Once Shunned

by Blake Pierce

  Looking back at the TV, the woman said, “No, but you don’t have to take my word for it. Have yourselves a look around. Be my guest. Maybe pick up some of the mess while you’re at it.”

  Neither Riley nor her colleagues bothered to move from where they were standing. The apartment was tiny and crowded, not a likely place for anyone to hide. Riley was sure the woman wasn’t bluffing. Apparently the other agents felt that as well, because none of them was poking around checking into closets.

  The woman seemed to be apathetic from sheer exhaustion—and Riley thought she looked much too young to have so many children.

  She asked the woman, “Are you his wife?”

  “Sure am,” the woman said. “My name is Doris.”

  Then with a wave of her hand at the raucous children she added, “And these are Bruno’s kids. Not that he cares much about them—or about me. Hell, he probably couldn’t tell you all their names.”

  Doris looked quickly around and said sharply to the teenaged boy …

  “Andy, stop your little sister from swallowing that thing.”

  The boy snatched a small plastic toy out of the little girl’s mouth. She immediately started crying. The woman muted the TV but kept on watching it.

  Speaking over the growing noise of the children, Riley said to the woman …

  “Why do you think your husband killed somebody?”

  Doris shrugged and said, “He keeps talking about it, that’s why. He’s been an angry man since he got out of the Danbury Prison a couple of months ago. You’d barely recognize him from how he was before. He was easier to live with when he was hooked on smack.”

  She pointed toward the kitchen area and said …

  “Have a look at the tabletop over there.”

  Riley and her colleagues walked over to have a look at the kitchen table. The checkered tablecloth was gouged and torn, and the Formica top under it was badly scarred by something sharp and hard.

  Doris said, “He keeps coming and going all hours, sometimes disappears a day or two. Whenever he’s home, he just keeps sitting over there, saying he’s going to get his own back, somebody’s going to pay for what happened to him. All the while he keeps stabbing at the table with that damned ice pick of his. Scares me and the kids half to death.”

  Riley felt a deep chill of anticipation.

  An ice pick.

  Had the search for ice pick purchases conducted by Agent Sturman’s team found the killer after all?

  Riley had barely dared to hope so, but now it was starting to seem likely.

  Bill said, “Do you have any idea where Bruno is right now?”

  Doris said, “He’s mentioned hanging around the corner of Redmond and Wilson, about a half a block east of here. I couldn’t tell you why.”

  Riley and her colleagues hastily thanked Doris Young, then rushed out of the sad little apartment, down the stairs, and out of the building. As they continued on foot along the street, Agent Sturman remarked …

  “We’d better find out what he looks like.

  Sturman used his cell phone to log into a database of mug shots. Soon he found one of Bruno Young, a bearded young man with hollow eyes.

  When they got to the street corner Doris Young had mentioned, they saw nobody in sight. There were vacant lots on three of the corners where buildings had recently been torn down. On the other corner stood a narrow, four-story building with sagging porches on each of its floors. A yellow sign in front read …

  THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED

  Sure enough, the windows were all boarded up.

  Riley remembered something Doris had said …

  “He was easier to live with when he was hooked on smack.”

  Riley had a gut-churning feeling that she knew what she’d find inside.

  Am I ready to deal with this? she wondered.

  The only alternative was to wait outside while her three companions went on in. And she couldn’t accept that as an option.

  Pointing to the building, she said to her colleagues …

  “We’d better search that place.”

  Riley drew her weapon as they crossed to the dilapidated structure and climbed up onto the sagging porch. She saw that the other agents had done the same.

  The front door was hanging loose on broken hinges, so they all stepped inside. The hallway was littered with trash and crumbling plaster. There were three apartment doors on the ground floor.

  Jenn rapped sharply at one of the doors and shouted …

  “FBI. Open up.”

  When no reply came, Riley, Bill, and Agent Sturman clustered on each side of the door, their weapons ready.

  Jenn opened the door and gasped at what she saw.

  “Jesus,” she said. “You all had better get a look at this.”

  Riley felt a deep tingle of anxiety. She already thought she had a pretty good idea what to expect.

  Sure enough, when they all walked through the door, they found that the room was lit only by candles. The floor was strewn with five human bodies. Some of them looked as though they might actually be dead, but Riley felt pretty sure that they weren’t. They were surrounded by debris that included bags of white powder and hypodermic needles.

  “What’s the matter with them?” Jenn murmured.

  “They’re high on heroin,” Riley said, thinking …

  “High” doesn’t seem like the right word.

  The inhabitants of the room were practically unconscious, except for a man and a woman who crouched in a corner. The man was giving the woman an injection, right there and then. He looked up at Riley and her colleagues as he pulled out the needle.

  “Did you say you were FBI?” he said in a weirdly detached voice. “What do you want?”

  Riley felt sure that the man was too deep in a drug-induced euphoria to care about the arrival of law enforcement agents.

  Bill said, “We’re looking for a man named Bruno Young.”

  Jenn added, “Is he on the premises?”

  The man sat heavily beside the young woman and closed his eyes.

  “Bruno Young, you say?” he said. “Maybe, I’m not sure. Names don’t count for much in a place like this.”

  Riley felt a chill at those words …

  “… a place like this.”

  Just as she’d suspected, he meant that the whole building was a so-called “shooting gallery”—a place where heroin addicts gathered to keep getting their fixes. Riley figured the people in this room practically lived here …

  And they’re probably going to die here.

  Her weapon was shaking in her hand now, and she really wasn’t sure if she could deal with what she was seeing.

  The last time she’d been in such a place was November of last year. She’d been searching for her daughter April, who’d been abducted by a vicious young punk. He had injected her and then tried to sell her body. When Riley found them, she’d had to fight her inclination to kill the young monster.

  Bill took Riley by an arm and steered her out of the room and back into the hallway, His voice was flat as he said, “We’d better check the rest of the building.”

  Riley nodded and added, “We should split up, each take a floor.”

  As Jenn knocked on another door just across the hall, Riley, Bill, and Agent Sturman climbed the stairs. Each step felt as though it might collapse under them.

  Bill began checking rooms on the second floor, and Sturman on the third floor, while Riley continued on her way to the top floor.

  She was panting and felt sweat breaking out on her forehead, but she knew it wasn’t just from the climb.

  The ugly smells of the house were triggering a grim memory—of how she’d walked into a bedroom of another shooting gallery and found April lying drugged on a bare mattress, whimpering “no, no, no,” while a young man tried to undress her for another man’s sick pleasure.

  She also remembered the violent rage the sight had triggered in her—how she’d brutally and deliberately crushed the abductor�
�s hand, first with a baseball bat and then under her foot.

  Shuddering deeply, she reminded herself …

  Keep your head in the game.

  She had a job to do, and she couldn’t let herself be overwhelmed by the past.

  She called out near the top of the stairs, “This is the FBI. We’re looking for Bruno Young. Show yourself, with your hands in sight.”

  When she reached the top of the stairs, she saw three open doors. She looked into one of them and saw just one man sitting hunched over against a wall with a needle and a spoon on the floor beside him.

  Is that him? she wondered. Is that Bruno Young?

  Riley stepped into the room.

  Someone grabbed her from behind, spun her around, and slammed her hard against the wall.

  Her gun flew from her hand.

  A strong shadowy man held her fast, and she felt something sharp against her throat.

  An ice pick, she realized with alarm.

  “What do you want with me?” the man hissed at her.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Riley stared into the angry face that loomed just inches from her own. She immediately recognized those hollow eyes and that shaggy beard.

  Bruno Young.

  She had seen his mug shot just a few minutes ago, and now he had her pinned against the wall.

  He pressed the point of an ice pick against her throat.

  For a few moments, all movement seemed to freeze.

  Riley wanted to shout to her companions in the floors below, but she barely dared to breathe. She knew that with a single hard punch, Young could drive the ice pick’s sharp, long shaft all the way through her windpipe and into the vertebrae of her neck.

  She’d probably be dead before she hit the floor.

  The man snarled, “Answer my question, FBI lady! What do you want from me?”

  “I just want to ask you some questions,” Riley said hoarsely.

  “Questions, huh?” he growled. “What did you need a gun for if you just wanted to ask me questions?”

  Panic seized Riley’s body as she tried to decide what to do. Any move she tried to make could well be her last.

  Just then Riley heard another voice in the room.

  “Bruno, you son of a bitch.”

  Riley realized it was the man she’d seen when she’d first entered the room—the man who’d been huddled against the wall in a drug-induced stupor.

  Bruno yelled back to him, “Shut up, Jim. Mind your own business.”

  The distraction was brief, but it was exactly what Riley needed.

  She jerked her whole body sharply to her left, then heard the dull thud of the ice pick as its shaft plunged into the wall.

  A quick glance around the room didn’t reveal her gun. It must have disappeared somewhere in the room’s deep debris.

  The man on the floor cried weakly …

  “Look out, lady.”

  Riley whirled back around just in time to dodge a lunge from Bruno Young.

  He had pulled the ice pick out of the wall and swung it at her, but his body weight carried him harmlessly past her.

  Then the heavy man turned toward her again, holding the ice pick in his fist with the point upward. This time he seemed to be considering what to do next.

  Riley recognized the stance of an experienced street fighter. She also knew that she was still dazed from his initial attack. She stood facing him, waiting for his next move.

  When it came, she seized her chance. She deftly grabbed his arm and twisted it.

  The ice pick fell from his hand.

  In another second, she had the man on his knees on the floor, holding his arm behind his back.

  In a violent surge of adrenaline, Riley’s whole body was dangerously charged with energy.

  She flashed back again to how she’d crushed the hand of April’s abductor, and she remembered how close she’d come to killing him.

  The same uncontrollable rage came over her now.

  She knew that one sharp twist would be enough to dislocate her attacker’s elbow, and then with another she could break his wrist …

  And after that …

  Image after sadistic image filled her imagination.

  She didn’t know if she could control the urge to strike this man, injure him badly, or perhaps kill him.

  Agent Sturman’s voice interrupted.

  “Agent Paige, are you all right?”

  Riley snapped around and saw him standing in the doorway.

  She wondered just how long he’d been there. She hoped it had been long enough to see that Bruno had tried to kill her.

  Riley nearly blurted …

  “Yeah, but you probably saved this bastard’s life.”

  Instead, she gasped for breath and said, “I’m OK, but I could use a hand with this guy. Get a pair of cuffs on him. He’s under arrest.”

  As Jenn and Bill came into the room, Riley crouched down and searched for her missing weapon. She found it and put it back in its holster. Then her eyes fell on the other man still sitting next to the wall—the man Bruno had called “Jim.”

  He’d been watching the scene with the weird, detached tranquility of someone immersed in a heroin high.

  Riley said, “Sturman, call the local cops to come and clean out this hellhole. They’ll have a lot of arrests to deal with. Then you and Agent Roston take Bruno Young here to the local FBI headquarters. Bill and I will catch up with you shortly.”

  Jenn dragged Bruno out of the room, and Sturman followed her, calling the police on his cell phone. Riley could hear the man loudly protesting as they hauled him down the stairs.

  Riley saw that Bill was watching her closely. She knew her partner was aware that something dramatic had happened here. She turned away from him and whispered …

  “We’ve got to talk to this guy. I’m hoping he can give us some answers.”

  Bill looked a bit surprised at the suggestion, but then he turned his attention to the man on the floor.

  The two agents crouched down in front the drugged man.

  Riley said to him, “You’re name is Jim, I take it.”

  The man nodded, and his eyes rolled back in his head.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Jim Gibney. Who are you?”

  Riley’s hopes wavered. She knew she’d called out that she was FBI when she’d gotten to the top of the stairs. Jim was still awfully deep in his drug state.

  Does he even remember what just happened? she wondered.

  Riley said, “I’m Special Agent Riley Paige, FBI. This is my partner, Agent Jeffreys.”

  The man seemed to be making an effort to hold his head up. When he spoke again, he sounded as if he were talking in his sleep.

  “Don’t arrest me, OK? I mean, if that’s what you’re here for. I’m not worth the trouble. This place is full of other junkies. You don’t need me. Anyway, I saved your life just now, didn’t I?”

  Riley didn’t reply. But the truth was …

  He might be right.

  As stoned as he was, he’d managed to alert her just in time to keep Bruno Young from stabbing her with that ice pick. Still, she wasn’t going to grant his request. Soon the police would be here, and Jim would be hauled away along with everybody else in the building.

  Riley said to him, “What can you tell me about Bruno Young?”

  Jim squinted and said, “Bruno was here? Again?”

  Riley suppressed a sigh. Jim’s memory of what had just happened seemed to be very dim. Was she going to be able to get any useful information out of him?

  She said, “Jim, he just attacked me with an ice pick, remember?”

  “You too, huh?” Jim said.

  Riley said, “Are you saying he attacked you with his ice pick?”

  Jim breathed deeply, in and out.

  “Not exactly,” he said. “But he’s been threatening to kill me with it. It’s been going on for days and days, maybe a couple of weeks. He comes up here and sits beside me and holds that ice pick to my throat, ta
lks about how easy it would be to finish me off, and how he’ll do it sooner or later. Sometimes he really scares me, but …”

  He inhaled and exhaled again and said …

  “Other times I tell him to go ahead, it’s not like I give a damn.”

  Bill said, “Why does he keep threatening to kill you?”

  “You’d have to ask him that,” Jim said. “If you can find him. Did you say he was here just now? If not, I sure don’t know where he is. Maybe you can catch him at home.”

  “We arrested him just now,” Bill said. “Right here in front of you.”

  Jim smiled ever so slightly.

  “Did you?” he said. “Hey, good for you. He’s a mean son of a bitch. Has been since he got out of the joint. It really changed him. It’s like I don’t know him anymore. We used to be pals …”

  Jim seemed to be fading off into a semi-conscious stupor. Riley shook him by the shoulder.

  “We need for you to tell us more,” Riley said.

  Jim shook his head and said, “I’m not a narc.”

  “Why did he want to kill you?” Riley said.

  Jim repeated, “I’m not a narc.”

  Then he closed his eyes and seemed to slip completely away from them.

  Riley was about to shake him again when she heard the sound of footsteps and voices down on the ground floor.

  Bill said, “The cops are here. Maybe we should haul this guy in separately. Maybe we can question him when he can make more sense.”

  Riley said, “You know that’s not going to happen any time soon. As soon as he comes down from this fix, he’s going to want more. When he can’t get it, he’ll go into withdrawal, and he still won’t make any sense. Anyway, we’ll know where he is if we think we need him.”

  Bill nodded.

  “Wishful thinking,” he admitted.

  They both got back on their feet.

  Riley said, “Besides, I think he already told us something.”

  Bill scoffed a little and said …

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  Riley still wasn’t quite sure. But she realized that something was nagging at her mind.

  She said, “Let’s head on over to FBI headquarters.”

  As she and Bill walked down the stairs, multiple arrests were already in progress. Riley felt troubled by what was going on around her. She remembered all too well how hard it had been for April to recover from her fleeting experience with heroin. It had taken some rigorous rehab, but April had gotten through it, and now she’d put the whole ugly experience behind her.