by Wen Spencer
“I’ve already told both the police and the FBI what happened,” Sam was saying. “And I only saw the back of the kidnapper’s head, so I don’t know if he was one of these people or not.”
The interloper was Hutchinson, sitting in the second wing chair. “Please, just tell me what happened.”
He reported the visitor’s identity to Rennie while stripping off the Dog Warrior jacket, glad now that Smack had cleaned the blood from him. He hung the incriminating jacket on a kitchen chair and moved quietly to the living room’s door. Stealth came to him as natural as breathing. Hutchinson was focused on Sam, who glared angrily back at the federal agent. Only Max seemed aware that Ukiah had entered the offices, giving him a hopeful look, so that he had to shake his head, no, no, they hadn’t found Kittanning. Max gathered his rage closer.
“The doorbell rang just as I turned off the water,” Sam continued without noticing Ukiah’s exchange with Max. “The baby started to scream, and I yanked on a T-shirt, some underwear, and found my gun.”
“Just because the baby was crying?” Hutchinson asked.
“Screaming,” Sam said. “I don’t know why but it just hit me at gut level, and I reacted. The only reason I got any clothes on at all was I didn’t want to flash Ukiah if it just turned out his son regularly screamed like someone was killing him.”
“Go on.”
“I heard a heavy thud, the kind you hear when heavy furniture tips over or a person falls, and someone running through the downstairs, and the baby screaming,” Sam said. “When I say it, it seems so sane, but it was really creepy, like listening to a soundtrack for a horror film. I ran down the back steps and into the kitchen as someone ran out the front door with the baby.”
“Why the back steps?” Hutchinson indicated the sweeping front stairs. “You might have been able to stop them if you had gone down the front staircase.”
“I don’t know the layout of the house. I just drove in from Oregon this morning. I wanted to go downstairs, and the back steps were right outside the bedroom door.”
“You didn’t hear shots?” Hutchinson asked.
“No. The shooter must have been using a silencer. When I got to the kitchen I could see Ukiah lying in the hall and someone running out the door, carrying the baby. I shot once at the kidnapper, and I think I hit him, but he kept on moving. There was a car waiting at the curb. He got in the car and it drove away. I chased after the car but I couldn’t keep up with it.”
“Where was the kidnapper when you hit him?”
“On the front porch.”
“So all the blood in the hall, that’s Ukiah’s?”
“I suppose so,” Sam said.
“If you came down the back steps and went to the front door, you had to step over Ukiah. Didn’t you notice he was bleeding?”
“I noticed.”
“Did he say anything? Tell you who shot him?”
“He wasn’t conscious at the time,” Sam said.
“Did you stop and check how badly he was hurt?”
“He was okay when I saw him later.”
“He was unconscious and bleeding and you didn’t check on him?”
“Leave her alone,” Max snapped.
Hutchinson glanced up to retort, saw Ukiah standing beside Max, and straightened. “Where the hell have you been?”
Ukiah growled, glaring at Hutchinson through his dark bangs.
“I told you,” Max said. “He was out looking for his son.”
Hutchinson took out a pack of cigarettes, tapped one out, and lit it. His attention stayed on Ukiah, the gears in his mind spinning behind his watchful eyes. “Some of the bullets they took out of the wall had passed through a body first.”
Ukiah lifted the bottom of his shirt to show the white of his bandages. “None of them hit anything important.”
“Do you know who it was that shot you?”
“I saw him.” He had taken back his mice before leaving Neville Island; while slightly fuzzy in quality, like viewing through a hazed window, his memories were complete. “I didn’t recognize him.”
The front door opened then. Ukiah had been focused on Hutchinson and had missed the person’s approach. The swing of the door, however, brought him Indigo’s scent. She checked at the door, hand still on the doorknob at the sight of Hutchinson.
“Who are you?” A half octave lower than normal, her voice sounded so hard and authoritarian that Ukiah barely recognized it as hers.
Hutchinson startled, looking to Max and Ukiah in surprise. “I’m wondering the same thing. Who are you?”
“This is Agent Hutchinson,” Ukiah told her. “Homeland Security.”
“Can I see some ID?” Indigo held out her hand.
“Who are you?” he said, handing her his ID.
Indigo inspected it a moment before returning it. “Special Agent Indigo Zheng, FBI.” She showed him her ID. “This is an FBI case.”
“The NSA believes that this kidnapping might be related to a case that we’re investigating.”
“The Temple of New Reason?” Indigo said. “From what I’ve been able to gather, there’s no connection between the kidnapping and their interest in Mr. Oregon.”
Surprise flashed over Hutchinson’s face and he glanced to Max before smoothing his features back to neutral. Still, under the careful facade, he showed signs of being disturbed by Indigo’s foreknowledge. “I see. Have you received cooperation files?”
“There hasn’t been time,” Indigo said.
Hutchinson turned back to Ukiah. “Counting the three bullets that went through you, and the six in the wall, the shooter emptied his gun at you. That’s a little excessive. Are you sure you don’t know him, Mr. Oregon?”
“I would remember. It’s part of having a perfect memory.”
“And yet two days after you’ve returned from an out-of-state trip, this stranger nails you and takes your kid.” Hutchinson reached into his jacket and took out an envelope filled with photographs. He dealt the top four onto the coffee table. “Are these photos of you with your son?”
The photographs were taken the day of the shoot-out with the Ontongard. Kittanning, wrapped in Ukiah’s black tracking T-shirt, was merely a dark shapeless bundle, identifiable as a baby only by Ukiah’s body language. In the first picture, Ukiah had his son tucked in the crook of his arm. In the second photo, he started the careful transfer of Kittanning to his shoulder, still stunned and awkward by his sudden fatherhood. In the third and fourth photo, he settled Kittanning on his shoulder, carefully protecting the wobbly head and tiny body.
“Where did these come from?” Ukiah said.
“The five I showed you earlier was just a selection of those we found on the cult member. There are nearly three hundred in all showing either you or your partner. Is this your son?”
“Yes.” Ukiah felt sick. The Ontongard in Pendleton hadn’t known that Hex found him and made Kittanning. Did this mean another group knew that Ukiah and Kittanning existed but hadn’t known where to find him? Why not take them both while Ukiah was helpless? Why use a human in the first place?
He realized that Hutchinson was speaking and ran back through his memory to catch up with the conversation. Hutchinson was pointing out that Ukiah’s personal information all indicated that he lived here at the offices, not out at the farm with his moms. Someone looking for Kittanning would have had to wait until Ukiah returned from Oregon before knowing where to find the baby.
“That’s a possibility,” Indigo said. “Kittanning, though, is not the only child kidnapped. The kidnappers have taken four other children. The first was August twenty-fifth, the second was August twenty-ninth, the third was September second, and the fourth was September sixth. Two boys, two girls, all under the age of eighteen months.”
Hutchinson took out his PDA and took notes as Indigo spoke. “And the MO is the same as this case?”
“Yes. The kidnappers steal a car. They change license plates with another car of the same model and color as the stol
en car to muddy the waters. We think they spend a day or two stalking their next victim until an opportunity arrives to snatch the child. They then abandon the car at a parking garage, apparently after transferring the child to a new car or location. We’ve managed to lift several sets of fingerprints from all the cars, but so far they’re not in the national database.”
“The other children—weren’t they in foster care? Kittanning doesn’t fit the profile. This could be a copycat crime.”
Indigo shook her head. “In all the previously recovered cars, forensics has found aged plaster in the floor mats, all from the same house. We’ve recovered the car used in Kittanning’s kidnapping and found traces of the same plaster on the floor mats.”
“You’ve recovered the car!” Ukiah cried.
“Yes.” Indigo’s sigh indicated that the find held no leads. “We assumed that they would follow normal MO and abandon the car in a parking lot. We contacted all lot owners, and it was reported in two hours ago.”
“We have some fingerprints on file of suspected cult members; not all of them have been entered into the national database,” Hutchinson offered. “We could cross-reference them.”
“We will.” Indigo turned to Ukiah. “You remember the shooter?”
Ukiah nodded. “White male. About six-two. Two hundred pounds. Graying mousy blond hair. Gray eyes. Lots of pockmarks on his face. Late twenties or early thirties.” He dredged out the clothing information. “He had a shoulder holster, under the jacket. A forty-five with a silencer. He had a prison tattoo on his right arm. I saw it when he lifted his hand and his jacket rode up. It was a snake or a dragon done in blue, twining up his arm.”
Indigo noted it down. “It matches the descriptions from the other cases, just a lot more detailed. Did you see the driver?”
Ukiah closed his eyes and carefully stepped through the memory. It was like flipping through photographs, only far more detailed. He opened the door and the man stood there, his nervous sweat now a glaring sign of things to come. Yes, and there was the scent of gunmetal, begging to be noticed. Ukiah changed the focus now, past the front porch to the street below. Mom Jo explained once that the human eye took in a room not in a single steady study, but a thousand seemingly random focus points that merged in the subconscious to make up a single impression. Most people couldn’t separate out the individual points and sharpen in on those, but he could.
The white Taurus sat at the curb, presenting its flank, engines idling, the driver looking toward him. “The driver was a girl, white, blond, medium build. She’s young, I would say she’s only sixteen or seventeen, if that.”
The car and the girl seemed familiar. Indigo said that the two kidnappers would stalk their victims, so he cast back through his recent memories for either one. He found the car in his memories of Monday—it had nearly back-ended him as he jockeyed through the Squirrel Hill traffic on Murray Avenue. Through glimpses in his mirror, and casual scans of the parking lot later, he watched as it pulled into the Giant Eagle’s parking lot, found a space on the other side of the lot, and pulled facing him.
“They were following me yesterday. They parked, and he followed me into the Giant Eagle.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t try to take him there,” Indigo noted. “Two of the kidnappings were in stores.”
Ukiah remembered the cantaloupe woman, her fearful reaction to Rennie. She nearly had it right, only Rennie beat the real kidnappers to the punch. “I ran into some friends; they were buying food for a cookout. We shopped together. There was a lot of them, and some of them were armed.”
Hutchinson looked surprised at this news. Indigo noted something down, presumably nothing that directly mentioned the Pack. Unease crept into her face.
“If they followed you to the store,” she asked, “were they here earlier, say around noon, watching the office?”
When Indigo visited.
Ukiah scanned the street as they stood outside saying good-bye, Kittanning warm in his arms. “Yes.”
“Were you armed when you went to Giant Eagle?”
“Yes.”
“Here’s a theory,” Indigo said. “They stalk you and notice that you and your friends go armed. They deem it too dangerous to do their normal snatch and run, but decide to eliminate anyone armed prior to taking Kittanning.”
Ukiah blanched, ticking through his mind all the possible people that might have answered the door instead of him. Max. Sam. Indigo. He started to growl in anger again.
“Are you up to coming downtown,” Indigo asked, “to work with a police artist and look through the mug books?”
Ukiah nodded. “Let me get something warmer on. I’m still a little shocky from being shot.”
Max and Indigo exchanged looks. Indigo asked make sure he’s okay without speaking, and Max answered with a nod and a reassuring touch to her shoulder.
“I want to change too,” Max said. “Give us a couple of minutes,” he said to the federal agents, “and we’ll follow you downtown.”
As Ukiah started wearily up the steps, their part-time investigator, Chino, opened the door and came in. Max must have briefed him because Chino eyed Hutchinson with open suspicion. After a quick introduction to the federal agent, Chino helped Max get Sam upstairs to the guest bedroom. They got her settled while Ukiah peeled off his borrowed T-shirt and pulled on one of his black tracking T-shirts. It felt more comforting to have its familiar darkness press against his skin; the other shirt had been a constant reminder that a stranger had dealt him violent death and taken Kittanning.
Max came in as Ukiah pulled a sweatshirt out of his closet. “Hold on a sec.” He pulled up Ukiah’s T-shirt to check his bandages. He caught Ukiah’s puzzled look and said, “I want to make sure all the holes are covered. I’m amazed those idiots even have bandages.”
Idiots? Oh, the Dog Warriors. Ukiah was puzzled by Max’s bitterness until he remembered the mess at the bar. “Were any of the men at the bar hurt?” And realizing that was a stupid question, he added, “Badly?”
“Some broken bones and mild concussions. Luckily nothing more serious, but it put us on the map again with the Pack. Right now we’re considered businessmen in the same league as ambulance companies; we have a good reason to be at the scene of a crime without being considered responsible for it. This keeps up, and we’re going to gain the reputation of troublemakers.”
“I’m sorry, Max.”
Max winced. “I shouldn’t be chewing you out. We don’t have time for it. I’m just generally pissed, that’s all. We had to admit that you were at the bar, but you left alone. I’ve called and left messages on your phone. You’ve been out looking, no help from the Pack mentioned.”
“Okay. We need to find out what we can on this cult. Hutchinson might be right. They had those photographs of me for some reason.”
Max nodded. “Keep your mouth shut around him as much as you can, though, kid. If that cult is now Ontongard, and that’s what Hutchinson is really poking his nose into, it’s best you stay as far away from him as you can.”
“If it is the Ontongard, we should warn him.” Ukiah moved to pull on the gray sweatshirt. “Somehow.”
“We’ll figure that out if the need arises.” Max plucked the sweatshirt from his hands, adding, “No, not that one.” Max flashed the PROPERTY OF THE FBI stenciled onto the front. “If Indigo is going to stay on this case, you can’t be reminding people how personally involved she is.” Max pulled out a white sweater. “This one. It’s good for the innocent victim look.”
Max went to change.
Ukiah’s sensitive ears caught Hutchinson saying to Indigo downstairs, “I know it’s not my place to say this, but you’re setting yourself up to be hurt.”
“What do you mean?” Indigo said after a shocked moment of silence.
“He might seem like any other man, but they’re different from the rest of us. Nobody is going to look at the two of you and think that you’re together for love. And in the end, that just tears you apart.
”
Did Hutchinson know that he wasn’t human? Ukiah walked to the balcony to look down into the foyer.
Indigo stood with her arms crossed, the events of the day showing by the fact she was telegraphing her irritation. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Cut me some slack.” Hutchinson laughed, disbelieving, mockingly. “You walk in like you own the place, and you don’t need to introduce yourself, or be introduced. It’s obvious. And I’m just saying that it won’t work, and you’re just going to get hurt. Fed to fed; we take care of our own.”
“Do you want to keep talking in code, or are you going to actually try to say something that makes sense?”
“Look, I’ve been there. I worked at a yacht club on weekends to help pay for college. And I made the mistake of falling in love with one of them. How can you resist? They’re sleek, all defects surgically corrected, wearing stylish fashions and all so self-assured. The rest of the world is frumpy in comparison. The problem is that if you’re not one of the breed, then you’re a grasping social climber, just out to use them.”
“You think I’m dating Max?” Indigo asked carefully.
It was nearly funny to see Hutchinson realize that he misstepped. “You’re not?” He noticed Ukiah coming slowly down the steps. “Oh!” And then the realization of her connection to Kittanning tripped in. “Oh! I’m sorry.”
With the proverbial cat out of the bag, Ukiah put out his hand to Indigo. She clasped it tightly.
“I’d rather not talk about this,” Indigo said quietly.
Hutchinson nodded, his eyes narrowing. Whatever he thought, he kept to himself. “I’ll meet you downtown.”
“Thank you,” Indigo said.
Ukiah and Indigo held each other, offering comfort, seeking comfort, but there was no real peace to be had, not with Kittanning gone.
Max came trotting down the steps, slowing as he saw them together and Hutchinson missing from the foyer. “Did I miss something?”
“Nothing,” Ukiah growled.