“If he’s sleeping, how’d he lose his license?”
“He’d drink himself to sleep and get up early for work. He got caught DUI twice, both times in the morning, on the way to the garage.”
“Well, that explains why there was apple cider everywhere in his townhouse.”
“Yes, he likes his apple cider,” she said.
“So how’s he get around, then?”
“I pick him up sometimes, other times he catches the bus, and sometimes he rides his bike.”
I thought about that. I didn’t see a bike at his townhouse. “Good. What else?”
“He likes Chinese food.”
“Yeah, I gathered that from his townhouse.”
“But he only ever goes to some place called Shanghai Flavor Shop. He says it’s the only place that makes pork buns the right way.”
“Shanghai Flavor Shop, huh?” I asked, thinking. “Okay, let’s give it a shot. If he’s still in town he may have been there today.”
“It’s in Sunnyvale,” she said.
I nodded, then turned the Road Runner around.
“Let’s just hope it’s still open.”
It was after eight thirty p.m., and the bottleneck traffic of the Valley had died down, so it took less than twenty minutes to make it to the little Chinese restaurant.
It was nestled in a strip of shops, most of them food-oriented: pizza, Indian, fish and chips, and another competing Chinese restaurant called Famous Food. The dinner rush was over and the parking lot scattered with the leftover cars. I left the engine running and the heater on for Elise.
The Shanghai Flavor Shop had two retina-burning hot pink neon signs on either side of the door telling everyone it was still open. Inside, a smiling white porcelain cat was waving its arm up and down. An old tube TV sat up in the corner of the restaurant on a metal arm bolted to the wall, and a Chinese soap opera was playing. An elderly Asian man was sitting at a table, slurping soup off his spoon. The guy looked up at me with a deadpan stare from heavy-bagged eyes. Then he looked back to his soup bowl and resumed slurping.
An Asian woman walked out of the kitchen wearing a shirt covered in blue-and-green embroidered flowers and a high-collar. She had large gold-framed eyeglasses and a wide smile, with yellowing teeth. “Hello,” she said enthusiastically.
“Hi,” I said.
“What would you like?” she asked, standing behind the counter with the waving cat.
“I’m Detective Gamble. I’m with the San Jose Police.” I pulled Stuart’s college photo from my jacket pocket. “Has this man been in today? Name’s Stuart Arnold.”
She took the photo and held her head back, looking down the bifocal lenses of her enormous eyeglasses. “Oh, yes, yes. Very good customer.”
“He’s been in today or he’s a good customer?”
“No, he been here tonight.”
“Tonight? How long ago?” I asked, urgency in my voice.
“Ah, you missed him. ’Bout two hour ago.”
“Two hours?” I asked, more to myself. “Shit.”
“You like order something? We have pork rolls, very good.”
“No. Do you know where he’s staying?”
“No, I don’t know. He always get takeout.”
I nodded. “Okay. Thanks for your help.” I turned to leave.
“Wait,” she said.
I turned, hoping she had something else to share. She did. She was holding a menu.
“You take menu with you.”
I took it and left. “Dammit,” I said, standing outside in front of the shops.
The rain was taking a break, but the air was gusty, blowing across my face, my arms, blowing at my jacket. The parking lot was wet and puddled, glassy from the overhead streetlights. Cars were rolling by on Old San Francisco Road, tires tearing through the rain-soaked asphalt.
Good news and bad news, Romero’s voice echoed in my ears. Stuart was still in town, but I’d missed him, and the clock was ticking. Three hours to go ’til midnight.
“Where are you, Stuart?” I whispered to the night.
A thought came to me and I stepped back into the restaurant. The woman was now looking up at the square TV.
“Excuse me,” I said.
“Ah, you want order now?”
“No. Did you see how Stuart Arnold got here? Was he driving? Walking?”
“No, he come on bicycle. I say to him, it too cold for bicycle. He say, I have poncho, can’t you see?” She laughed and slapped her leg.
I exited the shop and got in the Road Runner.
Elise was looking at me. “Was he here?” she asked.
“Yeah, he was here, and he was on his bike.”
“That means he must be close.” She sat up, excited.
“That’s what I figure. When he crawled under his rock, he thought he’d better do it close to his favorite restaurant.”
I pulled my smashed cell out of my pocket and clicked on the Google Maps app, thumbing it a few times to get it to work. Then I did a search for accommodations in Sunnyvale. Small red markers indicated there were a few in the area. The Renaissance Apartment Homes. Charter Palms. The Iris Garden.
I figured he’d choose either the Maple Tree Inn or the Whittle Inn. They were both about the same distance from the Flavor Shop and were the cheapest of them all. But the Whittle Inn was by far the cheapest and looked like the kind of place I’d stay if I wanted to lay low for a while.
I clicked on the directions tab and joined the Flavor Shop with the Whittle Inn. It showed up as one point three miles away.
“Let’s go,” I said and handed the cell to Elise.
EIGHTEEN
I pulled over on the curb roughly one hundred yards up the road from the Whittle Inn and killed the engine. I didn’t want to get too close and scare Stuart off with the noise of the thumping V-8.
“You coming?” I asked, looking at Elise. “He knows you, less chance he’ll run.”
“Okay,” she said.
The Whittle Inn looked like a place better suited to Hollywood rather than Silicon Valley. The front office was an art deco house with green-and-white striped window awnings and a sign in the front lawn which read MOTEL VACANCIES. It looked like the kind of sign you’d find outside a ’60’s drive-in theater to tell you which movie was playing for the night.
Across the driveway sat another building, this one flat-roofed and long and looking like a roadside motel, each room connected to the next, each with its own AC unit hanging out the wall beneath the window.
There was no bike out in the front of any of them. But then again, he’d probably have taken it inside. He wouldn’t want someone riding off with his only form of transportation.
A sign in front of the establishment read 24/7 Help Desk, so I made my way over to the art deco house and entered through the front door, holding it open for Elise. I glanced over at the rooms to make sure a curtain wasn’t being drawn back.
The small bell above the door jingled and a teenage girl, maybe seventeen, with purple hair and enormous headphones was sitting at the desk with her laptop open in front of her. Her lipstick matched her hair color and her eyes were a little bloodshot from the poor lighting in the room and the glare off the screen. Either that or from something more mischievous.
She pulled her earphones down around her neck and looked up at us, taking me in first, then Elise, then looking back to me.
“Yeah?”
“Detective Blake Gamble, SJPD.” I showed her my badge. “I’m looking for somebody.”
“Does this somebody have a name?” she asked.
“Stuart Arnold.”
She looked down at the open book beside her. “Nope. No one here with that name.”
“Okay.” I grabbed the photo out of my pocket. “This guy,” I said, pointing to Stuart in the picture.
“Don’t know. Started not long ago for the night shift.”
“And you haven’t seen anyone?” I asked.
“Nope. You’re the first
.”
“You mind if I take a look in the book?”
She looked at it, a little unsure if she should. They’d never trained her for the question, but she was a suspicious kind of girl. She was probably thinking about confidentiality of the guests. “Just quickly,” she said, and she lifted the book up onto the raised counter.
I read the names. There were five of them. Merle Rutherford, Julie Benedetti, Lance McClain, Enrique Hernandez, and Yong Chaw.
“Shit,” I said. “I guess it was the Maple Tree Inn after all.” I turned to leave when Elise touched my forearm.
“What is it?” I asked.
She pointed to one of the names. “Lance McClain,” she said. “That’s a character from Voltron. It’s one of his favorite shows.”
I looked down at it. “I’d like a key for room number four.”
The girl’s eyebrows knitted together. “I don’t think I can do that.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because. I don’t know. Don’t you need permission, a warrant or something?”
“Look, it’s been a long day. Just hand it over.”
“No,” she said, leaning back in her chair. She crossed her arms. “I don’t think so. I think you need a warrant.”
“I don’t need shit. Give it to me.”
“No,” she said a little louder. She was getting confident. She was used to saying no. No to Mom and no to Dad. And this would make a good little story for her friends.
I leaned over the counter. “You give it to me, or I’ll search you. Then I’ll search your bag. If I find anything, I’ll take you down to the station. I’ll process you. You could be there all night, and what will you tell your boss?” Her eyes flickered with doubt. “Yeah,” I said, smiling. “You’ve got something. A little hooch? Who knows, maybe some coke? It’s in your bag, isn’t it?” She glanced at it. “You wanna lose your job? Now hand over the fucking key.”
She rolled her eyes and blew out an exasperated breath of air. Then she went into the room behind her and came out with the key dangling on a green key tag. She held it out, looking away as I snatched it out of her hand.
“Now, was that so hard?” I asked.
We walked across the way and up to room number four.
I didn’t knock. I didn’t want to give Stuart a chance to do anything. If he had a pistol he might grab hold of it and hunker down somewhere, like behind the bed. Then it’d be a stalemate, and three hours would go by and the fairies would start choking people out with their hair. I couldn’t risk it.
I was quick. I stuck the key in, turned the handle and burst into the room. “Stuart. San Jose Police.”
No one replied. There were no lights on and the place was empty. I knew it was empty because the only place he could be hiding was in the bathroom, and the door was wide open and no one was inside.
The room was stained in the familiar smell of Stuart Arnold. Chinese food and dirty laundry.
Elise reached for the light but I raised a hand. “No. He might be out and I don’t want to spook him when he comes home. Close the door.”
She did, and I fished my keys out of my pocket. I had a small penlight as a key ring, barely larger than my thumb, but even small LEDs give off a decent glow. The narrow beam shone around the room.
The room was big enough for a bed, a TV unit, tea and coffee facilities and a small wall desk. He was a messy guy. I shone it over the unmade bed, the empty sideways cans of apple cider, the numerous Chinese takeout boxes. I picked up the one that had a steel fork still in the box. It smelled pretty fresh.
“Where would he be?” I asked.
Elise shrugged.
I shone the penlight around the room.
“No bike,” I said.
I held the beam on a duffel bag. I’d seen it before. In the video, the one in the pawnshop. I knelt down and unzipped it. It was filled with clothes.
“This is what he put the hard drive into,” I said. “He took this duffel into the pawnshop with him. Must’ve filled it up with his clothes, left straight from home on his bike.”
I upended the bag on the bed and only clothes fell out. I searched the pockets. I felt something rectangular in a side pocket and I pulled out a hard drive.
“That’s it!” said Elise. “That’s the one he used.”
“Okay, then,” I said. “That’s a start. But where’s the rest of it? How much gear was in the garage?”
“An Apple computer. The X-ray vision headset. A few cables.”
I flashed the LED penlight over the bedside table, then over the desk. Something was there. It looked like a . . . like a small reptile carcass with long sinewy gray legs ending in limp claws.
“What the hell?” I said.
“Oh my God,” said Elise.
The thing was splayed out on its back and pinned down by its hands and feet. Hand and feet. One arm ended in a small burl, around the elbow joint. The entire body was covered in hard-shell scales. The belly and chest of the small creature had been split down the center and opened up. Dissected. There were a couple of specimen containers next to it and they were holding tiny organs inside.
The creature’s head was drooping over to the side, and I used one of the scalpels to turn it toward us. It had empty yellow eyes and a purple-black tongue hanging limp from its spiny-toothed mouth.
“It’s a baby,” said Elise, her hands over her mouth.
“Well, I guess we know now why the Chaun is so pissed off.”
“Stuart was using the goggles without me and Nicholas,” said Elise. “He must have found this thing. Brought it back with him.”
“Look,” I said, picking up one of the specimen containers. “Looks like an eggshell.”
“He found an egg,” said Elise, looking at me, wide-eyed.
“That’s why there was a tank and heat lamp in his house. The idiot was incubating the thing. He was reading up on biology so he could study it. That’s what all the biology books were for.”
“But why is it dead?” asked Elise.
“Maybe he wanted to see its insides,” I said. “Like the fae woman said, we can’t help ourselves.”
“Stupid,” said Elise in a harsh whisper. “Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Come on. We’ll go wait for him in the car.”
“You think he’s coming back?”
“I don’t know. But if he does, we’ll be waiting for him.”
NINETEEN
It was dark and the rain was a mist, falling softly in the halos of the streetlamps along South Murphy Avenue. We settled into the Road Runner and the air was so cold it was like breathing in ice vapor. It was unusual for it to be this cold. I thought of running the heater, but I’d need to start the engine and I didn’t want to do that. A burbling V-8 attracts attention and it wasn’t worth the risk.
I didn’t know what was more startling, the fact there was a world of fairies out there, or the fact I wanted my car to be quieter for the third time in one day.
Elise was huddled into herself. She was rubbing her arms and her teeth chattered together. I took the revolver out of my jacket pocket and placed it on the dash. Then I slipped off my jacket and a bolt of lightning exploded in my shoulder and burned down the length of my arm. I winced, then handed the jacket to her.
“Here,” I said.
She pulled it over herself like a blanket, managing to curl most of her small birdlike body beneath it, her legs pulled up to her chest.
“Thank you,” she said.
I reached down to the passenger footwell and found the stick of jerky I had bought earlier in the day. I peeled back the wrapper and tore the jerky in half. I handed Elise one half and she looked at it like a child with a spoonful of broccoli.
“No. Thanks,” she said.
“Suit yourself.” I stuck the first half in my mouth and sat back and chewed.
Five minutes passed and the jerky was gone and there was still no sign of Stuart Arnold.
I huddled back into my seat and stuck my h
ands under my armpits, searching for warmth. I was tired. It’d been a long day. A horrible, awful, long day. I wanted to click my heels together three times and say “there’s no place like home.”
I closed my eyes and was suddenly acutely aware of all the injuries I’d sustained. My right shoulder was throbbing, deep in the joint, down my arm and into my hand and fingers. My chest hurt with every breath I took. My headache had become background noise, but now, with my eyes closed, it was like a siren blasting. And all I could see in the darkness of my mind was that damn horrible creature coming at me. I could hear the screams of Chuck and Joe. The squelching sound that awful scythe made as it passed through Chuck’s body. Then I could see Chris Romero’s headless body. It was all flashing up in my mind, a siren screaming, pain throbbing, horror-filled images flashing in my mind's eye.
“What’s going to happen?” asked Elise.
I opened my eyes and looked at her. “I don’t know.”
“They’re going to kill me,” she said, her chin covered by my jacket, blowing out a cloud of condensation as she spoke.
“I told you. That isn’t going to happen.”
“Why haven’t you called the police? Don’t you guys call for backup or something?”
It had been in the back of my mind. I wanted to call for help, for backup, but what the hell could I possibly say? “There’s a damn monster after me—bring flamethrowers”?
At some point I was gonna have to explain all of this to someone. Soon dispatch would be wondering why Joe and Chuck hadn’t called in and they’d send a car up there. Hell, they could be up there now. Then all hell would break loose. Every cop in San Jose would be getting a phone call. And so would I. They’d be wanting to know where I was. Wanting to know what had happened up at the house. And I would have no answer for them. No answer at all, because the truth sounded worse than bullshit. The truth would get me locked up, and I’d be pleading insanity.
I had considered calling dispatch and making up a bullshit story about some bad guy out there. Some big bad guy cutting off heads, stealing hard drives and X-ray goggles and skulls. Hell I could try and pin it all on Malcolm Bach. Even if he wasn’t tied up in all this, he was an asshole anyway. The problem was, later they’d be wanting a full report, and if I made up a little lie now it would all come undone later.
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