by C G Cooper
“You gonna sleep all day?” said Chance, stepping inside.
“Not the plan,” said Mac.
“Coulda fooled me,” said Chance. “Your buddy, Pittsburgh, called. Said you weren’t picking up the phone.”
“It’s probably dead,” said Mac. “Who— Never mind. It’s Kreisburg.”
“What is?”
“My buddy. Boss, actually.”
“Ah. Right.”
“Let me check my phone.”
The article in question was still in his jacket’s inside pocket. It was, as he’d suspected, dead to the world. He took it into the kitchen to charge.
“I’d offer you breakfast, but I’m fresh out of everything.”
“Breakfast?” said Chance. “Check again, bright eyes.” He waved toward the clock on microwave. In green block characters, it read 12:38.
“That can’t be right,” said Mac, though the clock on the stove agreed. He went into the bathroom and hunted up his watch. The countdown said 53:20:43. He sat down in the kitchen, held his head.
“Don’t sweat it,” said Chance. “We’ve all had a night on the tiles.”
“I didn’t drink,” Mac said. He displayed the bruise on his jaw, which the bathroom mirror had shown him was now a deep blue.
“How’d you get that?” said Chance.
Once again, Mac considered not telling him, but having lost several hours already, he didn’t want to do anything that might slow the investigation further.
“Jumped,” he said. “Last night, at the church on campus. Three bad guys in balaclavas. Two men, one woman.” He touched the bruise tenderly. “This was a pistol-whip.”
“Phew,” said Chance. “Tough church. Uh, speaking of religion, I got a confession. I knew what went down last night. Local PD secured the scene. Crisper, or whatever, said you took a few whacks.”
“Kreisburg. Why’d you ask, then?”
“See if you’d tell me. Thanks for that. I heard about the woman they assaulted. Don’t blame you for sleeping in.”
“It’s not the trauma,” said Mac, “if that’s what you’re thinking. Not here,” he tapped his body, “or here,” he tapped his head. “They did something to me, something—”
He saw the look crossing Chance’s face, concern mixed with doubts about Mac’s judgment. If he let either feeling take root, he knew, Chance would insist he spend the next few hours in the hospital. They were hours he couldn’t afford to lose.
Mac scratched the stubble on his cheek. “Sorry, you’re right. I’m not as tough as I used to be. Gettin’ old.”
Chance gave him a three count, which was enough of a pause to convince Mac he’d gotten away with the redirect.
Chance said, “You wanna borrow my phone?”
“Huh?”
“To call the office.”
Mac considered this. The honest answer was no. He didn’t want to have to explain to Kreisburg why he’d spent fourteen hours, give or take, passed out on the couch. If the old man thought he was too out of it, he might insist on pulling Mac in from the cold.
His chest itched. He scratched it, said, “Talk’s just gonna slow me down. What I need now is a new lead.”
“You and me both. Any idea where we can get one?”
“Did you boys in blue find any fresh DNA?”
“There was blood in the auditorium from a couple different sources.”
“One was me. Was the other female?”
“So they tell me.”
“I thought she bled a little.”
Chance nodded. “Take a couple days for an ID, if we get one.”
“I doubt we will. Besides, I can’t wait a couple days.”
“What’s the rush?”
Mac glanced at his watch. “Let’s leave it at ‘I can’t.’” The ache in his side began to shape an idea in his mind. “Hey, you know any place, in town or out, that does martial arts training?”
“Karate class, something like that?”
“More Muay Thai, jiu-jitsu, MMA. I got a taste from the woman last night. She had training,” Mac explained. “One of the men, too, but his style was a kind of Eskrima, more specialized than I’d expect to find in rural New York State.”
“Tell you what. I’ll put in a call to Wilburville PD, ask the brute squad where they go to get their dental work adjusted.”
“Sounds like a plan. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a date with a couple of Tylenol.”
Chance chuckled. “If I’d known that was your drug of choice, I wouldn’t have bothered swiping these.” He clapped two bottles of codeine on the table.
Mac poured two pills into his hand. He went to the fridge for water to wash them down with. On his way back, he remembered what Arken had said about experiments on students. He wasn’t sure why that seemed significant now. There was something he was forgetting, something someone had said.
Mac sat down at the kitchen table. “Do you surf?”
“Do I surf?” echoed Chance. “I drove over a billboard in the middle of Sandy. Does that count?”
Mac lowered his voice. “There’s a moment right before you catch a wave. You paddle out to it, get ready to ride the big beast. It’s so much bigger than you are, bigger than everything. There’s only one ocean, you know? Every wave’s part of it.
“So there’s this moment, when you’re on the board, and you know that with a few strokes, you can shoot the curl. Or not. It’s up to you.” His expression turned distant as he spoke. “The wave’s moving, you’re moving. You don’t have time to think. It’s go or don’t go. That’s the edge, where you meet the wave, and everything feels possible and impossible at the same time.”
Chance studied him, drumming his fingers on the kitchen table. “You're thinking about Tiffany?”
“Yeah,” said Mac. “I’m thinking about Tiffany. I told you before I think she got into something deep. I keep picturing her on that roof. How’d she go over the side without somebody pushing her?”
Chance shrugged. “The boot prints—”
“They showed nobody was close when she went over. I know,” Mac said. “I’m going out on a limb here, but stick with me for a second.” Mac tried to get more comfortable in his chair. “There were these experiments, mostly in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Government scientists. Ex-Nazi stuff. They were working on mind control. The official line is that they gave up. You can’t change somebody’s loyalties with a pill. You can’t make ‘em do something they wouldn’t normally do.”
“Like hypnosis,” said Chance. “You can get a guy to cluck like a chicken. You can’t get a mom to aim a gun at junior’s head and pull the trigger.”
“That’s what they say,” said Mac. “What if somebody found a way to push you right up to the edge, then make you feel like you had to go over, like going over was too big for you to control? If you scared somebody, altered their brain chemistry so that the next decision they made felt like life or death, what could you get them to do?”
“I dunno, man. I dunno. It’s an interesting theory—” Chance picked up his phone and started browsing through his contacts. “You really surf, big as you are?”
Mac smiled. “Big Mac ain’t no kook, brother. I can hang ten on a four-foot swell.”
Chance shrugged. “I’ll take your word for it.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Uri Kosolov Mixed-Martial Arts Gym was closed and dark. Time for Plan B.
Chance parked around the corner and trailed Mac up the hill to a back alley.
It was a gray day in Wilburville. The shadow of a passing cloud swapped afternoon for twilight, which suited their purpose. Checking to make sure they weren’t observed, the men ducked behind a dumpster and counted doors until they found the one they wanted.
“You okay with this?” asked Mac.
“You sure we can’t just knock?”
Mac looked at his watch. “I don’t have time to chat with the neighbors.”
Chance shrugged. “Am I okay with what?”
From
his pocket, Mac produced his LockAid. He removed the metal pick from its magnet on the side, inserted the pick into the deadbolt lock, and chased it with the tines of the tool.
“I’m a little out of practice,” he said.
“You would be,” said Chance. “Two-and-a-half days pretending not to be a spy. When was the last time you shot somebody, even?”
“Been ages,” Mac said. The lock turned. He drew back the deadbolt with a faint click. Withdrawing the pick, he turned his attention to the door lock.
“What if there’s an alarm?” asked Chance.
Mac gave him a cold look.
“Kidding. I’ll call it in.” He stepped away, pulling out his cell phone.
Mac patted his jacket, realizing he’d left his own phone charging in Chance’s forest green Grand Cherokee. “You couldn’t have done that in the truck?”
Chance waved him away. Sighing, Mac waited for his “go” signal. It came a minute later. Adding the slightest torque to the pick, he squeezed the LockAid’s handle. The lock sprang easily.
“Still have the touch,” Mac murmured, slipping inside.
Chance followed.
By the light coming in through the cracked door, they could see they were in a concrete receiving area about the size of a McDonald’s bathroom. The space was swept, empty. There was a light switch on the other side of the room by a pair of double doors.
“It’s quiet,” said Chance.
“Not for long,” said Mac. Turning away, he engaged the deadbolt so the door wouldn’t close on them. Then he slid his feet forward in the near darkness. There was no lock on the inner doors, only a working handle on the left side and a dummy on the right. He turned the handle and let the door swing inward.
The gunshot sounded like thunder in the enclosed space. A muzzle flash had sparked from the right, but the major fireworks came from the thudding impact of the opening door. Mac jumped back into the room as Chance dropped to one knee and drew his Glock from a shoulder holster.
“Police,” he shouted. “Drop your weapon.”
“My place,” said a voice. “Drop yours.”
Mac’s back was against the wall. He had his P229 in hand. Despite his alarm and the ringing in his ears, he motioned to Chance and mouthed, “Blanks.” There had been no sound of a ricochet, just a dull metal clash. Even a .22 would have pinged off the sturdy door and kept traveling.
He wasn’t sure if the detective understood him or if he’d reached the same conclusion. Neither man moved for the next few seconds, waiting to see what their host would do next.
A female voice overlaid with the grumble of an irritated cat said, “Names and badge numbers. I’m calling the cops.”
“We are the cops,” said Chance.
“We’ll see.”
“Okay, okay. Stay there.” Keeping his gun trained on the door, Chance fished his badge from his jacket and tossed it through the opening.
There was a shuffling sound, then a series of faint tones. Mac heard the woman address the police dispatcher by name. “Julie? I’ve got a badge number for you.” She finished the conversation by saying, “Thanks. I may call back with a complaint later.” She gave a short laugh. “Is he? We’ll see. Bye.”
Chance said, “We friends now?”
“Stay where you are,” said the woman. After a moment of scrabbling, the shaft of a push broom appeared in front of the door. It pressed the door wide enough for one man to exit at a time. A light came on in the next room. “Detective Chance Gardner, Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Who’s that with you?”
“A friend,” said Chance. “Put your gun down, come to the door, and show me your hands.”
“You show me your hands,” said the woman. “All four, in the air. Yours first, detective.”
Mac said, “Let’s try this another way. We’ll go out the way we came in.”
“You break into my studio on a Sunday afternoon, and I’m supposed to let you walk out? I don’t care who you are. I’ve got a right to feel safe where I make my living. Put your hands in the air and come out. I so much as see a weapon….”
“All right, I get it,” said Chance. He stooped and placed the Glock on the floor, making sure it clanked. Then he lifted it silently, tucked it behind his back. “I’m coming out.”
“Slow and steady,” said the woman. Now that she wasn’t barking, a slight accent was discernible, though Mac couldn’t place it.
Chance left the loading dock holding his hands out in front. “Hi,” he said when he was in a position to see the woman.
“Hi yourself. There’s a chair. Get comfortable.” Chance disappeared from Mac’s line-of-sight. The woman said, “Now your friend. Come on, friend.”
Slipping the P229 away, Mac followed Chance out. As soon as he saw his host, he stopped. Past the barrel of a .38, curly brown hair pulled into a ponytail with some loose tendrils framed a stony face with night-dark eyes. She was wearing leggings and a sports top. Her abs were granite hilltops ringing a shallow lake. Both arms were snuggled into compression sleeves that left the shoulders exposed so that the gun looked like it was floating between tan half-moons.
“Aloha,” said Mac.
“What in the world are you?” the woman said.
Chance said, “You never seen a Sasquatch?”
She glanced from him to Mac to the badge and phone resting on the floor in front of her bare feet.
“If you’re going to shoot us,” said Mac, “I’ll give you a minute to reload. Hard to smoke a guy with a plastic wad.”
She lowered the gun. “What’s the point? Bullets would just make you angry.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
A minute later, they were seated around a table. The woman, whose name was Yael Tayeb, straddled a chair. The coffee maker hissed behind her.
“You’re Israeli,” said Mac. “I had trouble placing your accent after that shot left us half deaf.”
“If you’re looking for an apology, you came to the wrong gym.”
“We’re the ones who are sorry,” said Mac. “If we’d known anybody was around we would have knocked.”
Chance gave him a look. “Yeah. We would have.”
To Yael, Mac said, “You know how to take care of yourself.”
“That’s right. For a long time, all I knew how to be was a soldier. After six years in the Israel Defense Forces, I thought, what now? I kicked around Europe ‘til I got tired of fat cat businessmen trying to feel me up while I was supposed to be guarding their foreign visitors. So I moved here.”
“And started teaching Krav Maga,” said Mac.
“What, you saw the sign? No, you couldn’t have. It’s in the front.”
“I said I was sorry. But, uh, if you don’t mind my asking, why the US?”
“I have family here,” she said. “More than back home.” She peeled off a compression sleeve, showed the humped waves of burn scars that formed a fleshy river from the back of the wrist to the inside of her armpit. “My mother died when I was little, same time as I got these.”
Chance made a swallowing noise.
“You okay?” said Yael.
“Yeah,” he said. “Something in my throat.”
“Sure,” said Yael. The coffee maker pinged and she got up to fill a mug. Her body was an architect’s tool box, full of arcs and angles. She was the sort of woman Mac pictured hanging from a flying trapeze. Chance was picturing something too as he watched her walk. Whatever it was, he was having a hard time closing his mouth.
One thing Mac could be sure of, now that he’d taken a good look, was that Yael wasn’t the woman he’d fought last night. She was too short and slender, though the comparison was like setting plastique next to dynamite and asking which was deadlier.
“You didn’t break into my studio for a gab,” Yael said, leaning against the counter that housed her coffee setup. “Were you looking for something, or is this just how you pickup girls?”
“Most of my dates don’t start with a shootout,” said Chance. “S
ometimes they end that way.”
Yael blew across her mug then seemed to remember something. “Where are my manners? Want some?”
“No thanks,” said Mac. Simultaneously, Chance said, “Sure. Thanks.”
Yael cracked a grin. She turned and reached for another mug, giving the detective a good look at her sculpted back. “How do you take it?”
“However I can,” said Chance.
“Me too,” she said.
Chance cuffed himself lightly under the chin. He muttered something that might have been, “Val. Val.”
Yael brought two steaming mugs to the table.
Mac said, “We’re looking for somebody. Several somebodies actually. We’re hoping they’re students of yours. And we’re in kind of a hurry. I was hoping to take a peek through your records. If you’re not comfortable with that, maybe you can answer some questions.”
Clearly curious, Yael sipped her coffee. “You seem like nice boys. Ask away.”
“First off, do you know a guy named Uri Kosolov?”
“I did. He sold me the place. Sign, too. If you’re looking for the gal with the keys to the kingdom, it’s me.”
Chance said, “You keep records of past students? Photos?”
“What if I said those are confidential?”
Mac said, “Then I’d ask you if you knew Tiffany Garrett. The girl who died.”
The wry expression she’d kept on her face soured. She put a hand to her forehead. “Yes. I did. She came once or twice. Took a class. Didn’t like it, I guess.”
“When?” said Mac.
“Last spring. Eight months ago, maybe more.”
Mac nodded, feeling the tingle of anticipation. “I want you to look at a photo.”
“This photo, you think it has something to do with Tiffany’s murder?”
“Who said murder?” asked Chance.
“You did, by breaking into my place. Look. I liked Tiffany. When I heard she was dead— But I don’t know you. And I think to myself, should I give something away for free?” She sipped. “What do you have to offer?”