by Alex Hughes
Mendez looked up, pausing in what she was doing over the maps.
There was a reply, muffled, a lower man’s voice.
“Don’t you think you’ve done enough?” the judge’s voice echoed, again too loud.
The door opened, and the judge, Jarrod, and Sridarin entered the house.
Jarrod and the judge stopped. The judge stood just a little too close, her arms extended in a classic “power posture”; Jarrod’s body language wasn’t budging in response. He wasn’t happy.
“Judge Parson, you must realize that—”
“I must realize? I must realize? You . . . you people lost my son! You let him be taken by criminals! I don’t see one possible thing that you can do for me here that you can’t screw up elsewhere. And I don’t want to look at you. You get out of my house, all of you.”
“I understand you’re upset. But—”
“This is not a discussion, this is me informing you that you are leaving. You have half an hour to get your things out of my house.”
“Ma’am,” Sridarian said then.
“That includes you. Everyone.” She crossed her arms, taking a visible posture of waiting. “Twenty-nine minutes thirty seconds.”
I could see Jarrod thinking, see it like bubbles moving in a pot of boiling water. Finally he stepped back, calculation still moving behind his eyes. “Let’s pack up, people.”
“Really?” I asked. “You’re coordinating half the city’s police and federal forces from that console there. We can’t leave now.”
“And you,” the judge said to me, “you. You’d better pray they find my son again. Because if they don’t, I am holding you personally responsible.” And she made a show of turning her back on me.
I felt . . . sliced open, like a cat-o’-nine-tails from the old movies had sliced my face in a thousand cuts. She was right. Even if the words made me bleed, made the guilt rush out like water. It was my fault, and she knew it.
Mendez put her hand on my shoulder, on the fabric of my shirt, in solidarity. Her mind strengthened briefly, but all I felt was that solidarity. Then she was moving, her intention to get out of this place quickly.
Ten minutes later, in the car outside, my stuff in a single bag next to me, I was feeling twitchy. I couldn’t take the condemnation in the judge’s eyes. I couldn’t take the condemnation in my own. I wanted ten cigarettes in a row, and I wanted my drug, but I wasn’t going to get either one, maybe. My hands shook anyway.
The trunk opened, then a thud and a reshuffling of the car, once, twice, three times as heavy equipment was added. Then the slam of the trunk closing, and the front passenger-side door opened.
“That was harsh,” Mendez said. She folded into the front seat and shut the door. “She’s hurting, and the harsh has nothing to do with you.”
“She’s right, though,” I said, still itching to be somewhere, anywhere but here. “I took Tommy outside the courthouse. I lost him.” The knowledge sat on me like a heavy weight, impossible to dislodge, crushing me.
Mendez was quiet for a moment, considering. She realized we hadn’t discussed this, that no one had discussed this. There hadn’t been time. “So far as it goes, that’s true. Sibley and his crew . . . they had an established plan, though. They had the shock grenade. It’s impossible to know. Maybe they would have managed it anyway. Neither Loyola nor I was expecting a crew like that. Not then and there.”
“You should have,” I said then, resentful. “The first attack, if nothing else, should have told you that.”
“It’s easy to assume we should have known things in retrospect. But the attackers were dead by then,” she said. “Another group was working, if any. Sibley—if we believed he was a threat at all—historically has worked alone. We were more concerned about a stealth jaunt at the house, to be honest with you. He surprised us.” She paused, and I felt a wave of exhaustion go off her again. “We all fell down on this one. In retrospect, we should not have left you alone for such long periods. But it’s more important to find him now than it is to throw blame.”
“It was my job!” I fell down on my job.
“You were the first to tell us that Minding isn’t your specialty. You adapt to your personnel, or you should. Jarrod’s been distracted, but I should have said something.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said automatically. It’s something you’d say in the interview rooms, with a witness who was telling you the truth as she’d seen it.
“It’s as much mine as yours. There’s plenty of blame to go around,” Mendez said. I felt her guilt there, but I felt her determination more.
“What are we waiting for?” I asked.
“Jarrod and I can leave at our discretion, and likely Loyola—if he will. Sridarin is assigned directly to the judge, not her son, and Loyola has taken on that responsibility as well. I imagine Jarrod’s sticking around for support, and to make another set of phone calls. It’s been a lot, working as the coordination point for the agencies. The ATF, at least, is picking up the ball with the local PD.”
“How likely is it that you think we’ll find him?” I asked her.
“I just gave out your information to everyone, so they’re packing up in city center. Honestly we were about done there as well. They’re looking outside the city in the direction of the flight out. I’ve done these cases before. Sometimes something will pop, and now’s the time if they’re outside the city. It helps that the PD knows it’s a judge on their side of the table. Sibley’s organized, but he can’t possibly have accounted for us mobilizing as fast as we did. We’ll get there.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Give Jarrod another few minutes and he’ll be out here. Most of the gear is already with us. We’ll move to a hotel and set up shop there. It won’t be the first time.”
“You’re not upset about Tommy at all,” I said. I regretted it immediately; the tone petulant and guilty. But she wasn’t, and it bothered me.
Mendez turned all the way around in her seat then. “Don’t allow your emotions to take you over. There will be a time to be upset, but that time is not today. Today, we do everything. Today, we find him.”
“Okay,” I said. She was probably right.
“You are new, I understand. But you cannot fall apart. It cannot happen.”
“Okay,” I said. Took three deep breaths, and forced more of my emotions into that little box, that little strongbox with the iron-reinforced sides.
* * *
The hotel was a mile or so out of town, on the interstate, an ancient hotel that was scrupulously maintained. The clerk at the front was a college kid, but he’d been an athlete at one time and had plenty of confidence.
“Room 202, that’s on the right,” he said as he took my hurriedly scrawled form and deposited a key in its place. Mendez and Jarrod had already been through this process, getting rooms for themselves and a central room from which to run the equipment.
The clerk leaned forward and pointed his arm to the right. “See the staircase there? Up a floor, turn left, fourth door on the left. You want to be on the quiet side of the place, that’s where you go.”
He turned back to his book without further comment, a dismissal if ever I heard one. But the book was a collection of Robert Frost, and he read loudly to himself in Mindspace thoughts, so that “The Road Less Traveled” followed me out the door and into the night.
The irony was not lost on me. Nope, not even a little.
* * *
The room was small and sad, and it echoed with various shades of loneliness, the faded flowered curtains rubbing shoulders with a downtrodden pale carpet. The bed squeaked when I sat down on it, but it held. The nightstand and chest of drawers were covered in scratches and faded with age, but clean. The whole room seemed clean, actually, at least on the surface; an odd, musty smell remained, though. Perhaps somebody smoking in the room, though smoking
what, I couldn’t tell you. From the smell, perhaps something with mold as a key ingredient.
I checked the shower—a real water-shower, no sonics in sight—and found it clean enough. No visible mold anyway, and wherever the smell was coming from wasn’t the sheets either. This would do.
Then I went back out on the balcony for a cigarette of my own, watching the drizzle of the day fall slowly to earth. It still felt strange to smell the faint salt of ocean in the air, and see gnats in clouds. It was strange to feel the ancient oaks, almost minds, settled into Mindspace. And most of all, it was strange to be without Cherabino. I missed her terribly, worse now when she was not here to tell me to stop whining and start working. She would have told me what to do about Tommy. She would have fixed this, or at least kept me from screwing it up worse. My hands shook with all the things I couldn’t think about, chief among which was how much I wanted my drug.
I stubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray, unable to get the taste of failure out of my mouth. Both Cherabino and Swartz wouldn’t stand for me giving up, not at this point, not when I could be doing something—anything—that might help the kid I’d come here to save.
But I felt the vision barreling toward me, becoming more and more real, and I was beginning to believe I couldn’t stop it.
I called the department to leave the new number for Cherabino, and talked to Michael again. Then I called Swartz and got Selah.
“He’s having a bad day. He’s finally sleeping. Is it an emergency?” she asked me, voice defeated.
I paused, wrestling with the question. It was bad. It was pretty bad. But I didn’t think I was going to use right now, and I’d be around the FBI most of the day, which would keep me from doing it if I changed my mind. Plus, Swartz had had a heart attack not too many months ago and it was a bad day.
“Adam?” she asked.
“No,” I said slowly. “No, it’s not an emergency.”
But as the dial tone rang, I wondered if that was really right. It was pretty damn bad right now.
I changed shirts and went back downstairs. Jarrod and the others had probably been waiting for me a long damn time, and I shouldn’t keep them waiting anymore.
I worried still, about Cherabino, about the man whose memories I’d stolen against all ethical boundaries, and about Tommy. Above all, I worried about Tommy. What were they doing to him? Was he even still alive?
CHAPTER 20
The sun was setting as Loyola and I made it to the crime lab, one of the small, flat buildings with tall trees behind them. Inside, it smelled like brick and chemicals, and we had to pass through security again to enter the main hall. Sridarin from the sheriff’s office was sitting in a bench about halfway down.
He looked up, circles under his eyes. He’d been sent away from the judge, he was thinking, and was feeling guilty despite his duty to get the shell casings over here after the attack. Jarrod was walking toward us from the other end of the hall.
“Hi,” Sridarin said.
“Hello,” Loyola said. “Any news on the ballistics?”
He stood from the bench. “Yes. They’re running it again to confirm since it was such a rush, but right now it looks like at least two of these are stolen weapons, one used in a robbery a few weeks ago. The gun found in possession of the attacker at the scene is a clear match to one of the shell casing sets, so between that and the witnesses, we have him cold. His is not in the system, but there’s a clear registration trail and the ATF is looking into it.” He took a breath. “With any luck, the idiots bought all of the guns at the same place and brought a couple of stolen items besides. Sheriff’s department is on protective duty with the judge and assisting Metro PD in the search.”
Jarrod reached us, his bootheels thudding against the floor. “Mendez is set up to coordinate out of one of the spare rooms, Metro PD dispatchers on assist. I’m going to need some help with phone calls.”
“Whatever you need,” I said, feeling like the world was already falling out of place.
Jarrod frowned at me. “I meant Loyola. Sridarin if he has the time. You can help, but if there’s something you can do that we can’t, now’s the time.”
I shook my head.
“Another vision with more detail might be useful about now.”
I sighed. “I’m pretty burned out right now. Give me some phone calls and I’ll see what I can do after that.”
Next to me, Loyola’s disapproval swelled. I was too tired to really care. There was more than one way to find Tommy, and give it another hour and I’d try the connection again.
* * *
I limped up the stairs to my hotel room, anxious and feeling defeated. I could still feel echoes of Tommy’s fear in my head occasionally, and I’d called half the city. I’d even begged my stupid difficult precognition to help me figure out the future and how to stop it, but no exercise I could give it produced anything but a reprise of that old, terrible vision. I’d sleep and try again, and pray that Tommy was still alive at the end. If he wasn’t, I didn’t know how I’d live with myself.
I unlocked the hotel room door with shaking hands, telling myself I could have another cigarette, hell, I could have four if I needed them, but I had to calm down, and I couldn’t have my drug. I stopped two steps inside the room. The door shut behind me with a bang.
The room smelled different. Moldy, yes, but something else . . . something like gun oil and cedar. Someone had been here.
I hunted for the lamp’s light switch, anxiety spiking. It was probably just the maid, I told myself. I was being an idiot.
When the lamp switched on, no one was there, and I took a breath. I could still feel another presence here like perfume. I went over to drop my coat on the desk—and saw it.
A box. A intricate wooden puzzle-box, something I’d never seen before but that somehow looked familiar. Its dark mahogany surface was vaguely the size and shape of a cigar box, with a more intricate pattern. Deep grooves like the lines of a map were set into its surface, along with small metal balls in the grooves. It was sitting on the freshly made bed, at its foot, with a folded piece of paper that read Adam.
The hairs stood up on the back of my neck.
I looked around the entire hotel room, first in Mindspace, then in the real world, pulling the shower curtain aside, opening the closet door with heart beating. No one was here. Not anymore.
I opened the box then, slowly, with a square of the sheet between its side and my hand. It clicked, the metal balls rolling, but it was open; it opened.
When I saw what was inside, I cursed and dropped the lid. Then, with a deep breath, opened it again.
Sitting in the recess of a red satin-top pillow were two things: one, a small vial of what looked like purple liquid against the red fabric, and two, a needle still wrapped in medical-grade packaging, a small needle with marks up the side in exactly the denominations one would need to use the vial.
My hand shook as I picked up the note, no longer caring of potential contaminants. I knew what that box held. I knew it, and it was far worse than any bomb. It was high-grade Satin, by the chemical formula on the label, a bluish drug that hit the sixth sense like a freight train. My drug. My poison. The thing I’d battled long and hard to be free of, and here it was, sitting there, for free, all too available. Blood rushed in my ears; my heart beat all too quickly.
I opened the note.
Imagine my surprise when you became involved in this minor judicial matter in Savannah, it said. I have adapted. Here is a gift for you, your drug of choice. Rest assured it will not be my last gift via my associate.
Remember, you were the one who made this personal.
It was not signed, but I knew who it was. I half fell, half walked backward, pulling out the chair in front of that desk and sitting with shaking knees.
Fiske had found me. Not just Sibley, who some of the time I’d assumed had been h
ired by Pappadakis, but Fiske. Cherabino and I had attacked his house and forced our way in for a reason that seemed to make sense at the time. He’d let us go, but he’d said he’d remember what we’d done.
Apparently he was the kind to hold a grudge, hold it for months, and then play with the source of that grudge. And he’d promised me gifts.
Somehow I doubted any of those gifts would be pleasant. Not when he’d started this way.
I sat there and looked at the box, at the vial, at my drug. I wanted it so badly I couldn’t . . . quite . . . think. My palms sweated, my heart beat, and I felt drawn to it, like someone had a piece of string attached to it, reeling me in.
I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see it. I turned away, literally turned away like a small child. And I breathed, deep breaths designed to calm my nervous system so I could think. I had to think. If I didn’t I’d jump in headfirst, and whatever I decided, I couldn’t throw away almost four years of being clean on an impulse. It wasn’t allowed.
My hands shook, and the strongbox of all my emotions shuddered, the locks holding, but only just. If I could just fall off the face of the world . . . If I could just take my drug . . .
A breath. Two. My problems would still be there waiting for me when I got back, I heard Swartz’s voice tell me. Just because it was here didn’t mean I had to use it.
I wanted to! I turned back around, then took a step back. I wanted to so much.
But Fiske wanted me to as well, or he wouldn’t have bothered to send it. My worst enemy—the person—had sent my worst enemy—the drug—to torment me. And though I wanted it with everything in me, I couldn’t just hand Fiske a victory.
Because for all my want, all my need, it would be a victory for him, a failure for me. A last, permanent failure on top of the dozen he’d already forced down my throat. It was pretty, that vial, but it was poison. Swartz had always said it was my poison.
Tommy could still be alive. Maybe. Somewhere. And if I was in a drug stupor in a corner somewhere when he died, when I could have done something about it . . .