“What precisely are we doing here?” Bheru asked when they were all standing on the sidewalk. “I am to assume this is yet again a way that Ms. Malak is assisting you on something?” His dark eyes narrowed. “Something which I also assume you have not fully revealed to me.”
Eran nodded. “Well, yeah.”
“At least you have the courtesy to look guilty,” Bheru said. “But prudence dictates that I will not go any further until I know all the facts.”
“I think that’s fair,” Brynna said. She looked at Eran, then decided to let him handle this. That way he could make the decisions about what to say and what not to.
Eran crossed his arms, then uncrossed them. “Okay, so you know about Casey Anlon and all his rescues.”
Bheru nodded. “Of course. And the unfortunate results that seem to occur every time.”
“We’ve learned the identity of the person who’s giving him the names of the people to save,” Eran said. “And why she’s doing that.”
“I see.” He waited.
So Eran explained it the best he could, with Brynna occasionally jumping in for emphasis. Casey, Gina and her kidnapped husband, even Jashire—with Brynna conceding to a little omission as to the demon origins involved. When they were finished, it was their turn to hear what Bheru had to say.
True to his character, Bheru took his time and gave everything careful consideration. “This Jashire person,” he said at last, “I am unclear as to why we cannot locate her.”
Eran looked helplessly at Brynna. “There are some odd things about her,” Brynna answered after a moment.
“In what way?”
Brynna ran a hand across her mouth. Careful, careful. “She’s odd . . . like me.” Bheru arched one eyebrow but said nothing. “I know you recall some of the things that are different about me,” Brynna offered. “Things that I can sometimes do.”
“I do recall that you were able to discover some things about the Kwan case that we would not have otherwise known,” the dark-skinned man said. He gave her a sidelong glance. “And that you heal at a remarkably rapid rate.”
“Jashire is like that, too.”
His lips pressed together. “I see. And this makes her somehow impossible to apprehend?”
Brynna hesitated. “It makes her someone you don’t want to apprehend.” There was just no other way to put it.
Bheru looked like he wanted to say something more but changed his mind. “So where do we start?” he asked instead.
Brynna inhaled, then eyed the building. “From the top down. Like smoke, scents tend to rise.”
Eran stepped forward. “So you can track this guy by his smell?”
The look she gave him was gloomy. “No. I’ve never met him.”
“Then what . . . ?”
“The scent of death, Eran.”
Both his and Bheru’s expressions darkened. “So you’re positive he’s dead?” Bheru asked.
“Yes. Because of what Jashire said the last time I caught up with her, even though she didn’t come right out and admit it, I believe that.”
“That’s a shame,” Eran said after a moment. “All that Gina went through to try to save him, all the sacrifices . . .”
What could Brynna say? Jashire had never intended to give Vance Hinshaw back to his wife alive. She may have even killed him early on. That had probably depended on whether Jashire had thought about sending another token off her prize, but the odds were he’d died before she’d had the opportunity to do so. What had she threatened Gina with? Something about sending his head. God.
Maybe him dying had been for the best. No living human body should have to go through the kind of torture that a demon could inflict.
The eighth floor was like a cheap gym locker room at the height of summer—hot and damp. To make things worse, it was spotted with mildew and black spots on the walls from the buildup of humidity and a hundred leaks in the roof. Climbing the stairwell left Eran and Bheru sweating and panting by the time they reached the top, although it had no effect on her. Brynna knew the moment they stepped into the hallway that there was nothing alive or recently dead on this floor. Up here it was even too hot for the druggies.
They descended to the seventh floor using the staircase at the opposite end of the hall, intending to crisscross each floor by entering at one end and exiting the other until they’d covered all the floors. The seventh floor was only slightly cooler than the one above, but at least it wasn’t as full of mold and water. There were no occupied apartments up here, although here and there Brynna could hear the shuffle of squatters in various apartment units. There wasn’t much to be seen, so they headed down the staircase at the opposite end.
They passed the elevator a few feet from the stairwell but there was an ancient “Out of Order” sign taped crookedly across the closed doors. The sixth floor was about the same, but Brynna had taken only a couple of steps out of the fifth-floor hallway when she stopped and lifted her head. “We’re getting closer,” she said unhappily.
Eran and Bheru looked at her. “It is not good news, then?” Bheru asked.
Brynna shook her head. “No. I never thought it would be.”
Bheru stared at the floor. “That is . . . unfortunate. For both him and Ms. Whitfield.”
Brynna continued down the hall with them a few feet behind her. There were half-closed doors most of the way, with the occasional one that was completely shut. The place was a mess, just as filthy as the floors above it even though the water damage lessened with every floor they went down. The building should have been condemned a long time ago, or maybe it had been and the owner was simply ignoring the city’s mandate.
Each hallway was long and dim with only two sources of dedicated light: dirty, mesh-covered windows at either end that were cracked and covered in decades of grime. Occasionally a little extra illumination leaked from a unit or two with slightly open doors, but it didn’t help much. The floor had once been carpeted but now was just more of the same filthy gray, with holes torn into it that revealed the crumbling concrete below it. The underlying structure of the building was the only thing that kept the random unit fires from spreading throughout the building.
They were between the elevator and the hallway at the other end and intent on heading down to the next floor when four thin and dangerous-looking young men stepped out of the apartment closest to the stairwell. Brynna, Eran, and Bheru stopped as the others spread out and blocked their way.
“What are you doing here?” demanded the one in front. “A little out of your element, don’t you think?” He and the others were in their early twenties. Their nationality was impossible to tell, but all of them had clean-aven scalps above dark eyebrows and good physiques showing a multitude of tribal-looking gang tattoos. The guy who spoke was apparently their leader, and his black tattoos crawled up his left jawline and disappeared in a triple set of spikes behind his ear.
“This is police business,” Eran said. “Step aside and go on about your way.” His voice was calm but Brynna had already detected the increase in his heartbeat. Bheru, too, had tensed, although his face remained professionally neutral.
“I don’t think so,” said the leader. “My boys and me, we been gettin’ reports on how you people are searchin’ the building, starting from the top floor down. You know, you kind of messin’ things up around here—throwin’ off the vibe, if you get my meanin’.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Eran said. “And I can make things a whole lot worse.”
“Like I said, you outta your element.” The gangbanger’s gaze cut to Brynna and Bheru, evaluating and dismissing them.
“We get, you know, visitors,” one of the other men said. “On a regular basis. You scaring ’em away.”
“Oh dear,” Bheru said. “I believe we are detracting from their business dealings.” His voice was a disdainful mix of sarcasm and politeness.
“Call it what you want,” the leader said. “Just get the fuck out of my building.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
“Well, you don’t maintain it very well,” she told him. “The elevator’s broken.” Eran and Bheru sent her an astonished glance but she ignored them.
“We try to keep things healthy,” said one of the others. “We think people oughta use the stairs, use their muscles.”
“What about the people who can’t climb?”
The leader grinned. He would’ve had a nice smile but for a couple of missing teeth on one side. “You mean like you.”
“No. I mean like you.”
His smile faded. “There’s nothin’ wrong with me, baby. But there’s gonna be plenty wrong with you dickheads.” He turned to look at the guys behind him, and one slipped around and stood in front. He was holding a type of gun in one hand that Brynna had never seen before.
“Oh shit,” she heard Eran say.
“What?” she asked.
“Uzi,” Bheru murmured. “A machine gun. Full auto.”
She wasn’t sure what any of that meant, but she didn’t much care.
“Kill them,” the leader said suddenly. “Then drag their bodies up to the eighth floor and let ’em bake. They’ll dry up before they start to stink.”
“I don’t think so,” Brynna said, and then she moved so fast that none of them, not even Eran or Bheru, who might have been expecting it, could see her. The guy with the gun never had a chance to squeeze the trigger. When she was finished about twenty seconds later, all four of the gangbangers were crumpled against one dirty hallway wall. Bruised but not exactly bloody, too dazed to stand without trembling but not unconscious.
Brynna stood and looked at them, not even breathing heavily. Then she reached over and yanked the doors to the elevator open to about two feet. As Eran and Bheru in particular stared, one by one she tossed the four young men into a pile in the elevator. Amid their groans, she forced the doors shut, leaving only about a one-inch space. “There,” she said. “That’s enough for them to breathe. It’ll take them a while to come to their senses and get out of there.”
She looked down at the Uzi by her feet, then toed it toward Bheru. “You guys want this? Or I can smash it.” She started to bend over and pick it up.
“Don’t touch that,” Eran said. “I have an idea.” He looked thoughtfully from the elevator to the gun and then at Bheru. “We’ll ve the gun where it is and call it in as checking out suspicious activity. Brynna, you still think Vance Hinshaw’s body is in this building somewhere?”
She nodded. “Yeah.” She lifted her head and inhaled deeply. “If not him, some other poor bastard’s. But since this is where I confronted Jashire . . .”
“I was kind of at a loss as to how we were going to report it if we did find him,” Eran said, “but if we have help, can get some backup in here before we do or with us when we do, it will look a whole lot more copacetic.”
Bheru nodded. “Yes. Good idea.” He glanced at Brynna speculatively. “I would say that was quite a show, but you moved so quickly that I’m not sure of what I actually just saw. I’m starting to think there are a good many other odd things you can do and about which we know nothing.” When she said nothing he looked from her to Eran with that same thoughtful expression, then finally shrugged and parked himself next to the elevator to make sure their unfortunate guests didn’t manage to free themselves before backup arrived.
By the time several uniformed cops climbed the stairs in response to Eran’s call-in, the four men in the elevator were awake and hammering on the elevator doors, trying to push their fingers through the minute opening between the two and pry them open. Once the beat cops had taken custody of the idiots in the elevator and tagged the Uzi, Brynna and her two companions drifted into the stairwell and down to the fifth floor with another couple of cops who’d just arrived tagging after them. When they moved into the hallway, the smell of decomposing flesh was unmistakable.
“Holy shit,” said one of the beat cops. He looked at Brynna like he didn’t know what she was doing there, then he let it go as something the detectives would have to deal with. “I think we’ve got a dumped body in here somewhere.”
Brynna didn’t wait for anyone’s approval as she headed down the corridor. The other uniformed cop hurried after her. “Ma’am—ma’am! Wait, hold it—ma’am!”
Before he could say anything further, she stopped at a door that wasn’t quite closed. “I think it’s in here.”
The officer scowled and she let him step in front of her and push open the door. “Whew,” he said. “Smell that.”
Eran scowled and he and Bheru followed the man inside. “Well,” he said under his br>Brynna dio Brynna, “this isn’t going to be good.”
And it wasn’t. They found Vance Hinshaw tied to a chair that had been positioned inside the bathtub. His former appearance was only a memory now. The heat had bloated his face and body totally out of proportion, swelling his flesh over the ropes that circled his chest, wrists, and ankles. It was hard to tell if the stains on his clothing were blood or bodily fluids—human forensics would have to determine that and the cause of death, although Brynna’s guess would be that Jashire simply hadn’t bothered to give the poor man enough food or water. Right now it was at least a hundred degrees in this room, and this had been, she was sure, a horrible way to die.
“Unless he has a wallet on him, this man will have to be identified via dental records,” Eran told the other officers. Brynna frowned then realized that might be the only way it could be done—Georgina had never reported her husband as kidnapped and the entire situation was too heavily wrapped up in circumstances that his superiors would never find believable.
As they filed back into the hallway and she waited for Eran and Bheru to make the first of many calls and reports, Brynna sure hoped that Georgina Whitfield had plenty of photographs by which to remember her late husband.
WHEN GEORGINA WHITFIELD OPENED the door and saw the three of them standing there, she fell to the floor in an untidy pile of arms and legs. Brynna caught her before she went all the way down, slipping a hand beneath one armpit and hoisting her back to her feet. She guided Gina toward the kitchen with Eran and Bheru following, finally settling the young woman on one of the kitchen chairs.
“I know what you’re here to tell me,” Gina said hoarsely. “I can see it in your faces. He’s dead, isn’t he? Vance is dead.”
“Yes,” Brynna answered. “I’m sorry.”
She looked from Brynna to the two men. “Was . . . was he alive when you found him? Was there ever even a chance?”
“No,” Eran said gently. “He’d been . . . gone for a while.”
“Oh, God,” she whispered. “Oh my God. All those people dead—for nothing. She lied the entire time, didn’t she?”
“I’m afraid so,” Brynna told her.
“I’m a murderer,” Gina said suddenly. Her back jerked into a rigidly straight line. “I might as well have shot or—or stabbed all those people myself!”
“That is not true,” Bheru put in. “You did the best you could under the influences hanging over you. Anyone would have done the same had they believed there was a chance to save a loved one.”
Concrete Savior Page 26