Desolate Mantle

by L. K. Hill

  Gabe winced. The man talked sense, but Gabe couldn’t exactly go into how he knew about the warehouse. “The reports we’re getting are worrisome, Mr. Cutler. There might be criminal activity involved.” That was stretching, to be sure. Nothing Kyra had seen directly indicated anything criminal. What she’d observed smacked strongly of drug activity, but without actually seeing anything, they couldn’t be sure. He was gambling big time, here. “It’s still private property, though, so without enough proof for a warrant—and we don’t have that—we need the owner’s permission to go in.”

  A frustrated sigh came through the phone. “I can’t imagine my father would object to you going in, especially if criminal things are going on there, but I don’t know anything about that warehouse, or if he’s keeping anything in there. I’ll tell you what. He’s supposed to call me in three days. I’ll ask him and get back to you.”

  Gabe barely suppressed a sigh. He couldn’t push this. It was entirely at the property owner’s discretion. “All right. Please call me as soon as you can.”

  “Will do, Detective. And thank you for the information.”

  Gabe hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair. Three days wasn’t long, but Kyra still wouldn’t like it. In the four days since she’d slept at his house, he hadn’t gotten any messages from her, or had any occasion to call her, though heaven knew he’d tried to think of some. Now was as good a time as any to tell her what he’d learned. He picked up his phone and dialed, but got her voice mail. Not surprising. At this hour, she was probably wandering the Slip Mire.

  “Kyra, it’s Gabe. I’m still waiting for information about the warehouse in the Carmichael district. I talked to the owner’s son today, but it’s the owner who has to give us permission to raid the place. He’s going to call me in three days, so do me a favor and avoid the whole area until after I’ve talked to him. I’ll call you again as soon as I do.” He paused, then hung up, wishing he had more to say.

  ***

  Kyra returned to her hotel hours later. It might have been the slowest time she’d ever made the journey in. She’d simply trudged through the alleys of the Slip Mire, thinking over everything in her head, trying to decipher some clue to who Jerome Dellaire could be. She’d come up empty, of course, but she planned to call Gabe and tell him what Josie said. If the name was some kind of alias, Gabe might be more effective in identifying it than she or anyone on the street would.

  Pulling her heavy black sweatshirt over her head, she dug her second cell phone out of her bag and sank down on the bed. To her surprise, she had a voice mail from Gabe. It came in at 10:57 pm. It wasn’t even midnight yet. She listened to the message, her mouth growing tighter by the minute. She’d found no way into the warehouse. No reason at all for the cops to go in, and who knew when they’d hear from the owner if he was overseas?

  Kyra sighed. What if Manny was in there? What if the walls of that warehouse were the only thing standing between her and a reunion with her brother? That might be presuming too much—the two men who’d been talking about a man named Manny hadn’t said anything that specifically sounded like he’d been in there, but still. Something ominous was going on. If Manny was involved, Kyra had to get inside. She had to.

  She picked up the phone and dialed Gabe’s number. It rang five times before going to voice mail. Her mind raced, trying to decide what to do. If she stayed put, he’d probably call her right back. But it was early. She didn’t have to stay in for the night. Originally she’d planned on it, being depressed after visiting Josie. After Gabe’s message, though…

  “You’ve reached Gabe. Drop me a line and I’ll get right back to you.”

  After it beeped, Kyra hesitated only a moment. “Hi, Gabe. It’s Kyra. I got your message. I stopped by my hotel to…get something, but I’m going out again. Depending on when you get this, I may not be in. I hoped you could look into a name for me. Jerome Dellaire. I have reason to believe it’s either an alias, or maybe the real name of someone who uses an alias on the streets. It’s really important I find out who this guy is. Anyway, I’ll call you in a day or two. Thanks.”

  She hit the end button and went into the bathroom. For the next twenty minutes, she wiped the pale makeup from her skin and replaced it with dark gray paint. It would help her hide in the shadows. After that, she donned her sweatshirt again and double checked to make sure she had everything she needed, especially her gun. As she reached for the door handle, the muffled sound of her phone ringing from inside her suitcase reached her ears, and she hesitated. It must be Gabe. Should she talk to him before leaving?

  Ultimately, she decided against it. She’d known Gabe for such a short time, but already he read her entirely too accurately. He’d probably hear some hitch in her voice she didn’t realize was there and ask her where she was going. The last thing she wanted was to worry him. She made a vow to herself to be back by sunrise. She’d call him then.

  She ducked out of the hotel room and hurried into the night.

  Twenty-five minutes later, she reached the Carmichael District. The warehouse sat dead center of the area, but as soon as Kyra reached the district, she started taking precautions. She moved slowly, keeping to the shadows. Each time she crossed a street or stepped briefly into the light, she waited for several minutes first, watching before moving. It took longer than usual that way, but after the experiences she’d had thus far in this area, she couldn’t be too careful.

  She moved in circles around the warehouse, trying to see it from another angle. What hadn’t she thought of yet? She didn’t see a single person or hear a hint of sound. It was eerily silent. She paused under the shadow of a staircase, half a block from the warehouse, and stared at it, thinking. Eventually, her eyes were drawn upward. The roof. An angle she hadn’t considered. Many of these commercial-type warehouses had either roof access, a skylight of some kind, or both. She should have thought of that much earlier.

  Silently kicking herself, she began moving again. After half an hour, she identified a building catty-corner from the warehouse. She figured it would be best to watch the roof from a distance before actually climbing onto it. She didn’t want to be taken by surprise. The adjacent warehouse was all boarded up and, after watching it for a time, she observed no activity at all. The only thing the building had by way of a fire escape was a rickety ladder attached to the side of the building. Kyra began to climb. When she reached the top, she realized she’d have to step lightly. Large portions of the flat roof were darker in color than the rest. When she prodded the dark spots with her toe, she found them soggy. Soggy or dried out. The center looked like a static whirlpool of water damage, and the far corner was dark enough, she thought it might actually be fire damage. The perimeter seemed to have sustained the least destruction, so she kept to it, gripping the three-inch wide, hip high ledge that skirted the entire roof.

  Eventually she found a decent vantage point stable enough to hold her weight while she crouched. This building was just across the way from the warehouse, but the darkness made it hard to see much. The few lights below shone dimly, red like those in the rest of the Slip Mire, and pointed toward the street.

  Sliding down to sit on her butt, her back against the roof’s outer wall, she pulled out her phone and turned on her hot spot. After ten minutes of trolling for apps, she found one that would turn her phone’s camera into binoculars. It even had an option for night vision. Perfect. An expensive app, to be sure, but she hardly cared about that at the moment. She bought it, downloaded, and then played around with seeing the roof she crouched on. Looking through the phone’s lens, the water damage became obvious, as well as the fire damage in the far corner. Evidence of charring and some kind of accelerant that had scorched a line into the far perimeter were obvious.

  Practically grinning, Kyra turned and got up onto her knees. Aiming the phone’s camera at the right front corner of the warehouse, she slowly panned it backward along the roof. The warehouse had a similar stone railing to the one she knelt behind
. Evidently there was far less damage. Still an older building, as all those in this district were, some parts of the stone railing crumbled, but nothing out of the common way. Mostly flat on top, except for one portion that rose up to form a door—A door on the roof—this could be her way in.

  Beyond the door, two dark bumps caught Kyra’s attention. She zoomed her phone as far as it would go, and even then she stared at them for several minutes. Finally, she realized they were the twin humps of a fire escape ladder, reaching over the top of the stone railing. She frowned. She’d walked around the warehouse multiple times, and she’d never noticed any such ladder. How could she have missed it?

  She panned over to the other side of the far roof…and her stomach jumped into her throat. She barely kept from screaming. In the front corner, opposite of where she’d begun her search, a man crouched. He peered through the scope of some kind of rifle. Directly at her. Kyra dove onto her stomach, even as she heard the shot. Brick and concrete exploded from where she’d been resting her elbows three seconds before.

  Immediately she rose to her hands and knees and crawled as fast as she could toward the ladder. She couldn’t get trapped up here. Her left knee sunk into a soft spot on the roof, and she clawed at the concrete to keep herself near the perimeter. She managed it, but only barely, and it cost precious seconds. When she reached the base of the ladder, she paused, wondering if the gun man was just waiting for her to pop up again. It would only take her a second or two to make it over the side, so as long as he didn’t have his rifle trained on this exact spot, she could probably manage it without getting shot. But what if he did?

  Her heart pounded in her ears. Then she became aware of voices. They came from across the street, echoing off the stone alleys. She couldn’t afford to wait anymore. Saying a rapid, silent prayer, she lunged toward the ladder, grabbing the rounded rails and threw her body over the side all in one motion. No gunshots came. She clambered down, leaping the final six feet and bending her knees when she hit the ground.

  She raised her head to find a group of men—six or eight, she thought—running toward her, all wearing the same clothing the warehouse’s guards always wore. They were still fifty yards away, down the street near the warehouse. One of them raised an arm and pointed a finger at her. The entire group picked up speed, many of them shouting at her and waving guns as they came.

  Kyra spun on her toe and fled. Gunfire ricocheted off walls as she ran. She ran harder. A bullet hit the brick side of a building just ahead of her. The brick exploded as she ran past. Something hit her calf, stinging, and she stumbled. She pushed on, surprised she could still run without trouble. Her breathing became ragged, but she didn’t stop. Or slow down.

  Chapter 18

  Gabe sat at his desk, fingers typing away. With not much to go on until more information came in on his cases, there was only one thing to do: attack the mountain of paperwork that went along with the criminal justice system. Rarely did he get hours at a time to catch up on such things, and he always took advantage when he did, even though it meant the night passing at a slug’s pace and a tightness behind his eyes all the while.

  Across from him, Tyke—wearing his fox-chasing-his-tail shirt again—did much the same thing. He was a worse typist than Gabe. His fingers would fly over the keys for ten or fifteen seconds. Then he’d stop, curse, hit the backspace button twenty times, a few quick keystrokes, and it would start again. The cycle repeated at least a hundred times an hour. Gabe had long since learned to tune it out.

  His phone buzzed, causing an error in his typing, and he answered it without looking, using his index finger to backspace. “Nichols.”

  At first, only heavy breathing came through the line. Gabe frowned. “Hello?”

  “Gabe? It’s Kyra.”

  Gabe sat up straighter. She huffed as though she’d run another marathon. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. I’m fine…Are you busy?”

  “Not at all. What do you need?”

  “Could you come get me?”

  Gabe snapped his fingers until Tyke looked up. He pointed at Tyke’s smart phone. Tyke tossed it to him. “What happened?” Gabe asked into his own phone.

  “I…found myself in the middle of…something unexpected. I was being chased again.”

  “Are you still?” He pulled up the navigation app on Tyke’s phone.

  “No. Pretty sure I lost them. I…did something to my foot. At first, with the adrenaline, I barely felt it, but it’s slowing me down, now. I’m limping. I’m not sure if I can make it back across town, and if I do run into those guys again…”

  “Where are you?”

  “At a pay phone. It’s at the corner of Tom Tom and Lancaster. South end of the Mire.”

  Gabe raised an eyebrow at that. The farther south one got in the Mire, the more homicidal the residents. The app pulled up the address with directions and ETA. “Okay. It’ll take me about twenty minutes to get there, but I’m coming. Will you stay by the pay phone?”

  “No. It’s too dangerous to be out in the open here. Across the way is a run-down church. Pull into the parking lot. I’ll watch for you and come out.”

  “Okay. See you soon.”

  He hung up his phone and tossed Tyke’s back to him without exiting the app. Tyke snatched it from the air, glancing at the screen. He made to set it down. With a start, he yanked it back toward his nose. He glanced up at Gabe with worry. “Isn’t that address on the south side?”

  “Yup.” Gabe jammed his arms into the sleeves of his jacket and plunked his pit bull paper weight down on top of the pile of papers so they wouldn’t scatter while he was gone. “How do you know that?”

  Tyke shrugged. “I’ve been there.” He glanced dubiously at his computer screen, then back at Gabe. “Want some back up?”

  After a moment, Gabe nodded. “Yeah.”

  Twenty minutes later, they pulled onto the right street. Darker than most, not a single working street light shone from any of the buildings. Most were boarded up, though broken panels and shattered windows proved the boards didn’t keep the homeless out. On streets like these, they burrowed in like insects to escape the elements.

  It didn’t take long to identify the pay phone Kyra had used. Given the state of the rest of the street, it was amazing it still worked. Still partially enclosed in true “booth” fashion, a white light shone down on the phone itself. It was dull illumination, but considering the darkness of the rest of the street, it drew the eye like a lighthouse beacon. No wonder Kyra hadn’t wanted to wait for him there.

  Across from it, a dilapidated, mostly wooden building hunched, with a sad semblance of what had once been a steeple. Gabe pulled into the wide parking lot. The space, though rimmed with all manner of garbage, was unencumbered enough that he could pull almost all the way up to the door, which he did. He put his sedan in park and waited.

  “She’s just supposed to come out?” Tyke asked from the passenger seat.

  “That’s what she said.”

  Minutes passed. Nothing happened. Each time the digital clock on his dashboard changed, Gabe grew more nervous. Why wasn’t she coming?

  “Maybe one of us should go in and look for her,” Tyke said.

  Gabe glanced over at his friend. Tyke gazed out the front windshield in an intense way. Gabe followed his gaze up the dark street. Scant light filtered in from neighboring streets. It should be barely enough to see his hand clearly in front of his face, much less anything else, and yet he could see something. Movement. So far way in the darkness, it barely registered. Something was definitely moving toward them.

  Scavengers. The Mirelings called them Prowlers. Either name was appropriate. In this part of the city, it couldn’t be anything else. No doubt they’d seen Gabe’s headlights already. He’d left them on so Kyra would make her way out safely. Turning them off now would do no good. But they couldn’t let the Scavengers get too close.

  “You drive,” Gabe said, throwing his door open. As he crossed swiftly in fr
ont of the sedan he registered Tyke sliding over into the driver’s seat before he pushed open the church’s dilapidated door. It hung crookedly on its hinges and nearly came off when he went through it. Gun in hand, he pulled out his smart phone and turned on the flashlight app. What he found surprised him. He’d feared the church would be empty, with no sign of Kyra and no way to know where she’d gone or where to start looking. While he didn’t see Kyra right away, the church was far from empty.

  The inside was small, no bigger than Gabe’s house, which for a church was minuscule. Not a scrap of furniture remained in it, though cardboard boxes and large, flat boards had been dragged in. The walls were missing narrow chunks, as though slats had been removed at regular intervals. Light from Gabe’s headlights filtered in, illuminating the several dozen homeless Mirelings sleeping there. Everywhere he looked, a rolled up bundle met his eye, with an arm sticking out here or a leg there. All slept. Some, who obviously enjoyed a substance-induced sleep—didn’t stir even when he tripped over them. Others shrunk away whimpering when his light slid over them.

  Smells of urine and alcohol made the air so thick that Gabe breathed through his mouth to keep from gagging.

  “Supra,” he called out softly, remembering to use her alias. “Supra. Where are you?” No answer. More Mirelings slept in the church than he cared to count, but it didn’t take long to check each of them. Kyra wasn’t among them. He sighed, running his light over the space again, searching for anything he’d missed. He couldn’t stay. The Scavengers were coming at them fast, and his car, though more than a few years old and battered, was entirely too nice for this zip code. Like the light over the phone booth drew him, the sight of his car would draw them like vampires to blood.

  Where had she gone? Had someone found her? Taken her? Did she run? He couldn’t simply leave without knowing what happened to her.