by K. J. Emrick
Another drink from his cup.
There he goes again. He just twisted the conversation away from my question and back to him helping everybody in the world.
Another drink.
And another.
His smile is infuriating, because I can see that he knows what he’s doing. He maybe even knows I’m not who I say I am. Which would explain why I feel like I’m wasting my time.
So maybe I need to be a little more direct.
“Do you collect anything at all, Mister Kato?” I point over at the shelf. “Like Chinese dragons, for instance? Do you have any interest in Chinese artifacts?”
His dark brown eyes hold mine, as the teacup lifts up, and back down again.
When it does, my eyes flick to the smooth, white surface inside.
The cup is empty. Kato has been sitting there drinking from an empty cup. Now why didn’t I see that coming…?
Oh, hell.
Now I know what’s been bothering me. My brain was screaming it at me the whole time but I was just too preoccupied with my questions to notice. I thought it was because he was moving too fast for me to hear a future echo, switching subjects over and over, but the truth was even simpler than that.
My future-sense wasn’t working with Samuel Kato, because he’s a Person of Magic.
That’s…not good.
When I look up again, his eyes are focused on me with white heat.
“Wondered when you’d figure it out.”
It takes a moment for those words to sink in. A moment where I sat there indecisive, letting the whole fight or flight response work its way through me. He’d been lying to me this whole time. Putting on an act that I almost fell for. Just like I suspected, he knew why I was here.
Leaning forward, I put one hand casually to my back where the pistol sits ready in its holster, under my shirt.
“Mister Kato, I—”
With a motion that was abrupt and violent he slams the teacup down on the tabletop and it shatters into pieces that scatter in all directions with stinging force. They hit my fingers and my face, and I can feel more than a few of them cutting my skin and drawing blood in thin lines. My eyes automatically slam shut to protect themselves from the onslaught. I throw one arm up to guard my face, too late, and the other hand takes a solid grip on my revolver.
Not even a second has passed before I blink my eyes open again but when I do, Samuel Kato is gone.
Like magic.
His chair crashes over backward to the floor like he only just vacated it. The table screeches sideways, slamming into my ribs, and I jump up to my feet, pistol up and pointed at…
Kato is already at the doorway leading from the kitchen to the rest of the apartment. He didn’t disappear, he’s just moving fast. Like, really fast. He’s gone again by the time I start that way.
Okay, so here’s the thing. Innocent people don’t run. Guilty people run. He obviously knew I wasn’t really from the radio station here to do a story on him. He’s into something illegal, something I was here asking him about, and now he’s running away from me.
That’s an admission of guilt in my book, magic or no magic.
Running into the short apartment hallway I sweep my gun left to right just in time to see him coming out of a bedroom further down with something tucked under one arm. He sees me, and he smiles. Seriously, what does he have to be so happy about? His game is over, whatever that game was, and I’m standing between him and the door. We’re on the second floor up here. There’s no fire escape outside that window behind him. He’s trapped, and he has to know it.
“I’m going to be leaving now,” he says to me, his voice calm and even, like nothing in the world is bothering him.
“Like hell you are,” I tell him. I almost said ‘magic or not, you’re coming with me,’ but that sounded a little too much like Robocop. I need the guy to take me seriously if I’m going to have any chance of getting answers out of him. “Look, all I want to do is talk. You’ve been asking around about Chinese antiquities and I’m trying to find one. Why don’t we work together and maybe we can both get—”
“He sent you, didn’t he?” He doesn’t stop smiling. He hefts the thing under his arm, something bulky covered by a sheet, and then he crouches down like he’s going to run. “You can go back and tell Chen that he’ll be hearing from me when I choose. Until then he really should leave me alone.”
My gun comes up. He’s about to do something stupid and I don’t want him doing it in my direction. “You already know about Chen? Listen, Mister Kato, I’m not here to get you in trouble. You’ve got things going on you don’t want the police to know about, fine. Whatever. I’m not here for you. I just need to find the guy who took…Arnie Chen’s statue.”
The corner of the sheet slips away from the thing under his arm, and in the daylight coming through the window at the end of the hall I get a good look at it for the first time. Well, not exactly for the first time. I’ve seen pictures of it before. The real thing, even the little bit of it that I can see, is much more dazzling in real life. It’s…damn. The thing is beautiful.
Even though I can only see parts of it that’s all it takes. A green jade dragon, circling an ivory Chinese unicorn that is part elegant deer with the tail of a horse and the head of a lion and a single curving horn on her head. They circle each other, their bodies twisted together forever in a story of love that is as ancient as time itself.
Oh, crap. Kato isn’t he one looking to buy Chen’s statue. He’s the one who stole the thing in the first place!
He reaches across and casually tucks the sheet back down. It’s too late to hide it now. I’ve seen it already.
“I need to take that statue from you, Mister Kato. It’s nothing personal. I’m sure you had a very good reason for stealing it from Chen, but it belongs to him.”
The sneer on his face might be the first real emotion I’ve seen from him since I got here. “The statue doesn’t belong to him,” he says. “This is not your concern. This is personal. He was never the rightful owner, not that he’ll admit it. A man like Li Qiang Chen takes what he wants and doesn’t care who he hurts in the process. I owe him for what he has taken from me. This is me getting my payback. So, as I said, I’ll be leaving now.”
“Not going to happen.” I punctuate my threat with the barrel of my revolver, aimed at his chest. I’m betting even a Person of Magic gets dead when a bullet pierces their heart even if it isn’t silver. “Just put the statue down, and let’s talk.”
“Sorry, whoever you are. I’ve never been much of a talker.”
With a quick twist of his head he looks back at the window behind him. It’s closed, and like I said we’re on the second floor, and I think using that as a way out would be a really bad idea…
I blink, and every muscle in my body freezes up, as I realize how far his head has twisted around. Completely around. He’s like a human owl standing there with the back of his head facing me and his thick neck all bunched around itself, twisted to look behind him.
Then his head snaps back around, and his smile stretches wide, wide, wider until it’s literally ear to ear. Thin lips open around his perfectly flat teeth, and he says just two words.
“Watch this.”
My tongue finally shakes itself loose as I realize what he’s going to do and I manage to choke out, “No, don’t!”
Too late. He was already moving.
His body turns…no. Half of his body turned. Everything from the waist up corkscrews around backward while his legs and his feet stay planted right there on the rug. His arms…
Stretch…
Toward the window while he laughs, and laughs…
And then he crashes through the window, and it shatters all around him with a jangling sound of breaking glass. There’s no blood. All of those shards, all of those tiny flying missiles, and he laughs it off like it’s nothing.
He was through and outside and then—only then—his lower half follows fluidly after the rest of
him, up and out and down. Just like that he’s gone.
Just.
Gone.
What the hell did I just see?
“That’s not possible,” I mutter to myself. “The guy must be made out of taffy. Freaking taffy. He’s a freaking taffy man.”
Move, I tell myself in the next breath. Stop trying to make sense of what you just saw and work the case. Just work the case. Move, move, move!
Forcing my muscles to work again I run to the window, broken glass crunching under my feet, and look outside to find a little ledge running along the front of the building, just under the windowsill, but of course Mister Taffy Man isn’t there. He’s down on the ground, standing right next to the street, the statue still in his arms under that sheet.
He looks up at me, like he was just standing there waiting for me so he could see my reaction. His mouth is a normal mouth again, and his body is the same short and squat shape it was when he met me at the apartment door.
Then he gives me a little wave, and casually starts walking up the sidewalk. Now I know why he had the statue covered up. He’s going to walk away with the thing, disappear into the city, and nobody will see what he has. I’ll be running around in circles trying to find him again.
No way. No way is this magic Taffy Man going to get away from me that easy.
Maybe he has a car out front in the parking lot. He’s been living here like a normal person, running the damned homeowner’s association, and getting around to fundraisers all over the place. He must have a car. I could run down to the lot, cut him off that way. Except, he’s not turning to go around to the parking lot. He’s just walking away. He’s already halfway up the block as it is and by the time I use the front stairs to get down to Roxy, and then drive around to the street, he could have turned at the intersection or ducked behind one of the buildings on the other side or…or…
I can’t let him get away.
My pistol is still in my hand. It’s useless at the moment so I slide it back into its concealed holster. I can’t shoot a man for walking away from me unless I want to spend the foreseeable future in prison. I can’t shoot him for being some sort of magic freak, either. I can’t even shoot him for possessing stolen property. Not in this state.
So the gun goes away, and I carefully lever myself up and over the bottom sill of the window, avoiding the jagged pieces of glass still fixed at the edges, and I put one foot on the ledge outside. It’s no wider than my sneaker. Not a lot of space to stand.
Well, this is a stupid idea.
Holding carefully to the inside wall, I put my other foot out. A few pieces of glass get under the soles of my shoes and make my foot slip, and a sharp piece still in the window snags at my pants, but then I’ve got my footing and I swing myself out.
A quick glance shows me Kato is still there, way down the street now, but not hurrying. He’s not worried about me coming after him.
He’s going to be worried soon enough. I’ll give him plenty to worry about once I get down there…if I don’t kill myself first.
Marines are trained in all sorts of physical activities. We get run through obstacle courses of ropes and wires and walls, and we have regular physical exercise regimens that would make world-class athletes sweat. I’m in great shape. I’m confident in what my body can do.
But this…this makes me nervous.
Closing my eyes, I step off the ledge, and turn as I drop, and catch the ledge again with both hands. I hang there for just a second to let the momentum of my own weight pass through me and dissipate.
Then.
Drop.
I hit the ground and roll to disperse the force of the impact and now I’m on the ground. Ha! Take that gravity! Falling from a height of two stories—about twenty feet or so—might not sound like all that much, but try it yourself sometime and tell me what you think. If you don’t break your legs, you’ll still be feeling it for days.
Actually, I take that back. Kids, don’t try this at home.
Shaking the pain off, I get my feet under me again and looked to see how far Kato is now…
There he is, still walking up the street without a care in the world. I can’t tell from back here, but I swear to God I think he’s whistling.
“Bastard,” I mutter. “Didn’t expect me to jump out a window, did you?”
Obviously, he doesn’t know me very well.
My gun comes out again, and I start running, ignoring the burning pain in my shins from the drop, and the stinging abrasions on my palms from the rough ledge and the bits of glass where I’d grabbed hold to ease my fall. I can’t shoot the guy unless he gives me a reason, but I’m not going to give him the opportunity to try, either.
In cop shows, when you see police officers chasing a bad guy, they always shout at the guy. Stop. Halt. Hey you! In real life you don’t do that. All that would do is give the bad guy fair warning that they’re being chased and give them a better chance to get away. There’s no such thing as fair play when you’re trying to stop a bad guy. The good guys might have a code, but that doesn’t mean we’re stupid.
There’s a steady line of cars passing me on the street, and I can only imagine what they think of me racing by, legs pumping, gun in my hand. Joy Road is kind of a local shortcut that locals use to bypass the traffic on the Southfield Freeway and I-96. It sees a lot of traffic during the day, so there’s lots of motorists gawking in my direction. I can’t worry about that. If they call the police to come check out the crazy woman in Fiskhorn, so be it. Considering what I saw up in that apartment, I’ll take all the help I can get.
Breathing hard, with steady, even breaths, I’m starting to gain on him. You’d think a guy who could stretch his body like taffy would just throw his legs way out in front of him and be gone in no time. I guess he doesn’t want anyone to see what he can do. Not in public, anyway. I’m within twenty yards of catching him when a big rig hauling milk goes sailing past. The driver’s face when he sees me is comically horrified. I see his hand reach up, and grab a cord—
Oh, no no no no. Don’t do it. Don’t do it!
The sound of the blaring horn is impossibly loud. Beep, beep beeeeeeeeep…
I cringe and pick up my speed as much as I can, because I know that’s going to draw Kato’s attention back to me. Sure enough, he looks behind him, and sees me coming.
And he blows me a kiss.
“Stop right there!” I yell at him. Okay, fine, it’s just like on the cop shows but there’s no sense in being quiet now. He knows I’m here.
This time it isn’t a kiss he throws me. It’s the middle finger.
Without stopping his forward momentum, he throws himself to the side, his leg stretching out way ahead of him, the rest of his body extending along after, jumping across an impossible distance to slide in between two abandoned brick buildings almost quicker than the eye can follow.
Crap. I did not see that coming. That’s what happens when I can’t use my future-sense. The bad guys get to surprise me. I hate surprises.
Maybe I should reconsider the idea of shooting him…
At a full tear now, even with the sharp pain in my left shin from my drop, I make it to the buildings Kato slipped between in just a few heartbeats. I aim my gun in there but of course, I’m too late. The slippery little dude is already gone out the other side.
The space is narrow. Just about a foot wide. On one side is a warehouse of some kind and the other used to be a tire dealership according to the weathered sign, and they must have gotten a code variance to build this close together. If I turn sideways, and hold my breath, I could probably get through. Or get myself wedged in there. One or the other. I mean, I can suck in my gut, but my breasts are what they are. Usually, they’re not a problem but for this…yeah. The space is plenty big enough for Chen’s statue to have fit through but someone as barrel chested as Kato was? No way. Not unless his torso is just as flexible as his limbs and his neck. Which, obviously, it must have been. Dude flattened himself out like a pancake
to give me the slip.
And there’s no way on God’s green Earth that I’m going to chance getting stuck in there with him on the other side. Uh-uh. If he comes at me when I’m all wedged up I’m done for.
I take a few steps back from the buildings and look to both sides. I could go around on that end and try to cut him off—
Three seconds before the two patrol cars come screaming into sight I see them in my mind, red and blue lights flashing and tires squealing as they stop up against the curb on my side, parked across traffic.
I’ve already got my hands up in the air, finger off the trigger of my revolver, before the cars come to a stop. I saw them getting out with their guns drawn, and I know what they’re going to say. I figure this would just save time.
“Drop the gun! Drop the gun now, or we’ll shoot!”
“On your knees! Do it! Do it now!”
The police in Detroit are very efficient and professional. They don’t know what’s happening here, but they know I have a gun and in a city that has the second highest violent crime rate for big cities in the nation, they aren’t taking any chances.
The revolver drops to the ground next to me as I do as I’m instructed and kneel down, hands behind my head, fingers interlocked. I wait for them to move in on me, not offering any resistance when one cop puts the handcuffs on my wrists. I hear his voice in my head before I hear it with my ears, and I sigh. Of course it would be him.
“Well, well, well. Lookit what we have here. Sidney Stone, you’re under arrest.”
Chapter Six
We’ve all got people in our life who simply do not like us. Recently, I seem to be racking up more and more.
To be fair, Sergeant Nathaniel Braxton has disliked me for a long time. He comes by it naturally, considering we’re such different people. He thinks having authority means you can do whatever you want, whenever you want, to whoever you want. I think he’s a moron.