Fortunate Son

by E. A. Copen

  “She’s a goddamn wolf,” the captain said, making a face. “Last I checked, wolves can’t talk on the telephone, Black.”

  I ignored him. “She might have been a wolf when she went in, but she won’t stay a wolf.” I didn’t tell him she’d probably already killed her hostage with teeth and claws if she meant to. This wasn’t a normal hostage situation, and couldn’t be treated like one. I pointed to the tech. “Get me a line inside.”

  While waiting for the line to connect, I walked to stand in front of the building, sizing it up. Three stories, sandstone with iron grates over the windows. Somewhere inside, Mariann North stood, maybe looking down at me, fighting the feeling of helplessness that was eating her alive.

  The tech appeared, holding a flip phone out to me. I took it and put the phone to my ear to hear it ringing. Five rings turned into ten. Twelve. Fifteen. Every cop inside the blockade held their breath, waiting to see if Mariann would pick up.

  On the sixteenth ring, someone inside picked up and a small, shaky voice spoke. “Hello?”

  “Miss North,” I said, “This is Special Agent Judah Black of BSI.”

  “I’m not coming out,” she snapped, “and I’m not giving him to you.”

  “I’m not asking you to do either of those things, Mariann. I just want you to talk to me. I’m going to try and figure out a way to get everyone out of this alive so everyone’s satisfied, okay?”

  She sniffled. “You can’t. There’s no compromise to be made, not unless you can bring Katie back to me.”

  “Mariann—”

  She hung up. My heart sank. I’d hoped she’d make this easy and let me come straight inside, but nothing about this case was easy.

  “That’s my son in there!”

  I turned to some commotion at the edge of the blockade to see Senator Grahm trying to push his way past several cops. “What the fuck is he doing here?” I growled and pocketed the phone on my way over to him. “Senator Grahm, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  He stopped struggling with the officers when he saw me. “Agent Black, you have to get my boy out of there alive.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do, Senator. You being here isn’t going to help. If the person holding him sees you, she’s going to get upset and the likelihood that anyone survives drops dramatically.” I pointed emphatically back the way he’d come. “You need to leave, now!”

  He looked like he was going to do the right thing and go, but changed his mind at the last minute. The senator darted forward, avoiding the cops trying to hold him back, and grabbed me by the shoulders, prompting them to draw their weapons and point them at him.

  I raised a hand. “Easy, fellas. The senator’s not going to hurt me.”

  “I know my boy’s done wrong,” the senator said, his voice strained. “But you have a son. I’m asking you as a father, as a fellow parent, to bring my little boy out of there alive. Whatever he did, he doesn’t deserve to die for it. Not like this.”

  I stepped back, prompting him to take his hands off me. “Go home, Senator. Think about everything that’s happened and let me do my job.”

  I turned back to the task at hand, pulling the connected cell back out of my pocket as it began to vibrate. Another call was coming in, this one from a different number with the same prefix. She must’ve moved somewhere else in the building. Smart.

  “Are you ready to talk, Mariann?” I said into the phone as I walked back toward the front door. “Because if you’re not, there’s a SWAT team out here armed with silver bullets, and a sniper on the roof with some silver of his own. We can still end this without blood, but you’ve got to let me come inside.”

  “Okay,” she said quietly. “But only you, and you have to promise me nobody’s going to shoot. You leave your gun outside.”

  “Tell me where you are in the building.”

  “Top floor,” she answered. “Southeast corner in an old office.”

  “Okay, I’m coming in.” I handed the phone off to a tech and pulled my gun from its holster, offering it to the captain.

  He stared at it, frowning. “You sure that’s a good idea?”

  “I have my backup,” I said and moved my backup to the waistband of my jeans against my back before pulling my shirt over it. I hoped she wouldn’t be able to smell it on me

  “You want a bulletproof vest?” he asked, taking my gun.

  I walked toward the front door, calling back, “What for?”

  The wooden door to the warehouse had long ago been broken down by vandals, the stone entry area spray painted. The first room inside was littered with beer cans, cigarette butts and other evidence that the place had been used for things other than its intended purpose. More spray paint tagged the walls, everything from phone numbers and crude drawings to actual art. I shuffled through the trash, making sure to keep my arms out where Mariann could see them should she be watching.

  “Mariann,” I called, “I’m coming to the stairs.”

  The stairs, which sat behind another broken down door in a small alcove, were littered with old sleeping bags and discarded food containers. I stepped lightly around them and started up the stairs, keeping my back to the wall and arms up. The graffiti and garbage vanished when I reached the second floor, and it was clear to see why. A large section of the floor was gone.

  “That’s far enough,” Mariann’s voice growled.

  I raised my eyes from the missing floor to the landing ahead where Mariann stood. She had her fingers around Baron’s throat, her hand halfway between paws and human digits. Her face had started to change, too, but she kept the Change from taking her completely, holding herself halfway between, just enough to have fangs and claws as well as the ability to speak.

  Baron’s eyes were wide, his skin ashen. He was still wearing his tailored suit and silk tie, but both were stained with blood from the gash in his head.

  Mariann’s aura said more than her physical condition. It was torn to shreds, bleeding energy all over, gushing like an open wound. It spiraled wildly from the right side of her head, waving like a flame in the breeze. She was in pain, and dangerously unstable.

  I raised my hands in a surrender gesture. “Mariann, let Baron go and we can talk.”

  “Let him go,” she quipped. “That’s what the law was about to do, wasn’t it? Let him walk free after he ruined Katie’s life.”

  I glanced around, knowing we were in a bad place. The stair corridor didn’t have any windows, which meant there was no clear shot for the snipers. If this went south, there wouldn’t be anything anyone could do to stop her before she tore out Baron’s throat. No one except for me, and I didn’t know if I wanted to take that shot. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “I saw the juror’s faces, listened as the defense tore apart your testimony.” Her fingers tightened around Baron’s throat until he gasped. “Do you have any idea what it was like to sit there and hear them argue that he shouldn’t pay for what he did because he has a sports scholarship and a promising future? You know who else had a promising future? Katie!”

  I extended my hands out to her and took a step.

  She took a step back in response.

  “Mariann,” I said, risking another step and forcing her back one more, “I didn’t know Katie, but I don’t think she’d be happy with what you’re doing right now.”

  “If she were here, I wouldn’t have to do this!” She tightened her fingers around Baron’s throat until he couldn’t make a sound.

  His eyes bulged and his mouth moved. He clawed at her fingers, but couldn’t pry them free.

  “Not so easy to have your way with a sober werewolf, now is it?” Mariann snarled. “You know, she’d never drank anything before that night. That’s what her roommate told me. Normally, our bodies process that stuff so fast we can’t get drunk, but not the first time. No, that first time, the body doesn’t know what to do with it. Takes a while to build up that tolerance. She’d have been fine if you weren’t there. You know, it’s good tha
t you’re here, Agent Black. I was almost having second thoughts about killing him until you got me talking.”

  I checked our position. We were still in the stairway, out of view of any windows. Time to make a decision. I could stand there and let her rip out Baron’s throat, kill the poor little rich boy who felt entitled to whatever he wanted just because he could afford it. Part of me thought he deserved it. He might not have pulled the trigger on Katie, but she was dead because of him just the same as if he’d killed her himself. Worse, he’d ruined her life before killing her, taking away everything that was sacred.

  I tried to imagine living with that torment for six whole months and couldn’t. What strength Katie must’ve had just to pull herself through every day and survive being on the same campus with that asshole.

  That was the big mistake people made about suicide and depression. People who struggle with it weren’t weak. It took three times as much effort just to get up and drag yourself to the kitchen sink for a cup of water. A shower was exhausting. Hell, even lying in bed awake at night sapped the energy right out of you.

  I knew because I had lived it.

  After my husband died, I considered following him to an early grave. Raising my boy on my own had seemed too impossible at the time. Everyone told me I was being selfish, and that only made me feel worse. It wasn’t until I had the gun in my hand and pointed at my own head that I realized the amount of courage it would take not to pull that trigger, to drag myself through another day of hell on Earth. To live with the demons in my own head.

  I knew if I had gotten to Katie sooner, if someone had just pushed harder to bring Baron down, she might be here and Mariann might not be in so much pain.

  But if I let her kill him, someone else would be in the same pain. Another mother would bury her child. Could I live with that?

  I drew my backup from the waistband of my jeans and pointed it at her head. “Mariann, take your fingers away from his throat.”

  “I said no guns!”

  As soon as I saw her clawed fingers close around his windpipe, I pulled the trigger. The bullet struck her in the shoulder, but that didn’t stop her. She ripped out a fist-sized chunk of flesh and cartilage with a loud, desperate cry.

  I fired again.

  Baron fell, wide-eyed, to his knees.

  I fired again.

  Mariann roared when a third bullet ripped into her, but didn’t go down. Her eyes went wild and she took a step toward me.

  I pulled the trigger again and again, eyes closed, unwilling to watch as I killed her. I kept pulling the trigger until it clicked empty, until the entry team was next to me yelling it was clear, until the captain closed his hand over mine and took the gun away.

  The last thing I saw as they led me away was a tear roll out of Mariann’s empty eyes and mix with the puddle of Baron’s blood on the floor.

  ADMINISTRATIVE LEAVE with pay. That’s what they gave you in the bureau every time you discharged your firearm. The time varied, partly depending on how long the investigative team took in determining if it was necessary or not, but it always happened. Firing your gun and actually killing someone, that was mandatory counseling and administrative leave with pay until you were medically cleared by a police psychologist to return to active duty.

  A slap on the wrist.

  I’d killed two people. While it wasn’t the first time I’d ever shot someone on duty, or even the first time I’d killed using my weapon, it was the first time I’d shot someone to death where it felt wrong. The whole thing felt off, like I should’ve gotten something far worse than bureaucracy-enforced vacation.

  As I sat in the uncomfortable chair in the interrogation room at the station and listened to the captain and his team go over all the debriefing with me, I just kept playing it over and over in my head. What could I have done differently to save someone? What might I have changed to keep one of them, any of them, from slipping through the cracks?

  “Do you hear me, Judah?” said the captain.

  I blinked and looked up from the table. “Huh?”

  “I said you’re being reassigned.” He closed the folder in front of him and steepled his fingers over it. “I was going to wait until after the Grahm case was formally closed to let you know, but with everything that happened last night, and with you going on leave, I think it’s best you know. You should spend it packing.”

  “What do you mean, reassigned?” I shook my head. “Is it because of what happened? Did the senator pressure you into this?”

  “I had nothing to do with it,” he said, drumming his fingers. “This comes from the top inside BSI. Let me tell you, they were very clear. This assignment isn’t optional.” He picked up the folder and held it out to me.

  I reached for it and realized my hands were still shaking. It’d been hours since I emptied my gun into Mariann North’s body and I was still shaky. My fingers closed around the folder and I placed it in front of me where I let it sit until the captain urged me to open it.

  Inside, I found pictures of a broken-down house with no gutters, mostly made of plywood and chipboard on a dirt lot. The other pictures in the folder mostly featured old trailers and a concrete wall with razor wire on top. The very last page in the folder contained a location profile and some general information about a small town in Texas called Paint Rock.

  Paint Rock... I’d heard of it. This was the assignment nobody wanted. A few years ago, the government had built a supernatural reservation on some dead land in the middle of Texas and was slowly working to deport as many supernaturals as they could to the place. On the reservation, poverty was high, crime was rampant, and agents went there to die or disappear.

  I slowly raised my eyes to meet the captain’s. “They’re sending me to the reservation.”

  He didn’t need to say it, but I knew Grahm had something to do with getting me reassigned. He’d practically told me he was going to do it when he said to enjoy Cleveland while I could. In the end, he’d won, but his victory had cost him. Just like mine.

  Why did this feel like the opening moves of a chess game?

  There wasn’t anything I could do about it. If BSI said I had to go, then I had to go. At least it would give me the chance to start over. Not everyone got that much.

  I closed the file folder and slid it across the table to the captain. “When do I leave?”

  TWO WEEKS LATER, I stood in the center of my cramped living room, boxes labeled and piled to the ceiling. There were twenty-six in all. My life had been consigned to twenty-six boxes. It was strange to see everything put up, and oddly relieving. I felt like all this time I’d been holding my breath and, finally, I could let it out. Though I’d never really hated working in Ohio, or Pennsylvania, or any of the other half dozen places I’d worked over the last decade, I’d never really enjoyed it.

  Being sent to the middle of nowhere in Texas felt like an opportunity, even though everyone else believed it was the beginning of the end for me. Out there, I wouldn’t have a whole department bogging me down. No red-faced superiors to ride my ass about paperwork. No one to breathe down my neck and tell me my every move was wrong.

  Of course, the trade-off would be a complete lack of resources. I was almost literally being fed to the wolves. Well, werewolves, I supposed.

  Hunter walked in and placed another box next to the most recent towering pile with a grunt. “That’s the last one,” he said, standing. “You sure you don’t want to take any of this with you?”

  I scanned the piles of boxes again. Everything I wanted had been piled into the back of my old Firebird to make the trip across country with us. I’d decided to take only five boxes, most of it clothes and photographs and maybe one or two knick-knacks or mementos. “I’m sure.”

  “What if we get all the way there and you realize you’ve forgotten something important?” Hunter frowned and looked up at me.

  I held my arms out to him and he stepped up close, letting me embrace him and ruffle his hair. “Pretty sure I have everyt
hing I need.”

  He pushed me away.

  “Come on,” I said, grinning and stepping toward the door. “Let’s go find our new home.”

  The End