by Wen Spencer
“Ephesians, chapter six,” Hellena murmured. “Therefore, take up the full armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.”
“Yeah,” Max said uneasily. “The other server has the damning information, like full background searches on possible converts.” He held up a stack of papers. “This is the dossier on Socket, aka Hutchinson’s rich girlfriend. How much she was worth, what sites she visited, her spending habits, the works. Some of the information on the site, though, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.” He shuffled through the paper. “I printed off some of the weirder things. Here, this is a geological map of upstate New York. According to the map key, these are fault lines.” Max knew Ukiah well enough to add in without him asking, “Basically cracks in the earth where earthquakes are most likely to occur. The Appalachians are some of the most stable areas in the world, but we still get minor quakes. There was one in 2002 near Lake Placid.”
“Nothing like the West Coast,” Sam commented. “We have active volcanoes.”
“I don’t know what this is.” Max pulled out another map, marked heavily with numbers and lines. He laid it down next to the map of the fault lines. “This is the same location, but I can’t tell what they’re mapping here.”
“It’s the power grid for that area,” Rennie said. “These are electrical poles and what power loads they’re carrying them from, and such like.”
“Heaven knows, the Lord needs power.” Max pulled out a CD from the drawer. “I sucked a couple hundred files down from the server, but a search for the words ‘Ukiah, Oregon, Maxwell, Bennett, and Kittanning’ on the entire server pulls up nothing. Nor could I find any hint to where the cult could be hiding now.”
It sounded like a dead end.
Dismay suddenly rippled through the Pack like shock waves on a pond, starting with Bear in the hall, transmitted through Hellena, Rennie, and finally to Ukiah, as Bear’s scent impression brushed against his mind.
Alicia had opened the front door and walked in unannounced, as she had done for years.
“It’s okay,” Ukiah said to the others, and then called, “we’re in the kitchen.”
Alicia came cautiously down the hall. Outwardly she looked very much like herself, in a black lace top over an iridescent cobalt-blue halter top, a tiny black leather miniskirt, and fishnet stockings above cobalt-blue high heel boots. Her hair, which had been of normal length and natural color in Oregon, had been cut short, dyed deep blue, and spiked in a thistle top with the exception of a rattail down the back. It wasn’t her normal half-jaunty, half-sexual saunter, though, down the hall. She had lost her bravado in Oregon, along with part of her identity, and almost her life. Her clothes seemed almost too brazen, as if she was desperately trying to reclaim herself.
“I’m sorry,” she said, edging around the room to keep at maximum distance from Rennie, whom she obviously recognized. “I know I should have rung the doorbell, but, you know, habit.”
“It’s okay,” Ukiah said and went and hugged her.
She clung to him tightly. She reeked of perfume, not her normal brand, but Indigo’s. Had she doused herself trying to reach the same level of sensitivity the Ontongard had? Did she realize it was Indigo’s perfume? “I heard about the kidnapping. I want to help. I know how much you must love him. I know how important it is to the world to get Kittanning back.”
“What do you remember of the Ontongard’s memories?” Rennie asked.
“They’re like dreams I had. Very vivid dreams.” She paused, and then shook her head. “I suppose they’re more than that. Sharp and clear, and yet so vague. I’m not explaining it very well. They’re like music videos of a dream. All these surreal images impressed into your mind, vibrant and yet nonsensical.”
“Was there a plan to kidnap the little one?” Rennie asked. “Or plans to expand to using humans to do Hex’s dirty work?”
“Humans? Never!” Alicia said. “One betrayal and billions would turn to hunt him down.”
“Now there’s an idea,” Sam muttered.
“That’s a two-edged sword to grasp for,” Rennie said. “When Prime and Hex first arrived, witch hunts had just fallen out of practice. Between ignorance and superstition, the Pack would be lumped along with the Ontongard as demons. Even now, men might decide that being rid of all aliens would be best. By numbers and morals, however, the end result would be the Pack destroyed and the Ontongard just driven under deeper cover.”
“What about plans for Kittanning?”
“I remember being surprised when I nailed Ukiah to the wall—when Quinn nailed Ukiah.” Alicia faltered and looked distressed at having memories of acts she never committed. “T-t-then flying with only thoughts of escape.”
She lapsed into silence. As she said, Quinn had been the one that drove a post digger through Ukiah, pinning him to a wall, and discovered that Ukiah wasn’t a Pack Get but the lone born breeder. The battle ended with Quinn rendered down to a flock of crows, which flew away. Alicia must have received Quinn’s memories at some point after that.
“The Oregon Gets didn’t know about me,” Ukiah said. “So they couldn’t have known of any plans to kidnap Kittanning.”
Despite the lack of useful information now, Ukiah could feel the Pack regard Alicia with interest. Never before could they peer into the mind of their enemy. There were assumptions they could make, based on Prime’s memories of a sprawling intergalactic life-form with billions of individual bodies acting like cells of a single organism. Prime, though, had splintered away from the Ontongard long ago; Alicia had been part of the Ontongard just the week before.
“How does the Ontongard stay organized when separated?” Rennie asked.
Alicia rocked her head back and forth in a habit that was wholly hers; Ukiah was pleased to see it. After two minutes of thinking, she said, “He uses the phone. In Pendleton, he called any of him that was out of mental range.”
“Hex or Gets?” Hellena asked.
“All of them are Hex,” Alicia said.
“We know,” Rennie rumbled. “We individualize Hex from his Get. He led and the others followed.”
Alicia narrowed her eyes as she considered it from the Ontongard viewpoint. “He was the origin of the will, like the headwaters of a river, but he no more led than ran along with, all agreeing. One mouth speaks, but all form the word.”
“Were the Pendleton Gets in communication with any others?”
“There was a sudden silence from Pittsburgh, and it was decided that it was too dangerous to communicate via phone long distances,” Alicia said.
“Do you remember the phone numbers used to contact the Gets in other areas?” Rennie pressed.
Alicia closed her eyes and pressed fingers to her skull. She thought in silence for several minutes and then shook her head. “It’s like reading in a dream. I can remember picking up the phone and hitting the buttons, but the numbers—I can’t remember them.”
“Indigo might be able to get phone records from everyone in Pendleton that became Gets,” Ukiah said. “Most of them are dead, so protection of privacy won’t be an issue. It will take some work to winnow out false leads, since we don’t know when they were infected, but it might give us leads.”
“This is not getting Kittanning back,” Max said.
“I thought I could help,” Alicia said. “I can man the phones, coordinate things a bit, cook, anything.”
“Well,” Max said, “you could make breakfast.”
The ransom note came at breakfast.
None of the other children had been ransomed, so they had not expected it. They were gathered in the kitchen, the table covered with maps of the city and plates of hastily scrambled eggs.
The Winchester doorbell sounded and someone answered the door.
There was a startled yelp and suddenly a body came flying into the kitchen. A scruffy man scrambled on the polished wood floor.
“What the hell?” Max shouted.
Ukiah lea
pt across the table to check Bear who had pulled a knife. “Bear! Wait! What is it?”
Bear shoved a small package into Ukiah’s hands with a wordless snarl.
Ukiah started to open the package, and then his breath got stuck in his chest as awareness hit him.
“I just delivered it!” The man on the floor whimpered, trying to squirm his way under the table. “I don’t even know what it is! I’m just paid to deliver it! Please, don’t hurt me.”
“Ukiah?” Max asked. “What is it?”
“It’s a mouse.” Ukiah had to force the breath out of his chest to talk. “Kittanning’s mouse.”
There was a moment of stillness, as if grief and fear and rage coalesced into something solid and held them motionless.
“You shouldn’t open it then. You’ll confuse it.” Max held out his hand for it, and reluctantly Ukiah gave it up.
Such a tiny box, like something you put a pair of earrings into. Max sat the box on the table, and opened it cautiously, as if afraid that the mouse would escape from all of them.
The body part had been too small to form a mouse. It took the shape of a miniature wooly bear caterpillar. It lifted its head up as if sniffing the air. Ukiah felt its tiny shiver of hunger. It sat on a folded piece of paper, stained with blood cells that died instead of transforming.
“What was it?” Max asked.
Bear came and carefully coaxed the caterpillar into his hand. “A finger. The left pinkie.”
A soft rumble of rage underscored the stillness.
Ukiah picked up the paper and unfolded it, his hands shaking with the anger that wanted to explode out of him, pound against something yielding, preferably someone responsible for this but not even that seemed necessary. Anyone guilty of anything would do.
The note was inspired by too many movies, a collection of cutout letters pasted to a sheet of paper. The kidnapper had used a ruled notebook, the edges still trailing the confetti of being torn from the notebook. “We want $200,000 in small bills unmarked DON’T we send you other pieces in small boxes we WILL call 3:00 p.m. NO COPS!!!”
“Two hundred thousand?” Max shook his head. “Small-time idiots.”
“You have it?” Sam asked.
“Hell, I’ve got a good chunk of it in the office safe,” Max said. “I can get the rest as soon as the bank opens.”
They looked then at the delivery boy and he shrank under their collective gaze.
“I just—I don’t—I don’t know anything about it.”
Ukiah crouched down to stare into his eyes. “You’re going to tell everything you do know.”
“I picked it up at the Oliver Building. The front desk. I got a call from the dispatcher saying that there was an Oakland run. I even tried to talk her into giving it to someone else. I hate biking up the hill on Fifth Avenue. She bitched me out and I went and got it. It was just sitting there waiting for me!”
“Who sent it?” Ukiah asked. The messenger held out a clipboard and Ukiah read the name. “Dewey, Cheetum, and Howe, attorneys at law. Third floor, Oliver Building.”
Rennie took the clipboard and growled.
Ukiah saw the disgust on the others’ faces. “What is it?”
“It’s an old Three Stooges routine,” Max said.
“Who?” Ukiah asked.
“Comedians,” Max explained. “The firm’s name is ‘Do we cheat them, and how.’ ”
Ukiah snarled his frustration.
The messenger flinched away. “I had nothing to do with this. I make dozens of runs a day. I just pick them up and drop them off where they tell me to.”
“Is there a security guard for the building?”
“Yeah. Some old fart.”
They had suddenly gone from no leads to too many. “Bear, take the messenger downtown to visit his dispatcher. Find out what they know about this Dewey, Cheetum, and Howe. Call me with the info.”
Max opened his mouth and then thought better of whatever he was going to say.
Bear carefully returned Kittanning’s caterpillar to the white jewelry box, put the box down on the table, and then waggled fingers at the messenger. “Come, come, we don’t have all day.”
“I want to talk to the doorman.” The box holding the caterpillar looked too fragile sitting there, alone; Ukiah picked it up. “I want to see what he recalls.”
“The kidnappers have been fairly slick so far,” Sam said quietly. “It’s unlikely the doorman saw anything.”
“Are there any security monitors in that lobby?” Max asked.
Over the years, their cases had taken them into a wide range of downtown office buildings, the Oliver Building being one of them. Ukiah called up memories of the lobby. “No.”
Max swore and went to the hall closet to collect his leather briefcase.
“We should call Indigo,” Ukiah said. “Tell her about the ransom demand.”
“Wait,” Rennie said. “Let us go to this Dewey Cheatum first, in case it’s an Ontongard trap.”
Ukiah knew that Indigo wouldn’t want a possible crime scene compromised, but he didn’t want her walking into a possible trap. “Okay. I’ll give you a half hour start. Don’t hurt anyone human.”
“Only if they deserve it,” Rennie compromised and stalked from the offices.
“Before we deliver the full ransom you should look over the serial numbers on the bills.” Max headed to his office for the money from his safe. Ukiah followed, gingerly carrying the small white box.
Sam had followed too, but she checked at the door as Max moved the dictionary stand to one side and peeled up the carpet, exposing the office floor safe. “Do you really want me to see this? I haven’t told you that I was staying yet.”
“If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t have asked you to come to Pittsburgh,” Max said, making no effort to hide the combination.
Sam, though, studied the room instead; it had originally been a library, built-in bookcases filled with books, a ladder riding a brass bar to give access to the top shelves. She pushed at the ladder, sending it down its track.
“Do you really think we should pay?” Ukiah eyed the caterpillar in its box. He sensed its loneliness and desire to merge with a larger, less helpless being. “In all the books, they say it’s a bad idea. The kidnappers rarely deliver even when the ransom is paid.”
“I’ve got the money,” Max said, opening the safe door. “I’ve more than enough money to pay it a hundred times over. I’m not going to risk Kittanning’s life or existence by not paying, especially for what’s just pocket change for me.” He took stacks of bills out of the safe. Packs of twenties, still taped together with a purple band by the bank. He tossed them into the briefcase.
“Two hundred thousand. Pocket change.” Sam snorted and came to riffle the stacks of twenty. “I’ve never seen this much cash at once. How much is each pack?”
“Purples are two thousand,” Max said, closing the safe and locking it. “The one yellow pack is a thousand, and the red band is five hundred.”
“Forty-one thousand five hundred,” Sam whispered.
“Forty thousand.” Max handed the two smaller bundles to Sam. “This is yours, for driving the van.”
Sam stared at the money in her hands as Max closed up the briefcase. “Why didn’t you tell me that you’re loaded?”
Max looked surprisingly shamed. “I know. I should have told you.”
“You say you trust me, and then you keep lying to me. Isn’t me trusting you part of this? Or is it what I have to lose is just so damn insignificant? Just a place to live that I don’t even own, some rented office space, and a beat-up ten-year-old car?”
“I didn’t lie to you.” Max held up his hand to ward off that claim. “If I put you up in some cheap hotel and set up a fake grungy office downtown, that would have been lying. What degree of truth do you want? I flashed plenty of money in Pendleton, from the airplane tickets to the fancy restaurants. I was fairly upfront that I had money to burn. Wasn’t that plain truth enough? This f
ancy house, is that enough? This forty thousand in cash, is that enough? Or are you going to be mad later and say, ‘You didn’t tell me about that!’ I don’t have some easy number that I can give you and say, ‘That’s what I’m worth.’ ”
Sam clenched her teeth and shifted her jaw, like she was locking down on sharp retorts. Finally, she said, “Just get it into the ballpark. The kid told me a number, and it might be right, but you don’t know that I know. Let’s get it settled between us, a nice solid foundation.”
“Fine.” Max said. He looked up at the ceiling.
“Well?”
“I’m counting.” Max said. “I told you that I don’t have easy numbers to hand out.
“Rough estimate, I’d say a hundred million dollars—”
“Shit!” Sam said. “Why do you even work?”
“What would I do otherwise? Sit at home and listen to the clock?” Max asked.
They listened to the grandfather clock tick out ten seconds before Sam said, “Then travel around the world. Go snorkeling in Hawaii. Visit Russia.”
“Go to a place where I don’t know a single soul for thousands of miles? Where I won’t even understand what the people around me are saying?”
“It just seems insane that you do something so dangerous for work.”
“By risking my life, I’m reminded that I still have it.” Max swept the briefcase off the desk. “Besides, I get to help people that desperately need it.”
CHAPTER NINE
Bennett Detective Agency, Shadyside, Pennsylvania
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
It was the end of Rennie’s half an hour, so Ukiah called Indigo and told her that the kidnappers had sent a ransom note by messenger.
“Ransom?” she repeated as if stunned.
He told her the amount. “Max is going to pay it. I’ve got the ransom note here, but we’re heading out to the bank to collect the rest of the money. Bear went off with the messenger to talk to his dispatcher . . .”