by Adam Carter
She had never much liked Jeremiah, but after a year of knowing him she was at last beginning to understand him a little. Which was likely a little more than anyone else at the bunker did.
If only there weren’t rules against talking about one another’s lives and pasts. If only people took the time to break those rules.
A shrill bleeping sounded, entirely disruptive to the feel of the grand house, and Lin pulled her phone from an inside pocket. “Go,” she said. After a few moments she hung up and told Jeremiah, “That was the bunker. Welles has struck again.”
“Another drug dealer?”
“No. A prostitute.”
“It’s starting isn’t it? He’s targeting other people now. Whatever’s coming, it’s happening right now.”
“Looks that way. You OK to move?”
“Believe me, Detective, stopping Welles today is without a doubt an attainable goal.”
She smiled, confused by the happiness that statement brought her. She had never before liked to partner with Jeremiah, but today, of all the days of the year, she was glad he was with her on this case. With Jeremiah at her side she actually felt WetFish had the best chance of stopping Welles and making Christmas just that little bit merrier for everyone.
CHAPTER FIVE
The woman’s name was, or had been, Emily Ross. She had been killed by a single shot to the stomach and had bled out over the pavement. Jeremiah had once heard that stomach wounds were the worst possible injuries because they took a long time to kill you, but he could think of far lengthier deaths than a single gunshot wound. Hopefully Ross had gone into shock the instant she had been shot. It would have done nothing to dull the pain, but it stood her a chance of having been knocked unconsciousness before the end came.
He and Lin did not go to view the body; there was no need, nor did they want to present themselves to the cameras. Instead they drove along Welles’s likeliest escape route. Jeremiah kept several cars in his large garage at home, although he had never much cared for them and none of them were flashy showpieces. He never wanted his colleagues to see that he had financial resources and so kept only old, beat-up cars. As they drove, this time with him behind the wheel, he began to question why he had allowed Detective Lin to see the inside of his home, see something of who he truly was. He did not see her as a friend – he had no friends, especially inside of WetFish – so why then had he been so willing for her to get to know him better? For that matter why had he even told her about Artemis and his wife Alissa?
It was as though he wanted her in his life, which was ridiculous. Jeremiah had no friends, needed no friends. Around the office he was popular, carefree and friendly, but he knew he was also loathed and feared. In his private life Jeremiah preyed on women like he was some virulent disease, never allowing himself to stay with any one woman for more than a month, and even only that long if he was feeling especially fond of her. This was the first time he had ever mixed work with his real life, and he had no idea why.
Speaking of his life, he had far too much to do to be messing around with Welles. Jeremiah was not as other people. He was stronger, faster, had far more acute senses; he could subvert the minds of animals and people through an advanced form of hypnotism and could even turn his body into a fine mist, although wasn’t quite certain himself how that one worked. But the abilities came with a price. For one thing, his powers were only heightened at night; for another, he did not eat or drink as other people did. Soil and blood were what sustained him, but he had been this way for so long now he no longer even considered it unusual. It was certainly a fair trade to be able to do what he could do.
Several months earlier he had met someone else who had these abilities: a woman named Josephine Dalton. She infiltrated their WetFish bunker but, unfortunately, had vanished, and Jeremiah had been secretly looking for her ever since, with no luck at all. These winter months provided him with longer nights and he should have been using them wisely. Instead he was running around with Detective Lin and being rather annoyed with himself that he found he was enjoying the experience.
Jeremiah checked his watch and found it was already seven o’clock. They had wasted so much time going to that shelter and then back to Jeremiah’s house, that they were losing precious hours. The dark had already gone and Jeremiah knew this would now be doubly difficult for them. If he had found Welles during the night he could have gained the man’s scent and perhaps tracked him more easily, but now the sun was up there seemed little chance of finding him at all.
“There,” Lin said, and Jeremiah was snapped out of his own self-induced misery to follow her finger. “Broken window.”
Jeremiah saw it. Welles had likely run down an alley which led to a car park, but they both knew he was using this as a ruse. He was too clever to have parked there, and so they had continued, and only two minutes’ walk farther up the road had they come across the back of a sports shop. Jeremiah pulled the car to a halt and they both got out. He could tell Lin was feeling the cold again, especially after being so warm in his house, although Jeremiah suffered no such chills. Changes in temperatures did not affect him at all: it had been so long since he was too cold or too hot that he hardly remembered how uncomfortable it could feel. That he had started the log fire back home purely for Lin’s benefit was also strange, although he told himself it was because he was maintaining the pretence of being normal.
Whether he believed that for a moment he had no idea.
They headed slowly for the back of the shop, both of them wishing the DCI would on occasion sanction the use of firearms. They knew Welles was armed, had no idea to what extent, and they were heading into the situation armed only with their wits; they didn’t even have any batons.
Once at the window Jeremiah peered through, although knew Welles would not be hanging around waiting for the police to show. There were no alarms blaring, so if there was one it was silent. Jeremiah started in slowly, keeping to the shadows, motioning for Lin to remain back. It was dark within, but Jeremiah did not require light by which to see. He scanned the rows of endless shorts, T-shirts and jackets, finding nothing out of place, nothing moving at all. He slowly crept farther into the massive room, keeping low, but could see no legs of a man hiding behind any of the clothes racks.
Motioning for Lin to join him, Jeremiah headed over to the equipment department and found a lightweight golf bag before selecting two golf clubs and a cricket bat. Lin raised her eyebrows in mild humour, and Jeremiah tossed in a couple of golf balls in case he needed missiles. “In the battle of vigilantes,” he said, “Frank Castle is about to meet Casey Jones.” By her dour expression he could tell she did not get the reference, but he hardly cared. Now armed, he at least felt a little more secure in their work.
“He’s not here,” Lin said. This shop heads into the shopping centre, so he’s likely broken through the door and disappeared somewhere out there.”
“He might be hiding low somewhere,” Jeremiah said. “He’ll want to check on the news story he’s created, so he’ll have headed for an electrical store.” He could see Lin hadn’t thought of that, but then that was what partners were for. “Come on.”
“Hey,” she said. “You can’t go patrolling the shopping centre with all that gear. It’s stealing.”
“It’s only stealing if I don’t bring it back,” he pointed out. “Besides, I don’t much care.”
He walked to the front of the shop to find Lin’s supposition had been correct. The windows of the door were intact, but the door itself had been forced. Jeremiah gingerly pushed it, stepping out into the centre at large, but no one tried to take his head off so he figured Welles wasn’t hanging around. The centre was all on one level – which made for no easy sniper positions – and consisted of about sixty shops. Checking the doors of each to see whether any had been forced would have been prudent, although he knew precisely the shop he wanted to try first, and it was only round the next two corners. With any luck Welles would have had some trouble getting the p
ower on and would still be in there. And if he was fiddling with the controls of a television he may even have set his weapons down; at the very least he would be concentrating on something and would not notice when Jeremiah came up behind him and whacked him over the head with a nine iron.
If that was even the right term; Jeremiah hated golf.
He heard the sounds of the television before he saw anything and slowed to a crawl, knowing Welles was in reach. He motioned for Lin to slow and saw she understood. Taking a deep breath, Jeremiah peered round the corner and located the shop he was after. He could see movement within, knew Welles had not been and gone. He stared harder, trying to see what Welles was doing, and through the window he caught his first actual sight of the man he had only seen in documents the DCI had handed him.
Welles was thinner than Jeremiah had expected, about six-one, maybe six-two, with short, slick hair as though he thought he was in some kind of advert for hair gel. He wore thin oval glasses and enough riot gear to make some of the overcompensating cops Jeremiah had known very jealous. His eyes were pinched, and he could see intelligence flaring through them. Here was a man methodical in his nature and ruthless in its application.
At the moment Welles appeared to be packing his guns away, readying to leave the television shop. He had likely seen everything he needed to and now wished only to put some space between him and the scene of the crime.
If Jeremiah had a gun he could have just shot the freak and had done with it, but instead he was armed with melee weapons. That meant he would have to get in close, and with Welles packing firearms that was never a good idea. In truth Jeremiah did not fear guns at all, but Lin was with him and he could not reveal his incredible agility and strength in her presence. Nor could he shoo her away to hide somewhere.
Jeremiah decided to do the one thing he was best at. Talk.
Stepping out into view, he strode slowly towards the shop. Welles saw him at once, but aside from raising his eyes to peer at him over the rim of his oval glasses there was no reaction at all. Welles did not gaze at him in curiosity, anger, or fear. He was looking at Jeremiah as though he was an approaching dog come to bury his prize bone.
Jeremiah stopped several feet from the shop. Welles had forced the door but Jeremiah made no move to approach it. He simply stood there staring, waiting for Welles to make the next move.
Purposefully finishing up with whatever he was doing, Welles made him wait, until finally he turned off the television, threw a bag over his shoulder and headed for the door. He stopped once he was through and faced Jeremiah, standing about ten metres from him. The two men sized one another up, and Jeremiah wondered whether Welles thought they were in some Wild West movie serial.
“Hit man?” Welles asked. “I’m starting to annoy the right people?”
“Is that what this is all about?” Jeremiah asked seriously. “You’re trying to annoy the traffickers by taking out their dealers?”
“Of course,” he replied matter-of-factly. “Why else would I be targeting them? You should have died in that car explosion. I wonder why you didn’t.”
“Lucky I guess.” Jeremiah noted the man was now deep in thought. He spoke with the clear crisp tones of an English professor and Jeremiah was afraid he had underestimated this man. He had thought Welles to be trying to clear the streets of poison, but if he was doing all of this just to get noticed, it meant he was after the people at the top.
But why would he want to do that? Because he was crazy would have been the obvious answer, but Jeremiah had always found that even crazy people did things for sane reasons.
“Cop,” Jeremiah said at last, if only to gauge his reaction. If Welles thought he was a mob hit man there was every chance he would blow him away first chance he got. Maybe Welles wasn’t a cop-killer though.
“Ah,” Welles said, looking Jeremiah up and down carefully. “I would not have guessed.”
“Would placing you under arrest actually do any good?”
“My good man, I have far too much to be doing, I have neither the time nor the inclination to spend time in your cells.”
“You have something big planned for today,” Jeremiah told him. “It’s started with prostitutes. I don’t get that part. Drug dealers I understand, but why would you want to kill prostitutes?”
“You’re a cop, you say, and you don’t know where whore money goes? It’s all connected to the drug trade, officer. Most whores are off their face on crack, which is why they sell themselves to begin with.”
“Made a study of it have you?”
A flicker of emotion passed across Welles’s face. It wasn’t anger, more frustration. Jeremiah guessed Welles didn’t like to be made fun of, or for people not to understand what he was doing. Jeremiah decided against pushing him any further.
“I’m taking out the bottom rungs, officer. And what happens when the people holding the ladders let go?”
“Nothing,” Jeremiah said. “The ladder sways but whoever’s at the top tends to stay up there.”
“Which brings us to my big play today. I’ve removed the people holding the ladder, officer, and now I’m going to give that ladder one big push to see what comes falling down.”
Yeah, Jeremiah surmised, definitely an English professor in there somewhere.
“It’s a pretty tall order,” Jeremiah said. “Why are you doing all this?”
Welles seemed on the verge of telling him, but said instead, “Society turns a blind eye to the evils of this country, officer. Society mollycoddles, and that has to stop.”
Jeremiah could not have agreed more, it was as though the man had read his mind, but there were ways of doing things and Welles was simply too open about it. Jeremiah withdrew two golf clubs from the bag upon his back and twirled them theatrically. “Let’s get this over with, chump.”
Now there was anger in Welles’s eyes, which was precisely what Jeremiah had been hoping for. He had tried to get information from him but he could see Welles wasn’t willing to give anything. As soon as Jeremiah knew this he had no qualms about pushing the nut job to see how little it would take him to crack.
Welles moved more quickly than Jeremiah predicted, bringing up a handgun almost faster than Jeremiah could see. But Jeremiah’s reflexes were honed to perfection, fuelled by his own unnatural nature, and he span with the clubs, slamming one into the hand which held the gun, the other coming down in a harsh chop into the back of the man’s head. Welles went down hard, but rolled from Jeremiah’s reach and tossed something his way. He was up and running and Jeremiah gave chase, ignoring the thing Welles had tossed at him. Jeremiah had almost batted it aside, whatever it was, with one of the clubs, but instead had dodged it so as not to slow him in his chase.
Behind him he heard Lin shout and turned to see her panicked eyes. He realised the thing hurtling through the air was a pineapple; an old-fashioned pin grenade from World War Two. And it was headed straight for Lin.
All thoughts of Welles forgotten, Jeremiah released his clubs, letting them clatter to the ground, and lunged for the airborne grenade, yanking free the golf bag as he launched. More poetic men would have claimed the world seemed to move in slow motion, but Jeremiah’s brain could not accept that. The world moved at the swift pace it always did; it was just that Jeremiah was quicker.
Shoving the bag over the grenade mid-flight, he pushed it to one side as he bodily collided with Lin, shoving her to the floor even as the golf bag span out of control and smashed through the window of the television shop.
A single loud explosion tore through the shop and Jeremiah stretched himself out as the raining glass and metal showered upon him. It had taken but a moment, and he was back on his feet in the very next instant, but Welles was gone.
“You’re making a habit of that,” Lin said, rising shakily to her own feet.
“Underestimating that man?”
“Saving my life, you know what I mean.”
He looked to her, could see she was shaken, although she was ma
naging as warm a smile as he could have expected from her. It was only then that he realised he had saved her life. He had not stopped to think, had just acted. He had seen the grenade and allowed Welles to escape just so he could save Lin’s life. It was odd now he thought about it, and he reasoned that his subconscious had told him that Sanders would blame him should he come back from the assignment alive and Lin didn’t. But he knew he had not been thinking that at the time, had not been thinking anything. He had just made a decision, had gone with what his gut had been telling him.
He didn’t like Lin, they were far from friends; he hadn’t risked himself to save anyone before and did not understand why he would do so now.
He had only ever cared for Alissa and Artemis, but they didn’t count. He had been fully human back then, instead of the shadow of his former self, the wraith those creatures had made him by destroying his family. Jeremiah’s humanity had died long before his encounter with Nathaniel and Richard, long before that night when he was at last defeated.
And as he looked at Lin trying vainly to control her shaking he felt an overwhelming urge to remove his coat and place it across her shoulders. But he resisted. She was not his friend, and she was certainly not Alissa or Artemis.
“We should report in,” he said stonily, looking away so he would not be tempted to help her further.
“Sanders isn’t going to like this.”
“No, but we did learn something.”
“That Welles is nuts?”
“That he has a purpose. Whatever he’s doing, he has a reason. He wants to get to the top, but why? What could they possibly have that he wants?”
“His sister?” Lin suggested. “She disappeared years ago, remember. Maybe she didn’t go to Australia after all. Or maybe she did and they followed her. Maybe they’re holding her for ransom.”