by Bruce Talmas
Okay, change of plans, I thought. If I couldn’t get what I needed from the Laurel and Hardy demons over there, I would try a new tack. Chase was a kidnapper. Granted, he was a degenerate, barely serviceable kidnapper, but a kidnapper nonetheless. That was a fraternity unto itself. Kidnappers weren’t like dealers or thieves or killers, so they didn’t socialize with their fellow criminals as much as those other groups did. I was convinced the busload of missing children was related to this Belial business, but if they were taken for the reason I suspected, Belial hadn’t been around yet. That meant someone else had to be responsible for taking them. It could have been the unknown Angelic puppet master, or it could have been contracted out. If it was an Angel, the chances of sniffing it out without any emanations were slightly worse than my chances of survival, so that avenue of investigation was likely a dead end. If it was a human, then maybe it was someone that Chase knew or at least was aware of. Unless a genie had granted him more brains and more balls since the last time I’d been in town, I knew Chase himself couldn’t have pulled it off, but questioning him was worth a shot. Frankly, I was just looking for an excuse to kill him.
So sue me.
As much as I would have liked to just go up to him and stab him in the eye socket, it wasn’t going to get me what I wanted. Besides, where was the fun in that? Better to make it last. The night was a bust anyway; I might as well entertain myself. Chase hadn’t been around when I killed his brother or he’d be dead too. I always thought I screwed up by not taking them both out, and here was my chance to make up for past mistakes. I also couldn’t ignore that ten years had passed in which Chase had been allowed to ruin lives because I didn’t feel like putting in the extra effort to go out and find him that night. How many women had suffered because of my failure? Stupid women, to be sure, but even stupid people don’t deserve to be strung-out hookers making money for worthless pimps with mommy issues. Maybe it was my newfound friendship with Katie, maybe it was the fearful glances of the women at Marchosias’s shelter. Whatever it was, I felt like I had to atone for all the evil that Chase had inflicted on the world in the intervening years. With that in mind, I sat back and watched the man work.
The first bus to arrive at the station was from Chicago. It was a full bus, and I watched as Chase scanned the arrivals. No one getting off the bus really fit the profile: no unaccompanied young women, no pairs of young girls traveling together. Chase must have been behind on his quota for the year though, because after a moment’s hesitation he approached a woman that had to be in her late thirties and, if we’re being perfectly honest, wasn’t all that attractive.
A one-way trip from Chicago to Pittsburgh by bus is at least a twelve-hour journey. The woman was clearly tired and anxious to find a place to sleep. I could also tell she watched the news, because as soon as Chase moved to put an arm around her she shot him in the face with a blast of pepper spray. I might not have been accomplishing much on my first night in Pittsburgh, but between the idiot demons’ antics and Chase getting blasted in the face, I sure as hell was being entertained. I wondered if they sold popcorn anywhere in the station.
Chase stumbled off crying and screaming “Crazy bitch!” at the top of his lungs. He guided himself blindly along the wall to the men’s room and went in to flush out his eyes.
While he was in the bathroom, I checked on the knucklehead demons to make sure they weren’t doing anything worth noting. I needn’t have worried. They were as clueless as before. In fact, they seemed to have gotten dumber. One of them was now holding the newspaper upside down.
Chase eventually returned from the men’s room, and I settled in for a long night of watching his shenanigans. Shockingly though, he got a bite on the second bus that arrived. I couldn’t see the girl from where I was sitting, but she seemed young. Old enough to know better, of course, but still young.
I followed them out to the main parking garage and watched as Chase opened the door to his rusted out Chevy Cavalier, which I would have assumed was a red flag to anyone offered a ride. The girl got in though. The sad thing was, Chase had been making a living at this for years, so there must be a lot of girls out there that really were either that desperate or that naïve.
Chase was smart enough to park in a garage, away from prying eyes and, from what I could see, security cameras. I didn’t have time to properly hotwire a car without letting him and his new friend out of my sight, so I used a spell to start the engine of the nearest vehicle, a new-model Santa Fe. Technically, the demons in the station could have sensed the magic in use, but they were at least two hundred yards away, and I doubted they had the mojo to sense anything beyond the newspaper they’d been attempting to read.
Chase maneuvered his car out the single exit lane of the lot and made an illegal turn toward downtown. I followed suit, thinking it’d be just my luck to get pulled over in a stolen car while trying to tail this asshole. I stayed a few cars behind his, and had to follow him the length of downtown and on into the South Side. I wasn’t very familiar with this part of the city, so I passed a couple of cars and got right on his ass. He wouldn’t be smart enough to look for a tail, even if he were in the process of committing a felony. It wasn’t until he pulled into the parking lot of an apartment building that I let him out of my sight as I kept going around the side of the building. By the time I backtracked on foot, he was unlocking the door of his second-story apartment and escorting the girl inside.
The building looked like a 60’s-era motel that had been converted into a 70’s-era apartment complex, and then forgotten about in the 80’s, 90's, and beyond. The exterior wall was painted in dual tones of white and peach that might have worked as a bungalow in Florida, but looked hideous on an apartment building in Pittsburgh. The closeness of the doors to one another indicated the rooms were small, and the whole building had a cheap porno feel to it. I ascended the chipped and crumbling steps up to his room and tried the knob. Master criminal that he was, Chase left the door unlocked. I almost laughed as I pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The girl was sitting on the couch and looked up in surprise. Chase was nowhere to be seen. I smiled at her and put my finger to my lips before she could say anything. To her, I could have just been one of his friends playing a practical joke.
Chase came out of the kitchen with two glasses of wine. I figured it probably came from a box. He was that kind of guy. It probably had a roofie in it, because he was that kind of guy too. He dropped one of the glasses when he saw me, but was able to catch the second glass before it tipped out of his hand. He only splashed about half of the contents onto his shirt.
“What the hell…?!!”
It was all he got out before I punched him in the face. The remainder of the wine he’d saved spilled onto him as he hit the floor. He was already unconscious by then.
The girl tried to get off the couch, but I turned toward her and repeated the shushing gesture. She stopped in a half crouch. I had a Sig Sauer P229 in my hand now, one of a pair that I kept on me most of the time. They were relatively inexpensive guns, but reliable and accurate. They were also intimidating enough to stop most people in their tracks. If the sight of them didn’t, the 9mm hollow points I kept in them would. I liked the 45s for their stopping power, but in most cases a 9mm served the purpose well: a well-placed 9mm to the brain would do the trick every time. Unless I was hunting big game (demons, half breeds, etc) the Sigs were all I needed.
The apartment was bigger than it appeared from the outside. I checked the kitchen to make sure no one else was in there, then went down the hallway to check the other rooms. I was surprised to see two bedrooms crammed into the little apartment. They were both small, but the master bedroom was at least big enough for a queen-sized bed and a couple of nightstands.
The second door was locked. The last time I'd opened a door without knowing what was on the other side, I got shot in the chest. Not wanting to repeat that performance, I kicked in the door and did a one-man SWAT entry into the room. Just
in case. There was no shooter though; instead, I found a woman passed out on the bed with an IV hooked up to her left arm. I doubted Chase was moonlighting as a hospice worker, so I checked her vitals, disconnected the IV, and completed the search by checking the small bathroom off of the bedroom. It was empty.
When I returned to the living room, I found the girl back in a seated position on the couch. I’d expected her to leave while I was checking out the apartment, but either fear or stupidity kept her rooted to the couch. Up close and in the harsh light of the living room, I could tell she was older than I originally thought. Maybe mid-20’s. Definitely old enough to know better.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Uh, Shelly.”
She clearly wasn’t comfortable in the presence of a handgun, but I didn’t really give a shit. She was getting a well-needed reality check.
“Well Shelly, you aren’t real bright, are you?”
A perplexed look crossed her features for a second. “Uh, I…uh…” and then she trailed off.
Confirmation, as far as I was concerned.
“What were you thinking, getting into a car with this guy?” I nodded toward Chase, unconscious on the floor.
“He said he could get me a job at Erotica.”
“You want to be a stripper?”
She nodded. “Easy money.”
“Yeah? So’s being a pimp. Ask Chase here.” No response.
I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the back bedroom, showing her the woman in the bed. “That would have been you in a couple days if I hadn’t followed you,” I said.
“I…uh…thanks.”
Jesus. Some people just weren’t worth saving.
“This girl needs a hospital. I don’t know what kind of shit they were dosing her with, but she needs it flushed out of her system. Can you take her?”
Shelly nodded.
“Good.” I gave her five hundred dollars and said, “Drop her off at the hospital and then find yourself someplace safe to stay. Pay a little extra for a nicer hotel if you have to, and do not get in the car with any strange men. Got it?”
She nodded and took the money, then stood there uncertainly, staring at the bills. “I’m not from around here,” she said. “Where’s the nearest hospital?”
I shrugged. “Do you want me to drive you?”
She nodded. I almost smacked her. “I just told you not to get in the car with any strange men.”
She shrugged. This time I did smack her in the back of the head. Not hard, but hopefully enough to knock some common sense into her. Some people refused to learn.
“I just knocked a guy out and was only moments ago aiming a gun at you. Would you agree that qualifies me as a strange man?”
She nodded. I grabbed Chase’s keys from the end table and handed them to her.
“Then go,” I said. “And if I ever see you again, I might have to shoot you on principle.”
I half-guided, half-carried the now-conscious but clearly loopy woman to the Cavalier. Once both women were in the car, Shelly wound down her window and said, “Thank you.”
Christ. I just stared back at her.
“I don’t even know your name,” she said.
“Just go away.”
********
When Chase came to, he was tied to the bed where I'd found the woman, except now he was the one with the IV in his arm. He started thrashing around until I pressed the barrel of the Sig against his temple.
“I put a lot of effort into tying you to this bed,” I said. “I’d hate for all my work to go for nought.”
His eyes focused on me. For a second I thought he remembered me, but then he slipped back into that blank stare that I took to be his default look.
“Nought,” I repeated. “Get it?” I held up his bound wrist. “Knot.”
Nothing. Why did I even try?
He looked down and saw the IV in his arm. He had to stare at it for a second before it occurred to him what it was, then his eyes widened.
“Don’t worry. I haven’t started the drip. Yet.”
“Who are you?”
“I didn’t clean the needle though, so I hope the girl you had in here was clean. Otherwise, you’re fucked.”
I pulled up a chair and sat down next to him. “Chase Hewitt. It’s been a long time.”
“Do I know you?”
“We met once or twice, a long time ago. I see you’re still in the recruiting business.” I flicked the IV stand next to the bed.
“No, man. It’s not what you think. I was trying to get that girl cleaned up.”
“Cleaned up for who?”
“No, I didn’t mean that.” He started crying and bounced the back of his head off the pillow a few times. “Not like that.”
“And the girl you brought here today?”
“She was new in town and needed a place to stay.”
“Wow, what a guy. A true Good Samaritan, huh? You always hang out at the bus station offering rides to young ladies out of the goodness of your heart?”
“I wasn’t going to do anything.”
I got up and walked around the bed. The stench of the filthy mattress in the tiny room made my head spin.
“I’m not the cops,” I said, “so you don’t have to worry about any of that. I just need some answers.”
“I don’t know anything, I swear.” The tears were flowing freely now.
“I haven’t even asked a question. How could you possibly know whether you have the answer or not? Or are you claiming that you are so fucking stupid that there is absolutely no question on earth I could come up with that you could answer correctly?”
“Huh?”
Maybe that was what he was saying. “Just shut up and listen.”
He shut up. If he could get that part right, maybe he would listen too.
“The busload of missing kids a few weeks ago,” I watched him to see if there was any recognition, but I was quickly becoming convinced that Chase’s face was incapable of showing any signs of intelligence. “What do you know about that?”
“Nothing. Like I said, man, I don’t know anything.”
I pulled out my knife. Sometimes a blade made more of an impact than a gun.
“Okay. I’m going to ask you another question,” I said. “If you don’t know the answer, I suggest you make something up, and it’d better sound convincing. If you don’t answer the question, or if I think you’re lying, I’m going to cut one of your ears off. Do we understand each other?” I gave a little flourish with the blade for added emphasis. He swallowed hard and nodded.
“If you needed to kidnap a school bus full of children, who would you hire to do the job?”
I waited ten seconds for a response. Nothing. I thought maybe he’d gone into shock until I started to lean in with the blade.
“No wait! Wait, wait! I’m thinking.”
I waited another five seconds. “I have shit to do Chase. I can’t make this an all-day affair.”
“Ville. He would be the guy I’d call. He knows all about that kind of stuff.”
“Ville who?”
“I don’t know, man. Just Ville. He’s got a place over on East Carson. It’s a nightclub. He lives somewhere near there too. Otherwise he keeps to himself, not counting his crew. A bunch of Aryan brotherhood douchebags. He’s European or Russian or something.”
“Finnish,” I said.
“That’s all I know! I swear to God that’s all I know!”
“No, not ‘finish.’ I mean Ville is a Finnish name.”
Another blank stare. “A finish name?”
You’ve got to be kidding me.
“As in from Finland,” I said it slowly, like I was talking to a retarded monkey. One who was hard of hearing. “It means William.”
He nodded, but he still looked like he had no clue what I was talking about.
“What’s the name of his club?”
Chase shook his head. “I…I can’t remember. I never been there. I think i
t’s a fag bar or something.”
“A fag bar?”
“Like I said, I never been there before,” he repeated, a little too defensively to my ear. It sounded like someone was dealing with a little sexual identity crisis. The straight guy doth protest too much. “But it’s got a gay name,” he added.
“What kind of ‘gay’ name?”
“Like ‘Ass Guard’ or something like that.”
“Ass Guard?” Sweet Jesus. “How about Asgard?” I spelled it out for him.
“Yeah, that’s it. I thought it was the European spelling or something.”
I really wanted to hit him, but he was already struggling to maintain control. Any little thing could push him over the edge. I simply nodded and tried to enlighten him. “It’s from Norse mythology. It means…” I looked at his blank stare and decided I was wasting my time. “…Oh, never mind. I think our Scandinavian history lesson is done for today.” I patted him on the head. “You did good.”
He took a deep, shuddering breath. For the first time since he’d woken up strapped to the bed, he was seeing a way out of here alive.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” I said. “I’m still going to kill you.” I got up and went over to the IV stand. “Anything else to tell me before you shoot to the moon?” I asked him.
“No, please don’t. I told you everything I know.”
“This has nothing to do with today. This is for all the other shitty things you’ve done in your life.”
I reached for the IV, then stopped. “I should have killed you when I killed your brother.”
He started to say something, but I put my hand over his mouth. “I just thought you should know,” I said. “But why reopen old wounds when there are so many fresh ones to tend to.”
I started the IV, but I didn’t even bother setting the drip. I just opened the whole thing up and let whatever he'd been feeding the girl flood into his veins. I didn’t know if he believed my confession, but judging by the screams that followed me out of the apartment, he had more important things on his mind.