Bone Wires

by Michael Shean

  “Yeah, something like that.” Carter shook his head again. “Fuck’s sake. This would be the goddamned Duwamish, wouldn’t it.”

  “That’s what I thought, yeah.” Gray leaned back in his seat and rubbed at his face. James Black-Eyes and his friends, probably, went out and hunted the fucker down. “Does Megan know how long he’d been dead?”

  “Maybe a week,” he said, “Not terribly long. They’d been delivered there just last night or so though.”

  So no fucking wonder Black-Eyes was in such a good mood, Gray thought. They’d gone and gotten him, this guy who’d been responsible for making people think that the Duwamish had been up to things they didn’t want to take credit for. They didn’t like people fucking with their reputation. Jesus, it was no wonder Black-Eyes did the favor for him – he’d already repaid them, however unwittingly, by revealing Muller in the first place! “God damn it,” Gray said, rubbing at his forehead now, “God damn it. So what the fuck do we do now?”

  “‘We’ do nothing,” Carter said, frowning at Gray directly now. “It isn’t the Company’s case anymore – Muller was an international fugitive. It’s the Fed that’s going to be responsible for this now. They might talk to you about it, since you were attached to the case, but I don’t think you have anything to worry about.” He quirked a brow. “Right?”

  Gray licked his lips. He’d kept Black-Eyes out of his reports. “Right.”

  “All right.” Carter seemed to relax a little. “Well, you’ll hear from the news soon, I’m sure. You talk to your girl last night after we met? Are you doing all right?”

  At the mention of Angie, Gray had to fight very hard to keep from smiling like his head was going to split open. “I talked to her, yeah. Told her she’d be looked out for, but I didn’t tell her anything about the rest of it.” Moody had been bad enough, he sure as shit didn’t want EA on her. “So what are we going to do about it?” Gray was trying very hard to change the subject, to get Muller out of his head. The creepy fucker, done in possibly by Gray’s own hand in an indirect fashion. He was the one who let Black-Eyes know he was on the Spine Thief case, after all, and that someone was leaving a calling card that seemed related to the Duwamish. But why was he feeling so evasive? Would it have been worse if he had killed the man himself? Would he have felt any grief if he’d put a round between those horrible synthetic eyes? Fuck no he wouldn’t. He just didn’t want to get in trouble, and that was the truth of it.

  “Well, I guess we’re going to wait and see what he does, see if he starts pushing her harder. I think he’ll just set something up in the end – if that happens, don’t worry, your girl will be fine. We have her registered as a confidential informant for Executive Affairs now.”

  Gray frowned a little at that. “You don’t think he’ll be able to pick that out? I mean he’ll know, won’t he? He has connections.”

  “None in my department,” Carter said. “And anyway, don’t you trust me? I know what he is, how he acts. Don’t tell me you’ve gotten cold feet overnight.”

  “No, no. It’s not that at all.” It was that he had too much to lose now, and the eyes falling on him just kept getting bigger and bigger. Moody and Vice, then Executive Affairs, and now possibly the feds – fuck’s sake, it was good enough being a hero, he didn’t need any more of this kind of shit. “I’m just nervous, I guess, about what he’s going to do.”

  “What he’s going to do is get himself fired and possibly arrested,” Carter said with a shake of his head. “Don’t worry about it. All right?”

  Gray swallowed. “All right,” he said, not feeling it at all. He wanted to get out of the car and go right back upstairs and guard Angie all day. Take her to work, follow her in, shoot that fucker behind the bar in the face. Fuck it, kill everybody involved, throw them in the canal. Only way to be sure. Did he want to be sure? He sure as fuck felt like he wanted to be sure. Gray’s skin prickled with a sudden rage that had been like the one from before, but inside of him, under his flesh, through the nerves, not as hard to control as before – because it was part of him, this anger, this certain violence that had suddenly bubbled up from within. He hadn’t the slightest clue from whence it came, but it felt…good. Good to protect her. Yes.

  Carter was staring at him. “You there, buddy? You went away for a sec.”

  Gray shook the thought out of his head; the fire in him went out, the wire shorting out in his head. Strange. “Yeah,” he said, “I’m here, I’m sorry. I was just thinking about the whole thing, that’s all.”

  “Well, go get yourself some coffee,” Carter said. “Seriously, you can’t just go fading out like that, huh? She keep you up all night?”

  “No,” Gray said, though he felt the anger flutter again. “Right. Okay, I’ll talk to you at the office. See you later on.”

  The call ended, leaving him in the car with the engine running and no desire to go anywhere but upstairs. The rage had come, gone, and he felt nothing after – like it was a process running in a computer, a thing with a natural place and a natural purpose despite its suddenness and its oddity. He thought about it a moment, what it might be like to indulge it, to keep the world away from the lean woman upstairs, and then he felt himself shrugging it off. It would mean getting thrown in the fucking freezer for a hundred years, and nothing was worth that.

  Gray sat in the car and thought about that feeling a little more. Then he pulled out onto the street.

  Carter was right about the feds. With Muller found in pieces in front of his former haunt, a pair of FBI agents came down to Central from their office over at the C. E. P. to see what Gray had been up to. It wasn’t meant as a slight when they sat him down in an interview room and quizzed him over his movements that week – after all, it was perfectly understandable that Gray might be considered an early suspect. He was the man on the case, he was the one who’d shot the murderer under Muller’s tutelage. Of course they were going to wonder if he didn’t just want to clear out the rest of the mess.

  A week after their initial interview, however, Gray hadn’t heard anything else – but that might be because of the press more than any lack of suspicion. With Muller found dead, the spotlight was turned on him once again. This time, though, he really didn’t have much to say. He wasn’t involved, after all, and he wasn’t being accused of the crime. This thing had all the hallmarks of a Duwamish hit, and he figured that’s why he wasn’t hearing from the feds after that. It certainly didn’t make him feel angry about losing another potential collar, even though he may well have been responsible for it in the first place. So when Maya Frail grilled him on NewsNetNow about it, he didn’t feel like could give any answer but the truth.

  “Well, I would’ve preferred it if Mr. Muller had been brought into police custody,” he’d said, “But I can’t say that I’m sad about the result.”

  Public Relations had just loved that. He’d decided to put his head down for a while after that, and the PR beasties were happy to let him. His days were spent poring over reports and not missing field duty, even though he knew full well that it meant his career had reached a plateau. He should be bothered by that, but he had Angie to think about now – although thanks to the story breaking and the resulting media attention, he wasn’t seeing a lot of her at the moment. Being seen together, especially by a news unit, would just make everything very difficult for everyone. She sent him a scarf by way of a messenger, however, and he kept it within easy reach when he went to bed. He kind of felt like an idiot at first, but then he remembered the night they’d been together. How they’d merged like that, the way that being with her transported him. Fuck it, he didn’t mind feeling a little silly when he had a girl like that, thinking of him. Being a romantic wasn’t a crime.

  But then again, he’d never been romantic, either. She was beautiful, but he’d been with prettier girls. More professional girls. They didn’t look like Angie, though. Talk like her. Smile like her. Maybe it was the sex that did it; hormone release building up what was already ther
e to towering heights. That sure as fuck explained a lot to him. He couldn’t wait to be with her again. Fucking mongs down at the waterway did for that. And she was working on her own, without being able to talk to him much, and then there was Moody hovering over her and he had no idea if Carter’s promise of EA protection was anything more than air…

  Gray woke, groping for her in the dark, her name on his lips. It had been nearly a week and a half since he’d seen her. He missed her so badly that he couldn’t sleep well at all without her weight beside him, her warmth curled up against his own. He looked at the clock; it was nearly three a.m.She’d be at home now, maybe, unless she was dancing the very latest shift. The Heights stayed open ‘til dawn.

  He thought of her coming home, tired after a night of dancing and dealing with idiots. Her feet would hurt. She’d need a hot shower, maybe something to eat. He’d like to take care of her. And after all, who the hell would be snooping on him at three in the morning? Gray would just go see her, and he’d end the torment of inaccessibility. He’d had enough of doing without the things he wanted to last the rest of his life.

  Gray put on dark clothes, jeans and a hoodie under a real leather jacket that he’d bought a few months ago. He hadn’t worn it before, on account of him never being out of a suit between then and now, but it fit well and it looked good on him. He put on a pair of black Francesco Aldi boots, also fresh in their box. He didn’t bother with the gun. And what else? He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, thought he looked good. She’d like him like this, something different.

  Looking at himself, however, he had another thought. What if someone was camped outside his building? Feds maybe, or Moody’s people, or just NewsNetNow or tabloids wanting additional material. He couldn’t risk going out on the sly and having Angie show up on camera, especially not fresh from work. He could just see the headlines now. People banging down her door, following her around. Wasn’t gonna happen. Gray went into his closet and found the holographic mask that he’d picked up when he paid Kate Murdock a visit at her sister’s place. It still had power, and since it had been used all of once its emitters were still in excellent condition; the moment he turned it on, the blank, placid features of the generic face he’d programmed into it stared up at him. Well all right then, Gray thought. Time to go be happy.

  Gray slipped out the back entrance of his building and into the attached parking garage, loading himself into the Cerico and wishing he still had the nice, anonymous Vectra to drive around. If there was anybody watching, however, he didn’t manage to spot them. Off to White Center he went, braving the late-night shadows of the Verge, in the hopes that he would see his lady.

  He’d rolled up into her neighborhood about three forty-five, pulling into the parking lot of a bodega two blocks from her apartment building. He put on the mask, feeling its membrane seal over his face, the faint electric buzz tingling his skin as the blank image flickered into being. He got out of the car and made his way down, hands in the pockets of his jeans, trying his best to look street in his designer coat and thousand-dollar boots. Gray knew he’d probably stand out, get attention. He just didn’t care. He should have, but the closer he got to her door the faster caution was evaporating from his mind. Hell, even if he didn’t have the mask on he still probably wouldn’t have cared if Maya Frail herself jumped out from an alley and started up an interview. He would have been prepared for that. What he was not prepared for was what he saw as he arrived at the end of her block.

  Two men were coming out of the building’s front door, both well-built, all suits and nasty looks. One of them had a suitcase in his hand.

  Gray reached into his jacket, immediately groping for the pistol that wasn’t there. Who the hell were those guys? His pulse picked up as he held back a bit, watching them walk toward a big sedan crouching in the fire lane out front, black and sleek and expensive. Federal, maybe, or…no, shit. He recognized one of those guys. The bigger of the two, a big snarly bald motherfucker, was a Vice cop named Charlie Gauge – he didn’t know much about him, other than some hints at bad shit done to a pimp with a power wrench. The other was just as shithouse huge, but Gray didn’t recognize him. These fuckers at Angie’s at nearly four in the morning now, and him without his gun. The beast in his brain was baying for blood, wanting him to go right down there and put a bullet in each of their ears for so much as darkening her fucking door.

  Quietly Gray waited, ducking into a dark alley nearby. The two of them were chuckling as the one guy put the case in the trunk – which was otherwise empty, Gray saw – and they got in. He wanted to charge down the street, unload a magazine’s worth of pellets into the damned car, kill them both. The monstrosity that roared in the back of his head was equal part fear and fury as he watched Gauge start the car and drive off, trailing the thin races of club rock behind them.

  The moment the sedan vanished down the block, Gray charged toward the door of her building. His legs burned as he shouldered through the unlocked door, taking the steps two or three at a time as he charged up the stairs; his lungs were on fire as he reached her door, his fingers trembling as he searched around the doorframe for her extra key and put it in the lock.

  Please, he found himself asking whatever power there was in the universe, understanding for just that moment what it was that summoned up the concept of God in the first place. Please, don’t let her be hurt. Don’t let her be dead…

  Propelled by his shaking hand, the door swung open. The apartment was trashed. Nothing that she owned wasn’t flipped over, broken, or searched through. The couch had been overturned and slashed open with a knife, the cushions opened up and the foam inside torn up and strewn everywhere. The doors of the kitchenette’s cabinets were torn off and tossed aside, and the remains of smashed cups littered the swatch of tile flooring. The bathroom suffered the same fate. All that there remained was the bedroom.

  From the doorway he could see that they had tossed it, too. The bed had been stripped, the mattress slashed open. Anger flared anew; this was the place he’d seen her last, this was where they had made love not two weeks ago. It was like walking into a church and finding shit smeared over the walls, his love’s temple defiled. And there, beyond the foot of the bed, a thick wad of bedclothes that looked vaguely long enough to have been a body. Trembling, he crossed the floor by inches, his eyes fixed on the bundle as he approached it. Could she be in there? Dead? Worse? He knelt down beside it, not daring to touch it yet. Instead he looked for bloodstains, but seeing none there reached out to gently push down on top of the bundle with his shaking hands. Down, and then into the bottom, where he found no body. Relief washed through him; he dropped to his knees, his hands spread upon the blankets, and felt hot tears splashing against the taut membrane of the mask.

  Gray stayed there for a few minutes. He took the mask off and rubbed his eyes, then put it back on with blood on his mind. He charged down the steps and went outside, sweeping the street for any sign of someone to run down and beat the fuck out of, and finding nothing marched back up to where the Cerico sat waiting. It took him maybe another thirty seconds to get into the car and dial up Angie’s number at the club. Panic began to well up inside of him again as nobody answered. Then he called her mobile, letting it ring, and again, and again – ten times it rang, and he was reaching to cut off the call and properly foam at the mouth when Angie sounded on the line, no image, only her terrified voice.

  “Dan?” She whispered it, as if she were hiding from the psycho in a horror film.

  Gray felt his body tense as he heard her, and he ran his hand along the console in the absence ofher face. “I’m here, honey,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m all right,” Angie said, and he had to strain to hear it even with the volume turned up to max. “I’m not at home. These two guys followed me home…I think they’re Moody’s guys. I ditched ‘em and ran like hell.”

  “Yeah. I saw them outside your place.”

  “You were outside of my place?”


  “Yeah.” Gray chuckled, but it was empty. “I just felt like I had to see you. What did they want?”

  Angie sighed. “My hero,” she murmured. “Look, I don’t know why precisely, but I think it might have had something to do with a call I made to your friend Carter.”

  Gray sat up. “What?”

  “Yeah, Carter.” She sounded a little guilty when she spoke. “It was a few days ago, he called me and said he was working for the company. Wouldn’t say how, but he said that he was looking to put Moody away and that if I heard anything I should call him. Well, last night those two guys came in, I thought they were going to lift one of the girls for some powder or whatever. I was waiting tables–”

  “Waiting tables?”

  “Yes, I don’t dance anymore.” Angie sounded shy for a moment. “Anyway. I passed them while serving drinks, and heard one of them talking about the owner of the club. They said they knew where he was, and that they were going to take him out. So, you know, I called Carter. Next thing I know, these fuckers are chasing me down on the way home from work.”

  Gray gave the console a hard stare. Carter. Carter. “Baby,” he began, his tone urgent to conceal a fresh explosion of rage, “Are you all right? Are you hidden?”

  “Yeah,” she said, “I think so. I’m in a hotel, little place. Can you pick me up?”

  The fear in her voice shot ice through his back, through his lungs, cold blades blasting him apart. “Yeah,” he said, “I’ll come get you, baby. Just…calm down, all right? I’ll take care of you. I promise.”

  Silence; he heard her breathing, soft and quiet on the line.

  “Baby?”

  A few more moments ticked by, and then her voice, saying something he’d never imagine to hear.

  “I love you, Dan. Thank you so much.”

  He squeezed his eyes tight. “I love you too, honey.” It was like giving confession to the most wonderful of goddesses, a prayer offered freely. “Just hang on.”