Marsh has finally stopped smoldering, though his skin is blistered, scabbed over and oozing in a few places. If he smiles, he might split open some newly healed skin, but I doubt we’ll have to worry about that happening.
Someone brought him a spare suit, so he’s mercifully clothed now. He adjusts the skinny, plain, black tie, knotted sloppily around his open collar. I see some fluid stains start to spread out immediately in spots on his shoulders.
“Let’s take a walk,” he says and starts going up the stairs, expecting me to follow. He’s walking without a stitch in his step, which is more than I can say for me. I hate that he assumes I’ll just follow, but I only hesitate a second before hurrying after him. I try and match his stride as we go up the stairway to the main floor. Every step feels like a hill. I hurt all over. My stomach is killing me where Finnegan treated me like a soccer ball. The stairway is wide enough for us to walk side by side, but I let Marsh proceed a few steps ahead of me. We weave through a few officers on the ground floor, but Marsh doesn’t walk through the front. He heads towards an exit in the back of the building.
“Detective Green, are you OK?” Greystone asks in my mind.
I think so. If I scream in panic, come running. That’s the best system we’ve come up with so far.
He marches past the line of officers cordoning off the area and walks casually up the alley out toward the main street. We leave the crowd of officers and onlookers behind.
“How did you know to come look for me?” I ask.
“Greystone,” he says. He chews on something, spits it out, and continues on without turning to me. “So. You thought someone on the team might be working against us. And you decided to not tell me.”
“Marsh . . .”
“I’m mad, but I’m impressed,” he keeps going, ignoring my attempt to explain. “I’m impressed you didn’t just assume I’m not guilty. That’s good instincts.”
He halts abruptly and turns to me. As I stop to stay with him, he pokes me in the chest with a single finger. Hard. “Ow!”
“But I’m pissed, Green. I’m your partner. I’ve got your back. The captain put me in charge of keeping you alive, and I take that seriously. You could have been killed.”
“Yeah, well.”
“Until you get proof I’m blocking this investigation, you keep me in the loop, dammit. Starting right the hell now. Am I clear?”
“Righ. OK! I trust you. At least I trust you now, anyways—unlike a couple weeks ago where you were beating the crap out of me.”
Marsh waves my comment away. “Old news.”
“But it’s not like you’re up front with me on everything.”
He looks at me quizzically. “What do you mean?”
“My apartment, for starters. I found out you put me in a dump.”
He chuckles, threatening to tear his lips. “You got me there. That place is a real shithole. It’s where we park suspects.”
“And I’m supposed to be getting paid!”
He shrugs. “Let’s call you an unpaid intern for now.”
I look around. The alley is empty except for a few pieces of trash blowing around in the breeze. The mortar on the brick walls nearby is crumbling in places, a few bricks missing. I could be standing anywhere in the world; the place is that nondescript. The buildings loom up around us. Down at the mouth of the alley, I can see people walking and riding horses on the main road. The familiar and unfamiliar mix together in a way I still can’t quite understand. The hulking, burned monstrosity of an animated corpse standing next to me claims to be eager to protect. But only weeks ago, he was torturing me, interrogating me relentlessly—the greatest source of fear and terror I’ve ever experienced. A few weeks earlier, I wanted nothing more than to be as far away from him as the earth could allow, and now, my life seems to depend on keeping him close.
“Look, Marsh,” I say finally. “I trust you, I do. But that also makes you the most dangerous person here to me. If you were behind this, it would be really easy for you to make me disappear. I would just be gone. If it means anything, I didn’t start investigating you because I thought you were the least likely to be the culprit.”
He slaps a thunderous hand down on my shoulder—the one that isn’t shot, thankfully. “You’re all right, Green. I’ll talk to the captain about getting you a new place to live, something a little better suited for you. A little safer. Maybe there’s a place open where we stick our parolees.”
We start walking towards the mouth of the alley.
“So, now what?” I ask. “Do we go after Finnegan? Do we try digging into someone else on the team? Or do we start looking somewhere else?”
I never hear his answer. Marsh opens his mouth to respond, but whatever he was going to say is drowned out by the screeching, deafening howl roaring towards us as we reach the opening onto the road. A meteor is streaking down out of the sky heading straight at our feet. A figure stands on top of the building across the street directing the meteor, but I can’t focus on anything but the ball of fire heading right at me. The air is sucked out of my lungs, and my eyes dry out. My teeth are rattling from the force of the oncoming projectile.
Marsh barrels into me, wrapping me in a bear hug that nearly breaks my back. We crash into the brick wall of the nearby building as the fireball explodes at our feet. The next few seconds are spotty; I black out at least twice. I’m not sure which way is up. I’m gasping for air and choking on ashes. I’m being crushed, a massive weight is on my chest.
“Detective!” I hear Greystone’s voice in my head, but I can barely concentrate on it over the ringing in my ears.
I dimly realize the weight on my chest is Marsh. It’s his ashes I’m choking on, the back half of his body is scorched away. I can see bones and internal organs. Again. He’s out cold, a dead weight on top of me. I struggle to slide out from under him, panicking. I am coughing uncontrollably. Looking around me, I’m surprised to see that I’m inside the building I had been outside of a few seconds earlier. There is a huge, gaping hole in the brick wall where the combined force of Marsh and the explosion broke through.
Over the ringing in my ears, I can hear Finnegan’s mocking voice from across the street. “You still alive in there, Green?”
Son of a bitch! I snarl in my head. I manage to push Marsh off of me. He’s completely unresponsive; I’ve no idea if he’s been destroyed or what. I stagger to my feet and start a lurching, faltering run out into the alley. Without even thinking, I draw my gun and run out the hole in the wall. I have to hold one arm up over my mouth to filter the smoke out from the flames burning around the entrance. I’m still coughing out a mouthful of Marsh’s ash.
People are scattering in all directions trying to run away from the flames. Finnegan is standing on the third-story roof across the street, one leg propped up on the ledge, arms leaning on his upraised knee.
“Damn, Green, for a living guy, you’re pretty tough to kill,” he yells, smiling evilly.
I raise my gun and fire. I’m not a marksman by any stretch. But the nice thing about these guns is the projectiles they fire are massive, and the impact covers a large area. I only have to point in the general vicinity of my target, and I’ll usually hit it.
General vicinity I can do.
That electrical force shields him from my shot, the same field he used earlier. He barely flinches.
“Green, you idiot. You can’t hurt me with that thing.” A ball of fire starts to materialize in the air above him. I’m guessing this will be meteor number two.
Finnegan only needs to hit me once. And he’s right, that shield of his, whatever it is, seems to protect him. I could blast at it all day, and it wouldn’t scratch him.
The ledge he’s standing on, however, is another story entirely.
I ignore him and pull the trigger again. My second shot disintegrates the bricks. He’s not hurt from my sho
t, but as the ledge he’s leaning on crumbles, he loses his balance. His arms pinwheel frantically before he pitches headfirst over the edge, the ball of fire flickering out of existence. He spins head over heels a few times on the way down, smacking off the side of the building at least once.
Bones shatter and break when he hits the sidewalk. His scream of pain and rage would normally have sent me running away in terror, but I’m too angry. I keep my gun aimed at him and start walking forward.
I squeeze off two more shots at him for good measure, shield or no shield.
It looks like he has to concentrate on maintaining that shield because this time nothing stops my shots. The first one tears a sizable chunk out of his midsection, leaving a smear of fluid along the ground. The second shot manages to wing him, ripping some skin off his face.
I hear some footsteps running up behind me, and I glance back. Kim and Armstrong come running full steam out of the alley entrance. Behind them, I see Meints and some other officers going through the hole blown into the alley wall.
“What the hell is going on?” Kim asks, quickly assessing the street.
I’m still moving towards Finnegan but looking over my shoulder back at my two companions. Kim’s eyes widen as he looks past me. I turn back around to see a cloud of smoke erupt where Finnegan is struggling to get up. Through the haze, I see Finnegan’s shadow spring up and take off.
Dammit!
“C’mon!” I yell, running after him.
Finnegan sprints up the street. Even with part of his torso chewed away and blood streaming from his face, he’s moving as fast as I can run at top speed. There are too many people on the street for me to take another shot. And I don’t remember how many shots my gun holds. He bulldozes through the crowd, tossing people out of the way. They look around in confusion, picking themselves off the ground as I run past.
He turns a corner, and I’m about thirty feet behind him. As I round the corner, I look back and see both Kim and Armstrong running after me, confusion on their faces.
“Where are you going?” Armstrong yells.
I don’t understand what the problem is, so I don’t bother to reply and keep running. Finnegan knocks a few people down, and I have to scramble around them. He puts some distance between us. I know I’m not in peak condition at the best of times, and I’m coughing from the smoke and Marsh I inhaled earlier. My side is cramping up. He’s pulling away as he turns another corner into another alley.
As I go barreling into the alleyway, a few things happen at once. The sky darkens, even more than moving into a narrow alley would account for. Captain Radu drops from the air right in front of me. I don’t mean he falls; I mean, it’s like he takes a step down, only that step must have been from at least fifty feet up. He lands as casually as if he’d stepped off his front porch. Shadows writhe and swirl around him, and his red eyes are blazing as I pull up short. He holds out his hand to block me.
“Stop!” he intones, and my knees buckle at the command. Behind him, Finnegan throws open a rusted metal door at the end of the alley. Finnegan gives me a glare full of venom, a threat in a glance, and runs into the darkness beyond the door.
“Captain, we can catch him! He went into that building right back there!” I say, willing myself to run around him, but my feet staying oddly in the same spot.
Radu turns his bald head and looks behind him. No other part of his body moves; he stares at the doorway for a second. I hear pounding footsteps behind him as Armstrong and Kim run up.
“Green, what—” Armstrong starts, but Kim interrupts him.
“Captain?”
Captain Radu turns his gaze back to me, but he’s looking at me quizzically.
“Where did he go, Detective Green?” he asks quietly.
I look at him like he’s gone crazy. “Through that doorway right there!” I say, pointing behind him. The steel door whines loudly as it slams shut.
Kim looks at me strangely. “What doorway?”
“What are you talking about?” I’m screaming at them. “The only doorway in this alley!”
“Green,” Armstrong says slowly, like he’s speaking to a slow child. “There’s no doorway in this alley. It dead-ends in a pile of trash.”
I look back to where the alley ends. The rusted door is closed. There is some litter and refuse for sure, but not enough to hide the door. The door couldn’t be more obvious if it had a neon sign over its head pointing at it. Finnegan has a massive lead on us now.
“What the hell, you guys?” I snarl in frustration.
I get blank looks back from Armstrong and Kim. Radu looks at me with a lot more interest.
“Curious” is all he says.
Chapter 28
Marsh gets worked over by what passes for medics here. He’s fine once he comes to, maybe crankier than usual. He has to lie on his stomach for the remainder of that day and the next while his back regrows itself. With Finnegan on the loose, I’m not allowed to go anywhere by myself. Even Greystone going with me isn’t enough as she can’t physically do anything to protect me.
I’m relieved from duty for the next few days. That’s what they tell me, but it amounts to house arrest. Two officers are stationed outside my door. I recognize them from the precinct, but I don’t know their names. They don’t bother to introduce themselves, and I can’t care enough to ask. We leave it at that for the time being.
Greystone pops in from time to time over my two days of incarceration. She fills me on the case’s progress—or its lack thereof. Finnegan is nowhere to be found.
I need something to take my mind off things for a while.
“Tell me about some of the other detectives,” I ask Greystone one afternoon.
She doesn’t bother asking for more details; she’s used to these questions by now. A minute passes in silence before she responds.
“Unless you are interested in a specific colleague, I thought I’d relate a story that involves both detectives Clark and Meints. It took place roughly eight months ago.”
I nod for her to continue.
Detectives Olsen, Clark, and Meints
“Detective Olsen had been asked to follow up on some missing persons. Ordinarily, this is the responsibility of the Retrievals Department, those responsible for finding citizens of our city that escape to the mortal world. There were a few citizens that had been missing for some time, and no evidence had been uncovered that they had left the city.
“He spent some time reviewing case files, revisiting the last locations of those missing, reexamining witnesses. I was surprised, actually. Usually, Detective Olsen was very efficient in matters such as these, but he seemed distracted. Unfocused. I would come across him multiple times staring into space, lost in thought. He wouldn’t share with me what was on his mind.
“‘I need a break,’ he declared one day and went to visit Detective Meints at his home. I’d never known Detective Olsen to get side-tracked or stalled in an investigation. Concerned, I accompanied him.
“When we arrived at Detective Meints’ home, Detective Olsen didn’t have any questions relating to the missing persons. Or at least his questions didn’t appear to directly relate to the problem at hand.
“He was asking about the origins of Meridian, about when the city was founded, how it was founded, and when it first grew from being a small refuge for the undead to become an actual city.
“It was quite fascinating information, really. Detective Meints had done extensive research on the subject. He may not be the expert on the subject, like that scholar in the bar you frequent so much, but he knew a great deal about it. Detective Meints spent many hours answering Detective Olsen’s questions, expounded on his findings and opinions, patiently explaining his thoughts. The thing I found the most interesting was Detective Meints’ observation that mortals are primarily concerned with where they are going after this life whereas the
undead are more concerned with from where they came.
“I had no idea why Detective Olsen was so interested in this subject. He would not answer any of my pleas to explain. Detective Meints gave him a copy of some notes he had written, and over the following week, Detective Olsen studied them diligently.
“While glancing through them at the precinct, Detective Clark saw what he was reading. After his predictable derisive comments and mocking observations, Detective Clark paused.
“‘You’re really interested in this stuff?’ he asked. ‘I know a guy who might be able to give you some more information if you still have some questions.
“‘Let me introduce you to Davenport,’ he said, and the smile on his face should have tipped off Detective Olsen that he was being set up for something. ‘I’ll have Chuck go get him.’
“I thought that initial meeting with Mr. Davenport was a disaster; the man was clearly delusional and obsessed with gaining attention and special treatment. It lasted for hours. I later found out that the regular officers dealt with him on numerous occasions over the years and had forbidden him from returning to the precinct except under the most dire of circumstances.
“Now that there was a detective giving him attention, he couldn’t be turned away anymore. Even by Detective Clark’s standards, this was a prank of sizeable proportions. Davenport could return to the precinct for the most trivial of reasons. And he would ask for Detective Olsen exclusively.
“This should have been a major annoyance. Mr. Davenport arrived with pages of tightly written grievances he wished to address. Detective Clark was quite pleased with himself. I saw him and this Chuck—one of the officers, Officer Charles Abayomi—laughing about it at length. But quickly Detective Olsen began to meet with Mr. Davenport in private. I do not know what they spoke about. Detective Olsen would never share with me what they discussed. I only knew he took extensive notes.
“Detective Olsen never found the missing persons, despite the captain’s multiple attempts to follow up with him. Detective Olsen stopped speaking to me entirely. The disappearances increased, and Detective Olsen no longer seemed interested in investigating the case.”
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