Damnable

by Hank Schwaeble

  “Oh. I didn’t know.”

  “Of course not. I mean, how could you, right? If you and your niece have no further business here, I would suggest you be on your way.”

  Fred nodded, glancing at Susan, then at Hatcher. He rounded the desk on Hatcher’s side and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “Garrett was a good man,” he said, staring into Hatcher’s eyes. His chin began to shudder and twitch. “A very good man. I didn’t know much about him, but he was always kind to me.” His mouth tightened like he was fighting off a sob, and he suddenly leaned forward and hugged Hatcher, squeezing him and patting his back firmly. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  Hatcher could feel what he was doing, quickly formed a basic understanding of what was going on. Fred let go and motioned to Susan. “Come on, sweetie. We should get going.”

  There was an awkward pause before Susan stood. She caught Hatcher’s eye as Fred placed a hand on her back and guided her toward the door. Her face was a jumble of sadness and confusion, each jostling for position. Confusion seemed to be winning for the moment.

  Hatcher turned to Wright when they were gone. “That was all very entertaining, but would you mind explaining why you’re following me?”

  “You really are a piece of work.” Wright shook her head in disbelief. “Jeez, Hatcher. Do I have to spell it out for you? We didn’t follow you here. Hard as it may be to conceive, this isn’t all about you. You crashed our party, not the other way around. We were staking the place out.”

  Hatcher thought of the janitor he passed in the lobby. Earbuds. He felt stupid for not pegging him. “Why?”

  “This is going to be another hard one to swallow, but here it goes: I actually don’t have to explain myself to you.”

  Hatcher looked over at Reynolds the Redhead. He tried not to look away, but wasted so much effort in holding Hatcher’s stare he’d have saved more face if he had. “For someone whose force is stretched so thin, you sure have a lot of people available for surveillance. You must have called in your entire precinct.”

  Wright looked at him quizzically.

  “Keeping an eye on this building and having all those guys over at the apartment . . .” Hatcher lifted a leg over the corner of the desk, half sitting, half leaning. “That’s a lot of hats dedicated to a couple of cases.”

  “What guys over at the apartment?”

  A twinge of something he didn’t like crawled up the back of Hatcher’s neck. “Where you dropped me off. You had a full surveillance going.”

  “Hatcher, we don’t have anyone over there. Maloney told us not to bother, because we really don’t have the manpower to spare. That’s why he agreed to have you keep an eye on her. He said the threat was low at her apartment and that you’d probably be able to take care of anything that might happen anyway, given all your military training. Where is she, by the way?”

  Her eyes were fixed on him, the muscles in her forehead slightly tightened, waiting for a response. He watched her, looking for some sign this was a game. Five seconds. Ten. Nothing.

  “We have to get back there,” he said, standing.

  Wright’s face was a portrait devoid of understanding. Hatcher hooked her arm and took a step toward the door, shooting a look at the other detective to let him know this wasn’t the time to man up.

  “Right now,” he continued. He started to hustle her out of the office. “I’ll explain on the way. And if you’ve got a siren on your car, we need to use it.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “IF YOU’LL ONLY RELAX, COMPOSE YOURSELF A BIT, YOU might just survive this. I have to say, you’re one of the lucky ones.”

  Valentine wasn’t certain she’d heard him. Or if she had, whether it had registered. She was strapped facedown on the bed, limbs spread-eagle. A custom-made tilt cushion was wedged under her hips, pushing her ass up and out, presenting her. She was more cute than pretty, a strawberry blonde with freckles across her nose and cheeks. Loose, pale breasts pressed against the mattress beneath a set of lungs that wouldn’t quit. The screams kept coming with hardly a pause to ventilate. Valentine hadn’t ever heard anything quite like it, which surprised him. Loud and stinging in his ears. A looping shriek. It was giving him a headache.

  Vocal cords, he thought, letting the words sink in. That kind of screaming wouldn’t be good. He was going to have to do something about that when the time came. An idea surfaced, and he felt the satisfying click of a mental tumbler falling into place. Vocal cords. Yes. That would take care of two things. Three, the more he thought about it.

  He gave a nod to Lucas, who stood like a sentry in the corner, holding a tranquilizer rifle across his body. Lucas smiled, nodded in response. The cage was set back some, farther from the bed, pushed into a custom recess in the wall designed for that purpose. Eager eyes watched from behind the bars, eyes almost glowing with a pent-up energy, a glint to the whites that was both animal and human, yet not quite either. Valentine unlocked the cage door, keeping the cattle prod at the ready. The Get was becoming more difficult to control each day. He’d drugged it the day before and put a radio collar around its neck, a high-tech piece of research equipment banned in the U.S. that was designed to administer a fifty-thousand-volt shock at the touch of a button, but he still wasn’t sure it was enough. It was as if the Get could sense some ultimate moment approaching, the anticipation filling it with excitement and purpose. The thought pleased Valentine, even as he gripped the cattle prod tightly.

  The woman screamed even more loudly at the sight of the cage door swinging out, something Valentine hadn’t thought possible. The Get hesitated, then slid sideways through the opening, speeding up then shuffling to a sudden stop like an ape a foot away from her. It straightened its back and stood, the angle of its spine rivaling that of a man. It stared at the woman.

  The regimen had been simple. Pornography in HD, several times a day. Allowing it to play with the bodies of the other women, explore them, experiment with them, after it finished consuming their hearts. It would sniff them, lick them, nip at them, embrace them, digitally penetrate them, then crawl back into its cage and masturbate. Valentine had given the Get a live woman once before. That test run hadn’t turned out well. He was more hopeful this time, having exposed his creation to more explicit sexual imagery than most men would ever see in a lifetime. He was finding it hard to temper his optimism. After so many years, the goal was finally in sight. The winds of destiny filled his sails. So far, everything had fallen into place. He was confident this would be no different.

  The Get stepped forward toward the bed and the woman let out her most piercing screech yet. Her facial muscles twisted and strained. Her tears dropped and puddled on the mattress.

  “Y’know, Boss, I have a Nine Inch Nails CD out in the car. Might help set the mood.”

  Lucas’s chuckle died in his throat as Valentine shut him down with a look. He glared at the large man for a pregnant moment, then shifted his attention back to the Get. Counting on more than one trial run, even thinking about one, was impractical. Only a few days were left, maybe even just one or two. There would only be one chance at getting this right when the time came, and he was not about to tolerate any distractions.

  “I’m just saying,” Lucas mumbled.

  Its sense of smell seemed to be what the Get fell back on, what it relied on most of all. It sniffed the air, leaning its head toward the woman as it caught various scents. She was wearing a vanilla musk, a rather common type of perfume among the girls Lucas had procured. Fitting, too. They had all smelled like delicacies of some sort.

  Things were definitely different this time, Valentine could tell. He noticed the presence of an understanding that hadn’t been there before as it lowered its head and snuffled its snout against the small of her back, as it ran its nose down to the cleavage between the twin globes of her ass. She was sobbing now, yelping and choking as she tried to catch her breath. The Get nuzzled its face into her genitals, snorted, then climbed over her back and mounted h
er. His optimism notwithstanding, Valentine hadn’t expected that. No hesitation, no tentativeness. No confusion. This time, the Get seemed to know exactly what it was doing.

  The young woman gasped as the thing rammed itself into her. She bucked and lurched as much as the restraints would allow, screaming again, yelling for it to get off of her. Whether it was driven by some primal instinct, some atavistic anger, or peculiar urges all its own, Valentine couldn’t tell, but he watched in fascination as the Get threw its upper body forward and clamped its baboonlike jaws onto the back of her neck, biting right through the coils of hair. Her head snapped back, her eyes running with mascara, saucered and fixed, bulging in shock. She let out strangled grunts as the Get thrust against her repeatedly, jolting her. One of the thing’s hands grabbed a clump of hair at the top of her head as it pumped harder and faster. Valentine heard a final gasp, a cracking, ripping sound. He watched, unblinking. The Get bit down harder, shaking its head, until its teeth tore through her neck and it pulled her head from her shoulders by her hair.

  A fountain of blood spurted out and the Get covered it with its mouth, swaying its jaws euphorically as it drank, holding the young woman’s head high, thrusting itself one final, violent time against her buttocks before rearing back and erupting in a feral wail of triumph.

  “Holy shit!” Lucas said. His hands twitched, fingers fidgeting over the tranquilizer gun.

  Valentine said nothing. He circled the bed slowly, carefully, watching as the bloodlust gradually drained from the Get’s eyes. Its breathing began to grow more calm. Eventually it dropped the woman’s head onto the bed and pulled out of her. Without the need for any prodding or encouragement, it climbed down and loped back into its cage. It reached back and pulled the cage door shut behind it, then receded into the shadows and curled onto the floor.

  Blood was everywhere. Valentine took it all in, running his eyes over the scene. Sprays and splatters of arterial red dotted and slashed and pooled for a radius of several yards from the front of the woman’s body. Her head lay on its side on the mattress, that same expanse of shock in her eyes, locked now in an eternal gaze.

  “I can’t believe it,” Valentine said. He looked back over his shoulder at Lucas. “After all the planning, all the preparation. After all the worrying . . .” His eyes drifted back to the body. Blood was still dripping from the neck hole. “After everything, it turns out I couldn’t have scripted it better myself.”

  He smiled broadly. “Absolutely, one hundred percent perfect.”

  HATCHER SAT ON THE WHITE SOFA, ELBOWS ON HIS knees, hands drawn to his face. One hand balled in a fist, the other cupping it. He bounced the edge of a knuckle lightly against his chin as he stared at the glass coffee table.

  Wright flipped her phone shut, turned to Reynolds. “He wants you back at the precinct. He’s sending a pair of uniforms over to watch the place in about an hour. I’m staying until they get here.”

  Reynolds nodded. Hatcher noticed he gave Wright a look behind her back. He caught Hatcher’s eye and gave him a similar one, a cross between suspicious and irritated. Then he left.

  Wright let out an audible breath. She tilted her head back and rubbed her hand across her eyes. She stared at the ceiling as she spoke. “Maloney made some calls. DEA was watching the street, had a tip about large quantities of crystal meth. Deal was supposed to go down this afternoon. That must’ve been what you saw.”

  Hatcher said nothing. There was nothing to say.

  “Look, it’s not your fault.” She lowered her gaze and shrugged. “We shouldn’t have left her with you in the first place. Our mistake.”

  The words hung in the air. Hatcher maintained eye contact but didn’t respond.

  “I didn’t mean it that way. I meant, it wasn’t fair to expect you to be her security.” Wright took a seat next to him on the couch and placed a hand on his arm. Her touch was almost nonexistent, like she was afraid the weight of her fingers could cause a bruise. “If there really was a threat, there should have been a few cops watching the place, not one non-cop with no backup. We don’t even know what happened, if anything even did. And you may not have been able to stop it anyway. You aren’t even armed.”

  Hatcher rubbed his palms down his face and stood. “I don’t feel guilty. So you can stop trying to keep me from blaming myself.”

  “You look like you feel guilty.”

  “Well, I don’t. I feel frustrated. Angry. Somebody out there is fucking with me.”

  Wright shook her head, gave her eyes a roll. “I wish you could listen to yourself. That’s pretty damn arrogant. This is all about you all of a sudden?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you mind explaining that to me?”

  “Don’t ask me how I know. It just is.”

  “So somebody snatched Deborah just to get at you?”

  “No.” Hatcher stared at a patch of carpet. “I don’t know. What’s important is that I figure out what’s going on.”

  “I think it’s best if you leave that to us.”

  He swiveled his head to meet her gaze. “Yeah, because you’ve been doing such a bang-up job so far.”

  “I mean it, Hatcher. You’d better not interfere with us on this.”

  “You’re the ones who told me to protect her. I accepted the responsibility. I’m not walking away just because I screwed up.”

  “So what do you plan to do? Go around beating up people at random until you find someone who knows something? That seems to be what you’re good at. You’re not a detective, Hatcher.”

  Hatcher shrugged. “You don’t need to be a weatherman to ask which way the wind blows.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Wright said. “You wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  Hatcher stared at her, locked eye to eye. Good for her. She was giving it right back to him, unblinking, refusing to give ground. He decided he liked that. And she was one damn sexy woman, he had to admit. Stubborn as all hell, but damn sexy. He circled the coffee table and walked toward the kitchen.

  “Hey, wait a second.” Wright followed him, then reached out and snagged his arm, turning him back to face her. “You’d better not know where to begin. Because if you do know something, and you’re not telling me, things are going to get very difficult for you. Don’t hold out on me, Hatcher.”

  “You guys are the ones who think you’ve got a mole in the department. Why should I tell you anything?”

  “Because this is a police matter!” Wright tossed her hands in the air. “You can’t try to storm the beaches and take the hill in this kind of situation. I don’t care what the commercials say. You’re not an Army of One.”

  “If you’ve got a mole in the department, I can’t trust you. It could be you, for all I know.”

  She let out a short, disgusted breath. A you-can’t-be-serious frown stretched her face as she stared into his eyes. Hatcher’s expression didn’t change.

  “I’m not a mole,” she said.

  “Okay, suppose I did cross you off the list. Then how about Howdy Doody out there? You’ll tell him, because he’s not on your list. Thing about moles is, if you’ve got one, you can’t assume you know who to exclude. The only safe play is to suspect everyone.”

  “Even me?”

  Hatcher walked into the kitchen, got a bottled water from the refrigerator. She stood in the entryway and waited, watching him. He unscrewed the cap and tilted the bottle toward her before taking a drink. “Especially you.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “You want my confidence? Help me find her. Just you. Nobody else gets involved.” Hatcher took another swig of water. “Tell Phony Maloney I went to my mother’s. Send Opie Taylor out to the filling station for some bait to make sure he doesn’t follow me. Tell me everything you know, starting with that whole charade back at my brother’s office.”

  “You’ve got some chutzpah, you know that? Even if it what you’re proposing wasn’t illegal, not to mention something certain to result in career de
ath, why would I do all that for you? What could possibly be in it for me?”

  Hatcher finished off the water, put the empty bottle on the counter. He walked past her to leave the kitchen, pausing in the entry to face her, their bodies almost touching. “Because you dig me, whether you want to admit it or not.”

  Tiny grunts of protest were all she could manage as she trailed him into the living room.

  “Did I just hear you correctly? Dig you? What is this, The Mod Squad?”

  Hatcher spun, stopping her short and peering down into her eyes. “In my line of work, we used to call that deflecting.”

  “You know, I used to think you were one of the most arrogant asses I’d ever met,” she said, her teeth slightly clenched. “Now it’s clear that you are—bar none—the single most arrogant ass of all time. Congratulations.”

  “Are you going to keep trying to laugh it off? Or admit it and help me?”

  “I’m not trying to laugh anything off, I am laughing it off.” She pressed up on her toes, bringing her glaring eyes closer. “And there’s nothing to admit, and no I’m not going to—”

  Her words disappeared into his mouth as Hatcher pressed his lips against her and wrapped his arm around her waist, yanking her body close. She broke the kiss off and slapped him across the face. He tugged her back and kissed her one more time. She slapped him again, harder.

  The second slap really stung. He touched the side of his cheek, still holding her around the waist. She lifted her hand to slap him a third time and he caught it behind her shoulder. They both stood there in that position for several seconds, a mock tango pose, his arm tight around her, his hand fisted around her wrist. She began to squirm, trying to push him away. He constricted his arm around her more, pulled her in even closer. He leaned forward, slowly this time. She pulled her face back, arching her spine, almost in a dip. He managed to close the distance, brushed his lips against hers, staring steadily into her pupils.

  “This is sexual assault,” she said. Her raspy voice was barely above a whisper.