by Tanya Huff
FIND ME!
“You can rant and rave all you like, Nightwalker. I am not going down there. You’re not thinking right now, you’re only reacting. Thoughts can be twisted. Reactions, especially from one with your physical power, should be avoided.”
The Nightwalker, he was amused to note, had not grown beyond the possibility of love. How foolish, to love those who were fed upon. Like a mortal declaring himself for a cow or a chicken . . .
He took one last look at the burning, brilliant ka that he so desired and then closed his mind to it, removing temptation. “We’ll straighten things out later,” he promised softly. “We have the time, you and I.”
“Graham. What?”
“Any word on Vicki?”
Dave Graham raised himself up on his elbow and peered at the illuminated numbers of the clock. “Jesus Christ, Mike,” he hissed, “it’s two o’clock in the fucking morning. Can’t it wait?”
“What about Vicki?”
Curling around the receiver so as not to wake his wife, Dave surrendered. “There’s no warrant in the system. No one’s got orders to pick her up. They’re keeping an eye on her place, but they’re watching for you.”
“Then they’ve already got her.”
“They who? Cantree?”
“That’s who he seems to be using.”
“He?”
“Never mind.”
Dave sighed. “Look, maybe she’s got nothing to do with this. Maybe she just went to Kingston to visit her mother.”
“We were working on the same case.”
“A police case?” Dave took the long silence that followed his question as an answer and sighed again. “Mike, Vicki’s not on the force anymore. You’re not supposed to do that.”
“Have you talked to Cantree?”
“Yeah, right after I talked to you this morning.”
“And?”
“And like I said in my message, nothing’s changed. He still wants you. I don’t know why. He said it had something to do with internal security, that I wasn’t to ask questions, and all would be made clear later on. He’s got me doing scut work out in Rexdale.”
“Did he seem strange?”
“Fuck, Mike, this whole thing is strange. Maybe you should just come in and straighten it out. Cantree’ll listen.”
The bark of laughter held little humor. “The only hope the whole city, maybe the whole world has is that I don’t get picked up and I don’t go anywhere near Frank Cantree.”
“Right.” It was two o’clock in the morning; he had no intention of getting into conspiracy theories. “I’ll keep ears and eyes open, but there’s not much I can do.”
“Anything you see or hear . . .”
“I’ll leave a message. Not that I’m likely to see or hear anything out west of God’s country, I mean, we’re talking Rexdale here. You’d better get going in case they’ve got a trace on this call . . . Mike? I was joking. Celluci? Christ . . .” He stared down at the receiver for a moment, then shook his head, hung up and wrapped himself around the soft, warm curves of his wife.
“Who was that?” she murmured.
“Celluci.”
“What time is it?”
“Just after two.”
“Oh, God . . .” She burrowed deeper under the covers. “They catch him yet?”
“Not yet.”
“pity.”
By breakfast, Vicki had regained most of her muscle control; arms and legs moved when and where she wanted them to although the fine-tuning still needed work. Attempting to use her fingers for more than basic gripping of utensils was chancy and stringing more than two or three words together tied her tongue in knots. Thinking beyond her present situation, trying to analyze or plan, continued to wrap her brain in cotton, and thinking about her present situation did no good at all.
Without her glasses, breakfast was a heap of yellow and brown at the end of a fuzzy tunnel. It tasted pretty much exactly the way it looked.
She couldn’t avoid eating sandwiched between her two cell mates, nor could she miss noticing how the other women on the range steered well clear of them, allowing them to move to the front of the food line as well as claim an entire pitcher of coffee. Natalie’s strength combined with Lambert’s viciousness placed them firmly on the top of the pecking order. The more coherent of the other inmates regarded Vicki with something close to relief, their expressions proclaiming not so much better you than me as at least when it’s you it isn’t me.
Protecting her food as well as herself turned out to be more than Vicki was capable of. Egged on by Lambert, Natalie lifted most of Vicki’s breakfast and, under the cover of the rickety picnic table—that tilted alarmingly under every shift in weight—pinched her thigh black and blue. Natalie thought the whole thing was pretty funny. Vicki didn’t, but the attacks came in from the side and she couldn’t fight what she couldn’t see. The meal became a painful and humiliating lesson in helplessness.
Locked back in the cell during cleanup, she kept her back against the wall and tried to force her eyes to function. Unfortunately, it didn’t take Lambert long to map the limits of her vision. Trying to duck away from the wet end of a towel dipped in the toilet, Vicki felt a sudden kinship with those kids in school yards whom everyone picked on just because they could.
When they were let back out into the range, she groped her way past the row of tables and tried to talk to the guard. She knew where the duty desk should be even though she couldn’t actually see it.
“Hey?”
“Hey what?” The guard’s voice offered nothing.
“I ne . . .”
“No. No! NO! NO!NO!NO! NOOOOOO!”
Natalie. Standing right behind her. Although she knew what the result would be, Vicki tried again. “You go . . .”
“NO!NO!NO! NOOOOOO!”
She didn’t think of this on her own. Lambert put her up to it. Teeth clenched so tightly her jaw ached, Vicki was willing to bet that the noise would go on indefinitely.
“Look!” she finally screamed, as she shoved impotently at the woman bellowing a hundred and twenty decibel accompaniment to everything she said. “I don’ belon’ he’!”
All at once iron rods slammed up against Vicki’s face as Natalie shoved her, and for an instant the guard loomed into focus. It wasn’t Dickson. It wasn’t anyone Vicki knew.
“So tell the shrink,” she suggested. Her expression teetered between boredom and annoyance. “And back away from those bars.”
“Mine for two days,” Lambert told her as Natalie led Vicki back to her side.
They spent the morning watching game shows. Vicki sat in a kind of stupor, thankful, given what she could hear over the noise of forty women in an area designed for eighteen, that she couldn’t see the televisions. Middle America rejoicing in the glory of frost free refrigerators would’ve pushed her over the edge.
Lunch was a repeat of breakfast, although Natalie moved to her other side and therefore pinched her other thigh. A woman with a bad case of the d.t.’s threw her plate against the bars and two others began screaming random profanity. Someone began to howl. Vicki kept her gaze locked firmly on her plate. Misery seasoned every mouthful.
After lunch, things quieted down as the soap operas came on. Lambert sat enthroned by the best of the four televisions with Natalie enforcing at least a localized silence.
“That’s my husband, you know. That’s my husband,” an elderly woman called pointing at the screen. “We have thirteen children and a dog and two . . .” A squawk of pain cut off the litany.
For the moment, Vicki appeared to have been forgotten. Moving carefully, she headed for the showers. Maybe if she scrubbed the stink of the place off she’d feel less wretched.
The concrete barricade that separated the showers from the common area rose from the floor to waist height and dropped from the ceiling to just above her shoulders. Everything in between was exposed to inmates and guards.
No one’s going to be looking at your tits, Vi
cki, she told herself running one hand along the damp cement. You’re just another piece of meat. No one cares.
A number of the stalls near the entrance were already full. In one, the flesh-colored blur separated itself out into two people. Anything that happened below the level of the barricades happened in as close to privacy as was available.
Stripping off shoes and pants and underwear wasn’t so bad, but the flesh on Vicki’s back crawled as she shrugged out of the shirt, and pulling the T-shirt up over her head left her feeling more exposed and vulnerable than she ever had in her life. She hurried in under the minimal protection the water offered.
Lost in the heat and the pounding of the spray, she almost convinced herself that she was safe at home and just for that moment things didn’t seem so hopeless.
“Good idea, Nelson, but you shouldn’t be by yourself. You’re still unsteady on your pins and sometimes people fall in the shower. Terrible place. So easy to get hurt.”
Lambert. And, as usual, not alone.
Vicki tried to twist her arm out of Natalie’s grip. Natalie’s answering twist nearly dislocated her elbow. The pain shot scarlet flames up behind her eyes and burned the fog away. Despair turned suddenly to anger.
She didn’t stand a chance. She didn’t care.
It didn’t last long.
“What the hell is going on in there?”
“Nothing, boss,” Lambert purred. “My buddy fell down.” Below the guard’s line of sight, her foot pressed lightly on Vicki’s throat.
“She okay?”
“Fine, boss.”
“Then pick her up and get out of there.”
Natalie giggled, reached down, and pinched Vicki’s stomach. Hard.
Vicki flinched but ignored it. Her head still rang from its violent contact with the tiles, but for the first time in what seemed like centuries, she was thinking clearly. Lambert and Wills were minor annoyances, no more. Her enemy was a three-thousand-year-old mummy who’d taken the law and twisted it and trapped her in the spiral he’d created. He was going to pay for that. She didn’t know who he’d hurt to find her, Henry or Celluci, but he was going to pay for that, too. In order to make him pay, she had to be free and if the system wouldn’t free her, then she’d have to do it herself.
“Thank you,” she muttered absently, as Natalie dragged her upright.
People had broken out of detention centers before.
“Another beautiful day in the Metro West Detention Center. Thanks, guys, we can take her from here.”
The young woman fought against the shackles, hissing and spitting like a large cat. The guards ignored her, hooked their hands under her arms and dragged her away.
“Fucking pigs!” she shrieked. “You’re nothing but fucking pigs and I hope I fucking knocked your goddamned tooth out!”
Dave Graham sighed and turned to face his temporary partner. “Did she?”
“Nah,” Detective Carter Aiken dabbed at the comer of his mouth and winced as his palm came away covered in blood, “but she split my lip.”
“Not a bad right cross.”
Aiken snorted. “Easier to appreciate it from your angle. There’s a crapper at the end of the hall, I’ll be right back.”
“What’re you going to do, stick your head in the toilet?”
“Who said anything about my head?” Aiken sucked the blood off his teeth and his brows rose dramatically. “I’ve had to piss since we left division.”
Dave laughed as the other man disappeared around the comer and leaned back against the wall. He liked Aiken. He wished they’d met under better circumstances. He wished he knew what the hell was going on.
“Well, hello, stranger.”
He straightened and turned. The Auxiliary Sergeant with her arms full of computer printout looked familiar but . . . “Hania? Hania Wojotowicz? Hot damn! When did you make sergeant?”
She laughed. “Six weeks ago. Actually, six weeks, two days, four hours and,” she checked her watch, nearly losing the pile of papers, “eleven minutes. But who’s counting. What are you doing way out here? Where’s Mike?”
Obviously, she hadn’t heard about Celluci. Fine with him, he was getting tired of talking about it. “Temporary duty. You know how it is. What about you?”
“Detention’s having a little trouble with the OMS. Their computer program,” she continued when he looked blank, “the Offender Management System. I’ve come to try and straighten it out.”
“If anyone can do it . . .” When they’d first met, Hania had been brought in to crunch the data gathered as part of a massive manhunt after a homicide down in Parkdale. As far as he was concerned, what she could do with a computer should be filed somewhere between magic and miracle. Even Celluci, who’d been heard to suggest that all silicon should go back to the beach where it belonged, had been favorably impressed. “How bad is it?”
Hania shrugged. “Not very. In fact, I’ve done my part, all that’s left is for someone to enter all this,” a nod of her head indicated the printouts she carried, “back into the system.”
“Good lord, that’ll take days.”
“Not really, most of this paper is blank. It’s all personal possession lists and not many people book in here with luggage. Well, there are exceptions. . . .” She flipped a page back and grinned. “Listen to this. Four pens, four pencils, a black magic marker, a plastic freezer bag containing six folded empty plastic freezer bags, a brush, a comb, a cosmetic case containing a lipstick and two tampons, seven marbles in a cotton bag, a set of lock picks in a leather folder, a magnifying glass in a protective case, three notebooks half full, one notebook empty, a package of tissues, a package of condoms, a package of birth control pills, a screwdriver, a Swiss Army knife, a fish-shaped water pistol, cotton swabs, tweezers, a pair of needlenose pliers, a pair of wrapped surgical gloves, a small bottle of ethyl alcohol, a high-powered flashlight with four extra batteries, two u-shaped nails, $12.73 in assorted change, and a half-eaten bag of cheese balls. Now I ask you, what kind of weirdo carries all that in her purse?”
It took Dave a moment to find his voice. “No ID?” he managed at last.
“Not a thing. Not so much as a Visa statement. Probably pitched it just before she got picked up. They do sometimes, but you know that.”
“Yeah.” They did sometimes. He didn’t think they had this time. “Who do they say belongs to all this?”
“They don’t. But I can find out for you.” She started down the hall. “Come on, there’s a terminal in here we can use.”
He followed blindly. He knew exactly what kind of weirdo carried all that in her purse.
“Dave? Detective-Sergeant Graham? Are you listening to me?”
“Yeah. Sorry.” Except he wasn’t. He couldn’t hear anything over Celluci’s voice saying, “Then they’ve already got her.”
“Fitzroy? Celluci. I’m assuming that if you’d managed to find Vicki last night you’d have changed your message to let me know.” And if you found her and didn’t change the message , the tone continued, I’m going to rip your head off. “Stay put tonight. At least until I call. I’m going to try to get into her apartment and have a look around—no one disappears without leaving some kind of evidence—but after that we need to talk. We’re going to have to work together to find her.” The last statement landed like a thrown gauntlet even through the tiny speaker of the answering machine.
In spite of everything, Henry smiled. You need my help, mortal man. Time you admitted it.
“Hi, Henry, it’s Brenda. Just a reminder that we need Love’s Labor Lashed, or whatever you’ve decided to name it, by the fifteenth. We’ve got Aliston signed to do the cover on this one and he promises no purple eye shadow. Call me.”
“Celluci? Dave Graham. It’s quarter after four, Tuesday, November third . . .”
It was now six twelve, eight minutes after sunset.
“. . . Call me the instant you get this message; I’ll be home all evening.” His voice grew strained, as though he
couldn’t really believe what he was saying. “I think I’ve found her. It isn’t good.”
Henry’s fingers closed around the chair back and with a loud crack the carved oak splintered into a half dozen pieces. He stared down at the wreckage without really seeing it. This man on the phone, this David Graham, knew where Vicki was. If he wanted the information, he would have to take the message to Michael Celluci.
The police in the unmarked car were easy to avoid. They appeared to have little interest in the job they were doing and paid the shifting shadows just back of the sidewalk no attention at all. As for getting into the apartment itself, well, he had a key. The door opened quietly before him and closed as quietly behind. He stood silently in the entryway and listened to the life that moved about at the end of the hall. The heartbeat pounded faster than it should and the breath was short and almost labored. The blood scent dominated, but fear and anger and fatigue layered over it in equal proportions.
He walked forward and paused at the edge of the living room. Although it was very dark, he could see the kneeling man clearly.
“I have a message for you,” he said, and took a perverse pleasure in the sudden jump of the heartbeat.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Celluci hissed, surging to his feet and glaring down at Henry. “Don’t do that! You weren’t there a second ago! And besides, I thought I told you . . .”
Henry merely looked up at him.
Celluci pushed the curl of hair back off his forehead with a trembling hand. “All right, you have a message.” His eyes widened. “Is it from Vicki?”
“Are you ready to hear it?”
“God damn you!” Celluci grabbed the lapels of Henry’s leather trench coat and tried to drag him off his feet. He couldn’t budge the smaller man although that took a moment to sink in. “Damn you!” he swore again, anchoring his grip more firmly in the leather. “If it’s from Vicki, tell me!”
The pain in the detective’s voice got through where anger alone wouldn’t have and shame followed close behind. What am I doing? Almost gently, Henry pulled Celluci’s hands off his coat. She won’t love me more for hurting you. “The message was from Dave Graham. He wants you to call him at home. He says he thinks he’s found her.”