by Tanya Huff
The guy looked like he was dead.
And a corpse gone missing.
Henry stopped and turned back. There was probably no connection. He moved silently forward, around the edge of a building, and almost choked. The scent of the death he’d touched at the funeral home lay so thick on the grass that he had to back away. Skirting the edges, and that was closer than he wanted to go, he traced it to a pothole shattered access road and lost it again.
At the sound of approaching sirens, he pulled the night around him once more and made his way back to the parking lot. He would watch and listen until the drama played itself out. The girl could very well be hysterical, terror painting a yet more terrifying face on murder. The police would surely think so. Henry didn’t.
If Henry comes up empty at the morgue, I’ll have him start riding the buses. A young Asian male sitting just in front of the back door eating candy shouldn’t be too hard to spot. Celluci can do the day shift. Vicki circled the Brock Street transfer point on her bus map. It wasn’t much of a lead, but it was the only one they had and she knew it was one the police would have neither time nor manpower to follow. If Tom Chen—or whatever his name was—was still in Kingston, and till riding the buses, they’d find him eventually.
Eventually. She sat back on the couch and rubbed her eyes under her glasses. That is, if he’s still in Kingston, and if he’s still riding the buses.
And if he wasn’t?
What if he’d thrown her mother’s body into a car and driven away? He might not only have left the area but the country as well. The Ivy Lea Bridge over The Thousand Islands to the States wasn’t far and with the amount of traffic that crossed daily, the odds of his car being searched by Customs were negligible. He could be anywhere.
But he knew her mother. There was no other reason for him to pass over the other bodies that had come through the funeral home and then run off with hers. Specifically hers. So the odds were good he had his base in the area.
That took care of who and where. Or, at least, that assembled as much information as they had.
Vicki dug her fingers into the back of her neck, trying to ease the knots of tension that tied her shoulders into solid blocks, then bent over the coffee table again, ignoring the knowledge that she’d be more comfortable in the kitchen. Stacking her notes on Tom Chen neatly to one side, she spread the contents of Dr. Friedman’s file over the table. Who and where and when and even how; she had notes on all of these, a sheet of paper for each with the heading written in black marker at the top of the page. Only why remained blank. Why steal a body? Why steal her mother’s body?
Why didn’t she tell me she was so sick?
Why didn’t I answer the phone?
Why didn’t I call her?
Why wasn’t I there when she needed me?
The pencil snapped between her fingers and the sound drove Vicki back against the sofa cushions, heart pounding. Those questions weren’t part of the investigation. Those questions were for later, for after she’d got her mother back. Left hand pressed against the bridge of her glasses, Vicki fought for control. Her mother needed her to be strong.
All at once, the lingering smell of her mother’s perfume, cosmetics, and bath soap coated nose and throat with a patina of the past. Her right fist dug into her stomach, denying the sudden nausea. The ambient noise of the apartment moved to the foreground. The refrigerator motor gained the volume of a helicopter taking off and a dripping tap in the bathroom echoed against the porcelain. An occasional car sped by on the street outside and something moved in the gravel parking lot.
Gradually, the other sounds faded back into the distance, but the footsteps dragging across the loose stones continued. Vicki frowned, grateful for the distraction.
It could be Celluci returning from the fish and chip store across the street, his footsteps hesitant because . . . well, because both he and Henry had been hesitant around her since they’d arrived. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate their help, because she did, but she wished they’d get it through their mutually thick heads that she could take care of herself.
Something brushed against the living room window.
Vicki straightened. The large ground level windows of the basement apartment had always been a tempting target for neighborhood kids and over the years had been decorated with soap, paint, eggs, lipstick, and, once, with Smurf stickers. Standing, she walked over and flicked on the floor lamp with its three, hundred watt bulbs. With luck, enough of the brilliant white light illuminating the living room would spill out into the night and she’d actually be able to see the little vandals before they ran.
She paused at the window, one hand holding the edge of the curtain, the other the cords of the venetian blind that ran behind. This close, she could hear that something was definitely rubbing against the other side of the glass. With one smooth, practiced motion, she threw the curtain aside and yanked the length of the blind up against its top support.
Pressed up against the glass, fingers splayed, mouth silently working, was her mother. Two pairs of eyes, an identical shade of gray, widened in simultaneous recognition.
Then the world slid sideways for a second.
My mother is dead.
Fragmented memory fought to become whole. Desperately, she grabbed at the pieces.
This is my . . .
This is my . . .
She couldn’t find it, couldn’t hold it.
A teenager, legs pumping, a ribbon breaking across her chest. A tall, young woman standing proudly in a blue uniform. A tiny pink mouth opening in what was surely the first yawn in creation. A child, suddenly grown serious, small arms reaching out to hold her while she cried. A voice saying, “Don’t worry, Mother.”
Mother.
This is my daughter. My child.
She knew now what it was she had to do.
The window was empty. No one moved in the parking lot as far as the spill of light and Vicki’s vision went.
My mother is dead.
Around the comer, out of sight on the gravel path that lead to the entrance of the building, the same faltering footsteps sounded.
Vicki whirled and ran for the apartment door.
She’d turned the lock behind Celluci, a habit ingrained after years spent in a larger, more violent city. Now, as trembling fingers twisted the mechanism, the lock jammed.
“GODDAMNED FUCKING SON OF A BITCH!”
She couldn’t hear the footsteps any longer. Couldn’t hear anything but the blood roaring in her ears.
She’ll be on the step now . . . The metal pushed bruises into her hands. . . . opening the outer door . . . Had the security door been locked when Celluci left? Vicki couldn’t remember. If she can’t get in, she’ll go away. The whole door shuddered as she slammed the lock with her fists. Don’t go away! Through fingers white with strain, she felt something give.
Don’t go away again. . . .
The hall was empty.
The security door open.
Over the scream of denial that slammed echoes up against the sides of her skull though no sound passed teeth ground tight together, Vicki heard a car door slam. Then tires retreating across gravel.
Adrenaline catapulted her up the half flight of stairs and flung her out into the night.
“That was close, Cathy, too close. She was inside the building!”
“Is she all right?”
“What do you mean, is she all right? Don’t you mean, did anyone see you?
“No.” Catherine shook her head, the flying ends of hair gleaming ivory under the passing street lights. “The repairs we did aren’t designed for so much activity. If any of those motors have burned out . . .”
Donald finished strapping the weakly struggling body in and made his way to the front of the van. “Well, everything seems to be working,” he sighed, settling into his seat. “But it sure didn’t want to come with me.”
“Of course not, you interrupted the pattern.”
“What pattern?�
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“The body was responding to leaving the Life Sciences building by retracing a path followed for years.”
“Yeah? I thought it was going home.”
“Her home is with us now.”
Donald shot an anxious glance over his shoulder into the back of the van. Number nine lay passively by, but number ten continued to push against the restraints. It had followed on his command, but he’d be willing to bet his chances for a Nobel Prize that it hadn’t wanted to.
“Lie still,” he snapped, and was only mildly relieved when it followed the programming.
Mike Celluci stepped out of the tiny fish and chip shop, inhaling the smell of french fries and greasy halibut overlaid on a warm spring night. Just at that particular moment, things didn’t look so bad. While finding Marjory Nelson’s body as soon as possible would be best for all concerned, Vicki was an intelligent adult, well acquainted with the harsh reality that some cases never got solved. Eventually, she’d accept that her mother was gone, accept that her mother was dead, and they could return to solving the problem all of this had interrupted.
He’d be there to comfort her, she’d realize Fitzroy had nothing to offer, and the two of them would settle down. Maybe even have a kid. No. The vision of Vicki in a maternal role, brought revision. Maybe not a kid.
He paused at the curb while a panel van pulled out of the apartment building’s driveway, turning south toward the center of the city. A moment later, the food lay forgotten in the gutter as he sprinted forward to catch hold of the wild-eyed figure charging out onto the road.
“Vicki! What is it? What’s happened?”
She twisted in his grip, straining to follow the van. “My mother . . .” Then the taillights disappeared and she sagged against him. “Mike, my mother . . .”
Gently, he turned her around, barely suppressing an exclamation of shock at her expression. She looked as though someone had ripped her heart out. “Vicki, what about your mother?”
She swallowed. “My mother was at the living room window. Looking in at me. The lock stuck, and when I got outside she was gone. She went away in that van. It’s the only place she could have gone. Mike, we have to go after that van.”
Cold fingers danced down Celluci’s spine. Crazy words tucked in between shallow gasps for breath, but she sounded like she believed them. Moving slowly, he steered her back toward the apartment. “Vicki.” His voice emerged tight and strained, her name barely recognizable, so he started again. “Vicki, your mother is dead.”
She yanked herself free of his hands. “I know that!” she snarled. “Do you think I don’t know that? So was the woman at the window!”
“Look, I only left her alone for a few minutes.” Even as he spoke, Celluci heard the words echoed by a thousand voices who’d returned to find disaster had visited during those few minutes they were gone. “How was I supposed to know she was so close to cracking? She’s never cracked before.” He leaned his forearm against the wall and his face against the cushion of his arm. After that single outburst, Vicki had begun to shake, but she wouldn’t let him touch her. She just sat in her mother’s rocking chair and rocked and stared at the window. Years of training, of dealing with similar situations, seemed suddenly useless. If Mr. Delgado hadn’t shown up, hadn’t cajoled her into swallowing those sleeping pills—“And how can you be strong tomorrow if you don’t sleep tonight, eh?”—he didn’t know what he would have done; shaken her probably, yelled certainly, definitely not done any good.
Henry rose from his crouch by the window. There was no mistaking the odor that clung to the outside of the glass. “She didn’t crack,” he said quietly. “At least not the way you think.”
“What are you talking about?” Celluci didn’t bother to turn his head. “She’s having hallucinations, for chrissakes.”
“No. I’m afraid she isn’t. And it seems I owe you an apology, Detective.”
Celluci snorted but the certainty in Henry’s voice made him straighten. “Apology? What for?”
“For accusing you of watching too many bad movies.”
“I don’t need another mystery tonight, Fitzroy. What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about,” Henry stepped away from the window, his expression unreadable, “the return of Dr. Frankenstein.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Fitzroy. I’m not in the . . . Jesus H. Christ, you’re not kidding, are you?”
He shook his head. “No. I’m not kidding.”
Impossible not to believe him. Werewolves, mummies, vampires; I should’ve expected this. “Mother of God. What are we going to tell Vicki?”
Hazel eyes met brown, for once without a power struggle between them. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
Seven
“I think we should tell her.”
Arms crossed over his chest, Henry leaned against the wall near the windows. “Tell her that we think someone has turned her mother into Frankenstein’s monster?”
“Yeah. Tell her exactly that.” Celluci rubbed at his temples with the heels of his hands. It had been a very long night and he wasn’t looking forward to morning. “Do you remember that little incident last fall?”
Henry’s brows rose. There could be little doubt what the detective was referring to, although he’d hardly describe the destruction of an ancient Egyptian wizard as an incident. “If you’re speaking of Anwar Tawfik, I remember.”
“Well, I was thinking of something Vicki said, after it was all over, about there being a dark god out there who knows us and that if we give in to hopelessness and despair it’ll be on us like a politician at a free bar.” He sighed, a long, shuddering exhalation, and was almost too tired to breathe in again. “If it hasn’t noticed her yet, it’ll be on her soon. She’s on the edge.”
“Vicki?”
“You didn’t see her.”
Henry had difficulty believing Vicki would ever give in to anything, least of all to hopelessness and despair, but he recognized that under the present circumstances even the strongest character might succumb. “And you think that if we tell her what we suspect? . . .”
“She’ll be furious and there’s nothing that wipes out hopelessness and despair faster than righteous anger.”
Henry thought about it, arms crossed, shoulder blades pressed against the wall. Tawfik’s dark god continued to exist because the emotions it fed on were part of the human condition, but the three of them—he, Celluci, and Vicki—knew its name. If it wanted acolytes, and what god didn’t, it would have to go to one of them. If Celluci was right about Vicki—and Henry had to admit that the years the mortal had known her should make him a fair judge—giving her anger as a protection would be the best thing they could do. There was also one other factor that shouldn’t be ignored. “She’d never forgive us if we didn’t tell her.”
Celluci nodded, lips pursed. “There is that.”
Silence reigned for a moment as they considered the result of having Vicki’s fury directed at them. Neither figured their odds of survival would be particularly high, at least not as far as maintaining a continuing relationship went. Henry spoke first. “So, we’ll tell her.”
“Tell her what?” Vicki stood in the entrance to the living room, clothing creased, eyes shadowed, cheek imprinted with a fold from the pillowcase. Stepping forward carefully, she swayed and grabbed for the back of a chair, bracing herself against its support. She felt distant from her own body, an effect of the sleeping pills she’d barely managed to fight off. “Tell her that she’s out of her mind? That she couldn’t have seen her dead mother at the window?” Her voice rode crazy highs and lows; she couldn’t seem to keep it steady.
“Actually, Vicki, we believe you.” Henry’s tone left no room for doubt.
Taken by surprise, Vicki blinked then tried to focus a scowl on Celluci. “You both believe me?”
“Yes. ” He met her scowl with one of his own. “We both believe you.”
Celluci flinched as the Royal Dalton figurine hit th
e far wall of the living room and smashed into a thousand expensive bone china shards. Henry moved a little farther away from the blast radius.
“Goddamn, fucking, shit-eating bastards!” The rage that turned her vision red and roared in her ears, stuck in Vicki’s throat, blocking the stream of profanity. She scooped up another ornament and heaved it as hard as she could across the room. As it shattered, she found her voice again. “How DARE they!”
Breathing heavily, she collapsed back onto the couch, teeth clenched against waves of nausea, her body’s reaction to the news. “How can someone do that to another human being?”
“Science . . .” Celluci began, but Vicki cut him off—which was probably for the best as he wasn’t entirely certain what he was going to say.
“This isn’t science, Mike. This is my mother.”
“Not your mother, Vicki,” Henry told her softly. “Just your mother’s body.”
“Just my mother’s body?” Vicki shoved at her glasses with her fist so they wouldn’t see her fingers tremble. “I might not have been the world’s best daughter, but I know my own mother, and I’m telling you that was my mother at the window. Not just her fucking body!”
Celluci sat down beside her on the couch and caught up one of her hands in both of his. He considered and discarded four or five comforting platitudes that didn’t really seem to have any relevance and wisely decided to keep his mouth shut.
Vicki tried halfheartedly to pull her hand away, but when his fingers only tightened in response, she let it lie, saving her strength to throw into the anger. “I saw her. She was dead. I know dead. Then I saw her again at the window. And she was . . .” Again, a wave of nausea rose and crested and sullenly retreated. “She was not dead.”
“But not alive.” As the words themselves denied consolation, Henry offered them as they were, unadorned by emotion.
Once again, her mother’s face rose up out of the darkness, eyes wide, mouth working silently. Celluci’s grip became a warm anchor and Vicki used it to drag herself out of the memory. “No.” She swallowed and a muscle jumped in her jaw. “Not alive. But up, and walking.” For a moment, the thought that there’d been only a pane of glass between them, made it impossible to go on. I want to scream and cry until all of this goes away and I don’t have to deal with it. I want it to be last Saturday. I want to have answered the phone. I want to have talked to her, to have told her I love her, to have said good-bye. Her whole body ached with the effort of maintaining control but of all the maelstrom barely held in check by will, she could only release the anger. “Someone did that to her. Someone at that university has committed the ultimate violation, the ultimate rape.”