Signs of Portents

by Lou Paduano

  “She knew, didn’t she?” Loren picked at the cup in his hands, tearing little pieces of foam from the lip. “The way she knew about the city, the true city. It wasn’t just something in a book. Some research she had done. Somehow she knew the truth about the city, the truth you shared with me after she was gone. She knew about it the whole time and never said a word. Never told me.”

  The weary detective sat back, letting it sink in. He had thought about it since he found the book sitting on Mentor’s bed in the Bypass chamber. Since cracking it open for the first time at Atlas Books and learning about the existence of Nathaniel Evans. Beth was more in tune with the city than anyone he had ever met. The true city.

  Even Soriya Greystone.

  “I called my sister after that night. After Evans. She didn’t understand, at first. Thought I needed to be back in Chicago, thought it was the right move so I could forget Beth. I thought the same thing for so long, convinced myself of it every day I was here because without her, even those three blocks became shadows. I convinced myself that my family was there, but that wasn’t true either. It was here. In Portents, of all places. With Ruiz. With you.” His voice was soft, little more than a whisper in her ear. “Dammit, Soriya. I won’t do this without you.”

  Leaning back, he reached for the bag by the chair. He set it on his lap, letting a hand slip in to retrieve the single item within. The Greystone. He held it in front of her closed eyes, then placed it on the bedside table. It was bigger than it had been, no longer a small pebble resting on a single palm but a hefty weight that clanged when it came to rest on the table.

  “I brought this for you. I was hoping to bring it sooner but if Ruiz knew I took it from the scene, he would have flipped. I don’t know how or why but there was only one. Like the two stones melded, if that even makes sense. Hell, nothing ever makes sense when it comes to this stuff.” Loren stared at the stone, little more than a paperweight when carried by anyone else. “I don’t know what it can do. After that night, I don’t think I ever want to find out. But it helped you stop Evans. It stopped the lights. I’m hoping it can help you too.”

  “I’m out of fuel.” Loren held up the empty cup with a smile. The stone sat silent on the bedside table. No light glowed. No change occurred. Slowly, he stood up. His knees ached from sitting. His head rang every time he took to his feet from the small gash above his temple. The door clicked open. He waited in the frame, looking back once more, hoping for open eyes in return. When the machines continued to beep and buzz around her as her response, his head lowered. “I’ll be right back.”

  The door closed behind him, leaving nothing but the sound of the machines keeping Soriya Greystone alive. It began moments later with a whisper and a glimmer. Soft light lit the surface of the stone on the bedside table. Gradually, it turned to a white glow, its surface marked by a single rune.

  The white light expanded, spreading across the room. Monitors buzzed and beeped louder and louder. The light beamed out of the half window of the doorway into the hall. A sharp cry for air echoed in the room as lungs fought to breathe on their own.

  For the first time in two weeks, auburn eyes burst open.

  Down the hall, Loren watched the cup of coffee fill up slowly. It came out thick and black. He stopped halfway to give him space for the powdered creamer and the three packets of sugar he needed to block the awful taste of the black ooze. Coffee was a means to an end but never an enjoyable one. It served a function for him.

  When he looked back at the room where Soriya lay, light greeted him. It showered the hall in a bright haze, spreading farther and farther. Loren dropped the coffee on the floor of the hospital hall and raced into the light. Was it the stone? Was it something more? He didn’t know. All he knew was that he needed to see her, see that she was safe. To know she would always be safe.

  The light faded before he reached the door. His hand fumbled with the lever until he heard a heavy click and the door flew open into the room. No surprise covered his face. No shock at the sight before him. All that remained was a grin that grew wider upon entering the room. An empty bed greeted him with the sound of flat-lining monitors and sensors from the machines. The stone was missing from the bedside table. The third floor window was open, blowing the shade back and forth with the night air circling the room.

  Soriya Greystone was gone.

  Loren stepped toward the window, peering out into the warm summer night that had settled over the city of Portents. His smile refused to fade and he called out into the night.

  “I guess I’ll see you at the office.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Ruiz stood in the dim light of his office, looking out the window at the streets below. The desk lamp cast a long shadow over him. He was decorated in his dress uniform, his badge shining on his left with twin medals adorning the right side of the jacket. All of the flags that lined the Rath Building stood at half-mast. They had for over two weeks, ever since The Night of the Lights and the black tower. Four officers fell in the line of duty that night at the hands of a monster that threatened to take Portents with them. Merrill and Daniels. Jankowitz and Naeger—gone. The thought of their names brought back the night, the sight of their bodies on the tiled floor and the heat from the wound that covered his right arm from wrist to elbow.

  The memorial service was earlier that day. It rained, of course. A fitting tribute for a city in mourning. A warm summer rain that brought an array of colors to the field where his fellow officers now rested. Michelle and the girls joined him on the podium when he offered a final tribute to his fallen friends. It had been a long time since he had to go through that, a long time since a man had fallen under his command. He hoped it would never be necessary again, though the sting in his arm assured him it was inevitable.

  Everyone was there. The mayor and the commissioner used the opportunity to return hope to the people, while also remembering there was an election only a year away. Even Mathers kept a low head and a somber tone, sharing thoughts on the tragedy that befell the Central Precinct. Ruiz hoped it meant a truce between them, at least a holding off of hostilities, but as the day shift captain stepped away from the podium, a look shot Ruiz’s way let him know there would be no end.

  Of all the people gathered in the crowd, Ruiz was glad to see Loren among them. He wore a dark blue shirt with a red tie under a black leather jacket. Though his eyes were deep shadows from lack of sleep, the thick beard that had covered his face was gone. The long threads of hair were trimmed and combed. He looked like a new man to the aging captain.

  Loren stood in the dim light of the office, his leather jacket slung over his arm. He played with his tie, threatening to rip the clip free from his collar. Ruiz kept his back to him, maintaining a long silence. Both men carried the burden of that night. They would never forget the four fallen colleagues that could have easily been them lying on the tiled floor of the black tower. The right arm of Ruiz was tucked in front of him, out of sight from Loren, though Ruiz noted the concern in his friend’s eyes every time he grazed his forearm.

  Neither one wanted to speak. The precinct was running quietly all around them, the memorial service carrying over into the hearts and minds of everyone wearing a badge. Heads were low, voices muted. The men and women of the Central Precinct went about their work to keep nights like that from occurring ever again. All discussion of the night in question had fallen away. It happened. Something happened.

  Ruiz kept the official report as clean as possible. A madman had taken the lives of six people, including the head of the city’s largest corporation, Gabriel Evans. The madman had no name, Hady Ronne coming up empty on any identifying markers on the corpse. Turning away from the endless questions and making it about the dead officers was a clear sign of what truly mattered when all was said and done.

  The lights. The Greystone. Nathaniel Evans. None of that entered into the matter. There were inquiries, there were debates, but all were agreed that the lives of their four colleagues outwei
ghed everything else. Loren agreed as well, surprising Ruiz. There was a calm in him, one that settled the issue that had been hanging over the weary captain since recruiting the man for the case.

  Sitting in the center of the desk, amid the mountain of reports and paperwork put off during Ruiz’s hospital stay, was a badge. Gold plated metal shined under the dim light of the lamp. Across the top, it read P.P.D. with the word Detective underneath the shield in the middle.

  It sat before Loren, daring him to act. It drew him close. He felt the weight of it even from a distance. He had come so far. He had lost so much. Yet the badge was clear, polished, as if the history they shared was erased and this was a new beginning. His call with Chicago went badly; he would be lucky if his sister picked up the phone again if he needed her. His shot with the Chicago P.D. was blown as well, having used up every excuse to stay on in Portents to watch over his friends. And now the badge.

  Loren lifted it up, letting it rest across his palm. Ruiz remained silent at the back of the office. His left hand ran up the length of his right arm. Each touch sent a visible chill through his body.

  “Are you sure?” Loren asked. His finger ran across the embossed lettering on the shield.

  Ruiz turned his head slowly, keeping his right arm out of sight. “I don’t need another counseling session from you. Michelle pushes me enough.”

  “You’re making important decisions, Ruiz,” Loren replied softly, turning to close the door to the office. “If they’re coming from a personal place instead of a professional one, we should talk about it.”

  “I can still feel it, you know.” Ruiz turned. Slowly, he removed the glove covering his right hand. It fell flat against the desk, the light washing over his scarred appendage. He rolled the sleeve gently up his arm. The scars ran along his forearm in no distinctive pattern except for at the wrist. There, the fingers of Evans were still visible from their point of contact. “Even though the nerve endings are shot to hell, I can still feel his hand burning into my flesh. I’m warm all the time to the point of sweating even with the air conditioner blasting down on me. The feeling wakes me in the middle of the night and I swear I’m going to see those red eyes staring at me from the end of the bed. Worse, that I won’t see Michelle or the kids ever again. Doctors say I’ll be lucky to lift a coffee cup much less my sidearm, so the department softball team is off the table for me this season.”

  Neither laughed at the joke. The scars were too deep between them.

  “I know where I’m coming from on this, Loren. The commissioner signed off on it, despite Mathers pitching a fit. There was no denying your role in the Evans case, no matter the result. You saved lives, Loren. Hell, you probably saved the damn city.” Ruiz’s eyes locked on the badge in Loren’s grip. “You know it, same as I do. The real question is, are you sure?”

  It was a question he had been asking for days. He debated it for hours on end in the hospital room where Soriya lay sleeping. Beth was here, the memory of her death and the absent feeling of closure in solving her murder. The anger and the mistakes. The feeling that took most of the last four years away from him, years lost trying to solve her case. To understand her death.

  It had been a downward spiral. He lost his last chance to reconcile with his father, and unwittingly lost his mother in the process because of his obsession. He was afraid it would happen again. He was afraid he was not strong enough to fight the urge to spin out of control again. There had been moments in those four years when he closed his eyes, where he was fine with never opening them again. There were moments of true depression mixed with rage and anger over the pain of her death. His own inability to see past her deep blue eyes when they closed before him on the pavement in front of their apartment made it impossible to breathe during those years.

  But here he was. Here he remained, even after all of it. All of the struggle. All of the grief. Here he was in Portents. Always Portents. He tried for so long to pass the city off as not his own. Now, he wore it as clearly as the badge he held in his hand. Like the signs littering the wall of Mercy Hospital, he survived. This was his city as much as anyone else. There was no more denying that.

  Ruiz watched his friend’s sullen eyes, carefully studying the badge before him. “The city is changing, Loren. Evans showed us that and I can no longer stand idly by. I’ll never see it the way Soriya does, never understand it the way she always has or allow the city to see that way either no matter the cost, but we have to hold the line. Us. You’ll be completely independent in operational status, answerable only to me. You will, however, follow the procedures and guidelines laid out to the rest of the department. There will be questions. Especially from Mathers who will be watching like a hawk. People will not understand so you’ll have to handle a regular caseload on top of the…let’s call them special circumstances that arise. The job is yours…if you want it.”

  The corner of Loren’s lip rose slightly. His finger ran along the badge one last time. Then he slipped the cool metal shield into his right pocket. “You knew my answer the second you called me for the Evans case.”

  “Yeah, I did.” Ruiz nodded.

  From the darkness that washed over him, Loren saw the calmness settle over Ruiz and the slight twitch of his lips into what passed for a smile. Few of those were visible over the last two weeks. He hoped that was changing.

  Loren turned for the door. Reaching for the handle, he could hear the slow buzz of the floor. People scattered from place to place. He smelled the thick odor of black coffee in the air and heard the clattering of reports being typed. It felt right. It felt like home.

  Ruiz called him back as he stood before the open door. “You can’t do it alone, you know.”

  “I know,” Loren admitted. A stick of gum slipped between his lips. Filthy habit. Ruiz returned to the window and the city streets below. Night was covering Portents like a blanket.

  “You think she’s out there?” Ruiz asked. Loren’s tall reflection gleamed in the window. Ruiz heard the deep confidence in the voice of his friend echoing through the office before Greg Loren stepped out to start his shift.

  “I’m sure of it.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  She unlocked the door to the apartment, her lips inviting, her name unknown. She was quick to leave the bar where Francis McKay had been having a bite to eat and a lemon-lime soda with some colleagues. Beer never agreed with him and liquor made weeks fade from memory. Caffeine was also an irritant that caused his bladder to shrink to the size of a walnut so the flat lemon lime soda was the beverage of choice when among friends. At least, Francis thought they were friends. He never really knew. Half his life spent in a lab, the other reliving the first half in his own mind, so sitting with other people and listening to conversations was a nice change of pace.

  A nicer change was her arrival. Tall, with long legs barely covered by a tight red dress. She approached quickly and efficiently, never letting his mumbling or stuttering slow her down. She wanted him, though he had never seen her before. His mother told him never to talk to strangers—but truthfully, everyone was a stranger. The woman in the red dress was no exception. She pulled him away from his colleagues, away from everything in the bar, and he never stopped her. Never wanted to stop her.

  Dating had been a trial and error process with Francis at a young age, in the fact that he tried and failed to land a date his entire life. Women that surrounded him walked the line between too attractive or too self-involved, much like Francis was when it came to his work. The fact became apparently clear that the choice between work and women was relatively simple for a man who went to three proms without a date. His little black book contained more formulas for fusion reactors than it did telephone numbers of women.

  Saying he was happy for the change of pace was an understatement.

  He tried to speak during the trip to her apartment. He managed a few mumblings that were lost to the summer wind that whipped through the streets of Portents. Mutterings that would never outstrip the
rush he felt at her advances, forcing him down streets he never knew to buildings he had never seen before. Her place was in a large ten-story building near Fulcrum by the expressway running north to Venture Cove. She had a corner apartment on the seventh floor. Unlocking the door, Francis kept his hands busy, fumbling with his tie. He tried not to think of the three lemon-lime sodas he drank or the square root of 1,232,100, hoping to keep everything perfect.

  “Come on in,” she beckoned. Her hand, with thick red fingernails, ran along his back, pressing him forward through the opened door.

  A fixed grin ran from ear to ear along his face. His feet carried him through the living room of the apartment, but his eyes failed to see what was around him. All he saw was the red of her dress while she closed the door and locked it. He wanted to say something clever. He wanted to be charming and funny, with a “you sure don’t waste time,” but the only sounds that exited his lips ended up being more nonsensical gibberish that only an infant would find entertaining.

  “Enough talk,” she said, her hand gripping his tie. She pulled him deeper into the apartment. She let the tie slip away, stepping into the darkness of the bedroom at the far end of the hall. Francis stayed in place, unsure of what to do. He loosened his tie. It felt natural to do that for some reason. The collar of his shirt opened up. Two buttons. That was enough, he thought, right? Two—wait, three. That works. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed during his scientific deliberations on buttons, but when a hand reached out of the shadows and a single finger rose, begging his entrance to the room, he was sure it had been too long.

  Francis McKay entered the bedroom. He was greeted by a thin stream of moonlight through thick curtains. They blew casually, the wind carrying them through the open window on the far side of the room. From the light, he saw the large bed in the center of the room, stripped down to the sheet. He walked over to it and sat on the edge, waiting patiently. He looked around for his host, confused.