Alien Taste

by Wen Spencer

  Ukiah washed it quickly, set it with the other plates in the dish rack, and dried his hands on a tea towel. “So what’s up for this morning? We pick up my bike first, or what?”

  Max led the way outside, pausing on the wide porch. “I realized last night that it’s been almost a month since our last target practice. I think we should drive to the back forty and get in a solid hour.”

  Ukiah grimaced, locking the front door behind him. “I hate guns.”

  “The .45 saved your life yesterday.” Max cuffed him as they walked to the Hummer. “You let your skills go rusty, and next time you won’t be so lucky.”

  Ukiah reluctantly nodded. The kick of the .45, the muzzle flash lighting the woman’s eyes, the report mixing with her scream flashed through his mind. When did I start to remember that?

  While Max drove to the back of the farm to the target range, Ukiah reviewed the day before. All his memories were complete now. Some were cloudy, as if seen through fogged glass, but intact. Why couldn’t he remember them when he was in the hospital and could now?

  It was a short bouncy trip to the target range, a long flat field on the very edge of the farm. At the one end of the field, the land dipped to the creek bottom and the neighbor’s property line. At the other, the hundred-year flood plain line rose sharply. It was into that deep soft bank that they shot.

  Max wheeled the Hummer around so the tailgate faced the bank and killed the engine. In the cool morning sun, nothing stirred in the field except occasional grasshoppers. “Quiet.”

  “Me or the field?”

  Max considered, swinging open his door. “Both.”

  “Max, did you ever kill anyone?”

  Max gave him a surprised look. “I killed that Crazy Joe Gary.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  No wonder Max looked surprised. Joe Gary was the whole reason they started to target shoot. It had been a bloody turning point in Ukiah’s life—only three years ago, and yet seemingly in some other lifetime. Before that case, Max had worked mostly solo, only showing up to fetch Ukiah for rare tracking cases. There had been no talk of “partner” and never even a question of Ukiah carrying a gun. Then Max had taken him out to find a hiker lost on the Appalachian Trail. It was a difficult tracking job on rock, gravel, and hard-beaten dirt paths with hundreds of other searchers confusing the trail.

  They were twenty miles from nowhere when Ukiah discovered a clear set of tracks and the truth of the woman’s disappearance. She had been force-marched by a man to his secluded cabin. They found out later that the man was Crazy Joe Gary. That he was built like a bear. That he had more guns than Max. And much later, that he had two dozen dismembered skeletons buried about his cabin, and one cut-up Boy Scout in his refrigerator.

  But they didn’t know all of that.

  When they found the cabin, they called the local police on Max’s wireless phone. A woman on the other end politely explained that all her officers were out on foot searching for the missing hiker, and it could take hours to get someone to them. It was then that the screaming started, horrible terrorized screams. Max decided to storm the cabin, counting on surprise and a drawn gun to win the day. Being Max, he also set up a backup plan. He gave Ukiah his spare .45 and told him to stay outside unless things went bad.

  Maybe if they had known more about Crazy Joe Gary, they would have waited for the police backup. Maybe not. As it was, Max crashed into the cabin barely in time to stop Gary from bashing the woman’s head open as the first step in a much practiced slaughtering ritual. Gary had stood, sledgehammer in hand, slack-jawed at Max’s entrance. His shock lasted for only five heartbeats, then he exploded into action.

  A minute later, Ukiah stood over the half-conscious Max, eye to eye with Joe Gary’s rifle. He patiently explained that he could pull his trigger just as fast as Joe Gary, that the .45’s slug would kill Gary just as quick as the rifle’s bullet would kill Ukiah, and that they would simply both be dead.

  Unfortunately, crazed killers don’t have the strongest grasp on logic, and Ukiah had never fired a gun before. From the bloody desperate gunfight that followed, two things were born: Ukiah’s hate of guns and Max’s insistence that the boy learn how to handle them. Yesterday, though, had been the first time since Crazy Joe Gary that he actually fired his gun during a case.

  Actually, Ukiah reflected, a third thing had come out of that gunfight. Without lead up or fanfare, Max asked him if he wanted to be a full-time private detective. Of course he said yes. After his moms also said yes, but before his identity was fully established and all his various licenses granted, Max took him on every case, patiently explaining everything that went into being a private detective, and began introducing Ukiah to all as “his partner.”

  Not that Ukiah remembered everything that happened on that day. There were holes in his memories leading up to the gunfight. Neat bullet holes in his recall. The paramedics had said memory loss was common for accident victims. Those missing memories stayed lost. Why had the memories of Janet Haze come back?

  Max coded open the Hummer’s gun safe. “You know, Crazy Joe Gary, he was a lot like that girl. A killer on the loose and your life on the line. I know it feels bad knowing that you killed someone. I’ve been there, it’s horrible.”

  “Gary was different.” Ukiah hadn’t been bothered by Gary’s death—but was it because he hadn’t fired the killing bullet? No, that wasn’t it. Maybe because instead of just his life against the killer’s, it had been Max’s life and the woman’s versus the killer’s. Had it become noble then, a selfless act to be honored?

  He realized that Max was sitting on the Hummer’s tailgate, watching him like he was worried about him. It wasn’t something Max did often, and it made Ukiah uncomfortable.

  “Joe Gary was different than this girl,” Ukiah repeated, and struggled to put into words the gut feelings he had. “He was a monster long before we showed up. If you hadn’t killed him—” Suddenly the words seemed like a lie. To be fair, Ukiah should own the bullets he had put into Joe Gary. “If we hadn’t killed him, he would still be killing people. But this woman, she seemed so—lost. I don’t think she had ever hurt anyone before in her life. There were teddy bears in her room, Max. She seemed furious that she had killed those people, and she seemed to think someone had done something to her to make her kill them. What if someone had done something to her—gave her some drug? What if I hadn’t killed her, and the drug wore off and she went back to being just a woman and not a monster?”

  “What if, what if, what if.” Max shook his head. “The ‘what ifs’ will drive you insane if you let them. Much as you hate the idea, Ukiah, you only had one choice: if you wanted to live, you had to kill her. You had a split second to make the decision at gut level, and you wanted to live. There is nothing horrible about wanting to live, Ukiah. There is no creature on this earth, on that deep gut level, that doesn’t want to live.”

  “I could have wounded her.”

  Max scowled at him. “What did I tell you about using a gun?”

  “If you are going to shoot, shoot to kill. Otherwise you’ll miss your target completely and you might as well not have pulled the trigger.”

  “I know you can remember that—and the entire Pittsburgh yellow pages, if you wanted. But it can’t be memorized words, it has to be embodied actions. You did the right thing with that girl. You fired your weapon and hit twice in the torso. But you need to do it next time, and the time after that, or you’ll be dead. You’re not a good enough shot to wound someone in a battle like that, kid. Maybe in a few years, but not now.”

  “I don’t want there to be a next time!”

  “Kid, we’re hired to help people. We find lost people. We find kidnapped people. We save people from tight jams. But sometimes, like with Crazy Joe Gary, we have to fight the bad guys before we can save our client.”

  Max’s phone rang and he flipped it open. “Max Bennett.” Max’s face grew dark as he listened to the person on the phone. “Agent Zheng, we’ve
already told you all we know on this case. If you don’t mind, we don’t want anything further to do with it.” He stood and started to pace. “If you missed the news flash, my partner was almost killed by Doctor Haze. What? No. That won’t be necessary. We’ll meet you at our office in an hour.”

  Max growled and looked like he wanted to pitch the PCS out into the field. “Damn bitch. Well, get in the truck, the FBI wants us in town to ‘discuss the case’ now.”

  “What wasn’t necessary?”

  “Agent Zheng said if we didn’t want to come to town, she’ll drive out to wherever we were.”

  “I don’t want the FBI out here. Mom Jo would freak.”

  “That’s why we’re meeting her in town.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Shadyside Neighborhood, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  Wednesday, June 17, 2004

  Bennett Detective Agency was a silent testimony to how much Max had been worth in his “previous life.” It was located a block off boutique-infested Walnut Street in the posh Shadyside neighborhood, in the downstairs of a sprawling five-bedroom Victorian home. The floors were cherry, the walls chestnut burl paneling, and in the entry was a massive grandfather clock that filled the house with solemn, even ticking.

  When Ukiah started to work with Max, the downstairs and most of the upstairs had been empty. Once, in a semidrunken state, Max explained that he and his wife had lived for years with broken hand-me-down furniture in tiny apartments. When success finally brought in money, they had bought the small mansion, thrown away the old furniture, and planned to slowly fill the house with beautiful antiques. The grandfather clock had been their only purchase before Max’s wife’s death.

  Since then desks, chairs, a conference room table, wooden filing cabinets, and other office equipment slowly filled the downstairs. Max’s office was in the den with floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases. He had a desk once owned by Frank Lloyd Wright (a reference that failed to impress Ukiah until Max drove him down to Fallingwater) and a two thousand dollar “executive” chair. Ukiah’s desk was much less impressive, but he usually used it only to stay out of Max’s hair while he did the paperwork that ran the agency.

  Agent Zheng was standing on the front porch when they pulled up. Her car, identified by its government plates, was a silver four-door Saturn. Ukiah parked the Hummer on the street instead of pulling around to the garages behind the office, since he and Max planned to pick up his motorcycle after the interview. Besides, he wasn’t the best at slotting the wide truck into the standard-size garage. He had driven, in part to get in his needed practice, but mostly to let Max search hither and yon for information on Agent Zheng.

  Max winced as Ukiah rode over the curb on his last pull forward. “Well, that’s all that seems to be on-line about our Agent Zheng. Not much to go on. One smart cookie that gets results—too bad it’s our balls she’s trying to break.”

  “Be positive.” Ukiah turned off the Hummer and pocketed his keys. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Kid, you’re just too naive for your own good.”

  He grinned at Max. “Don’t know how, hanging around with you all the time.”

  Max shook his head, smiling. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Agent Zheng nodded to them as they came up the walk. “Mr. Bennett, Mr. Oregon. Thank you for seeing me.”

  “You didn’t give us much of a choice,” Max grumbled, unlocking the front door and leading the way into the house.

  Ukiah hung back to let Agent Zheng enter first. She paused to give him a long study, working upward. Without comment, she gazed at his comfortable hiking boots, moss-colored slacks, white linen button-down short-sleeve shirt, and thick black hair, still damp from his hasty shower but neatly combed. It probably seemed like a drastic change since she had seen him last. When he had gotten home yesterday, he’d discovered he looked like he’d been rolled over most of Schenley Park. Dirt coated all his exposed skin. Dead leaves floated in his hair. The spare clothes from the Cherokee had been full of holes, stained with black cave mud, then slightly shrunk in an attempt to get them clean. His night romp through the muddy park had only made his appearance worse.

  Reflecting back on Agent Zheng’s undercover blue jeans and torn heavy-metal T-shirt, Ukiah supposed that neither of them had been at their peak at the morgue. This morning Agent Zheng wore an expensive-looking black pantsuit and a white silk blouse. All of her hair was raven black. The one long lock swept like a wing, silky and controlled, down from her forehead to her neck. Her makeup was crisp and her perfume—a musk, warmed by her body heat—was light to the point of elusive.

  Agent Zheng finished her inspection and brushed past him. His skin tingled with the nearness of her passage. She followed Max, scanning the rooms as they moved through them, expressing neither surprise nor pleasure. She was almost impossible to read, and Ukiah wasn’t sure if this was good or bad. It spoke to him, though, of being centered, achieving a tight focus that couldn’t be wavered.

  Max opted for his office, taking the position of power behind the large desk. Ukiah leaned against the wall to Max’s right, facing them both. Agent Zheng accepted the visitor chair, a stylishly sleek chair that decorated her well.

  “All right, Agent Zheng, you wanted to discuss the case. We’re here. What is there to discuss?”

  She plunged straight to the heart of the matter. “We studied your disc frame by frame, and we found one frame to be of most interest.”

  Ukiah glanced at Max, and a name seemed to be shouted between them—Rennie Shaw.

  Agent Zheng laid out a blown-up version of the mug shot Max had used. “This is Rennie Shaw. I will be frank with you. This is a very dangerous man. He belongs to a loose organization of motorcycle gangs. These gangs span the country. They are the Demon Curs, the Hell Hounds, the Devil Dogs, the Wild Wolves, and the Dog Warriors.”

  “Kind of stuck on the canine motif.” Max, as usual, did the talking for the partners.

  “Yes they are. As a collective, they call themselves the Pack. Rennie Shaw is believed to be the leader of the Dog Warriors, perhaps of the entire Pack. It is a tight-knit group, rigorously exclusive and extremely cunning. Authorities rarely can arrest a member, and they never stay in custody long. The Pack has a reputation as extreme escape artists. They have been known to vanish without a trace from maximum-security holding cells. Authorities have tried to cut deals with captured members—reduced sentences and such for inside information—but no offers have ever been taken.”

  “Could be they knew they could get out without taking a deal,” Max stated dryly.

  “Yes. But it is unusual that in a group of this size, no disgruntled members have ever come forward. Despite the apparent lack of communication between the various gangs, not a single undercover agent has ever been able to penetrate their society. Everything we know about the Pack comes from extensive interviews from eyewitnesses. Another unusual aspect of the Pack is that many of the members are untraceable. No birth certificates. No Social Security numbers. No official records.”

  Ukiah squirmed. This sounded uncomfortably close to himself three years ago. “So how does the Pack link in with Janet Haze?”

  “We don’t know.” She indicated the photo. “This is the only clue we have that they are involved. If Doctor Haze, however, was given some type of dangerous drug, it could have easily come from the Pack.”

  “So the Pack gives her drugs,” Max ticked off points on his fingers, “watches her freak out, and checks to see if she’s dead in the woods, and later steals her body. Murdering escape artists fit the bill to what went down yesterday.”

  “Yes, it does.” Agent Zheng said “After finding this photo, we started to investigate the possible link between Doctor Haze’s work and the Pack yesterday morning. Within an hour, one of our agents vanished without a trace.” She flipped a second photograph onto the table. A solemn man in his thirties with “I’m the FBI” stamped invisibly on his forehead. “Wil Trace was one of the best
agents we had; an agent with ten years of organized crime and gang experience. He was quick on his feet and level-headed.”

  Had. Was, Ukiah noticed. She is already using past tense.

  Max leaned far back in his chair, almost as if he was trying to distance himself from the missing FBI agent. “I think I can see where this is going, and I don’t like the destination.”

  “In the past,” Agent Zheng went on, “the Pack held law officials they’d captured for several days. Usually, the Pack either subverts them or simply makes them vanish. If they have Wil Trace, and he’s still alive, we have to find him before they try either.”

  “No.” Max made defecting motions with his hands. “This is a case for the FBI and police. Not for us.”

  “He has a wife and three children.”

  Max tapped his finger on the FBI seal on the file folder that had held the photographs. “He’s an FBI agent who knew the risks.”

  “Max,” Ukiah interrupted quietly, “shouldn’t we at least hear what she wants?”

  Max shot him an angry glare. “Don’t fall for that wife-and-three-children bit, kid. She’s got the whole FBI organization behind her. They don’t let their agents fall through the cracks. Every law agency in the state, in the country, has been brought to bear on this.”

  “You’re right,” Agent Zheng admitted. “They have. But we’re desperate, time is running out, and we’re not even sure if it is the Pack that took Special Agent Trace.”

  Ukiah frowned—he’d thought Pack involvement was a given. “What do you mean?”

  Agent Zheng turned to him. “There’s no logical tie between Doctor Haze and the Pack. Nor was Wil Trace even investigating the Pack. He was searching Doctor Haze’s home for some clue to her death. His car is still parked outside the house. Neighbors remember him going in, but didn’t see him leave. We’ve turned the house upside down and found nothing. We’ve searched the neighborhood and Schenley Park. Nothing. Mr. Oregon has proved that he could find a trail where no one else can. He’s our last chance to find out what happened in that house.”