Blood Avatar

by Ilsa J. Bick

  “You could call her,” Ramsey said.

  Ketchum gave him a one-eyed squint. “But you wouldn’t?”

  “It’s your kid. Do you want to?”

  Ketchum’s lips pursed, and then he scuffed the pavement with the toe of his boot. “No. I want to talk to my boy.”

  Ramsey nodded. “Then let’s go talk to your boy.”

  * * *

  Ketchum led and Ramsey followed: a thirty-kilometer trek northwest out of town to the school that served Farway and two other rural townships. Ketchum had called ahead, and when they pulled in, the school principal, a rotund man with oily hair, was waiting. Ramsey sat in his loaner while Ketchum got out, conferred a moment with the principal, and then disappeared into the building. Ketchum re-emerged ten minutes later, his jaw set, his look thunderous, and his left hand firmly clamped on a young boy’s shoulder.

  Up close, Ramsey saw the resemblance. The boy had Ketchum’s jaw and cheekbones but dark brown hair and the wild-eyed look of a kid terrified out of his wits.

  “This is Joey.” Ketchum’s face was a rock. “Most of what Joey and I have to discuss, we’re going to do in private. But, for now, Joey’s got something to show us.”

  * * *

  “Right there.” Joey pointed up a steep, leaf-strewn slope. “By the stone angel.”

  Facing the rise, Ramsey looked left and spotted the angel, sword in one hand and scales in the other. “And you boys didn’t see anyone before that?”

  Joey shook his head. “The only reason we saw anything was we heard the car. I bet he wouldn’t have seen us if the sun wasn’t going down.”

  “Why?”

  “That rise looks west. Troy wears glasses and the sun got the glasses,” Joey said, simply. He thought a minute then added, “I remember walking close to the edge of the rise when we got here, and we didn’t see anything.”

  Ramsey looked at Ketchum. “Two possibilities: either the killer came in on a bike, like the boys, or he was dropped off because he figured on having Limyanovich’s car.”

  The lettering on the grave marker was worn and stained with lichen and mineral tracks left by rainwater. Ramsey traced the inscription with the fingers of his left hand. “Can’t make out a date, or who’s buried here. But I’ll bet the church in town has records about who’s buried where.”

  “Maybe,” Ketchum said. “But there hasn’t been a burial here since the end of the Jihad. This is deconsecrated ground. There was a lot of trouble here during the Jihad, you know, between the Old Romans and the New Avalons.”

  Ramsey thought back to Sunday morning. Was that only yesterday? Seemed like a year ago, so much had happened. “Yeah, Amanda said there was a lot of bad blood.”

  “That’d be an understatement. I was a kid at the time, over in Clovis and just out of diapers, when the Jihad really got going. In Farway, the New Avalons and Old Romans started accusing each other of being in league with the Blakists. There was talk about a break-away faction of Blakists scattered all through the lake islands.”

  “Anyone implicated?”

  “As far as I know, no one ever proved anything about anybody. A bunch of families run out of town, though. One family got wiped out, right here in this cemetery. Old Romans had come to pray, but the rumor started in on how they really were meeting with Blakists. Before you know it, people bore down and butchered those people. The cemetery hasn’t been used since. When Isaiah died—he was Old Roman—they buried him in a smaller cemetery outside of town.”

  “How many Old Romans left in town?”

  “Not too many. I’d say round about fifty families, all told.”

  “And Doc Summers,” Ramsey said. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Joey wince. “What?”

  Joey fidgeted. “Well, one thing about the guy we saw, I mean . . . we all kind of thought, with his hair, you know . . .”

  “No, I don’t know,” Ketchum said. “What are you saying, son?”

  “Well, the guy looked kind of old, and his hair was”—Joey swallowed—“white. And he had a lot of it, kind of wild, and—”

  “Old Doc,” Ketchum cut in. He closed his eyes. “Lord help us. They saw Doc.”

  44

  1330 hours

  The operating room was chill and smelled of antiseptic, coagulating blood, and rotted meat. Noah Schroeder’s blood pressure had dropped twice during the operation, and once he’d almost arrested. Three hours later, and Amanda had excavated a double handful of dead and dying flesh.

  Finally, Amanda looked up and signaled the circulating nurse. “Call ICU. Tell them he’s on his way.” As the nurse hip-butted the door into post-op, she said, “We’ll have to leave the wound open to granulate in, and we’ll load him with antibiotics. But I really don’t like his blood pressure. It’s been in the basement too many times.”

  Gabriel stripped off his gloves. “I’d keep him on a pressor. Once the anesthetic wears off and we have a chance to settle him down in the ICU, his blood pressure will probably read closer to true. His urine output’s bad, so he’s still pretty vasodilated. I’d keep him on a vasopressor, make sure his kidneys get blood. I’ll keep a real close eye on him while he’s in ICU. That way—”

  “That way, we don’t get renal failure on top of whatever infection might be cooking.” Amanda nodded. “Sounds like a plan. By the way, I didn’t get a chance to thank you for this morning. When his blood pressure crashed, I needed all the hands I could get.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Gabriel said. “Just doing my job.”

  * * *

  His job.

  Five minutes after the ambulance call went out that morning for Noah Schroeder, Gabriel was on his turbo, heading for the hospital. Everyone knew he pulled extra duty, came in on his off-hours, and practically lived in the hospital, so no one gave a second thought when he barreled into the emergency room.

  Noah was an incredible piece of good luck. He’d had a nervous moment when Ketchum and that detective showed, but a few minutes of listening in relieved his anxiety. They didn’t know. They didn’t have a clue. If not for Noah’s sister, the meddling brat, they might have remained in the dark even longer. But now he might be able to kill two birds, not with one stone but in fairly short order.

  Now, he sat in the ICU, poking numbers into a chartputer, just doing the job, monitoring his patient—and it was like his mind worked on two divergent streams: the routine rituals, and then this wilder, more turbulent river churning through his mind.

  He was starting to feel a little . . . unhinged? Was that the word? He wasn’t sure. So much had happened between Friday night and now. He and the Handler hadn’t spoken since, when, Saturday? Sunday? He couldn’t remember. He was running on not enough sleep and too much left to do.

  The problem was every time he got closer to what he saw as a solution, something else popped up. Like the deputy staking out Underhill’s house: who’d have guessed? He was reasonably certain that the deputy had not seen Underhill after Gabriel had left. Even if he had, what was there to see? A woman, dead drunk and passed out on her sofa, and her son upstairs, tucked out of sight. Nothing to see.

  But now they knew Noah had been shot. Only a matter of time before they tied Noah to Troy—and if Troy Underhill died soon, they’d start looking closer at the hospital. The personnel.

  On the other hand, so what? He’d given Underhill the amnestic. She wouldn’t remember him. If the other deputy had gone up to the house—and by some miracle, roused Underhill—she’d more than likely remember him. Gabriel had wiped everything he’d touched. The doctored vials were the only incriminating evidence, and they might be chalked up to pharmacy or manufacturer’s error. But the prescription was valid, and Sandra Underhill’s signature card was on file (he knew because he’d methodically forged her name to the refill request).

  What was more, Gabriel would bet money, Sandra Underhill would lie her head off. Who wanted to be known as the mom who bedded a guy for money while her kid slipped into a diabetic coma?

&nbs
p; Got to keep going. Got to keep my eye on the prize.

  Another unexpected windfall: with all this business about Noah, Amanda Slade hadn’t had a chance to go to the bathroom much less wrap up an autopsy. At last check, Limyanovich was still a guest of the ETU: Eternal Care Unit. Aka the morgue.

  Because if there was a capsule in one tooth, maybe in another . . .

  He met Amanda in the hall, going the opposite direction. This, he interpreted, as a good sign. If Amanda was in the ICU with Noah, while he was in the morgue . . .

  Amanda stopped. “How’s he doing?” She carefully listened, asked a few questions, then nodded. “Okay. Thanks again for coming in, especially since I know you had a late night.”

  Charlie’s. He’d completely forgotten. She’d seen him there. Judging from her appearance—the bruises around her neck and a liver-colored welt on her left cheek—it looked like he’d missed something. He’d picked up the police call, of course, but only found out about Amanda from the nurses that morning. “Yeah, well, you know . . .”

  Amanda seemed to take this as meaning something because she nodded as if she understood. “I was kind of surprised. Didn’t peg you for a Charlie’s person.”

  “I don’t go there often.” This much was true. “It’s not really my style.”

  “Mine either. Why didn’t you stop and say hello before you left?”

  “Oh, well, I didn’t want to intrude. You and this detective boyfriend of yours . . .” He trailed off when she began to blush, furiously. “Sorry, but you look pretty banged up. You’ve got to be more careful. Can’t afford to lose you.”

  “Yeah, I’d be kind of sad to see me go, too,” Amanda quipped and then touched his arm. “It’s fine. Thanks for being concerned, and the help. You’re a real angel, you know that?”

  “Yeah,” Gabriel said. “That’s what all the girls say.”

  * * *

  He had, he calculated, about thirty minutes before Amanda might be done puttering with Noah. Thirty minutes.

  The morgue was next door to Amanda’s basement office and was a large square room with buffed linoleum floors, overhead fluorescent light bars, and teal-blue tile walls. Three morgue refrigerators occupied one entire wall and faced long metal counters and sinks along the opposite wall. A neat queue of six metal gurneys with scalloped body trays were racked in two rows along the near wall closest to the entrance. The morgue was, trading on a bad pun, dead quiet.

  Gabriel studied the refrigerators. Each refrigerated, stainless steel bay held six corpses in a conveyor tray system, three to a side. A body was placed on a body tray mounted on a gurney, then rolled end on to the open door. The conveyor tray system was designed such that the body tray rolled in or out of the cooler using the conveyor mechanism. According to Amanda’s records, Limyanovich lay in refrigerator #2, berth #2. Gabriel reached for the locking handle to Limyanovich’s berth—and paused.

  Next to the handle was a dataset lock. For a crystalkey. Which he didn’t have.

  He spent thirty precious seconds cursing, his hoarse whispers filling the morgue with a sound like rats’ feet on glass. He didn’t know, hadn’t stopped to think! Amanda had to have a key, but where? Would she carry a passkey all the time?

  In her office, now, pulling open drawers, thanking whatever angel was watching over him that, at least, Amanda didn’t lock her desk drawers. (And why should she? No one here but us dead guys, ha-yuck, ha-yuck.) He shuffled papers, various pens and pencils, a makeup kit, a pair of old running shoes. My God, women were pack rats. . . .

  He found the crystalkey tucked in an envelope in the bottom right-hand drawer. The crystalkey was hexagonal and pale pink, and fit the lock perfectly. Gabriel inserted the crystalkey, twisted counterclockwise while pulling down on the locking handle and presto! The refrigerator puffed open, releasing a ball of air that smelled of damply cold chemicals. Gabriel could make out a lumpy black body bag on a body tray. Pulling the tray out a third of the way, he unzipped the bag. The smell inside the bag was worse than outside: a stink of wet charcoal and rubberized chemicals. But he was working quickly now, using his gloved hands to pry open Limyanovich’s jaws and the tip of a curved metal clamp to count out the teeth.

  He’d studied his holoreconstructions thoroughly and completely. There were a total of five remaining candidates, not counting the teeth Amanda had already examined: one that contained a legitimate dental post, and the hollow rear molar with the remains of that capsule.

  The first tooth he tried, the upper left second bicuspid, didn’t so much as budge. The second, a lower right first molar, came away with only minimal tugging and revealed a steel post. The third, the right lower third molar, resisted though he thought he detected a tiny amount of give. He stepped back to move out of the light. The pitted crannies of the tooth looked a little off-center, like a table with one leg shorter than the others. He reached in with his clamp and gave the tooth another nudge, but couldn’t move it.

  Time, time! He checked his watch. Thirteen minutes since he entered the morgue, four since he started with the teeth. Three teeth left: one he couldn’t budge, one he hadn’t tried and this off-center molar.

  He tried the first tooth again. The clamp bit against the tooth’s enamel with a faint yet perceptible click. He twisted his hand right and then left. No dice.

  Break it. By the time anyone knows anything, you’ll be long gone.

  He sucked in a breath, gave the clamp a violent twist counterclockwise, and jerked the clamp straight up. The tooth gave with a loud snap! Another post.

  He released his breath in a sigh of frustration. Did a watch check. Five more minutes and then he had to leave. Two teeth left.

  All right, smart ass, where is it? Think, think, think! There’s something I’m missing, but I’m smarter than this, this has to be something staring me right in the face.

  Smart ass. Thinking that sent a little frisson tripping up his spine. Something about smart—and then he knew.

  He’d studied the holoreconstructions of Limyanovich’s teeth and jaw many times over, cross-referencing with dental texts. The mature adult has thirty-two teeth, counting all four third molars, the wisdom teeth. But Limyanovich had twenty-nine teeth. Limyanovich was missing three of his wisdom teeth

  “But not the fourth,” Gabriel said. He stared down at Limyanovich and then at that stubborn back molar, a sooty peg canted like one of those ancient cemetery grave stones. “You smart ass, you’ve only got one wisdom tooth.”

  This time, he didn’t hesitate. He slid the clamp around the tooth, held on and then levered the tooth back and forth, back and forth, rocking it the way he might rock a car stuck in the snow. Sweat trickled down his temples, and when he ran his tongue over his upper lip, he tasted salty bristle. The tooth wouldn’t budge.

  “Come on,” he muttered, “come on, come on!”

  The tooth gave, suddenly. The clamp jerked free, the tooth clenched in its jaws, and he saw something arc away in a bright twinkle to tick-tick-tick over the floor.

  A crystal. A very minute, very red data crystal.

  In three minutes, Limyanovich was back on ice. Thirty seconds later, Amanda’s key was back in her bottom right-hand desk drawer. And in six minutes, he was gone.

  Now, on his turbo zipping along and the wind whistling past his cheeks, he felt buoyant. He was untethered, nearly a free agent. He hadn’t included the Handler in his plans, just thought them up and told the Handler what he was going to do—and then did it. For all the danger, he was enjoying the hell out of this.

  When he got the Handler over his earbud, he said, “I got it.” He explained about the tooth then added, “I’m on my way home now to run it on my decryption program.”

  “That is excellent.” The Handler’s smoky burr vibrated with triumph. “This is superb. You have done very well, extremely well. Only there are still problems, yes?”

  “I’ll take care of them,” Gabriel said, suddenly irritated. Spoiling it for him.

  “You are not
concerned about the proximity?”

  “It’s too late for that.” He explained about the Underhill boy. “With Noah unconscious,” he didn’t say dead because he had to figure out how he’d pull that off, “and the Underhill boy eliminated, that ought to do it. They’ll never tie them to me.”

  “What about the crime scene evidence?”

  “Don’t worry. They’ll get themselves tied up in knots trying to figure that.”

  After they disconnected, Gabriel was vaguely annoyed. Hadn’t he proven himself? Bringing up the kids; he knew what he was doing! Well, he’d show the Handler a thing or two about taking care of problems, little and big ones.

  Like his father.

  45

  1330 hours

  They found a bike in a stand of nearby juniper. Twenty meters closer in, Ramsey spotted blotches of rust-colored dirt arranged in a rough semicircle, and then a short distance away, dime-sized blotches speckling the gravel in a halo.

  “Blood spatter,” he said, backing up toward Ketchum. “We need to be careful where we walk. Treat the whole place like a crime scene and get the county people up here and go over this place a centimeter at a time. But those are two distinct patterns.”

  “He was shot twice,” Joey said. “Noah said he heard a shotgun, and then we all saw the other gun go off.”

  “You actually see a shotgun?” Ramsey asked.

  “No.” And now Joey looked uncertain. “What we saw was, well, like a cane or something. You know, Old Doc’s got that bum knee, only he got close to the other guy, the one with the mustache and long hair, and then Old Doc whipped the stick around and jammed it into the guy’s chest. BOOM! Just like that.”

  “Bang stick,” Ketchum said. “Then he shot at you, son?” When Joey nodded, he said, “Show us.”

  * * *

  The hill was slick with leaves, and Ramsey slipped a couple of times, staining the knees of his jeans a muddy green. Ramsey was in reasonable shape, but he and Ketchum were huffing by the time they made it to the top. Arming sweat from his forehead, Ramsey said to Joey, “So you guys huddle here at the edge, hear a bang, see the big guy with the mustache go down, and then the other guy shoots him with another gun while he’s on the ground. That’s when Troy screamed?”