by Wen Spencer
CHAPTER TWELVE
Bennett Detective Agency, Shadyside, Pennsylvania
Thursday, September 16, 2004
“Personally, I hate this plan,” Max said while shoving scrambled eggs about in a frying pan. Sam, who was helping Ukiah rebandage his gunshot wounds, made a sound of agreement, followed with a murmured, “This is going to hurt.”
“Yes.” Ukiah hissed in pain as Sam yanked off the bandage across his back. “I know. It’s unlikely to work and it’s going to put lots of pressure on Alicia.”
A good night’s sleep, however, hadn’t produced any other suggestions, Alicia had already been called, and Rennie was impatiently pacing the kitchen.
“Hell, that’s not it.” Max spooned half of the scrambled eggs smothered with cheddar cheese onto Ukiah’s plate. He split the remainder between himself and Sam; Rennie had announced that he had eaten already when Max started to cook. “Alicia is a grown woman; she can say ‘no’ if she can’t handle the pressure.”
Ukiah tried not to attack the eggs and failed. Max made heavenly eggs to start; wounded as Ukiah was, the eggs were fluffy protein bliss. “If it does work,” he mumbled around a mouthful, “we’ll want to pump her for everything she might know, down to the smallest detail.”
Sam turned the bandaging over to Rennie in order to eat her eggs while they were warm. “Considering the guilt Alicia’s carrying around from what went down in Oregon, I think it will be good for her.”
The men looked at her in surprise.
“What?” Sam said. “Don’t tell me that you didn’t know?”
“No,” Ukiah said unhappily. “Poor Alicia.”
“What I’m worried about is the hypnotist,” Max explained after finishing his eggs. “If this works, he’s going to hear everything. Think about it. Alicia is going to be giving out details on bio weapons and alien invasion plans while guys who look like they eat kittens for breakfast take notes.” Max waved his hands as if trying to contain the scope of the breach in their secrecy. “Insane as what Alicia might say, the Dog Warriors will give her a level of creditability you’re not going to be able to explain away.”
“Exactly,” Sam said. “If she’s under, it’s assumed that she’s telling the truth. If she was mentally deranged, why are the Dog Warriors paying attention to what she’s saying?”
Ukiah winced; he hadn’t considered someone other than them would hear everything Alicia had to say.
“None of the Pack can hypnotize someone?” Max asked Rennie.
“We know how to steal, destroy, torture, kill, and evade capture,” Rennie said.
“I figured that this was a little too subtle for your normal MO.” Max glanced to Sam. “You?”
“My dad tried to teach me. I’ve seen him do it as part of a stage act he does when he’s not scamming people out of money. I know it does work. I’m just too impatient or something. I’ve never been able to put anyone under, not even the easy ones.”
Max considered the tidbit of personal information. “Okay.” He turned to Ukiah. “I don’t suppose your moms have a hidden elf talent.”
“Well, I—I don’t think so.” He searched his memory. “When Mom Lara first started to have migraines from the brain tumor, and the painkillers left her so groggy, she tried hypnosis to deal with the headaches. It helped. But it wasn’t Mom Jo that hypnotized her; it was Bridget. We could probably get her to put Alicia under.”
“Bridget?” Max made a slight face. “I don’t think we should use someone that knows your family. In fact, going to Ohio to have it done is a strong possibility. Hell, if we had the time, running up to Canada would have been the preferred option.”
Ukiah thought about Bridget. She always struck the Wolf Boy as a solid, honest person. Even with Magic Boy’s wisdom, he could see no flaw to her character, despite her unorthodox lifestyle. “I say we use her.” When Max started to protest, Ukiah put a hand to his partner’s shoulder. “Trust me, if not her.”
Max gave a grudging nod. “Okay. We’ll use her.”
The phone rang and Sam, who had been sitting closest to it, picked it up with a well-practiced, “Bennett Detective Agency. Killington here.” Which was really weird to hear. “Hey, Chino, what do you have? Yeah, I’ve got a pen.” She copied something out, growing a deep frown. “My God, you made that up! Is that a real name? I would too. Anything else? Oh, great!” She made more notes. “Thanks. Are we going to see you later? Okay. Tonight then.”
“What’s up?” Max asked as she hung up.
“Chino got a lead on Zip, the dead cult member stopped on the turnpike. His name was D-D-mit-D-mi . . .”
Max leaned over to look at the note. “Dmitriy Zlotnikov.” Then seeing Sam’s stare at him. “I grew up Pittsburgh. We’ve got lots of Polish people here.”
“Do the middle name.” Sam tapped the paper.
“Yevgenyevitch,” Max said. “Vitch means son, so his dad was probably Yevgenye. Eugene.”
Sam gave Max an unreadable look and went on. “He went by Dan, so I’m obviously not the only one that has trouble with his name. And apparently he grew up in the area too. A next of kin claimed the body from the morgue after the autopsy. This is her address. Could be a wild-goose chase.”
“Right now,” Max said, “all we have is wild geese.”
Alicia wore a scarlet camisole-styled shirt, black leggings, and sandals that showed off her tanned toes. She had toned down the false bravado of the day before but it was still there, from thistle-top blue hair to red-painted toe nails. It reminded Ukiah of how fragile she was after all she had gone through.
“You sure you want to do this?” Ukiah asked her. “I don’t want to put too much pressure on you.”
She laughed. “After what I’ve been through, this is going to be easy. A little talking in my sleep. I’ve been hypnotized before.”
“Really?”
“After my parents died. It was part of my grief therapy,” she said. “Actually this probably will be good for me. I’ve experienced the complete drowning of my self by an alien force, and now I’ve got to pretend it never happened.”
“I didn’t realize you . . . remained aware of Alicia when you were Hex.”
“Oh, yes,” she said quietly. “It was like falling down from a great height into a monster mosh pit. For a while the crowd fills your ears and you ride the sea of hands and it doesn’t seem that awful. There’s that sense of oneness—of hundreds of others holding you up, supporting you, passing you on. But then you fall down between the bodies and then they’re all standing on you, pressing you to the floor, so you can’t move, and can’t be heard, and the whole time the monster roar of the crowd beats on your skin.” He reached out and took her hand, and she clung to it, whispering, “But the worst was you could sense your body walking around killing—killing the people you loved the most.”
He gathered her into a hug and rocked her. “It’s okay. It’s over.”
“I tried so hard to stop my body, but I wasn’t strong enough.”
“You know it’s not your fault. You were lucky to survive.”
“I know. I know. I know.” She let out a deep shuddering breath, and then said in an annoyed tone, “And the real pisser is that I used to so love mosh pits.”
A surprise laugh slipped out of him, and he hugged her tighter. In a flash she had shown him that Alicia was still there, fully intact, and maybe stronger than he gave her credit for.
She patted him twice on the back and released him. “Let’s go, daylight’s burning.”
She was right—barely. The sunlight was still a brilliant white of early morning. If Mom Lara hadn’t been adamant about Bridget’s household being early risers, Ukiah would never start out this early to someone’s house.
They had planned to go to Bridget’s alone, just the two of them, but Rennie appeared around the corner of the house and walked out to the Hummer with them.
“You’re coming with us?” Ukiah asked.
“Yes.”
�
�Why?”
“We don’t have enough time,” Rennie said, “to count all the reasons. I’m coming with you, and that’s it.”
Bridget’s home was a low-slung contemporary house in Fox Chapel, an exclusive area of Pittsburgh with multimillion-dollar homes on rolling wooded estates. It presented the public road with a quiet, solid stonework facade.
Starr, Bridget’s tall lean blond partner, answered the door. “Ukiah? My gosh, you’ve shot up in the last few months!” She stepped back to let them into the bluestone foyer. Beyond the entrance hall, the house branched out into private, public, and kitchen areas, with a sunken great room straight ahead. With a cathedral ceiling of rough-hewed barn beams, the great room was filled with houseplants and backed with a wall of glass viewing the wooded backyard. The effect was like stepping back outside. After the house’s tame facade, the wildness was unexpected and magical.
A massive fireplace of uncut river rock dominated the east wall of the great room. Its blackened fire pit breathed out ghosts of ancient fires. An oil painting hung over the mantel; an antlered man stood in a mist-filled woods, lifting up a bone horn to sound, turned so his face was in shadows. There was a sense of quiet power in the painting.
If you could see into his eyes, Ukiah wondered, would they be filled with stars?
“Bridget’s in the garden,” Starr said, distracting Ukiah from the painting.
Starr led them out the back door to the far corner of the yard, a clearing in the woods with flowers intermixed with herbs and vegetable plants. Most of the vegetables had ripened and been picked, with the exception of pumpkins in a nest of vines. Cornstalks had been bundled into teepee sheaves. An apple tree lent sun-warm sweetness to the crisp autumn smell coming from the woods.
Bridget was kneeling in the riot of green, her auburn hair braided into a thick cord and pinned on top of her hair like a crown. She looked up with slight amusement. “What have you brought me?”
“A bear, a wolf, and a cock robin,” Starr said.
“That sounds like the start of a fairy tale,” Ukiah said.
“Or a dirty joke,” Rennie said.
“At least you get to be a wolf. I think I’m the cock robin,” Alicia said. “And if that’s the case, I’m offended.”
“Cock robins are good jolly brave birds,” Bridget consoled her.
“This is Alicia Kraynak.” Ukiah scrambled to handle the introductions. “She’s a good friend of mine.”
Alicia offered her hand and a nervous smile.
“And this is Rennie Shaw . . .” Ukiah wasn’t sure what to add to that, nor did Rennie offer to finish the introduction. The Pack leader stood with a hard guarded look on his face.
“You look like a serial killer,” Ukiah complained silently.
“I am a serial killer.”
“Alicia?” Bridget offered a distraction. “Aren’t you the girl that disappeared in Oregon?”
“Yes.” Alicia smiled shyly and laid a hand on Ukiah’s shoulder. “Ukiah found me and brought me safely home.”
“Merry meet, merry part, and merry ye meet again.” Bridget smiled warmly. “Lara called, saying you needed help, Ukiah. How can I help you three unlikely fellows?”
“We . . .” Ukiah fumbled for a simple explanation. “We need Alicia hypnotized to learn something she might know but can’t recall.”
“Sounds easy enough.” Bridget rose and brushed the dirt from her knees. “Let’s get comfy and give it a go.”
Ukiah held out a hand to halt her. “The only thing is this involves—well—something you are better off knowing nothing about. Is it possible for you to hypnotize Alicia and then let us question her alone?”
“Oh, goodness, no. I will have no part in lowering someone’s mental defenses and then let two untrained strangers muck around in her brain.”
Ukiah had expected that as her answer. “We need you to at least promise not to tell anyone what we talk about.”
“Not to worry.” Bridget led them back into the house to a flagstone sunroom with white wicker furniture. “A hypnotist is like a doctor in regards to patient confidentiality. Perhaps even more so, since the patients aren’t aware of what they’ve said.”
Rennie looked pointedly at Starr.
“My spouses know that they’re not my secrets to tell and keep their curiosity to themselves.” Bridget waved Alicia into a lounge chair. “Settle in and get comfortable.”
“Spouses?” Rennie yipped aloud.
“I have a wife.” Bridget motioned to Starr, who smiled smugly at Rennie’s surprise. “And a husband. He’s at work right now.”
Rennie said nothing, Ukiah sensed Rennie’s regard of her shift slightly, unconsciously acknowledging her as an alpha female.
“Why don’t you give me a few minutes alone with Alicia to put her under.” Bridget made shooing motions, as if they were schoolchildren. “People listening to the process sometimes go under inadvertently, and I’d rather only have one patient at a time. I’ll warn you now, though, some people can’t be hypnotized.”
Alicia started to say something, perhaps to mention that she’d been hypnotized before, and then fell quiet, looking troubled. Who knew what the infection and converting her back to human had done to the structures of her mind?
Ukiah took Alicia’s hand, squeezed it tight, and left her to Bridget’s care.
Starr led them back into the house to a kitchen filled with drying herbs and spices. Rennie eyed the abundance of straw brooms, the blue hollow glass witch’s ball in the window, and the locked hutch containing mistletoe, skullcap, and dragon’s blood root, as Starr put the teapot on to heat and started to prepare tea.
“She’s a witch,” Rennie noted with surprise and uneasiness.
“She’s Wiccan.”
“I thought you said she goes to your church.”
“She does. I’m Unitarian.”
“And to think that other Christians kill each other over saying mass in Latin or not,” Rennie said lightly, but nevertheless paid closer attention to the tea making.
Ukiah pointed out the poisonous herbs were all locked into the hutch. In focusing Rennie’s attention on it, Ukiah noticed something he missed earlier. “Starr, what is this? These dark leaves.”
Starr came to see what he was looking at. “That’s wormwood. Artemisia absintium. It can be dangerous, so we lock it up.”
“Why do you have it?” Ukiah asked.
“We use it in various ways. When smoldered as incense, we use it to summon spirits. It’s good for expelling worms, especially roundworm and threadworm.”
“Some carry it as protection against bewitchment and hexes,” Rennie added, his brogue suddenly thick, as if he had stepped back a hundred years.
Starr grinned at Rennie, as if amused by his discomfort. “Why do you ask, Ukiah?”
“I think I saw it in a painting recently.” Goodman’s mural to be exact. “It’s hard to tell. The leaves were small and not done with a lot of detail—more of an impression of the leaves than an accurate drawing.”
The teapot started to whistle, drawing Starr back to the range. “Wormwood has lots of colorful history behind it. Its nicknames are ‘Old Woman’ and ‘Crown of the King.’ The Greeks thought it a cure against the poison of sea dragons, and it’s in the Bible.”
Sometimes the trick to being a private investigator, Ukiah decided, wasn’t finding clues but ignoring all but the right one. Even if he was sure that Goodman had painted wormwood into his mural, Ukiah now had a wide range of reasons why. Had Goodman been trying to poison his monstrous mother? Had he believed he needed protection from witches?
“She’s most likely done.” Starr added a tin of powdered hot cocoa mix to the loaded tea tray and handed the tray to Ukiah. “Take this out to Bridget. I’ll stay in here, sketching.”
“Please picture a staircase in your mind,” Bridget was saying when the men returned to the patio. Alicia sat with her eyes closed, her body relaxed. Bridget indicated to Ukiah to set the tea tray dow
n on a nearby table with an absent wave of her hand. “It can be a staircase wholly in your imagination, or one you know very well. Perhaps it’s the staircase in your house, or one at your school, or maybe it’s somewhere outdoors, old and worn. When you see the staircase, please see yourself standing on the bottom step, looking up. When you can clearly see yourself and the stairs please nod your head.”
Alicia nodded ever so slightly as Ukiah settled quietly in one of the chairs beside Bridget. Alicia’s breathing slowed and her face started to sag in total relaxation.
“Please see yourself walking up the staircase. With each step you take you will go deeper and deeper into the hypnotic state. When you reach the top of the stairs you will be deeply hypnotized and ready to respond to the questions asked to you. Please take your time and walk slowly up the stairs. Just nod your head when you reach the top. Walk up the steps and be more . . . and . . . more . . . hypnotized . . . more . . . and more . . . hypnotized.”
Alicia nodded once more.
Bridget glanced now to Ukiah. “She’ll answer questions now.”
“Alicia . . .” Ukiah realized he should have given more thought to what questions to ask. “Alicia, do you remember Hex taking the Ae from the ship? They were in the armory. It’s empty now. Do you remember him taking them?”
“The Ae?” Alicia’s face twisted into one of Hex’s frowns. She continued in Hex’s flat voice. “Prime planned an ambush for me while I was out collecting specimens for the creation of the breeder. I had taken heavier weapons with me than he expected. He waited; thinking I’d lay them aside, but I could sense his uneasiness, try as he might to hide it: like sandpaper against my nerves.”
Ukiah stared at Alicia in dismay; he hadn’t expected Hex to answer. Behind him, Rennie growled so deep and low that Ukiah felt it more than heard it.
“It was—disquieting.” Alicia/Hex continued. “I think back to the mother ship but I do not remember him, nor does any I that shared memories with I prior to leaving the mother ship. He was a loner always, but I did not see that, surrounded by myself as I had been, but now that I was alone with him, I see that I was truly alone, and he was another, and not myself. He pressed me to set aside the weapons and I saw the truth and he saw with me, and in that moment . . .” Alicia/Hex paused, mouth working, trying to shape the confusion of the alien who had always been one, finding itself suddenly two. “We drew our weapons, I and he, and we fired, he and I, and wounded . . . both . . . ourselves.”