by Lou Paduano
Chocolate dripped down her chin. Mentor laughed. It was the perfect moment, the perfect day. She knew it would never be forgotten just as surely as she knew she never wanted it to end.
Bones snapped under her punch and the man fell back. Each time she connected, he flew back and each time she collected him, dragging him away from the corner under the stairs of the platform. The third time, the man’s left eye closed and did not open again. The lid was swollen shut from the pummeling. She did not care. She did not stop. Her eyes were dead to the world, her ears deaf to his cries.
“Please! Please,” he pleaded. Her fist rained down on him again and again.
Soriya felt a crunching sound and knew it was her elbow shattering against the concrete wall she had been thrown against. Fifteen minutes of pounding led to that. The minotaur paced at the far end of the room, waiting for his opponent to rise again. There was bellowing and monologuing as only a villain could, with threats made against everyone and everything in the city of Portents. He was ambitious to say the least, but standing at over eight feet with nine-inch horns extending from his temples, he had every reason to be that way.
Blood trickled from her lips as easily as the ice cream had three years earlier. This was another moment, she realized. Another rite. Mentor stood in the corner, encased in shadow and unseen by the great beast’s black eyes. He nodded to her, understanding her own realizations and making his known in the process. This was the way it would always be for them. This was the job.
Her eyes thinned, her sore frame struggled to stand. The corner of her lip rose slightly. One foot fell before the other and soon she was in a run for the minotaur that looked astonished at her perseverance. She raced for her destiny. Mentor smiled from the shadows, always watching her back. Always there for her.
There was no feeling left in her hands. They pounded against dented and torn flesh. Soriya’s blood mixed with the man’s in each connection. His cries were silenced. His eyes were closed. Still, she continued. Even as another cry, quiet at first, rang out under the stairs of the subway platform.
“Stop,” the girl said softly. Through dead eyes, Soriya saw the girl’s fear. “Stop.”
Soriya turned back to the man and continued her assault.
Sitting before the Bypass, Mentor held out the Greystone. Soriya did the same, following his every motion. He kept his eyes on the stone while he spoke with words that cut through her.
“The Greystone is pure. It is all of the faith and spirit one can procure in a lifetime and more, channeled through a greater source.”
The Bypass shimmered in green, floating in front of them like an emerald orb.
“A source we may never fully understand.”
There was nothing more to understand. There was nothing more to know about the world she inhabited. It was cold, it was ugly, and she felt the grime of it clinging to her like a second skin. There was nothing but rage left to her. Mentor’s words rang in her ears but she forced them out, her fist rising and falling on top of the man. He was no longer conscious from the pounding she delivered, not that it mattered to her. She lifted him by the collar, screaming in his face for more.
“Come on!”
In the corner of the platform, the woman with the torn blouse found her footing and inched her way toward Soriya.
“Please stop.”
Still in front of the Bypass, Mentor continued. The stone glowed against the dim green light from the floating orb. Soriya’s eyes were wide, wondering if the awe she felt would ever fade, hoping against hope it never would.
“When all is darkness, little one, the stone is the light that will guide you back to the day. You only have to believe in it, and in yourself. As I believe in you.”
His hand rested on her shoulder, his pride filling her.
A small hand rested on Soriya’s shoulder. Her fist was raised for another round but the touch of the hand, the way it pressed into her flesh, jarred her back to the moment. That was what it was, a moment, one that pulled in both directions and all directions at the same time. If she let it.
“Please stop.” The words were barely a whisper but she finally heard them.
Her fist fell. The man slipped from her grasp and collapsed in a heap on the cold concrete of the platform. The young woman she had saved backed away, letting her hand slip from Soriya’s shoulder. Her eyes were wary, flinching every instance they connected with the deep brown wells of her savior.
“I…” Soriya began, but the words were not there. The Greystone is pure. She barely registered where she was or what had happened, the words of her lost father figure rattling around her every thought. As I believe in you.
The girl did not wait to hear the rest of the sentence. With the way cleared, she raced for the stairs and the street above. Soriya watched her depart, ashamed of her actions. Kneeling close to the man in the heap on the floor, she heard the small hiss of breathing. The train was already gone and she needed to follow suit. Footsteps fluttered down the steps toward the platform, voices in a hurry. The young girl must have found some officers to investigate.
Soriya left the whimpering moans of the broken man and ran for the tracks. She jumped off the platform into the shadows of the rails, letting the darkness consume her as she made her way back home.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Loren was knee-deep in filth when Ruiz arrived at the back alley. The scattered detective was oblivious to his commanding officer’s presence as well as the doggie bag he carried. He was focused on the pavement beneath the overturned dumpsters that lined the wall. Ruiz stepped back as a bag of trash went flying by. The captain grimaced and munched on a lukewarm fry. It wasn’t until Loren reached under his arm to retrieve the book he had been carrying since the Bypass chamber that he noticed Ruiz’s discontented face.
“It’s here, Ruiz,” he said, flipping through pages rapidly. “It’s been right here the whole time.”
Ruiz pointed toward the street. Traffic raced by in droves. The evening rush hour was starting in earnest and soon the speeding traffic would begin to crawl until the sun completely faded. “Loren, the body was found—”
“I know where the body was found,” Loren snapped, silencing the captain, who was more than happy to listen and munch on his dinner. “There was something about this one that didn’t add up. The body wasn’t anyone with a secret like the others. It wasn’t hidden. It was out in the open. Away from this alley. It didn’t fit.”
“He was rushed. He was lazy. It was more for the thrill of the kill than the ritual.” Even Ruiz found the last option hard to believe, but there were still dozens of explanations that poked a hole in Loren’s assumptions.
“No. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that this guy isn’t lazy enough to let something as intricate as the ritual slip away from him.” Loren paced the alley, his hands in front of him working out each thought. “This one was different from the rest because it had to be different. Because he needed something different from him.”
“What?” Ruiz nearly choked on a large hunk of burger. A slice of bacon dangled from his lip and he felt the rest slipping back up. He forced it down, coughing loudly.
“The fifth victim. Accountant, right? What was his name again? Pruett. Jackson Pruett. Wife said he walked the same route every day for ten years. Up Evans Avenue for the black tower after taking the A train at 7:45 AM. Every day.”
“What does it matter?” asked a confused Ruiz. “He was skinned, Greg! He took his trophy same as every other victim. No different. You’re looking for things that aren’t there, exactly why Mathers is taking—”
“But he was supposed to be all set with the skin from Urg,” interrupted the pacing detective. “It was our waitress. Don’t bother to give me the patented Ruiz glare. I’m not saying Sandy over there is our killer. She probably is a killer the way she eyes up her customers like meatbags, but today she’s just an inspiration.”
“I’m lost. Beyond lost.”
“I know.” Loren flip
ped violently through the files in his grasp. Photos fell to the trash below without regard until he found the one of Jackson Pruett’s skinned remains from the previous day. He shoved the image in front of Ruiz, causing the bewildered captain to drop a handful of fries to the ground with a loud curse.
“Look! The jacket. See?”
“What?” Ruiz asked, looking at the image of the deceased. He tried to concentrate, drowning out Loren for a long moment. On the right front pocket of his jacket there were small indentations along the lip.
“He had something there.” Loren’s finger poked the image in front of Ruiz’s face. “You can see the imprint. Probably from wearing it there for years. Our killer took his ID badge.”
“Loren…”
“Just follow me here.” His hands waved in front of him. He knew how it sounded. He knew how all of it sounded, especially when spouted by a man who hadn’t had a restful sleep in days. He knew all of that but he also knew something else. He was right about it all. “This is not about the body. Any of the bodies. They are necessary to what he is doing. What he is becoming. I’m sure of that after talking with Soriya. But it was the signs that were staring us right in the face the entire time.”
“The glyphs. The dead languages.” Ruiz wanted him to slow down almost as much as he wanted him to speed through to the ending. This had been a long time coming. The city was panicked. The mayor and the commissioner wanted their heads for it. If Mathers had his way, he would bring the axe to help out. Both men needed the win and only had hours left to bring it home.
“No. Not even those.” Loren pointed proudly to the floor of the alley, carved out of the mountain of garbage surrounding it in a circle. “Just a regular sign, hiding in plain sight. Our killer had Pruett’s entire route to choose from but he picked this spot. He’s been trying to tell us who he is the entire damn time. Trying to bring back the past, the city buried with him. Tell me what’s special about right here of all places in the city.”
Ruiz stepped over and saw the manhole cover. It bore the seal of the city of Portents along the top. On the bottom, it read in small, white letters: Evans Line. Commissioned – 1873. He looked at the detective, confused and weary. “It’s a sewer line, Greg. There are thousands of miles of crap flowing beneath us. It’s just a sewer line.”
“It was the first sewer line, Ruiz. Look at the date. 1873. Yet everything we keep in the archives, everything in Mason’s famed bookstore, tells me the city wasn’t even conceived of until the 1890s. It’s like the damn raven said. He was here at the beginning.
“I thought it was related to previous murders at first,” he went on. “I checked every record I could find but nothing backed that theory because it wasn’t the murders at all. He was talking about before that. The beginning of Portents.”
“Raven?” It was the first question of many that slipped through Ruiz’s lips. He let it pass when no response was forthcoming, and pointed to the book in Loren’s hands instead. “Is that why you’ve been carrying around Beth’s book like a security blanket?”
Loren knew how he sounded. There were so many wheels turning inside his head he wasn’t sure which way to pivot next. There were the rituals to explain but all the pieces that lined up before him only brought him back to the signs and the locations of the murders. Each aspect held significance. Any decent cop could tell that much, but even Loren was stumped as to what each piece meant to the grand scheme. Soriya had alluded that the trophies were pieces of the killer being rebuilt and used for other murders but the question of how an old soul, dead over a hundred years, would know Abigail Fortune or Martin Decker enough to be able to use them to further his own goals. And the fifth murder victim, the accountant dumped in the alley where they stood? How would he have known about him at all? A deal made with the darkest of lights. More of the raven’s wisdom seeping through the darkness. What it meant, though, was beyond Loren, so he let it go, hoping Ruiz would stay with him on what he thought was next. As he opened his lips to begin, a call rang out from the street.
“Detective?” Pratchett’s voice filled the alley, head peering around large piles of trash. “Captain?”
“Perfect.” Loren smiled at the reprieve with Pratchett’s arrival. He needed the officer’s help and the map he hopefully carried to pull off any chance of convincing Ruiz as to what was really going on and where they needed to head next. “Pratchett! Back here!”
Pratchett kicked aside a small path in the heaps of garbage bags, scurrying his way into the depth of the alley. His large hands carried the map Loren had requested. He looked between the two men, then back to the captain’s cold leftovers, curiously. “What are we doing back here?”
“Don’t ask,” Ruiz replied, popping another piece of burger in his mouth.
Loren snatched the map from Pratchett, who shrugged his shoulders, stepping out of the excited detective’s way. The map unfolded on top of the dumpster, nearly knocking over the remaining fries that made up Ruiz’s disappointing dinner. The aging captain, while slower than he had been when he was on the streets, was fast enough to keep the Styrofoam box from falling to the trash-ridden alley.
Both men watched Loren’s frantic search over the map. His eyes flipped between the large scale rendering of Portents and the book in his grasp. Finally, he found the correlation he had been looking for, matching it to the records Pratchett had given him early on in the case when the signs were merely a hunch, an itch to be scratched when time allowed. Now his eyes sparked with excitement at the pieces falling into place.
“Look…look,” he exclaimed. The two men circled him, all three standing over the map. “The third murder. Vlad’s. Where was it?”
“Warehouse District. On Beckett,” Ruiz replied, curiously.
Loren marked it on the map. “And the first?”
“Hob’s Lane on the Upper West Side,” Pratchett answered. “Some old farmstead.”
Another mark made its way to the map. Loren turned the small marker to the west of the city. “The second was down here at the Town Hall Pub. Near the docks.”
Pratchett felt Loren’s excitement, letting it carry him like a wave. He pointed eagerly toward another site. “The apartment complex on Glenview and Forest was the fourth.”
“Exactly.”
Ruiz squinted at the four large dots on the map and shook his head. “I don’t see anything.”
“Wait for it,” Loren replied. His eyes were on their other companion. “Pratchett. Can you tell me the name from the apartment complex? The building’s name?”
“Started with an E.” The giant of an officer thought for a long moment. “Evans.”
Loren saw the flickering of lights in Ruiz’s eyes at the sound of the name. He quickly flipped open the book to an image of an old tenement building sharing the same view of the lakeshore as the complex. “This is what was there before it. Look at the date as well.”
Both men saw it read 1876 with the name Evans adorning the front of the building. Loren flipped to another page, this time showing an old homestead that matched the crime scene of Abigail Fortune.
“The old farmstead was his. There was an old stone in the landscaping with the date March 11, 1873 carved into it, though I have no way of knowing if that stone is still on the property.” He quickly flashed the image before moving to another. Mentor had had all of the pages noted. He knew, on some level at least, that the scenes related to Evans. He simply never had time to confirm it before the end. An image of the first shipyard opened for Ruiz and Pratchett to view. “The docks were commissioned by him at that time too. It was the gateway for people to come and build Portents from the ground up. And this sewer line?”
He paused. He had spent so long trying to understand the city, trying to see it from Beth’s perspective and from Soriya’s only to come up short. Now, the city lay before him, a puzzle waiting to be pieced together and every benchmark, every sign, pointed to a single man in the frame.
“This sewer line was where he stood when an
angry mob ripped him to pieces.”
Ruiz waved his hands in front of Loren. A single finger rose for a moment to process everything. Pratchett simply listened, feigning understanding through eyes of bewilderment. “You’re talking about the guy you asked me about earlier? Nathaniel Evans?”
“Nathaniel Evans.” Loren nodded. “Pissed off and back for more.”
“Seriously?” Ruiz asked. Loren knew how it sounded. Knew all of them were hoping there would be another answer. That there had to be a better answer than the one that was being laid out in front of them. Serial killers were part of the job. Lunatics of all colors and stripes were par for any city. However, a man who founded the city, then was erased from any mentioning by every historical account, only to return over a century later for some kind of sick revenge? That was beyond science fiction. That was “throw your ass in the loony bin and tie your own straight jacket” crazy.
It was also the truth.
Loren took the marker and began connecting the small dots on the map. Four dots in different corners of the city. They did not line up with the current borders of the city—there had been a number of additions with suburbs and expansion after the Second World War—but even the skeptic in Ruiz saw what Loren was drawing.
“There,” he said when he finished. A large box in black marker covered the map.
“A square,” Ruiz said, plainly. “Come on, Loren. It’s a square.”
“It’s a box, Ruiz,” Loren replied.
“I’ve always felt rhombuses were scarier,” Pratchett chimed in at the sight of the two men staring each other down. Both turned to the obtuse officer, who quickly waved his hands in retreat. “Just me on that one then.”