The Wallis Jones Series Box Set - Volume Two: Books Four thru Six
Page 43
“I also checked with the nearby precinct and tried to ask about any calls from this neighborhood last night without sounding too suspicious, which I’ll tell you, wasn’t easy. Nothing,” he said, making a perfectly round zero with his thumb and forefinger.
“Not one phone call of loud noises or strange people in their neighborhood. Remember when we were here just, what a few days ago? Everyone bunching up on us, all talking at once. Regular neighborhood watch with a million opinions wanting to know what we were going to do. And then all of this and nothing. Something is not right,” he said, violently nodding his head.
He spit out a long brown stream of watery tobacco.
“I thought you quit chewing,” said Detective Biggs, trying to put all of the pieces together so they’d make any kind of sense.
“I damn well did but it calms my nerves,” said Buster, not looking at his partner. Biggs let it go.
“Come on, show me this hole in the wall,” he said, trying to push through the thick stand of bushes in the back.
“More like a well-built hole in the floor,” said Buster as he followed behind him. He crouched down by the side of the house, pointing out the deep curve in the ground just at the top of the foundation. “Clever, huh? You really wouldn’t notice it unless you knew to look for it.”
“How’d you find it?” asked Detective Biggs, crouching down next to him. He started to crawl down the slope underneath the house, not waiting for a response.
“It was left open, that’s how,” said Buster, shouting after him.
Detective Biggs knew his partner wouldn’t follow him. He hated tight spaces. Biggs felt the moisture creeping in through his pants, making him even colder. His knees started to ache and he wondered if it was really necessary after all to try out the escape route.
He came to the opening in the floor and pulled himself up into what looked like an office. Someone had torn the place apart, upending drawers and pulling things off of the shelves and the wall. A computer monitor still sat on the desk but there was no hard drive anywhere nearby.
“It was like this when you found it?” he asked Buster as he came walking into the room from the hallway.
“Don’t ask me stupid questions just now,” said Buster, his hands still on his hips. “I tried Harriet Jones’ phone number. Went straight to voicemail. Left her a good long message.”
“I doubt she’s going to call you back,” said Biggs, taking a walk around the room, closer to the walls. “You think they found what they were looking for?”
“I think they were looking for humans, is what I think and I’m going to go with no. But there are still suitcases upstairs in the master bedroom closet and it doesn’t look like Wallis Jones took any of her makeup. People left in a damn hurry.”
“I might have the beginning of an idea of what this is all about,” said Detective Biggs.
“Well, please enlighten me,” said Buster. “I’ve never seen anything like this, at least in these parts, and especially without any fanfare from neighbors or the brass wanting answers.”
“Have you ever heard of a group called Management?” asked the detective.
“What is that, some kind of temp agency?” said Buster.
Chapter 12
“What makes you think we’re safe here?” asked Maggie Foyle. “It’s a snowy campus with a bunch of old buildings and children and old people everywhere.”
Maggie blew hot breath in a steady, slow stream watching the vapor of steam appear in front of her. Charlie knew his little sister was just trying to make a point.
“It’s drafty and cold in here. I get it,” he said, trying to sound more like a big brother to her. He had missed so much of the years when she was growing up. It wasn’t her fault that he had decided to try and take on George Clemente. He rubbed his hands together to warm them up and distract himself from the one memory that kept flashing through his mind of his hands wrapped around Alphonso’s neck as the man’s eyes bulged and his skin grew a deep red.
Charlie was having trouble sleeping through the night. If it wasn’t a replay of killing Alphonso it was a dread that came over him ending with his family being gunned down, or worse. He was always the last about to die, watching his mother and father, and then Maggie struggle to get away as he froze and couldn’t quite manage to do anything.
Just as the gun was pointed at him and he could see George Clemente standing behind the gunman, smiling wide enough to show his rotting teeth, Charlie would snap awake. The sheets would be soaked with his sweat even in the cold, drafty building.
“And there are so many rules.”
He realized Maggie had been talking all along, complaining about where they took sanctuary. Currently it was in the Uptown Home for Boys and Girls run by Episcopalian nuns. An order closely aligned with the Order of the White Rose.
“It’s like living on the edge of the universe,” said Maggie. Her face looked like she smelled something sour.
“Try and make the most of it,” said Charlie. He was fighting an undercurrent of anger and sadness that threatened to cast him under for days at a time. It had started when he was still in lockstep with George Clemente and then killing Alphonso and choosing to blow his own cover.
But there was a moment where he was sure something had changed for the better and even though they all had to take new identities and live somewhere new, he had a chance at something real.
A place where he didn’t have to wonder if someone else would be shot right in front of him for insubordination, only to watch everyone else in the room casually step over the body. Or eat dinner with a madman, or sit next to him on long flights or stand next to him while he made a speech and act like everything was going according to an accepted plan.
That had been eating away at his soul. He could live with everything else as long as he could just say what he meant once in a while without death being even a possible outcome.
Then he found himself running again, but this time with his entire family and out of a small, charming town in Texas on Halloween night. Children were dressed up in bright costumes in front of the house and his mother was slapping some sense into his teenage sister out back by the waiting getaway car.
Now, they were in frozen Chicago, mostly staying indoors to avoid being spotted by someone who might recognize Charlie. The few times Maggie insisted on getting outside and he went with her for a walk, he bundled up against the cold. At least the twenty degree temperatures helped him hide his face.
But they were only allowed to take short walks around the neighborhood that was largely made up of small-scale box stores and mental hospitals or halfway houses.
The area had once been the main shopping district up until the mid-1920’s and even got its name from the department store, Uptown, that anchored the area. Local civic leaders had images of recreating the New York of the Midwest and had named the main thoroughfare through the neighborhood, Broadway. Young couples poured into the area to dance in the Aragon Ballroom or go to the Uptown Theater.
Even the brand new film industry was booming in Chicago and Essanay Studios was doing a good job of competing with California, despite the weather.
But everything changes. The elevated trains were extended out past Foster Avenue and suddenly Michigan Avenue was the shopping mecca and the Depression settled in as landlords neglected the graceful old buildings till they became shoddy and broken-down with remnants of grandeur clinging to the structures.
Then the halfway houses and mental hospitals settled in and it became impossible to wander through the neighborhood on foot without passing clusters of people all talking at once, none of them talking to each other. At least, not so a passerby could tell.
It was the perfect place to hide in plain sight and it helped that the Circle had established a children’s home so long ago no one around them even remembered it was there most of the time.
The children’s home predated even the heyday of the neighborhood and had benefited equally from both the upsw
ing and the downturn, which translated to not at all with both populations largely ignoring the cluster of large, prairie-style old mansions that took up an entire block. There was even a grassy area in the center, hidden by the mansions that was once a park for wealthy residents of the houses and now constituted the orphanage’s campus greenspace.
The wealthy had moved on long ago, even convincing the city to rename their sections of Uptown with new titles like Edgewater and Sheridan Park. That made it easier to more completely forget about Uptown and the newer residents the state kept dropping off and then promptly forgetting where they placed someone.
On one walk a tall man, even tall next to Charlie was standing at a bus stop having a shouting match with someone from his past who was long gone. He even had the pauses down and Charlie felt like he could imagine both sides of the conversation. It felt so intimate he had looked away and put his arm around Maggie to hurry her along.
But the man had turned his attention to them anyway and started shouting not at him, but at Maggie, demanding to know where she had been.
Charlie realized the shortcomings of walking among the mentally ill. It became difficult to know if one of George Clemente’s men or a Watcher from Management was just trying to blend in and had found a clever way to get close enough to him, or to Maggie and bring things to an abrupt end.
“Don’t run,” he had whispered to her, pressing his fingers against the gun in his pocket, wondering if he’d have to use it. That would ensure they would be running again tonight to some other location. One more death in a freeze frame to run through his mind unbidden at the oddest moments.
Maggie would never forgive him, he was sure of it. She would try after a while but what does that even look like, he thought.
He kept pressing against Maggie’s back with his arm, whispering to her to keep walking, don’t look back as the man got closer to them. They were nearing a wide alley and he leaned in and whispered, “Run.”
Maggie startled and turned to look at him with wide eyes, clutching at the lapel on his coat. He pulled her hand away as tears welled up in his eyes, spilling over onto his face. He wrapped his hand around the gun and took it out, spinning around as he shoved Maggie toward the alley.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “for all of it.”
That was when he saw the man and woman in long overcoats come up on either side of the man who was just inches behind him and grab him by the arms. He protested loudly, shouting to anyone around him that he was being taken against his will.
Most people didn’t even bother to look up but those who did just looked relieved.
Charlie quickly wiped his face on his sleeve, leaving a streak of snot from his nose and put the gun back into his pocket. He turned away, making a note of anyone who was around him but didn’t see anyone looking directly at him.
That was a saving grace of a mentally ill man yelling into the night. No one wanted to bear witness to the crazy.
Maggie was halfway down the alley, still running full out.
“Maggie! Maggie! Stop already,” he shouted, gaining on her as they came to the corner of the building.
She was crying hard, sobbing as her chest heaved up and down. She stopped running and stood still for a moment, still crying loudly. Just as suddenly she pressed her hand to her mouth and ran to a nearby overflowing dumpster, puking behind it as she pressed her hand against the dirty green side.
He gently took her curly hair in his hands, holding it back loosely as he waited for her to finish. All the while, he was scanning the alley, wondering if he should call someone and tell them they might have been made. Send in an extraction team to get them out of there.
“You okay?” he asked quietly, leaning down to get a better look at her face.
She was still crying but was breathing more steadily as she tried to spit. She stood up straight, pushing the palms of her hands into the small of her back and pushing out her stomach, leaning outward to stretch. Charlie noticed a small spray of tiny red dots underneath her eyes. Evidence of how hard she had squeezed her eyes shut trying to get away from their present reality.
“You okay?” he asked again, not sure what else to say. He turned to look around one more time as a hard slap landed on the side of his face making his head rock back.
Instinctively he started to reach for the gun even as he was taking in who must have delivered the blow.
“How could you?” screamed Maggie, full throat, her arms pulled up close to her chest as if she was trying to protect herself against something. The sound echoed off of the nearby brick buildings.
Charlie could see that the palm of her right hand still glowed red. She had swung at him with everything she had and wanted to hurt him.
“That’s new,” he said, his eyes watering from the sting in his cheek. His skin felt warm to the touch. “Feel better?” he asked, bitterness in the tone of his voice.
Maggie ran at him, her teeth clenched, a low growl coming out of her as she raised her fists and tried to punch him in the head. Charlie easily held her off as he felt his own anger rising. She was stronger than he expected and managed to land a blow just above his left ear making his head ring.
He put out his foot and easily tripped her, letting her fall hard to the pavement as he let go of her arms. He stood back from her, his fists clenched, trying to make his breathing steadier and not sure what he might do next.
A weariness came over him even as he still shook from anger.
Maggie got up quickly, brushing her hands off on her coat as she seemed ready to run at him again.
“I wouldn’t,” said Charlie, a dark scowl coming across his face. He had never spoken to Maggie like that before, even when they were younger and he would grow tired of a little sister wanting to always tag along or who occasionally broke something of his.
She hesitated and he tensed, ready to throw her back to the ground, if necessary. He had enough of letting people do to him whatever they felt in the moment.
Maggie shook her head without saying anything, still crying. She covered her face with her hands, still shaking her head. Charlie just watched her from a distance, wondering if he could leave her where she stood and knowing that wasn’t a possibility.
She dropped her hands by her sides. “Why did you have to do this to all of us, Charlie?” she pleaded, angry. “Why did you have to drag all of us into your dress up game of trying to get ahead,” she said, mocking him. He felt the anger rising, hot through the center of his chest.
“Stop,” he said, evenly, willing himself not to leave or to strike her.
“Why you? There were no other career options for you or was this all some lame ego trip?”
Charlie knew he was on the very edge of doing something and before Maggie could say another word he grabbed her hard around the arm, pulling her behind him, almost lifting her off her feet every few steps.
“Stop it, stop it!” she shouted, hitting at him with her other arm as she tried to keep up. He had broken into a slow jog, determined to get her back to the children’s home as quickly as possible so he could finally find a place to be alone.
“Hey man, hey man,” said the overgrown man who had bothered them in the first place. Charlie gave him a hard shove in the middle of his chest, knocking him back a couple of steps as he dragged Maggie past him.
“Wait!” she yelled through gritted teeth, trying to dig in her heels and stop their progress. Charlie pulled harder, not looking back to see if she was okay or he was twisting her arm. She’ll figure it out, he thought.
He got to the corner where they had to wait for the light and he looked back to see the tall man watching them with a quizzical look on his face, finally standing still, rubbing his chin. He was suddenly a lot calmer.
A chill ran through Charlie and he shook, hard, throughout his entire body as he kept a tight grip on Maggie’s arm. It wasn’t easy to get a good grip on her through the puffy coat but he could feel the thin, muscular arm through the layers of down.
A Watcher, Charlie thought, still looking at the man. Not crazy at all. They’ve found us, he thought. We’re holed up in this big city in the one neighborhood where no one who’s sane will look up at you and everyone else will mistake you for Jesus or their long-lost Daddy. And still they found us.
The light turned and they quickly crossed over Broadway by the faded Jewel grocery store, cutting across the wide parking lot. Maggie was no longer fighting him but instead was walking as quickly as she could, trying to keep up with his longer stride. He had stopped trying to run. He was only doing it to make his little sister mad and to do something with his frustration and anger.
He looked at her and saw the edge of something pink and shiny in her pocket that startled him. He stopped, yanking her closer to him, making her fall against his chest as her face flushed with anger again. The pink cat pin she was wearing jabbed at him as her full weight pressed against him for a moment.
“What the hell?” she said, pushing him away with her free arm. “What are you doing? I thought we were in a hurry?”
Charlie deftly grabbed the pink cell phone peeking out of her pocket as Maggie tried to lunge at him to take it back.
“That’s mine!” she declared, trying to climb down his other arm to get at the phone. He easily held her off as he pushed the button at the bottom. There was a message from someone named Stephanie with a Virginia area code.
“What’s the security code?” he asked, his nose flaring as he took in short breaths. “What’s the security code?” he said, louder, shaking her hard.
“That’s my phone,” she spat out, putting her one loose hand on her hip, taking a defiant pose.