can give you a time of death within minutes,” the tech told Demetrius, trying to pacify him. It didn’t work.
“Big deal. So can he, can’t you, Killer?” He had no idea. I could give him all three. The mummy had been there since October 23, 1985, sometime between nine P.M. and one A.M.
“I want an ID on all three bodies ASAP – and did anybody get the GSR off Detective Collins’ hands?” he asked, turning back to me, looking at the bandage on my arm. “Or the blood alcohol?”
“Both. And they bagged my gun as evidence. Can I go now?” I asked, knowing the probable answer. Still, I had to try.
“In a minute. First, tell me again why you were here?”
“I wanted to thank Rigan Kelly for bringing me to the hospital.”
“Right...” Demetrius nodded, playing along, not believing a word of what I’d told him when he got here. “And you brought your girlfriend with you?” he asked, letting his eyes wander over Kat.
“She’s not my girlfriend. She was driving me. I was injured, remember?”
“So, she was just your driver? Why her?”
“I’m easy to use, ‘cause we also live together,” Kat contributed, not so helpfully.
“Nice arrangement. You told Burke she was a stalker.”
“I am,” Kat chimed in again, digging us in deeper. “I follow him around, but Kill doesn’t want anything to do with me. Can you imagine?”
“Darlin’, the crazy goes right through your eyes to your soul. I don’t blame him,” he told her, then turned to me. “She’s a few cards short, isn’t she?”
“It’s not like it sounds,” I told him.
“It never is.”
“I rent her an apartment.”
“Right. Maybe I don’t want to hear anymore. It’s all purely platonic, I’m sure. Let’s get back to the relevant part here. You come to express your gratitude, but you call Burke to meet you? Why?” Demetrius pressed. I took my time answering, making sure that my answer would match what Burke and I had worked out before Demetrius arrived.
“I knew Burke was interested in finding those two girls, and that Rigan Kelly works with at-risk youth. I thought it might be a good idea to warn her that they might turn up.”
“So it wasn’t an investigation?”
“Not at all.”
“You just stumbled across the two girls you saved from Markov’s yacht, caught a Russian Mafia soldier groping one, shot him, let the other one run away with his gun, and then ran over here to find a guy you think might have been Josef Markov lighting a kid on fire. All by chance?”
“Exactly.”
“You’re good, isn’t he good, Kill?” Kat said, grinning at Demetrius. She was trying to get a rise out of him, but luckily Demetrius ignored her.
“You’re givin’ me a fuckin’ headache, Collins. You expect me to believe any of this?”
“What other explanation is there?” I asked. That stopped him. Demetrius looked back at the scorched tree, Anton’s body, the mummified remains and then the lights in the distance where the Russian body was lying dead and he shrugged, completely lost.
“I wish I knew. Only in Goddamn Staten Island… Either way, you’re done here. Go home. Stay there. The Feds may want to talk to you. While you’re there, write me a full report on this whole mess,” Demetrius said, talking as I got up and started to walk away.
“A report? Really? Is anyone going to read it in the middle of this disaster?”
“Maybe not. The Feds might decide all three of these people drowned just to avoid a diplomatic mess with the Russians. We won’t know until they get here.”
“Enjoy the company. I’ll be home and warm and dry,” I said, rubbing it in.
“If they want to talk, I’m sending them to your place – and if they want to talk to your Girl Friday, that’s the same address, right?” Demetrius needled me, trying to get a reaction from me.
“She lives upstairs.”
“She’s on top, huh?”
“Funny,” I muttered over my shoulder, still walking.
“Hey, Kill, I almost forgot,” Demetrius called after me. “Burke tells me you know how the pieces of that plane got here.” I stopped, turning back for a moment, curious as to why he cared.
“It was a case my dad worked on back in the eighties. Some drug runners crashed here trying to smuggle some coke,” I told him honestly.
“No shit…” he said, impressed.
“No shit.”
“He said this is where you got lost as a kid too. This place bring back any memories?”
“No. None,” I told him, turning to leave again. Kat followed me, giving me a look. She thought I was lying. I wasn’t. It didn’t bring back memories.
It brought back dreams…
…The wet smell of the wool blanket was comforting, in spite of the fact that the odor was a bleak reminder of the cold and damp that the blanket was warding off. As I pulled it tighter around me, I was aware that it was too dark to even see what color the blanket was, but I somehow knew that it was green. I also knew that huddled next to me under the blanket was another warm body, a girl who smelled vaguely pungent from not having washed in several days and whose skin felt so soft where it touched my own. I also knew that whoever she was, I knew her well, since she was the one I had seen running through the woods in my other dreams. The girl’s relentless shivering was keeping me awake in spite of being tired, and I could feel that it was getting colder. The girl’s skin was cooling off and I held her closer, but I noticed that her shivering was also slowing down – not because she was getting warmer, but because hypothermia was setting in. The fear of falling asleep, never to wake up again, motivated me.
“We need to get out of here,” I told her, hearing my own childish voice. “We don’t have a choice.” She was about to respond when the sound of the rain on something metal began to take shape, and all of the whispered and dissonant sounds seemed to coalesce into words...
…And then they became actual words, whose accent sounded strange to my ears. I glanced out through a gap in the wall of whatever we were inside of and saw flashlights flickering between the trees. Everything they passed over was illuminated, but when they passed, a deeper darkness seemed to be left behind. Men were talking to each other out there, behind the light, their voices barely rising above the sound of the rain.