Indigo Man

by M. J. Carlson

  “I just don’t want anyone else hurt.”

  She touched his chin, pulled it around until he was looking at her eyes. “I know, but these guys have to be stopped, whatever it takes. Or you can quit now and let them bury you alive. Your choice.”

  He nodded. “I know. I know it has to be done.” He took a breath and blew it out. “I’m ready.”

  She took his hand and led him into the house. “We’re good,” she said to her father’s glance.

  Something sizzled. Zach wrinkled his nose and sniffed. “Is that bacon?” he asked, his brow furrowing. “Real bacon?”

  “Jack doesn’t like the soy version,” Miranda said from the kitchen.

  “Stuff tastes like burnt plastic,” Jack mumbled.

  Sara rolled her eyes and slid her chair back. “I’m going to help Mom.” She stood and went to the kitchen, taking up a position next to her mother, opened a cabinet door, and pulled plates out.

  Sara’s father still stared at Zac from the other side of the table, his eyes as focused as twin lasers, boring two perfect holes through Zach’s head. “So, how’d you get roped into this disaster?”

  “Laz and I have a small testing lab just south of town. We do DNA testing there.” He cleared his throat. “I mean we did testing there. We’ve known for decades the gene for psychopathy and alcoholism, among other disorders, is associated with Taql-A and C957T polymorphisms of the ANKK1 gene. I developed a cheap, easy test for twenty-three related genetic disorders, including psychopathy, while I was in graduate school. It was my thesis. They used to call psychopathy antisocial personality disorder before we discovered the gene responsible for it. Laz was working on his chemistry doctorate at the time. We worked together and discovered how to streamline the procedure. We got a patent on the process and decided to take advantage of it. Anyway, we got this sample a few days ago—”

  “The one she brought.” Goode flicked a glance toward Sara.

  “Yes, sir. It turned out to be positive for several disorders.”

  “Including psychopathy.”

  Zach nodded.

  “And it turned out to be Stiles’s DNA.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Figures,” Goode said. He asked how the test worked, and seemed genuinely interested. Sara slid a plate containing scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast in front of each of them. Sara’s mother put the other two plates on the table as Sara topped off their coffee.

  When they were seated, Zach spoke to Sara’s mother, “Thank you for breakfast, ma’am. I can’t remember the last time I had real bacon.”

  “Neither can I,” Goode said.

  “It was last week, dear,” Miranda said as she forked up some eggs.

  ***

  After breakfast, Sara pressed her fingertips to her head and winced. “The aspirin’s wearing off.” She nudged Zach’s arm. “Could you glue me back up, please? I need to go and lie down for a bit.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he responded, glad to feel useful.

  “Glue? What glue?” It was Goode.

  “Zach glued my cut last night.”

  Goode’s attention darted between Sara and Zach and the corners of his mouth lifted. “Is that what the kids are calling it now?” Goode asked.

  Sara rolled her eyes. “Zach used Magic Glue from an auto parts store last night to close the cut on my head. No stitches and it worked like a charm.”

  Goode crossed his arms over his chest. “An auto parts store?” He turned his raised eyebrow to Zach.

  “Actually, sir,” he said, “it’s cyanoacrelate. Chemically, it’s identical to what they use in the ER and most types of surgery instead of stitches—when there’s no tension on the edges,” he added. “It works great on facial lacerations.”

  “What kind of doctor did you say you were?”

  “Molecular biologist, but Laz is—” he stopped. “Was—” The word punched him in the chest. “Sorry, Laz was a biochemist. He swore by the stuff. He dated an ER resident for a while when we were in grad school. He dated a lot. He—” Zach blinked against the burning in his eyes. “He—” He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger and wiped them across his eyes. “Sorry.”

  A hand touched his shoulder. He turned his head to see Sara’s mother standing over him. “Why don’t you show us how it works, Dr. Marshall?”

  He swallowed. “Yes, ma’am. If you’ll tell me where my paper bag is, I’ll get it. Please, call me Zach, Mrs. Goode, all my friends do,” he said, remembering his last conversation with Laz.

  She smiled at him. “Of course, Zach. Your bag is on the washing machine.”

  He stood and went into the laundry room and grabbed his crumpled auto parts bag. He stared at the bag for a moment. “Last night,” he said to himself. The words held a new meaning now, and he shuddered at what they might mean tomorrow.

  In the kitchen, Sara had already removed the gauze and laid her head on her crossed forearms, exposing her injury. Miranda held Sara’s hair away from the cut on her scalp. As he pulled the second tube of glue from the small box, Goode stepped around behind him.

  “Jack?”

  “What?” he said, eyes wide. “I want to see how this works. You never know.”

  Zach bent over Sara, dabbing the cut where it had started to ooze again when she’d washed the blood out of her hair. A deep red bruise colored her scalp and extended onto her forehead.

  “It’s simple,” he said, pushing the laceration’s edges together again. “You just have to make sure to get the edges tight, and the skin has to be dry, or it won’t stick.” He kept an even pressure on her skin as he applied the clear liquid and it hardened.

  “What about bleeding?” Goode asked.

  “You’d have to stop that first,” Zach said. “Also, if there’s any tension on the skin, it won’t work.”

  “Knees and elbows and such.”

  “Correct.” He applied a second layer, spread it further onto Sara’s skin. “Really active things.”

  “Lucky it was my head,” Sara said.

  Goode ignored her comment. “Go on.”

  “Takes about two or three minutes to cure. It’s best to do a second layer, like this.”

  “Infection?” Goode asked.

  Zach shook his head. “Bacteria can’t grow in the stuff, and they can’t move through the glue.” He stood up. “If it’s clean to begin with, it stays clean.”

  Goode leaned in and blew out a soundless whistle. “Slick.” He stood and offered his hand to Zach. “Thank you for taking care of my daughter.”

  Zach took Goode’s outstretched hand. “Your daughter saved my life last night, probably more than once. How do I repay that?”

  “It’s the job.”

  Zach shook his head. “No, sir, she wasn’t assigned to protect me. The people she works with tried to kill me, and she stopped them.”

  “If you two are finished bonding,” Sara said from the table, smiling at her own joke. “I’d really like to go lay down, before I yack up all over Mom’s floor.”

  Sara’s mother touched Sara on the shoulder. “Come on, sweetheart. Leave them to it. You know how boys are.”

  Goode stepped away, reading the back of the box the Magic Glue came in. As Miranda helped Sara toward her bedroom, he thought he heard her say something like, “I hope so, too,” in a low tone.

  “Zach.”

  He turned to face Goode, who’d moved to the laundry room door. “Yes, sir?”

  “You up to giving me a hand?”

  “Yes, sir. Whatever I can,” he said. The talking and movement had started his chest aching again.

  Goode nodded as they headed into the laundry room. “And my friends call me Jack, not sir.”

  He watched as Goode silently placed a plastic bucket in the sink in the utility room and turned the faucet’s handle. While the bucket filled, Goode opened the bag of shop rags and handed Zach several. When the bucket was half full, Goode turned off the water, grabbed the bag containing six bottles of p
eroxide and the bucket, and headed outside.

  In the carport in the daylight, Zach got a better look at the outside of the house. It was a modest, cinder block construction, built before the Water Wars. Someone had enclosed the rear of the carport and added two sets of double doors, presumably for storage. The block walls were a medium moss green with the trim and doors done in white. He stopped for a closer inspection of what he’d thought was glass the previous night.

  “Shatter-resistant, high-impact PMMA poly-glass,” Goode said from the other side of the car. “It’s sandwiched between two sheets of steel with plasma-cut pane openings.”

  “It opens out.”

  Goode nodded. “Very non-code. The jamb is steel, lag-bolted into the reinforced concrete wall.”

  “Sounds like a bank vault door,” Zach said.

  “Can’t be too careful,” Goode said. He circled around to the driver-side door of Zach’s Mitsu.

  Zach stood opposite him and opened the passenger-side door, trying not to be sick as he stared at Sara’s blood in the daylight.

  “Here.” Goode tossed a bottle of peroxide to Zach. When he caught it, sudden, sharp pain from his rib almost dropped him to the concrete. Jack popped the top off another peroxide bottle and poured it on a shop rag. He rubbed at the blood smeared on the inside of the door. “Good thing the seats in this bucket are dark leather. You’d never have gotten the blood out of the cushions if they were cloth.”

  “No, sir, um, I mean Jack.” Zach poured peroxide on the seat. He watched it bubble and fizz as it worked its way down the seat to the rear, and started dabbing, ignoring the ache in his ribs.

  “Did my daughter really knock you down?”

  Pain cut Zach’s laugh short. “Twice, but the second time was more of a tackle than knocking me down. I landed on a root and she landed on top of me.”

  “And you didn’t at least offer to kick her ass? You’re a better man than I am.”

  Zach tried the laugh again. “You tried to take your daughter recently? She put me flat on my back in an alley ’cause I mouthed off to her.”

  It was Goode’s turn to laugh. “That’s my girl. Takes after her mom.”

  “Yes, sir,” Zach said.

  Goode slanted a quick look at Zach, but offered no comment. When he’d finished wiping the door down for the third time, he hesitated. “About the little league story… you?”

  “My brother, Dave,” Zach said, opening the second bottle. “I was playing shortstop. He’s the family geek.”

  “You got a family where the molecular biologist isn’t the geek? What’s your sister, an astrophysicist?”

  Zach chuckled. “Just the two of us,” he said, rubbing the seat again. He popped the release to get at the little stain on the rear carpet where a few drops of blood had leaked between the seat and seat back.

  “What’s your dad do?”

  “He was the janitor at the elementary school my brother and I attended. He also worked nights on the cleaning crew at the library.”

  “No college?”

  “Couldn’t get past the dyslexia, I guess.”

  “Shame.”

  Zach shrugged. “He worked hard, and we did all right. He taught us life isn’t about what you get, it’s where you turn what you got into who you are.”

  “You talk about him in past tense,” Goode said.

  Zach’s voice dropped. “He died ten years ago.” He went to work on the carpet. “I’ll go ahead and tell you. You’ll find out anyhow. My mother killed him.”

  Goode kept wiping off the wheel where Sara had touched it.

  “She has extreme antisocial personality disorder.” He hesitated a beat. “Psychopathy. She stopped her meds occasionally ’cause she didn’t like how they made her feel. There was a dog next door that bothered her by barking at night, and one morning, it was gone. They got into an argument.” He shrugged. “And she stabbed him to death. Her defense was it was his fault for not leaving if she was out of control. It was like she didn’t even care.”

  Goode stopped rubbing the steering wheel. “I’m sorry.”

  Zach continued working on the carpet. “Thanks, but it’s old news.”

  “Your mom still around?”

  “She’s at a facility for the criminally insane. My brother got married a few years ago. They have a little girl, Sasha. She’ll be two in July.”

  “Good thing you two had each other,” Goode said.

  Zach ignored the comment, not wanting to get into his relationship or lack thereof with his brother. Instead, he scrubbed the spots on the carpet with a soft-bristled brush Sara’s father had brought from the laundry room. He laid his head against the back of the passenger’s seat. Pain-soaked sweat trickled down his face and back and Goode’s shirt started sticking to his skin.

  “Let me get that, Zach.”

  “Thanks, Jack, but I’ve got it,” he said, without breaking rhythm. A few minutes later, his panting became groaning, his sweat-blurred vision tunneled, and the concrete bit his knees. Goode dropped his rag, and moved around the car to help him to his feet.

  “Come on. Break time.”

  Goode helped him into the house, as Miranda was finishing the breakfast dishes. When she saw them, she rushed over and glared at her husband. “Jack. What did you do?”

  “Blame your daughter for this one. I didn’t break his rib, she did. Where do you want him?”

  “Put him in our room. Where do you think?” She led the two of them to the master bedroom and helped Goode pull Zach’s shoes off when he was on the bed. “Close the curtains, Jack, please? And get me a couple of those T-3s, would you?”

  He tried to roll off the bed, but Miranda sat next to him, and gently pushed him back down.

  “Just where do you think you’re going, young man?”

  She rested her palm on the center of his chest. When Goode returned, she held two pills out to him. She tilted a glass of water to his lips and he swallowed them.

  Zach’s head relaxed onto the soft pillow. He had to get as far away from them as possible. They were eccentric as hell, but they were decent people. The thought of their getting caught up in whatever was happening to him was simply unacceptable. “I have to get out of here, ma’am. I can’t let this hurt you and Sara, and Mr. Goode.”

  In the background, Goode laughed. “As if.”

  Miranda put her hand back on Zach’s chest, her touch comforting, and spoke over her shoulder, “Jack, please close the curtains, honey.”

  And then, the weight of the past twenty-four hours pressed in on Zach until he couldn’t it bear any longer. It was all so wrong. This wasn’t the excitement he’d wished for. This was a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from, and now it was spilling over onto innocent people. Tears trickled down his cheeks, mixing with his sweat. He closed his eyes, surrounded by panic that threatened to swallow him whole.

  “Zach. Zach,” Miranda’s voice drew him away from his pain and fear. “Look at me, dear.” When he finally could, she ran her hand over his forehead, and brushed his hair off his face. “You don’t worry about us. You lie here and rest.” When he started to protest, she smiled down at him.

  “I want you to stay here till supper. And if you try to get out of bed before one of us comes to get you,” she said, and smiled down at him, “I’ll break another god damn rib. Do you understand, dear?”

  He swallowed, recalling his own mother. In contrast, Miranda’s smile looked genuine. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. That’s settled. Jack,” she said. “You come with me, and please get that no-good crony friend of yours, Hank, on the link. I have a favor to ask of him, if he’s sober enough.”

  “Yes, Ran,” Goode said, sounding surprisingly meek.

  Zach closed his eyes. Miranda and Goode moved to the door. They spoke in hushed tones as they stepped into the hallway and closed the door. She said something that sounded like, “You like him, too, don’t you?”

  Goode exhaled. “I’d like him a lot better if I knew he wa
s going to be alive this time next week.”

  “Captain Goode. After thirty years, fifteen on the street, you know better than to talk like that.”

  Goode grumbled something Zach lost completely as they moved further into the hall and out of earshot. He lay in the dark and apologized to Laz for their last conversation as he drifted off.

  ***

  Murphy downed a Percocet with a swallow of water and went to work rifling through the silverware drawer in his apartment until he found what he was searching for. He lifted the folded envelope and carefully opened it. He tilted it till a postage stamp-sized square of thin cardboard dropped onto his palm. A dark, round, electronic radio frequency ID chip roughly half the diameter of a pencil eraser adhered to the thin cardboard. The chip was thin enough that Murphy could barely feel it when he ran his thumb over the paper square. A friend of his who did e-work for the company had sent him this upgraded version a couple of months ago to field test. He hadn’t had occasion to put the thing to use—until now.

  He returned the paper square to its envelope and refolded it closed. So, Goode’s poor, aging mom had taken sick. What a coincidence. “Bullshit,” he said aloud, and scowled. There was no such thing. Not in his experience. He wanted a talk with Gopher Girl, but there was no address on file for her parents. He just had to figure out a way to get his little toy into her possession and he could do the rest on his own.

  He inserted the transceiver of the burner link into his ear and dropped onto his couch, loosening his tie as he did. He placed the envelope next to his Caddy’s key ring. “Link. Contact The Boss and establish conference call with Sugar.” Murphy slouched onto the couch and slowly tried to work the kinks out of his neck from last night. He groaned when he found a particularly tender spot.

  CHAPTER 16

  Zach stirred to the voice above him. “Zach? Zach. Wake up.”

  The dull throbbing in his chest was uncomfortable, but not unbearable. Everything was soft and fuzzy at the edges. His thoughts floated as if suspended in oil. He moved his hands across the unfamiliar bedspread under his fingers. A different, lightweight quilt covered him. He was—in Special Agent Goode’s parents’ house at the beach. She’d brought him here in his vehicle. She’d—she’d saved his life.