Steve winced. I described the groups who had been at the estate in a general way, leaving out the summoning of the floating storm and the spells on Tattoo’s body.
“What about you? Did you come for the auction, too?”
“No,” I answered. “With me, it’s …” What the hell could I say? I couldn’t tell him about the society. “… just bad luck.”
He didn’t look impressed with that answer. “And what does this have to do with what happened to you in Seattle?”
“Near as I can tell, nothing. It was similar to this, though—weird creature, people going nuts.”
“You did solve that problem, though?”
I kept my face carefully neutral. “I did.”
“How?”
I thought back to the last moments of that ordeal, when my best and oldest friend had pleaded for me to spare his life. The smells of spoiled blood and field turf came back to me, and so did his voice. The old injury on my left hand throbbed.
I opened my mouth to answer, but the words wouldn’t come. I’d only talked about it to one other person, a peer in the society I had never seen before or since. At the time, I was still in shock and I’d expected him to kill me. Since then, I hadn’t said a word about it.
And I wasn’t going to start with a cop, even a temp cop, no matter how politely he asked.
“Never mind,” Steve said with a wave of his hand. “I understand.”
We didn’t say anything for a while, and my eyelids began to droop. He noticed. “Let me set you up for some shut-eye. Any fool can see you need it, even this one.”
The pillows and blankets he brought were pink and flowery. I stretched out on the couch, feeling awkward and vulnerable, but when I closed my eyes, I dropped into a deep, dreamless sleep.
“Get up.”
I came awake suddenly, thinking that Yin’s men had found me again, but it was Catherine.
“I mean it,” she said again. Her tone was sharp. “Nap time is over.”
I sat up and rubbed the bleariness out of my eyes. The VCR clock said it was almost ten, but was that the evening of the same day, or had I slept all the way into the morning? “It’s nice to see you, too. Is it early or late?”
“It’s still the same day, if that’s what you mean. And I’m hungry again. Those bastards took my emergency food with the jump bag. Come on! Up!”
As a rule, I don’t like being snapped at, but I was too damn tired to care. Maybe I was just glad to see that she was okay. “Don’t talk to me that way,” I said out of habit. “How did you find me?”
“Goddammit, Ray.” She sat down on the edge of the couch and folded her arms across her breasts. “I saw you go into the motel to meet Yin. What kind of game are you playing?”
“I’m not playing any kind of game. Do you think he turned me? Do you think he bought me off?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“That’s bullshit,” I said with more anger than I’d expected. “He sent me your cellphone and told me he’d kidnapped you. I went there to free you.”
She sighed and set her hands on her knees. “And I watched you go in, thinking you were collecting a payoff.”
“He nearly killed me, but the fire made him back off.”
“That was lucky.”
“Not really.”
She smiled and I smiled back. We had a moment. Then she looked away and her smile vanished. She held up her hands. They trembled slightly.
“I’m forty-five years old, you know. I’ll be forty-six in August, if I live that long. This job isn’t as exciting as it was when I was twenty-five. I’m better at it now, but …” She rubbed her hands together and leaned back. “They did get me, you know. They stopped my car and dragged me out onto the asphalt. It seemed like a dozen of them, all smiling shit-eating smiles and holding their guns against my body. All over my body.”
She was silent for a moment. I waited for her, and eventually she said: “They couldn’t keep me, though. They underestimated me, and when I saw my chance I took it.”
“I’m glad.” It was a stupid thing to say, but I couldn’t think of anything better.
Catherine just nodded. “How did you get into this? How did you get sucked into this life?”
Maybe she didn’t know my history. Or maybe she was testing me to see if I shared information. I didn’t care. “My best friend … my best friend had a predator in him. Annalise was there to kill him, but I tried to save him. I took his side against her, but he was past saving.”
She nodded. “With me it was my nephew. He was a little wild and very funny, but one summer day he could suddenly do things. When the society came hunting for him, the whole family hid him away. They protected him. Except me. I knew he was killing people, and I decided to turn him in. I had to do the right damn thing, no matter what it cost. My family … isn’t my family anymore. I’m married now, with two girls, but they’ve never met my mother or sisters. I don’t want them to hear the things my family says to me—what they call me now. I got this damn job out of it, though.”
I couldn’t imagine how hard it was to do society work as a parent, and I said so.
She pulled away from me and let her body language become neutral. “I have ways of dealing. There are ways of doing this job that help keep a little distance. I don’t do any of the violence, and I’m never around when it happens. There’s no need for me to see that and carry it around with me, bring it home to my family. Not after what happened to my nephew. I take care of my own people and let these people take care of themselves.”
That last bit was a little cold. I don’t rescue people. I kill predators. But I did my best not to react. People have to cope the best they can.
She continued. “But … maybe it’s just that I know more now. Maybe I just know more about the danger and the … the suddenness. It can be so quick. One minute everything is just fine, and the next you’ve lost all power and control. They only had me for about twenty minutes, okay? That’s how long it took me to get away, but … When they have you, they can do anything to you. Kill you, rape you, torture you …” She paused while she ran through the possibilities in her mind.
I couldn’t ask what Yin had done. I didn’t have any real need to know except self-indulgent curiosity. What I needed to do was make her feel better. “Want to go kill them?” I asked.
“Yes!” she answered, but she didn’t jump up and rush for the door. “But I’m not the type. And it wouldn’t get me anything. I’m going to have nightmares about this, I think. I’m going to have nightmares for a long time about this. Christ, I’m collecting them like scars.” After a moment, she added: “Do you really think we should kill Mr. Yin?”
I spread my hands. “Catherine, I bought him off with a fake spell. Someone is going to have to kill him.”
We had a little discussion about that, where I explained what I did and how I did it. Catherine didn’t like the idea on general principle but couldn’t think of a specific reason to object. She even admitted that the society publishes fake spell books to discourage wannabes. Then she explained that Steve Cardinal had told her where to find me. It seemed that most of the town was looking for us, with instructions to call him if we were spotted.
“He seems to know more than he should,” she said. She watched my response carefully, as if trying to decide whether I was sharing information I should have kept to myself.
“He saw the sapphire dog,” I said. “In fact, it nearly fed on him. So yeah, he knows more than he should.” I told her about the predator, how it looked and what it could do. She was motionless while I spoke, staring at me intently.
Then I told her about my visit with Pratt. She seemed to recognize the name.
“Did he give you his number?” she asked.
“He wasn’t that into me. Actually, he was a complete asshole. He told me to go home, and he wouldn’t help deal with Yin.”
Wouldn’t help rescue you was what I should have said. Catherine seemed to understand any
way.
She rubbed her face. “Well, we can’t leave,” she said. “It wouldn’t make sense to leave Washaway now.”
My head felt foggy and sore for a moment, probably from the effects of sleep. “Right, that doesn’t make sense.”
After that, she set up the police scanner. Steve was out, so I went into his kitchen. I couldn’t find any coffee. We had to settle for black tea and sugar. His fridge contained nothing but condiments, Wonder bread, white cheese, and hamburger buns, and his freezer was packed with microwavable meat patties. I felt a little awkward raiding the man’s kitchen, and the dismal selection made it easy to leave it all untouched. Maybe we should order out.
We listened to the scanner for the better part of an hour. It was extremely dull, but Catherine had an amazing capacity to focus on something that might become useful at any moment. I got up and moved around the room, swinging my arms and trying to keep loose. My face felt stiff, and when I checked a mirror I saw that my eye was not swollen anymore but was an ugly dark color. The spot where Bushy Bill had hit me was slightly red but not too bad. No wonder the women in Washaway weren’t tearing their clothes off when I walked into the room.
There was squawking on the scanner when I came back. It barely sounded like human speech. “Do you understand any of that?”
“Fire at the motel is out,” she said. “The whole thing is a loss. The neighborhood watch is supposed to find locals who can put the firefighters up for the night.”
I wasn’t sure why they weren’t going home, but that didn’t seem important. What was important was Steve’s house; I didn’t want to be there when he got home. I didn’t like that clean, quiet, depressing little place.
“I want to get out of here,” I said. “Do you want to stay and man the scanner?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I’ll come along.”
That surprised me. “Are you sure?” I didn’t say This is a safe place or We might run into bad guys. I didn’t have to.
“They know about me, so there really isn’t a safe place anymore. And I’m not the stay-at-home type.”
She took the keys to the Neon and carried the scanner into the garage. While she fiddled with the wires under the dash, I went into the kitchen, boiled water, and poured it into a thermos. Then I added a tea bag and the last of Steve’s sugar.
Back in the garage, I found Catherine sitting behind the wheel, the engine running and the scanner hissing. I opened the garage door and she pulled out. I closed the door and climbed inside.
The scanner sat on the floor mat beside my feet. I didn’t dare move for fear of pulling out a wire. “I’m the one who rented this car, you know.”
“Maybe, but I’m a better driver.”
Fair enough. We drove back and forth through town, waiting for something to happen. At one point, a black Yukon passed us going the other way. The bidders had the same idea. After almost an hour, a thin fog billowed in, but nothing else came up. Finally, Catherine said what I’d been afraid to say. “Could it already be gone? Things wouldn’t be this quiet if it was still in town, right?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Except that the Breakleys were only discovered because we burned down their barn. Maybe it’s holed up somewhere, feeding and biding its time.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said. “The cage was surrounded by lights, remember? What if it only wanted a ride because it needed to avoid daylight? What if it set out cross-country once night fell?”
“Fuck.” That hadn’t occurred to me. The predator hadn’t walked like a creature that could cover a lot of ground, but I wouldn’t have guessed it could move through walls, either.
“Driving around is a waste of time,” I said.
“I agree completely.” Catherine did a U-turn in the middle of the street and headed back toward the shopping center on Littlemont.
The Grable was sealed off with more yellow caution tape. The arch was blackened on one side, and the building was a shell. I didn’t like looking at it.
Catherine parked in front of the bar. “I’m going to socialize,” she said. “You’re designated driver, so you can have Pepsi. After I get inside, count to five hundred and come in. This works better if people think I’m alone.”
She went inside. I sat and counted slowly. There was a Fleetwood parked a couple of dozen yards away. It took a moment for me to remember where I’d seen it before. I got out of the Neon.
I approached from an angle that would keep me out of the side and rearview mirrors, but I didn’t need to bother. The driver was alone and asleep. It was Regina Wilbur.
She was wrapped in an expensive cashmere coat, and she’d managed to clean herself up. Her hair had been washed, at least. She had a duck hunter’s shotgun in her lap.
The button for the door lock was up, so I yanked the door open and snatched the shotgun away from her as quickly as I could. She woke instantly. If I’d been any slower, I’d have been staring down the barrel. I was glad I hadn’t underestimated her.
“Hello, Regina,” I said. “It’s kind of a chilly night to be sleeping in your car, isn’t it?”
“Oh,” she said. “It’s you.” If she had bothered to remember my name, she wasn’t going to say it. “I know why you’re in Washaway. If I get my hands on that shotgun again, I’ll use it to part your miserable skull.”
“You don’t know as much about me as you think,” I said.
That got a rise out of her, as I’d hoped it would. “That little German bastard told me everything I need to know. He says you want to kill Armand.”
“And you believed him? You can’t trust that guy. He murdered a member of your own staff in cold blood.”
“Pfah!” She waved a liver-spotted hand at me. “Why should he lie to me? I’m just a helpless old woman!”
I almost laughed in her face. But that “little German bastard” wouldn’t have been fooled by her any more than I was. “And I’ll bet he offered to capture Armand for you.”
“Not just for me,” she said, sounding as if I’d insulted her intelligence. “He wants to bring in a team to study Armand, and he thinks the home I built for him would be the best place to do it.”
“So he wants to share the sapphire dog with you? Like the poetry professor?”
“Yes!” she drew out the hiss at the end of that word with malicious joy. “He and I will share the same way I shared with the poetry professor, as soon as he catches Armand in one of those big, black Yukons of his.”
I couldn’t resist correcting her. “The Yukons with the red-and-white cards on the dash? Those aren’t his. That’s a different bidder entirely.”
She smiled like a snake, and I realized I’d made a mistake. She started the engine and backed out of her parking slot. I had to jump out of the way of the open door. She gave me one last sneer before she pulled out, leaving me holding her shotgun.
Damn. I had underestimated her after all, but what should I do about it? I could have tried to call the new emergency chief of police, if I had his number, which I didn’t. And if I followed her, I would be separating from Catherine again.
That hadn’t worked well the last time, and I wasn’t going to do it again. I tossed Regina’s shotgun onto the roof of the teriyaki place. Maybe she had another gun, but I think she would have tried to shoot me if she had. And while she could certainly afford a new one, she’d have to wait until the stores opened. I had time. I hoped.
I decided that I’d waited at least a five-hundred count and went inside.
Catherine was sitting at the bar, chatting amiably with the bartender. She had a glass of white wine in front of her. Her body language was different from what I’d seen before—yet another personality. I wonder how she chose them, or if she went by instinct. I took note of where the bathroom was and picked a spot where I’d have to walk by her to get to it.
Two stools over from me was a guy of about twenty-five. He was slumped over a beer, reading the label as if it might make him happy.
In the corner was an
older couple sipping from tall drinks with a careful, trembling elegance. They both looked shriveled and wasted on the top half of their bodies and thick with flab on the bottom half. They seemed like people who had once had much better uses for their time but would have been offended at the label “barfly.”
A pair of young guys shot pool in the corner. They didn’t talk, but I couldn’t tell if that was because they didn’t like each other or they were just intent on their game.
The last person in the bar was Pratt. There was an empty bowl and crumpled napkin in front of him—he’d come here for his dinner. I wondered if, like us, he was here to find information or if he was slacking off from his job. Which wasn’t fair, but to hell with him. I didn’t like him.
The bartender tore himself away from Catherine long enough to take my order. He was a middle-aged guy with a slouching belly and no ring on his left hand. His face had started to go pouchy, but his hair was thick and combed straight back as though he was proud of it. I asked for a root beer and a menu. He dropped them off and wandered back to Catherine.
I could overhear a little of their conversation: she was complimenting the town in ways that prompted the bartender to brag a little. He described the Christmas festival that would happen tomorrow, explained the history of it, and flirted with her shamelessly. She didn’t encourage him, but she didn’t back away, either.
Depressed Guy tapped his empty bottle on the bar and the bartender brought him a new one. He took my order, too. I went for the grilled cheese, figuring it was cheap and too easy for him to screw up.
Catherine went back to doing her thing. I couldn’t hear everything she was saying, but it sounded like small talk. Whatever information she was getting was coming at a leisurely pace, and she didn’t seem interested in speeding up the process. My grilled cheese arrived; I’d never had a better sandwich in my life.
Depressed Guy muttered something to himself. I glanced over at him. He said: “Ever love someone or something so much you can’t live without them?”
I remembered the way the sapphire dog had made me feel. Depressed Guy suddenly had my full attention. “Yeah, man. I think I have.”
Game of Cages Page 17