by Chad Huskins
As if to support this, he heard the whispers on the wind. “…gap is wider now…we could get through if we try now…but the other one, the sister, she could still keep us out…”
Another voice rose to prominence, slithering in on the wind, howling in his ears. “Let’s use this one here.” At once, Spencer knew they were talking about him. “He could do it. He wants to do it. If not, we have no choice but to swallow her whole, and hope her power joins with ours…”
“Yes! Yes! We should swallow her whole! We must join ourselves with her! She must! She must!”
“We are so close! It is our greatest hope—”
Spencer started laughing, and all the whispers stopped at once. Perhaps they stopped because of him, or perhaps not. It made sense, though. If he could hear them, then his voice must also be slipping through that membrane into their Deep. “Cut this, Jack,” he told them. “Nobody kills Kaley Dupré but me. She’s mine. And when the time comes, I’m the one who collects, not some fucking pussy-ass warlord who can’t even find his dick in the dark, much less find a way out of a locked broom closet.”
Silence.
“They locked me up once. Know how long it took me to get out? A few months, maybe a little longer. Certainly wasn’t no billion fuckin’ years.”
Silence.
“I got yer attention?”
Silence.
“Good. Now listen up. Way I see it, you got two options. First, you could try whatever you did before when you took poor Mrs. Cartwright, but ya see how well that worked when ya tried to get the little girl. Her name’s Kaley,” he put in. “You could try that again, hope it works out better for ya. Or,” he stressed, “you could go after the other one—her name’s Shannon. Much weaker than her sister, not as much of a fighter, and she needs Kaley to survive. I’ve already heard some o’ you tossin’ this option back and forth. Personally, and this is just me, I’d go with Shannon. Trust me, I’ve been around Kaley longer than you have. If you’re lookin’ to open a hole in reality so big you could all just come clambering through, well, nothin’ gets Kaley tearin’ open gaps in the fabric of the universe faster than her sister in distress.”
Silence.
“Now, I’m not even sure who I’m talkin’ to, someone on another plane or some shadowy portion of Kaley Dupré’s mind hankering to get out. Either way, you an’ me, we’re the kind o’ things people lock away and throw away the key. You need me, because whenever you’re tryin’ to break free of somethin’, it helps to have an inside man.” He shrugged. “I’m your inside man.”
Silence.
“An’ I could use you, too, because it sounds like you’re the kind o’ man with powerful friends. I’m all about makin’ friends,” he chuckled. “So, whattaya say? Leave the big sister alone for now, an’ I’ll get ya the little sister later?”
Silence.
“Ya know, where I come from we take silence to mean acquiescence.”
Silence.
“That’s a fancy word for agreement.”
Silence.
Then, “You give the little one, we leave the big one alone.”
Spencer held his arms out to his side, smiling and nodding. “There ya go. That’s called a good old-fashioned win-win situation right there.”
“You give the little one, we leave the big one alone,” it repeated.
“Yeah, that’s the gist.”
“You give the little one, we leave the big one alone.”
“What’re you, a fucking retard? That’s what I just said.”
“You give us the little one, pitbull, and we leave the big one alone.”
“Yeah, I…wait. Wait, what did you just say?” Spencer felt paranoia and suspicion gather around him like old friends. “Pitbull? Where did ya hear that?”
Silence.
Then, something shot past his leg. Spencer spun and whipped out his Glock, pointing down at the ground. Except for his footprints and the tire tracks left by the SUV, the snow was pure and unmolested. He looked all around him. The snow was still surging in a straight line towards the docks. Towards her, he knew.
The boy was sitting up in his seat, hands pressed against the foggy windows, sometimes wiping them so that he could see out. Spencer pointed at him, and Peter ducked back below.
He listened for any further communication from these “Others,” heard nothing, and then brooded for a moment. Then, on a whim, he went to the back of the SUV and opened the hatch. He opened the black case and retrieved the Benelli. In the back, the boy peeked over the seat, watching him. Spencer looked up at him and the boy vanished again. “You stay right here. I’m not going so far that I can’t see you,” he lied.
Pitbull, he thought. Pitbull.
Before leaving, Spencer took the car keys and pocketed them. He loaded seven shells into the shotgun, put a few in his left jacket pocket, and a few in his right. One of the Uzis that he’d taken from Zakhar’s pals was small enough to fit inside his jacket. Now packing considerably more firepower, he shut the hatch and hurried towards the chain-link fence. He moved along the fence for about thirty yards, looking for just the right spot. Pitbull, huh? Finally, he found a spot where the fence had been damaged and bent at the bottom, possibly where some vehicle had slammed into it, and knelt to get a hold of it with both hands. With five good tugs, he made an opening big enough to crawl through.
Pitbull.
The snow was frozen, and took some kicking and digging to make a path for him. Once on the other side, he raised the Benelli and cocked it. The snow was still rushing towards the docks, but it was kind of changing directions, drifting from east to south.
“All right,” he said, hustling down the embankment towards the first stacks of crates. “Lead the way, little girl.”
The traffic was easing up, but only slightly. Probably everyone has finally decided it’s smartest to stay home, thought Shcherbakov. They would be right about that, and in more ways than just one.
Highway M-51, however, had its share of problems because of so many closed lanes. Lit signs over each exit informed motorists of the constant changes the Highway Administrationwas making to deal with the storm. Several road closings were listed, along with suggestions for alternate routes.
The Wolf wondered if his target had opted for any of these detours. There were several places Pelletier might go, not the least of which was the airport—Shcherbakov had already texted one of Zverev’s people and told them they might want to send someone to check out the gates—but it wasn’t likely since almost all flights were being cancelled. And you would know that, wouldn’t you, Mr. Pelletier?
Coasting by Kosulvo Ulitsa and Branonsky Prospekt, Shcherbakov passed a few large buildings with a plethora of graffiti strewn across: a continuing series of epic murals that all formed a picture of a beach and an ocean, with plenty of sunlight. It was a stark contrast to the frigid conditions all around, obviously meant to be a little sarcastic. In large, looping painted letters, someone had repeatedly proclaimed Мы молодежь нации! We are the youth of a nation!
Shcherbakov turned on the defroster; a fog was slowly spreading across his windshield.
He crossed another bridge, and craned his neck to get a view of the streets below, those leading towards the docks. They were all packed with traffic, and most of them were recently closed. In fact, two men with cones and dressed heavily in parkas and ushankas and reflective vests were stepping in front of the mouth of Ekaterininskaya Ulitsa. That little stretch of road looked deserted. Still, he pulled to a stop just beside the men, honked his horn and waved one over. He rolled down his window, hollered, “How long has this road been closed?”
“We’re just closing it now,” the workman yelled over the wind. “Too narrow for salt trucks and plows. Not heavily trafficked, so it’s freezing over, and the traffic on the highway is such that any minute now people might start trying to use it as a shortcut. They do that. With that packed ice, you’d have wrecks within half an hour. You can take another road, abo
ut a kilometer up—hey!”
Shcherbakov was already out of his car and jogging to the mouth of the street. He slipped and almost fell, but he managed to get his cell phone out. His eyes had seen what they needed to see, even from far off. A single line of tracks headed in, and another headed out of Ekaterininskaya Ulitsa. The worker was calling to him, saying this was a dangerous area and no place to park his car. Shcherbakov knelt beside one patch of tire tracks and compared them with the pictures in his cell phone that he’d taken of the tracks at the cabin. Same. He stood and jogged over to the tire tracks in the far lane, going the other way. Different.
The Grey Wolf smirked. He entered, but didn’t leave this way. He stood and addressed the worker running up to him, cutting off the man’s protests with a silencing hand. “This road you said was a kilometer up. Is it Kurakina?”
“Yes. Now please, move your car.”
He knew Kurakina Ulitsa. It went around a large suburban neighborhood, but eventually went to Pisinksi Prospekt, which ran parallel to the Miass River and went straight out to the docks. “Do you expect Kurakina to still be open by the time I get there?” he said to the worker.
“It should be.”
“No more road closings?” he hollered, hustling back to his Priora.
“None that I’m aware of.”
“Thank you.” Shcherbakov almost collided with a small Nissan when he merged back onto the street.
Unfortunately for Detective-Inspector Rideau, Lieutenant Tattar had indeed been right when he said it would probably take more than half an hour. It was fortunate, however, that Tattar’s cellular phone was somehow getting service, for Rideau’s wasn’t. The lieutenant kept up with the road closings and was able to use various GPS, map services, and even a phone call to police HQ, to find the routes currently available.
The Bogema Apartments were covered with as much ice as they were police. It shouldn’t be so overrun, not for a simple murder, and it seemed the media knew that. Chelyabinsk Police would have sufficed for any intrusion and murder, no matter how brutal. But there were three large unmarked SUVs, and two large roving forensic labs that didn’t have Chelyabinsk Police markings. The FSB had gotten here very quickly, unsurprisingly. The Grey Wolf’s involvement is more than just speculation, then, Rideau surmised.
They parked beside one of the SUVs. The FSB must have been informed that she was coming, because a gray-suited man in a black, buttoned long coat was walking over to her, flanked by five other men and one woman dressed similarly. All of them were wearing blue footies around their shoes, which meant they had been to the crime scene.
Detective Yudin hopped out of his front seat and moved to open the door for Rideau, but she opened it too quickly for him and was out and shaking hands with the lead FSB man. “How do you do?” she said. “I’m Detective-Inspector Aurélie Rideau.”
“Blok,” he said, expressionless, not specifying if he was Agent, Special Agent, Detective or something else. And it didn’t matter. Rideau could see instantly that the man was used to filling all of those occupations and duties. Blok was tall and grim, not an uncommon look for a Russian, especially amid such a harsh winter, and he had deep, inset eyes of cold slate, with bushy black eyebrows going gray, along with the rest of the hair on his head, the same close-cropped hair just hidden beneath his ushanka. “I can show you up.”
No pleasantries, no other introductions. Rideau just nodded to the only other woman and gave a brief smile as she walked past. Blok led her and Lieutenant Tattar away from the main stairs. The steps had been cordoned off; numerous pictures were being taken of the snowy ground by a feverish group of forensic photographers. “Footprints?”
Blok spoke without looking back at her, leading their retinue to another set of stairs at the side of the building. “The first responders were pretty competent. The detective that contacted FSB was told to lock down the area.”
“Since Rubashkin was a person of interest in their investigations, I presume?”
“Yes.”
“And have you found any? Footprints, I mean.”
“We’ve isolated one set of footprints that don’t match the foot size or known footwear of anyone living on her same landing,” Blok said. “Size forty-one-and-a-half.” That was Russian measurements, roughly a size 11 in U.S. standards, a size 45 in France. That was about what she knew of Yuri Shcherbakov’s shoe size, collected from various other crime scenes around the globe, particularly those in the Dutch revenge killings.
“Who found her?”
“A maintenance man. He came around to complete a yearly inspection on smoke alarms. It was a coincidence. All the apartments here are undergoing such inspections at this time. If it hadn’t been for that, it could have been weeks before anyone noticed.” They came around to the landing from another way, on snowy open paths that had dozens of sets of footprints. “We decided to establish this path here as our approach to the crime scene, since there were no footprints at all along here when detectives first arrived on the scene.”
They carried on in silence until they came to the apartment door. Just inside, there were bags of fruit spilled, and a few markers that the forensic team had set around the various oranges, apples, and pears, establishing where everything had been when they first arrived. Rideau removed her shoes before entering, and stepped into a pair of blue footies like the other agents. They were all supplied rubber gloves, and Rideau snapped hers own as she crossed the threshold.
The room smelled of smoke, and also, quite frankly, like someone had passed gas, or had ruptured a sewer line. There was a reason for that, and she would see why in a moment.
The apartment was filled with halogen lights, a few investigators moving around with blacklight wands, and gloved men carefully pushing chairs, tables, and paintings to one side and examining them by flashlight.
Rideau put a hand to her nose, guarding against the aroma. Blok said, “Here,” and handed her a bottle of mint-smelling cream to put under her nose. She accepted it gratefully, smearing some of it over her top lip, just beneath her nose. The cream smelled strong, but it was better than breathing the alternative.
Rideau paused at the kitchen, where a line had been drawn around a small, furry animal. A dog. A terrier, if she wasn’t mistaken. A couple of markers were around it, and one forensic photographer snapped multiple angles of it, then opened the cupboards and took snapshots of the contents. “He killed the dog?” she asked.
“Yes,” Blok answered impassively.
“Suppose it was making too much noise,” Tattar commented.
The unidentified female agent muttered, “It was strangled first, then its neck was broken.”
“How can you tell?”
“The bottom of the neck has been recently shaved, you can see extreme ligature marks.”
But Rideau was hardly listening to either one of them now. She’d rounded the kitchen countertop and was now standing at the threshold of the living room, looking through a gap in the evidence collectors and photographers, stunned. If she had thought her past in hunting wanted criminals and locating mistreated children had prepared her for everything, or had given her the ability to divorce herself from any scene, she now had that illusion suitably obliterated.
What Aurélie Rideau was looking at now was inventive, precise, and undeniably brutal. Thought out well in advance, she thought. Nothing like this could be spur of the moment. The knots were done with supreme care, the tube in the anus hadn’t been inserted with any vicious thrust, and the tube itself had one end still smoking from a burnt fuse. The room smelled of that smoke, and it coiled with the gastric spillings of Vasilisa Rubashkin. The conclusion was a flimsy thing, only needing to be tacked on for paperwork’s sake. Another message.
Her belly was a ruin. The rats had had their play. The body was twisted backwards. Rubashkin strangled herself fighting against what had been unleashed inside of her. The lower abdomen was mauled, like a tiger had gotten hold of her. The stomach was like a ripped plastic sack on
the floor, and parts of the intestines had bubbled out. The floor and part of the nearby couch were stained red from what must’ve been a shower of blood when the rats first burst through.
The rats. One of them was squealing away inside a plastic box a gloved forensic woman had brought up. The creature covered in blood and viscera, scratching and clawing at the box’s translucent walls, angry and driven mad by its ordeal. Rideau didn’t see the other rats. They must’ve run. Under the bed somewhere, or out the door when no one was looking.
Someone stepped into the room behind her, began murmuring to the agents and lieutenant. “We’ve isolated two separate kinds of tire tracks in the snow that don’t belong to any resident’s vehicle.”
“Anything else?” Blok asked.
“Not in the parking lot, sir, no. But we’re still looking.”
“Have you canvassed all the neighbors?”
“All but one, and the neighbors say he’s visiting family in Izhevsk for the week. The others say they saw nothing.”
Rideau moved around the body, gave it a wide berth. She looked into Rubashkin’s eyes. They were half closed, like she was getting a little drowsy, and was thinking about taking a nap. The eyes looked very rheumy. The toxicology report would probably come back with some paralytic or sleeping agent used to put her down. The Dyneema rope around her throat, wrists and ankles had cut deep; severe bruising was already happening. The putrid smell of intestinal and stomach gases were heavy, even with the cream directly under her nose.
What were her last moments like? How she must’ve prayed that someone in the apartments above her or below her would hear her screams, or that some random delivery person had come knocking. Think if that maintenance man had come to check the smoke alarm just a little sooner. Might she be alive?