by K. C. Finn
Kendra grins and nods.
“You know where he is, don’t you?” Cae inquires.
Angelica nods her heavy head. “He made sure I did,” she says, and her voice is staring to break. “I think he even thinks I’ll go back to him,” she adds dejectedly.
The sad silence that might have followed is suddenly broken by a loud crashing from somewhere nearby. Before Cae can even get to his feet to see the source of the noise, a gunshot marks the breaking of the apartment’s lock. Angelica races out of the room as fast as her heeled shoes will take her, with Kendra bolting the opposite way, weapons out.
The assailant smashes open Angelica’s door at the same moment that Cae draws his gun. A masked man enters the room. But the mask is not for breathing; it is made of plastic and bears a strange face. The white visage of the mask has thin, green slits for its eyes and a grate over the mouth. Little yellow lines run along where the cheek bones should be, and on the forehead of the mask is a red symbol like the cog inside a clock.
“Drop the gun if you value your life,” Kendra says.
The masked face turns slowly to see her flanking his left side with her usual two guns. One is pointed to his hand, which holds a pistol of his own; the other is aiming straight for his head. The stranger looks back to Cae, who is also aiming for the masked face. The mask looks him up and down very carefully.
The figure then raises his other hand slowly, pointing to the clock symbol on his head, and in a sudden motion he bolts back out of the broken-down door. Kendra moves to chase him, but Cae suddenly shouts “No!”
“We don’t have time for assassins right now,” Cae continues. “He’ll be headed back to Jobe to report. We need to beat him there.” The sound of frightened sobbing from what must be the bedroom catches his ear. “Get Angelica. We need to grab a car.”
Kendra strides from the room with a nod, returning a moment later and dragging a terrified Angelica in by her elbow. The blonde struggles against Kendra’s iron grip fruitlessly.
“So blondie, where are we going?” Kendra asks her.
“He tried to kill me,” Angelica murmurs with a disbelieving sob.
“Angelica,” says Cae in a level tone. “We won’t let that happen,” he assures.
Angelica Lane looks into the deep blue eyes of the young detective. She sees the diligence he’s become so well known for, and she believes his words completely. Cae takes in a breath in the short moment they share.
“Now tell us where to go,” he demands.
25.
“Why aren’t there any guards?” Kendra asks as she leads the way up the steps of a fine looking mansion. They are inside a glass-walled porch filled with clean air, but when they uncover their mouths the trio keep their gas masks on hand.
“There should be guards,” Angelica agrees. “There were guards here the night before last.”
“How many?” Cae inquires.
“Five or six that I saw,” replies the blonde.
Cae and Kendra share a look, during which the ex-soldier makes an unruffled expression. Five or six opponents will pose little problem for them with Kendra at her most alert.
“Maybe he’s not here,” Cae supposes.
The front door to the mansion is already open, so the three intruders step gingerly inside. Kendra flicks on a light, illuminating a huge and beautifully decorated reception hall. The light of the chandeliers hits Cae harshly and he stumbles for a moment, adjusting. A weakness runs through him that he finds difficult to hide.
“How’re you doing there?” Kendra asks, and her tone is not lost on the detective. She, after all, has witnessed his recovery over the last few days, and knows better than to think it is complete.
“Fine thank you,” Cae answers as they follow Angelica up a central staircase.
“Hmm,” is all Kendra says in reply. The top of the staircase leads to a corridor full of expensive looking paintings. Angelica slows her pace, looking around nervously every few moments.
“I can stand up straight and pull a trigger,” Cae assures, “That’s all I need right now.”
Angelica stops still until Cae and Kendra are with her again. Three doors remain in the corridor. “The one straight ahead is a sitting room,” she says in a shaky tone. “He was usually in there when I used to…”
She doesn’t finish the line, for which Cae is grateful. The less Angelica reminds him or Kendra about her underhand dealings, the better. Cae looks at Kendra and exhales a breath he doesn’t know he’s been holding.
“Ladies first,” he breathes.
“You’re a real gentleman,” Kendra replies dryly, unveiling two guns. She gives Angelica a harsh look. “You stay in the doorway behind us,” she instructs. “You watch for trouble, and then you sound the alarm. If you try to run, I will find you.” Kendra’s tone is disturbingly sincere.
“Believe me, I’m not going anywhere,” Angelica says with a snort of derision. “I’m safer with you two.” She steals a quick look at Cae, who brushes past her swiftly, lining himself up behind Kendra.
With a deft precision, Kendra pushes the door open with her boot. The sitting room is already lit, and a man sits in a chair at the far end of the luxurious room. Cae follows her into the room, scanning the figure of the man, who has his back to them. He sees expensive shoes at the end of familiar navy trouser legs, and a crop of dark hair with a balding patch in just the right place.
“Damian,” Cae says. “Don’t move. Just listen.”
Kendra approaches the figure in the chair slowly, both guns trained on him. She steps silently across the expensive carpet at a snail’s pace, trying not to raise the alarm.
“I know what you did, and I know why,” Cae continues carefully, his gaze snapping between Damian and Kendra. “I’m sorry,” he states. “I understand why you wanted me gone.” The room is impossibly long; Kendra is perhaps only half way to the chair. “I’m a liability, I know. But if you’d just told me to step down, I…”
Cae freezes, realising what he’s about to say.
“You know what,” he begins, his tone louder, harsher than before. “I wouldn’t have stepped down. I made a mistake, I know. A terrible mistake. But just the once. It is never going to happen again.” Cae feels a new energy rising in his chest; Kendra makes a swift move and is almost right behind the chair. “I’m good at what I do, damn it. I thought you knew that. If you had a problem with me, I’d have thought you’d be brave enough to just tell me about it, or at least to pull the trigger on me yourself. But apparently you’re just as cowardly as the rest of them. You’re nothing more than a low, common criminal.”
At Cae’s last words Kendra quickly rounds the chair and points her pistols straight into Damian’s face. She freezes there, her eyes narrowed in intense concentration.
“Nice little speech you gave there, Cae,” she says in a level tone. “It’s a pity he’s already dead.”
26.
It is twenty minutes later that Caecilius Rex and Angelica Lane sit on the carpet at the top of the stairs together. The body has been checked, and checked again. It does indeed belong to Damian Jobe, and he must have been cold for hours. Angelica shivers for the hundredth time, she keeps looking up every other minute.
“When’s Kendra coming back?” She asks.
“She’s gone to wave the Pandas in,” Cae says.
“The what?” Angelica pulls a quizzical little pout.
“Oh, sorry,” he continues. “The regular police. I want to make sure they hit the right house. They don’t usually come to the rich end of town.”
Cae looks down at the ornate skirting against the walls, then up and around him to the stained glass windows that glow strangely in the quickening dark.
“This place is beautiful,” he observes. “Makes me think Damian’s been abusing the budget a little.”
“It doesn’t belong to him,” Angelica replies. “This is Redd Richmond’s house.”
Cae lets out a little laugh. “I am so in the wrong line of w
ork,” he says. “So Redd’s making a little time-share money whilst he’s inside?”
“I don’t think he knows that Damian was using it. He hasn’t said anything anyway. He just took the bribe to mention the circus to you, without even questioning it,” the blonde answers. “This house is bought and paid for with dirty money. But it’s a perfect hideout, don’t you think?”
“Of course,” Cae answers. “Nobody would be watching this place with its owner incarcerated.”
A short silence follows, until Angelica shivers again.
“This all got out of control so quickly,” she says with a sigh.
“And you didn’t even suspect him?” Cae asks. Angelica just shakes her head with a sad smile. “I thought you were good at reading behaviour.”
“So did I,” she replies. “I’ve been so stupid.” Tears force her voice to crack and she turns her head away.
“So have I,” Cae says after a moment. “Damian told me not to poke my nose in where it didn’t belong, not to offend anybody important. That was a clue. And I missed it.”
“You couldn’t have known,” she whispers.
“But there was more,” he presses on. “The way you were when he introduced us. I knew something was wrong then. But I wrote you off, put it down to attitude.”
“Why?”
Cae meets Angelica’s glassy eyes, finding that they reflect his own blue shade in the twilight. He takes a good look at how pretty she is for the first time, taking in her cheekbones, her painted lips. He supposes just how easy it might have been for Damian to manipulate her, to wind his way into her mind as well as her bed.
“You looked like trouble,” Cae answers. “But not the kind I usually deal with.”
Angelica breaks a tiny smile, and she is about to speak again when a group of officers come through the door led by Kendra. She directs them upstairs and they race up and past where Cae sits. Angelica watches them entering the sitting room, then looks back to the detective beside her again. Her eyes fall to where they always fall when she thinks he isn’t looking.
“Why do you wear those gloves?” She asks.
Cae gives a short, empty laugh. “I’ve told you too much for one night already,” he says, getting to his feet.
After a moment’s consideration, he holds out a hand to her. She takes it, helping herself up, but she lets go of him quickly as soon as she is steady.
One of the squad that went into the sitting room steps back out, catching the detective’s eye.
“Sad, isn’t it?” Cae asks.
“Bleeding tragic mate,” answers the officer in a flippant tone.
Kendra pulls up beside the conversation before Cae can question the officer’s strange attitude. But a second later all his doubt is answered.
“Where’s this body supposed to be?” He asks Kendra.
“What?” She says quickly. “In the chair.”
“In this room?” The officer replies, pointing his thumb back at the sitting room.
“Yes,” says Kendra with a frustrated sneer.
“Well it isn’t there,” the officer replies.
Cae looks at him, recovering from his dumbstruck state enough to say. “We’ve been sitting right here. Nobody could have taken him.”
“So what’re you saying, Rex?” Asks the officer impatiently. “That the corpse just got up and walked away by himself?”
A flash of lightning hits Cae’s brain, and suddenly he feels even stupider than before. He and Kendra exchange a horrified look.
“That’s exactly what happened,” he sighs.
27.
“I’m having a hard time remembering that dead doesn’t always mean dead anymore,” Kendra observes when they are heading back to the station in the car they procured from Angelica’s building. “How about you?”
“Don’t get me started,” Cae answers. “And keep your eyes on the road.”
Caecilius Rex does not like to be played for a fool, and he’s ashamed of himself for the events of the day. To think that he and Angelica were just sat there like idiots whilst Jobe tiptoed away. Perhaps he was even right behind them, laughing at their false confidence that the bad guy had been caught at last. Damian had always admonished Cae for his relentlessness; he used to say it was what made him so reckless, such a liability to the force.
And in a way, he’s right.
“So we’re minus the blonde,” Kendra says with an obvious lift in her tone. “You can tell me now what this beef is between you and the big chief.”
Cae nods more to himself than her. Perhaps it is time to share a little more than just case notes. She’s earned the right to know why she almost died for him this week, at the very least.
“About a year ago, I killed someone,” Cae says in a deliberately emotionless tone. “Another detective. I shot her. I was aiming for the culprit, and she…she got in the way.”
“But that’s accidental,” Kendra says with a shrug as she drives on slowly in the dark fog. “That’s not your fault.”
“I shouldn’t have been shooting,” Cae explains. “I was under Damian’s strict instructions not to kill the culprit. But I couldn’t stand the thought of him getting away.”
A short silence passes as the car lines up with other police traffic waiting to get back into the station’s underground car park. Cae looks out into the foggy, dark road ahead of them, illuminated by the red tail lights of the car in front. The fog looks like a cloud of blood hanging over him.
“He said he couldn’t trust me anymore,” Cae adds.
Kendra takes her chance to look at him while the car is still. She can’t see his face much under his gasmask, but his eyes look tired and heavy.
“That’s no excuse for trying to kill you!” Kendra replies. “For pity’s sake, the guy could’ve just fired you, couldn’t he?”
“The woman I shot,” Cae continues, his mouth running dry, “was his sister.” The revving of engines ahead signals movement. Cae looks to Kendra, but her eyes are miles away. “Kendra,” he says. She doesn’t react. “Kendra the line’s moving.”
“Oh,” she says eventually. A horn beeps her on violently from behind. “Quit your noise, I’m going!” She shouts to nobody in particular. Between her gasmask and the sealed windows of the car, there is no-one to hear her but Cae.
Once inside the airlock of the car park Kendra pulls them into a space in the corner. Other officers are getting out and going upstairs to file their reports about the body that got up and walked away. But the detective and the soldier just sit in silence, slowly taking off their masks.
“What the big chief’s trying to do to you, it’s like what I did to Lacroix.” Kendra speaks softly, after a while. Cae just looks at her, bemused. “He hurt you, so I killed him. Revenge, pure and simple. I guess that falls into your ‘Passion’ motive category.”
“I guess it does,” Cae replies quietly. He has no idea what to say next, no way of knowing what Kendra thinks of him now. Perhaps he does deserve punishment, just like the rest of them.
“There’s one difference though,” Kendra suddenly adds. “Between you and Jack Lacroix.” Cae meets her brown eyes, finding them more serious than he’s ever seen. “You’re not a bad person. You’re a really, really good person,” she says firmly. “And you’re sure as hell not a murderer. You do a lot of good in this town, and it’d be awful to lose you.” Kendra blinks her dark lashes, breaking an awkward grin. “I guess that was more than one difference,” she adds.
“I got the gist anyway,” Cae replies with a smile. “Well,” he says swiftly. “We’d better go make up our report.”
“Not yet,” Kendra says with a wave of her hand. “Grab my bag would you?”
The dirty brown rucksack sits on the back seat. It is well used and rather small, but when Cae picks it up it feels surprisingly heavy. He tries to hand it to Kendra, but she pushes it back into his lap.
“Take a look,” she says.
Cae unzips the bag, and what he sees makes him shoot out
a disbelieving laugh. There are little plastic bottles, perhaps fifty or more, all filled with creamy coloured powders. He flashes Kendra a huge smile, which she returns.
“I swiped them from the casino a while back,” she explains. “This time we fight the chief on his terms.”
They bear a variety of hand-scrawled labels. There’s FORGET, LIFT and GRAVITY, as well as PAIN, RESISTANCE and POWERFUL. Cae sees a bottle he doesn’t recognise, labelled THRUST. There’s even one tiny bottle of DEATH.
“These should come in useful,” Cae considers, picking up a bottle of TRUTH with interest.
“As soon as we work out where to use them,” Kendra says, her voice a little more flat. “We still have to track him down again. Unless you have one of your oh-so-brilliant theories about where he might be?”
The detective rummages through the bag eagerly, blue eyes shining.
“As a matter of fact,” he begins. “I do.”
The Circus Comes To Town
28.
It takes four hours and two bottles of TRUTH to uncover the new password and number of the Atomic Circus. Whilst Kendra is learning the ropes of chemical interrogation in the police cells, Cae briefs every available officer on his new plan of action. With no chief to say yes or no to the idea, the bewildered officers are just about willing to put their faith in the young detective, particularly when he conveys to them just how many criminals they can put behind bars in one night.
Now he sits in his office waiting for Kendra and eyeing the phone. Two new gasmasks sit beside the handset, both of which are full over-the-head pieces. It’s not Cae’s usual style, particularly as his face is the only part of him he can really ever show in public, but going back into the circus is risky as it is. He’s going to need all the cover he can get.
Cae casts an eye to the second mask, changing his mind for the thousandth time about whether Kendra ought to be with him again or not. This plan puts her in a far more dangerous position than before. Ultimately though, Cae knows it won’t be his decision. She’ll be by his side even if he tells her not to be. Perhaps especially if he tells her not to be.
As if on cue, she appears as he thinks of her. Kendra throws herself into the chair opposite him, putting down a scrap of paper with a poorly scribed number, and the word “Rex”.