by Bill Bennett
‘The scanner couldn’t penetrate. And they can see through anything. And here’s the really weird thing, Lily – it took three strong men to carry it, yet when they put it on the scales, it weighed in at fourteen pounds.’
‘Fourteen pounds?’ Lily asked, incredulous. ‘The scales must be out because it weighs more than that.’
‘I know. It’s got us all beat. So you can’t tell me anything about it?’
‘No. Nothing I haven’t already told you.’
Marley sat back, staring at Lily, trying to unhinge her with her unflinching gaze. ‘How much do you want to get your mom back, Lily?’
‘Are you kidding me? What sort of question is that?’ She felt like leaning forward and scratching the woman’s face for asking such a dumb question.
‘Then how about you come clean? And tell me what you know.’
The woman had an uncanny ability to intuit, Lily thought with a grudging respect. She was probably a very fine detective. But there was no way she was ever going to get a look at the letter.
‘This is going nowhere,’ Lily said. She rubbed the pain in her forehead. ‘I’m tired. And I haven’t eaten all day.’
‘Okay,’ Marley said, unsmiling now. She slowly got to her feet. ‘How about we get some Chinese?’
Lily sat outside on the front stairs of the station, waiting for the takeaway delivery. She needed fresh air, and space, and time alone to collect her thoughts. She watched as squad cars pulled up out front, a procession disgorging the evening’s catch of flotsam and jetsam; the desperate, the trapped, the lost, the strays. A never-ending tide of small- and big-time criminality that buffeted the doors of this station and others like it every night, every day, all around the country.
How many murders, rapes, drug busts, robberies and assaults were they handling right now? Lily wondered. And yet they’re spending time on my mom, a woman who’s gone missing just a few hours. There must be more to it, she thought. Why else would a detective be assigned to a missing person case when she’s not even been missing twenty-four hours? It makes no sense, unless it’s part of a bigger investigation. But an investigation into what? This bunch of witches? How could her mom possibly be involved with them? That’s crazy.
She pulled out her small harmonica from the front pocket of her jeans. She took it everywhere for moments like these, when she needed to calm down and think. She played a Muddy Waters song – ‘Everything’s Gonna be Alright’ – drawing the interest of some cops who were walking up the stairs escorting a person of dubious gender, handcuffed and wailing his or her innocence.
‘Won’t get you into Juilliard, kid,’ one of the cops said, patting Lily’s head as they walked past into the station. His buddies laughed. She wished at that moment that her hair was razor wire. Electrified razor wire.
She waited till they’d gone, looked around, but some more cops walked up. She wanted to take her mom’s letter out and read it again, but she needed privacy. There’d be no privacy around the city’s central police station on a Saturday night, so she triggered her photo brain.
It started off as a game, when she was very young. Her dad would take her out on long walks, and when they got back home he’d question her about what she’d seen.
‘What colour dress was Mrs Miller wearing when she waved and said hi to us?’ he’d ask. ‘And which hand did she wave, the right or the left?’ Or, ‘What was the name on the side of that truck parked out front of the bank?’ Or, ‘How many planes flew over us during the walk?’ And if she got that right, he’d ask, ‘What airlines were they?’
He began to train her not only to be observant, but to remember things with photographic detail. Hence the name, photo brain. After a while, her recall became second nature to her. Things stuck. Her photo brain kicked in even when she wasn’t aware of it.
Towards the end, before her dad died, she’d developed her ability so acutely that she’d become almost psychic. It freaked out everyone at school, especially her teachers who thought she was cheating when she consistently scored perfect marks in her exams. And it only further distanced Lily from her friends, or would-be friends, who thought she was totally weird, and possibly even an alien.
Her photo brain was handy in situations like this, though, when she wanted to remember her mom’s letter. She put her harp away, stilled her mind, and recalled the entire letter word for word, in particular the section warning her to be careful about adversaries.
Our adversaries are everywhere, and they take all shapes and guises. They will come to you as friends and helpers and they are convincing. They will be charming, handsome, attractive. You will believe them. Do NOT believe them.
Could her mom be referring to Kevin Johnstone? He was certainly charming, handsome and attractive. And what about the cops themselves? They were certainly helpers. Should she not trust them? But then, who could she trust? And this organisation of witches the detective talked about – even if they did exist, what interest could they possibly have with her mother? Could it be a case of mistaken identity?
She looked down at her hand. The stinging bees again. An uneasy tingling that was faint, but distinct. She held her hand up, palm out, and extended her arm as if she were making a stop sign. She moved it in an arc, like she was aiming the probe of a Geiger counter, feeling the intensity of the sensation wax and wane as she moved. The stinging bees were strongest when she aimed her palm down the street, into the shadows.
Her heart began to thud in her chest. The biker girl must be around somewhere. But where? She hesitated. What should she do? Should she go back inside and tell the detective? But what would she say to her? That her stinging bees were warning her the tiny biker girl was somewhere down the street, lurking in the dark? The detective would laugh at her. And after all, every cop Lily had ever known had turned out to be useless. No, she had to handle this herself. She was an adult now after all.
She felt a sudden rush of anger. A sense of outrage. They’ve taken my mom, she thought. How dare they step into our lives and take the only person I truly love away from me. And God help them if they’ve hurt her in any way. She jumped to her feet, bounded down the stairs, and walked over to a tree beside a nearby fence.
She grabbed a low hanging branch and pulled hard. The long straight limb cracked and tore free. Lily quickly pulled off some smaller twigs, and held up a staff some five feet long. Not a solid jō, Lily thought, but wielded with skill it could be a useful weapon. She snapped off its leafy end, looked at the split tip she’d created. Sharp shards of splintered wood. She could jab that into the biker’s eye socket. Or into her windpipe. She could do some serious damage.
She did a few quick aikido movements with the branch to test its balance and weight, then she looked around. Where were they?
She held up her palm.
Further down the road there was a long gap between the streetlights, and the stinging bees were telling her this was where the biker woman and her posse were hiding. In those deep shadows. Holding her makeshift wooden staff in one hand, and swinging it in a series of swift aikido arcs to get her blood flowing, she strode off down towards the shadows. You don’t scare me, Lily thought, as she marched down into the dark.
And then the doubts started flooding in.
She slowed her step.
That tiny one has killed people, she thought. Several people. She’s got knives. Terrifying knives, which she obviously knows how to use. She’d think nothing of stabbing me in the heart. Or slitting my throat. And she’s a witch. Don’t forget she’s a witch. She could have all sorts of powers and weird tricks she could use against me. And her two pals, they look just as scary. They look like killers too. What are you doing, Lily? How are you going to help your mom if you get a knife in your heart or your throat slit? Right now you’re the only one who can save her. And how will you do that if you’re left lying in a pool of blood two hundred yards from a police station? Think this through, girl.
She stopped.
She stood standing in the
middle of the road, under the harsh light of a street lamp, her staff hanging limply by her side.
She stared into the shadows up ahead.
Could she hear the low chuckle of someone laughing?
Could she see the faint glint of someone’s eyes, watching her, waiting for her to step into the full dark?
The stinging bees were now coursing up her arm into her chest, into her heart. They were on the rampage. It was though they were screaming at her, Get out of here, now!
And do what? Lily thought. Go back to the police station, eat fried rice, fill in some forms and wait weeks for the cops to do sweet FA? How was that going to help bring her mom back home?
She tightened her grip on the wooden branch and swung it in a swift attack movement. I have to do something, she thought. The cops will do nothing. It’s up to me. If I don’t act now and my mom ends up dead, or she disappears forever, then I’ll regret this moment for the rest of my life. I’m all she’s got. And she’s all I’ve got.
She stepped forward, grasping her staff – but suddenly a hand clamped hard on her shoulder, and swung her around.
‘Lily, what the hell are you doing?’
Marley, the detective, stood facing her, looking bewildered. ‘What’s that?’ she asked, nodding at the tree branch.
‘It’s . . .’ Lily hesitated. She could feel the stinging bees leaving her body. She turned and looked back into the shadows further down the street. They’re going, she thought. They saw the cop and they’ve disappeared.
There was now almost no sensation left in her body, or her hand. She looked back at the detective. There was no point telling her. If she did, they’d waste a lot of time mounting a search, they’d find nothing, and it would only further lower her credibility in the eyes of the cops.
‘I just thought I’d get some exercise,’ Lily said blithely. ‘And I was practising being a drum major, that’s all.’ She twirled the branch above her head, mimicking a cheerleader.
‘A drum major?’ Marley asked, smiling in complete disbelief. Lily was probably the least likely girl to be a drum major she’d ever met.
‘The food’s arrived,’ Marley said, ‘and there’s a couple of people I’d like you to meet.’ She looked over Lily’s shoulder into the shadows where she’d been staring.
‘What people?’ Lily asked suspiciously.
As she followed Marley back into the squad room she noticed a man and a woman sitting by the detective’s desk. They spotted Lily and smiled and stood as she approached. They looked nice and neat, Lily thought, and well intentioned – as though they were sales reps for a pearly-gated religion. She took an instant dislike to them.
The woman was in her early thirties – heavy, with a plump beaming face and greasy brown hair tied back in a bun skewered by several cheap plastic clips. She wore grey jeans and a pink track top, and Birkenstock sandals on her pudgy feet.
Standing beside her was a younger man, bulked up like he had permanent residency at his local gym. He wore tight tan trousers bursting at the seams from bench-press thighs, and a stretched pale-blue polo shirt that revealed Popeye biceps. He glowed with the kind of wholesomeness that comes from eating too much oatmeal.
‘Lily, I’d like you to meet Janet and Ted,’ Marley said, offering them up like gifts under a Christmas tree. ‘They’re from Child Protective Services.’
‘Child Protective?’ Lily turned to Marley, her mind racing. ‘What do you mean?’
Janet stepped forward with well-oiled compassion. ‘Lily, I’m very sorry to hear that your mom’s gone missing. It’s a horrible state of affairs.’
She had a manner that was meant to comfort those that came to her ample bosom, but she only irritated Lily, who had a sudden urge to stomp on her piggy feet and hear her squeal.
‘I’m sure your mom will turn up real soon,’ the budding Schwarzenegger said, with heartfelt reassurance. He bent down slightly to Lily’s height, to make their connection more intimate.
Lily hated being treated like a child, as though she was emotionally immature. ‘How do you know she’ll turn up soon?’ she asked him, cuttingly.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Do you know more than her?’ She nodded to Marley. ‘This detective here who’s been assigned the case?’
‘Well, no, not exactly,’ Ted said, straightening up, retreating to higher ground.
‘Then you’re either lying to me or offering me platitudes. Which is it?’ Lily’s eyes flashed like cutting knives.
Ted was now back to the safety of his full height, his genial smile slowly waning. He opened and closed his mouth like a fish swallowing water.
‘The fact is you don’t know when my mom’s coming back,’ Lily continued, ‘same as the cops. So why pretend? You’re spinning crap to make me feel good, but all you’re doing is making me lose what little respect I might have had for you.’
The two government officers gaped at her. Lily stared back at them defiantly. Marley stepped into the place where the air once had been. ‘Lily’s had a long and very upsetting day,’ she explained to Janet and Ted, who were staring blankly.
Lily sensed the detective was amused by the skirmish, but was too professional to show it.
Janet regained her place in the world. ‘Lily, under state law in situations like this, when a minor has no relatives who can act as guardians, and when there’s clearly a threat to personal safety or wellbeing, we’re required by law to take custodial care until such time as an alternative arrangement can be determined and approved by the CPS.’ She finished with a slight air of smugness, as though using an acronym somehow returned her to her rightful status.
‘Well you can stick your C-P-S up your A-S-S.’ Lily glared at her, feeling her face redden with anger.
‘Miss Lennox,’ Janet said, shocked, ‘I will not have you talk to me . . .’
‘She’s coming with me.’
A voice from behind. Strong and clear.
They all turned.
Walking up the corridor strode a young man. He was slim, and moved with the grace and power of a wild cat. He had long shiny black hair that flowed down to his shoulders, and huge dark eyes that shone bright. He wore a park ranger’s uniform smudged with dirt, and large black boots crusted in mud. He wasn’t much older than Lily, yet he had a confidence and air of authority that made her think he was the coolest guy she had ever laid eyes on.
‘And who might you be?’ Marley asked, momentarily taken aback by his bold entrance.
‘Skyhawk Nuevo, ma’am. I have permission from Miss Lennox’s legal guardian to take her back to his home.’ He handed Marley a printed email.
She quickly read it, then looked up at Lily. ‘Do you know a Dr Frederick Maguire?’
‘Of course,’ Lily said calmly, as though none of this was a surprise. ‘Dr Maguire is my uncle. I spoke to him earlier. He said he was going to send . . . Skyhawk . . . to come get me.’
Ted crossed his bulging biceps over his barrel chest and said with a steely smile, ‘I’m sorry, Lily, but we can’t allow you to leave here with another minor. Where is this uncle?’
Skyhawk took out a well-worn leather wallet. ‘Dr Maguire is in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And I’m not a minor.’ He handed his driver’s licence to Ted, who glanced at it, then passed it to Marley. She wrote down his details in her department-issue notebook.
‘It’s not happening,’ Janet said sharply. ‘This doctor might well be your legal guardian but . . .’ She looked over at Skyhawk suspiciously. ‘Are you related to Miss Lennox? Or are you just simply a friend?’
‘I’m no relation, ma’am,’ Skyhawk said, with a quiet steadiness. ‘But if you got any concerns about the bona fides here, I suggest you call Dr Maguire.’
‘Who is this Dr Maguire anyway?’ Janet said. She turned to Lily. ‘I’m sorry, Lily, but until we receive formal notification from this doctor and evidence that he is in fact your legal guardian, then I’m afraid we cannot release you into the care of this young man. It would be unlawful
to do so.’
A phone rang on the desk beside Marley. She grabbed it and answered impatiently. ‘Yes?’
Her face immediately tightened. ‘Yes, sir. Detective Marley Davis, sir.’ Her voice was crisp. She was alert and tense. The others stared at her. She listened, said ‘Yes, sir’ a few more times, then hung up. She looked over at the two CPS officers, like a schoolchild who’d just come back into the classroom after a visit to the principal’s office. ‘That was the commissioner of police. The governor has given his permission for Lily to travel to Santa Fe with . . . Skyhawk . . . here.’
‘The governor?’ Ted said, looking across at Janet in disbelief.
Lily tried to stop from grinning.
‘He’s emailing authorisation,’ Marley said. ‘He also instructed that the suitcase travel with you, Lily.’ Then she added, bitingly, ‘Your uncle must be a very important man.’
‘Uncle Freddie rocks,’ Lily said, as she pushed past the two stunned Child Protective Services officers and stood beside Skyhawk.
‘Now, am I free to go?’ she asked sweetly.
Skyhawk’s car was parked out on the street around the corner from the station. It was a ’78 Cadillac convertible, a faded blue relic that looked barely roadworthy, but totally cool. Two SWAT officers walked up wheeling the suitcase on a trolley, then with considerable effort they slung it into the huge trunk.
As they walked off, they looked over at Lily and shook their heads, as if she was responsible for the preternatural qualities of the battered Samsonite.
Skyhawk came around and opened the door for her. ‘Excuse the mess,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t expecting visitors when I left home this morning.’
On the front seat was a pair of workman’s gloves and a large hunting knife in a beautiful hand-carved leather sheath, from which hung a couple of long colourful feathers.
‘Oh, sorry.’ Skyhawk quickly grabbed the knife, leaned across her and put it in the glove compartment. His smell immediately wafted over her – a smell of ferns and green moss and forest floors after a spring shower. It was a comforting smell, earthy and untainted.