I’ve been away for too long.
He had thought the smell of the clones was bad. But it was nothing compared to the rotten stench coming through the vents and around the leaky windows as he drove into the city.
It made him want to stop the car and kill the first person he saw. He restrained himself. He had an agenda and didn’t have time for diversions.
Later, perhaps.
The information the clone in the Hawaiian shirt gave him wasn't alarming. But it was close. A rare loose thread in his life. The sort that could unravel everything if the wrong person were to pull on it. Someone like detective Harley. Though how much influence she had anymore was a matter of debate. Enough influence for her former partner to bring her back into service. But now it seemed Agent Graves might be parting ways with the FBI.
He didn’t like that. Law enforcement officials held to a very rigid routine. They were bound by rules and procedures if they wanted their silly laws to hold up in court. But freelancers…they didn’t have to follow the rules. Not if their desired results weren’t congruent with written laws.
And that could be a real problem.
Which was why it was better to be proactive.
He maneuvered the Buick down to the east side of down. Over the railroad tracks. Literally on the wrong side. Again. That one little thread. He should have taken care of it. Was going to. Maybe he’d been sentimental. Maybe that’s why he didn’t.
No, sentiment couldn’t be it. More like an admiration of efficiency.
After all, it was hard to find a good mechanic.
Thirty-Six
“Hey, wake up.”
Graves was leaning over her. She blinked stupidly. What was he doing here? Wasn’t he down in D.C. kissing fibbie ass? And why did he have all his clothes on? That’s not how those dreams usually went. At least he’d shaved. She didn’t like him looking all tired and rumpled like…
He held up a grease-spotted white paper bag. "Brought you breakfast," he said. It smelled like cheeseburgers and fries. "Except it's more like dinner, considering the time."
At least he hadn’t brought coffee. Her stomach growled. Cheeseburgers sounded good to it.
She sat up. She still had all her clothes on. Which was kind of disappointing. She rubbed her face with both hands. Memories of the last couple days crept back into her consciousness. Had all that really happened? Was she really back on the Reaper’s trail?
Graves raised his eyebrows. They asked a question that she wasn’t sure how to answer. You okay, partner?
She hadn’t been okay for a long, long time. Even though she’d stopped boozing and cleaned up her act a bit, she still felt like a zombie. The walking dead. Everything she’d valued and held precious had been ripped away from her. Or lost through carelessness.
Her dad. Her job. Walt.
And now, by some twisted miracle, here he was. In her life again. Working together.
And he brought cheeseburgers.
She wanted to ask for more, but she’d take what she could get.
She swung her leg out over the floor. “What the frick time is it?” she asked.
God, she needed to run and take a shower. She must have looked like hell. Well, more hellish than usual. She wasn’t going to pass for a supermodel with one leg and a giant scar running down one side of her face.
“Almost seven,” Graves said, “I just woke up about an hour ago myself. Hope you don’t mind, I used your shower. And your razor.”
I do mind, you didn’t invite me in the shower with you.
“My razor? Oh, yeah, that one.”
“It’s very pink,” Graves said. He rubbed his chin. “Still sharp, too.”
She looked down at her leg and wiggled her toes. Damned if she didn’t feel those phantom toes on the other leg wiggle too. Creeped her out every time.
“Yeah, well, it only gets used half as much,” she said.
Speaking of…she leaned down to grab her prosthetic. It was just out of reach. Of course. Walt crouched down and got it for her. As he held it out to her, she felt herself almost tearing up for some damned reason. She ducked her head and mumbled a thanks.
Graves stood. He shook the bag. It stank wonderfully of burgers and greasy fries. “You want dinner first or shower?”
She gave her armpit a sniff. “How bad do I smell?” she asked.
“Not bad.”
“Dinner first,” she said, “I could eat the whole damned cow.”
Thirty-Seven
After burgers and fries and a long, hot shower, Harley felt almost human again. As they drove down to the east side of town, past the railroad tracks, she watched Graves from the corner of her eye. It was so good to have him around again. She swallowed past the lump in her throat. It wasn’t going to be for long. They were going to catch the Reaper, or he was going to disappear like mist in the sunshine. And then Walt would go back to being an FBI guy and she’d go back to… Yeah. Best not to think about that stuff.
“This better be legit,” she said.
Shadows moved across Graves’ face. The SUV’s headlights shone on cracked, crumbling pavement. There were more potholes than there were street in some places. The streets on the eastside were almost deserted this late at night. And most of the streetlights were dead, too. The tenements they passed only showed patches of dim light. Most of the windows were dark. Sleeping, or just empty? It was almost like the street where the Reaper left his message. Eerily quiet.
"All we can do is check it out," Graves said, "The plumber checked out. Maybe the mechanic will too."
Harley shivered, even though it was warm in the SUV. The plumber had been a wreck of a man. They’d found him right where Graves Sr. said they’d find him. Living in a halfway house over on the south side of town. The guy had more or less become a permanent resident because he could actually fix things. He’d done time for assaulting a guy with a pipe wrench. Something about a woman. Or maybe it was drugs. The guy kind of rambled. It had been a chore to get him to focus on the mechanic. When the guy’s memory finally clicked in, his expression closed up, his eyes going narrow.
Oh, yeah, Bennie. Great mechanic. Had a coke habit for a while, but he kicked it. Told me something once, while we was doing lines. Scared the shit out of me. Told me he worked on death’s car.
The plumber had gone quiet, staring at the floor and shaking his head. It had taken some more patient prodding from Graves to get him going again. Harley had stood back by the door, in the shadows, fists clenched in her pockets. Graves had a lot more patience than she did. She would have grabbed the guy’s flannel shirt and started shaking him by then.
The plumber rubbed his gaunt face. His hands were trembling.
I don't know man, we were both high. People say things when they're flyin', ya know? Anyway, I asked Bennie what he meant. And he told me…he told me…guy brought the car in regular. Liked to keep it running good. Said it looked like a piece of crap, but under the hood, it was a beast. Had a 600 pony police interceptor engine, souped up tranny and heavy duty suspension. Cost the guy a fortune for Bennie to do it. Coulda got it done elsewhere, but the guy wanted Bennie to do the work.
So, Bennie says this one night, the guy brings the car in. Bennie lives in a little apartment over the garage, so people bring shit by all hours. Pisses him off, but he won’t move.
Anyway, guy brings this car in hot. His busts the lock on Bennie’s door and brings the car in. Bennie’s in his skivvies, running downstairs with a shotgun in his hand. He sees the car, recognizes it. Its got some crumpled fenders, smoke’s coming out from under the hood.
Bennie’s yelling what the hell. And then the guy steps out. He’s dressed all in black. ALL in black, head to toe. Can’t see his face or nothing.
At that point, Harley was nearly vibrating with barely contained fury. All she wanted then was this mechanic's address. There was no way he could not be talking about the Reaper.
Now, let me explain, Bennie said he’d never really seen this guy’s
face good. Guy always wore dark glasses and what looked like a wig and fake beard. Bennie didn’t care, the guy paid cash, and lots of it.
But when Bennie saw this guy coming out of that car like death himself, he said he almost shit himself. He forgot the shotgun in his hand and just dropped to his knees and started praying.
The guy came up to him and told him to get up. Bennie did and this guy pulled out a wad of cash that could choke a horse. He told Bennie to pull the engine and all the goodies he could salvage, then take the car to the crusher at the junkyard. He said he'd bring Bennie a new car in a couple days. The guy goes to the trunk and takes out a little black backpack and shuts it. He goes back up to Bennie. Bennie's there shakin' in his boots because he knows this guy is some kind of bad business. He wants to run away, but he's too afraid. The guy just hands Bennie the money and tells him not to open the trunk. Then he walks out. Middle of the frickin' night and in a shitty neighborhood, guy just walks out into it. Like he ain't afraid of nothing. Like he's going out to hunt up some more death.
Of course Bennie the mechanic opened the trunk. The plumber said Bennie never told him exactly what was in it, just that he shut that trunk right quick and never went near that end of the car. He stayed up all night stripping the car and first thing in the morning towed it over to the wrecking yard and watched it get turned into a little cube of crumpled metal.
Harley could barely contain herself. She finally managed enough calm to ask the plumber when all this happened to Bennie the mechanic. After prodding his memory, the plumber came up with a date that was pretty close to when the Reaper attacked her. According to the plumber, Bennie the mechanic kept doing work for the guy–at least up to the point where the plumber ended up in prison. He hadn’t reconnected with Bennie since he got out of prison, but he gave them the mechanic’s address.
Over on the east side of town. On the wrong side of the railroad tracks.
Through trash strewn streets and past darkened tenements, Graves maneuvered the SUV. Harley stewed in her own thoughts. Her mind kept going back to that night in a different shop. She lost everything there. Had it taken from her. Her heart pounded and her palms were slick with sweat. Why was she so scared? The Reaper wasn’t going to be there. If they were lucky, they’d get a clue from Bennie the mechanic. A break that would finally get them on the Reaper’s path.
Something a few years ago, she would have killed to get.
“You okay?” Graves asked.
She rubbed her palms on her jeans. “Yeah, fine,” she said.
“You’re humming.”
She jerked back. Humming? “No I wasn’t,” she said.
"Yeah, you were. You always hum when you're nervous," Graves said.
“I’m not nervous. And I don’t hum.”
She kept her eyes ahead, glad for the darkness to hide her burning cheeks. Graves turned yet another corner. He must have had a map inside his head. Either that or he was lost.
“Okay, you do something that sounds exactly like humming when you’re nervous,” he said, “You getting one of your feelings?”
Maybe she was. She took a mental step back and examined what she was feeling. Back when she and Graves were partners, sometimes she’d get a hunch about something. There was one time they’d been about to go into a building to look for a perp, when she stopped and yelled for Graves to stop, too. Graves had given her a what the hell look. Three seconds later, the building exploded.
He never questioned one of her hunches again.
Unfortunately, her feelings were unreliable. Otherwise she’d still have both legs and both eyes.
This time, as she tried to examine her nervousness, the feelings seemed to skitter all over the place. It didn’t feel like a warning. It didn’t feel like anticipation. It was all jumbled.
And not very helpful.
“I don’t know,” she said, “Maybe I’m just out of practice.”
“Thought you were still going after the bad guys,” he said.
She snorted a nervous laugh. “Those guys? They’re chumps. Lightweights who can’t stay out of jail to save their lives,” she said, “You know there’s a difference between them and…what I used to hunt.”
“Yeah, I know,” Graves said. He slowed the SUV. Ahead of them the headlights illuminated a sign. “Looks like we’re here.”
The sign was faded and weatherbeaten, the paint flaking off in chunks. It was barely readable. Crumbling white letters on a splotched blue background. Bennie’s Garage. The oval sign had a jagged section missing on the bottom right. Like an airborne shark had taken a bite out of it. There were pockmarks on it that looked suspiciously like bullet holes.
The building the sign was attached to didn’t look a lot better. The cinderblock structure sat by itself on a cramped lot between two taller, equally dilapidated buildings. A bent up chain link fence stretched out on either side, theoretically blocking access to the back. Two sagging wooden garage doors took up most of the face of the building. A smaller door with iron grating over the window sat off to the right, next to a narrow window, also with iron grating.
The second story of the garage had three narrow windows in it, spaced equally apart. One window showed a dim, yellow light.
Hopefully, that meant Bennie the mechanic was home.
Graves parked the SUV in the driveway. Before he shut off the engine, he pulled his pistol out of his coat and checked the magazine. Harley gave it a wistful look. She had her Taser in her pocket, but it just wasn’t the same.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a spare, would you?” she asked.
Graves gave her one of his raised eyebrow looks. "You're not licensed to carry a firearm anymore, are you?"
She let out a small sigh. Mr. Rule Book was back. “It’s a technicality,” she said, “Come on, you’re not going to let me go in unarmed, are you?”
“You’re a weapon all by yourself,” he said. He opened up the console between the seats and handed her a flashlight. “Here, you can hold this.”
She peered into the compartment. “You got a big, fat target I can wear, too?”
He rolled his eyes and shut off the engine and the lights. The sudden darkness gave her a shiver. She flicked the flashlight on.
"The Reaper's long gone from here," Graves said, "If we're lucky, this guy can tell us something. I'm not holding out a lot of hope, though."
Still, she shivered again. Something was wrong here. And not just the neighborhood.
“I don’t like this, Walt,” she said, “I got a feeling.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “So are we going in or not?” he asked.
She turned her head. The garage bulked up in front of them. It was made of shadows and darkness. Had she lost her nerve? Was that it? She could take the small fries, but ran scared from this one?
She clenched her jaw and pushed the door open.
“Come on,” she said, “Let’s get this over with. I have laundry to do back home.”
Thirty-Eight
Bennie the mechanic wasn’t answering his door. The old wooden door threatened to fall out of its frame every time Graves rapped his knuckles on it. Dust and flakes of green paint fell with every knock. Harley glanced around. The street was empty. And dark. A strong odor of grease and motor oil hung around the garage. It somewhat overpowered the general stench of trash and dog crap that permeated the neighborhood.
It smelled like dad’s garage.
She fought the shivers that ran up her spine. Pushed away the images of that night bubbling up from the depths of her brain.
“Maybe the guy’s a heavy sleeper,” Harley said.
“Maybe,” Graves said, “Maybe we should try in the morning.”
Harley was about to agree with him when she caught a whiff of something. In between the stink of shit and motor oil, there was something. A bright scent that sent shivers down her spine.
Citrus.
Harley stepped back and yanked the Taser out of her pocket. Graves gave her a look
, his hand raised to knock again.
“He’s here,” Harley said, “The Reaper.”
Graves’ eyes went wide. His gun was out in a flash. He took the flashlight from Harley’s hand, then he kicked the door open. Wood crunched and glass shattered as the door slammed back against the wall.
He went in, flashlight and pistol raised.
“Shit,” Harley said.
Usually she was the one going headlong into danger. What the hell was he thinking? She rushed in after him. And almost ran smack into his back.
“What the hell, Walt?” she whispered.
Then she saw the body on the floor in the bright circle of the flashlight. A thin, wiry man in blue mechanic’s overalls. He lay facedown, his balding head reflecting the flashlight’s beam. A greasy baseball cap lay a few inches from him. Blood pooled around his neck. Which sported a horrific gash.
“Bennie the mechanic?” Graves said.
Graves raised the flashlight and panned it across the garage. Racks of greasy tools, oil coated barrels, a rust-stained tow truck.
And a tired looking Buick sedan. The car’s dented fenders were a faded metallic blue. Rust spotted the corners of the doors. But the tires looked new. In the quiet of the garage, Harley could hear the tiny ticks of cooling metal.
Graves walked over to the car and put his hand on the hood. “Still warm,” he said.
Something whirred out of the darkness and hit Grave’s arm. His gun and the flashlight went flying, clattering across the concrete floor, along with the tire iron that hit him. He spun around, clutching his arm. The flashlight’s beam swung wildly as it rolled along the floor.
Harley ran at the where the tire iron came from. The Taser was raised in front of her. The damn thing didn’t have any range. She’d have to get close.
Something slammed into her gut. She went to the floor, gasping for breath. Graves cried out her name. She heard footsteps pounding toward her. Idiot. What did he think he was doing?
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