Blood and Fire

by McKenna, Shannon

  It was the dad of the twins, loping toward them, holding up a phone. “We found this in Hayden’s stroller,” the guy explained. “Must have rolled out when you were helping Kate change Hayden’s pants.”

  Zia Rosa took her phone, smiling mistily as the man sprinted away. “Lovely family,” she said wistfully.

  Miles opened her door, bracing for what he knew was next.

  She was ready for him as soon as he got into the driver’s seat. “So when are you and Cindy having a little bambino?”

  “Never.” Miles punctuated that statement by slamming his door.

  “Never say never, giovanotto,” she intoned. “What’s written is written. You will have bambini. Soon. Very soon.”

  Oh, man, she was hexing him. He made the sign with his hand against the evil eye, the one that she’d taught him herself, learned from her old grandma back in Brancaleone, in the old country.

  She opened up her purse and fished out her wallet as he fired up the engine. She pulled out the photos she’d showed to the mom. “It gave me brividi,” she said. “Cold shivers. Just look. Exactly like my little Magda and my little Bruno. Look at them.”

  What else could he do? He braked. Looked. And looked again.

  Holy . . . fucking . . . shit. They really did look like those kids.

  And not just like. Exactly like. Weird. He was getting brividi himself. He’d had plenty of opportunities to observe the kids, especially the boy. He peered more closely. One was a black-andwhite, taken in the late fifties or early sixties, maybe. A formal portrait. The little girl was solemn, unsmiling. The boy was in an informal color photo, taken in the eighties by the looks of it, and exactly, in every detail, identical to the hellion from the pit, right down to the dimples in the fat cheeks and the fuck-you-youpathetic-pencil-dick-chump gleam in the kid’s eyes.

  It was completely creepy.

  Miles glanced into the old lady’s triumphant face. She’d caught the shock-and-awe vibe and was very satisfied with herself.

  He put the truck in gear. Babies, for the love of God. They all looked alike, right? Round heavy cheeks, bright sparkling eyes, pouty rosy lips, soft silky curls, cute button noses? The kids couldn’t have been that similar. Power of suggestion. He was spending too much time defending his childless state while shopping for swippie wippies soggy wipes. The constant, grating stress had softened his brain.

  Into the approximate consistency of baby shit.

  Petrie glanced at his watch as he got himself logged into the medical examiner’s office. Trish was waiting for him, tapping her foot. As if she were the one who’d dragged her ass all the way to Clackamas because of someone’s inexplicable whim.

  “I’ll be late for lunch with my grandmother because of this,” he groused, with ill grace. “I was supposed to meet her at the London Grill at the Benson, and I’m not going to make it in time. Not even close. She’s going to make me pay for it. In blood.”

  Trish clipped the visitor’s badge onto the lapel of his jacket and gazed at him, her big blue eyes limpid and absolutely pitiless. “Trust me,” she said. “It’s worth it. You have to see this, Sam.”

  “Why not just tell me about it on the phone? Why the mysterious build up? Why make me schlep all the way over here from downtown?”

  “It’s a visual thing,” she said, without turning. “You’ll see.”

  Trish led him through the office and into the rear area where the autopsies were done. She stopped at one of the examining tables and drew the cover off the cadaver, with an almost imperceptible flourish.

  Petrie took a look. And froze. Mouth hanging open.

  “They called me in to take pictures,” Trish said. “That suicide on Wygant this morning, remember? He’d put the gun in his mouth. It took out the back of his skull, but left his face intact.”

  Petrie looked up. Trish’s face was somber, but her eyes had a glint of excitement. “It’s him, isn’t it?” she prompted.

  He just stared down at the dead man’s face. It was Bruno Ranieri. Feature for feature. His hair was an inch or so longer than it had been in the photo, but it was him, right down to the dimples. Trish indicated them with a blue fingernail. “Check out those bifid zigomaticus, huh?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Who caught this one?”

  “Barlow,” she said.

  “You tell him?”

  “Not yet. Wasn’t quite sure. Wanted you to see it first.”

  He looked into her eyes. “OK,” he said. “I’ll tell Barlow. I guess I have to call Rosa Ranieri to come ID him for us.”

  He stood outside, in the chilly October rain for a long time afterward. Immobile, even with Grandmam waiting at the restaurant. Staring at the slip of paper that held Rosa Ranieri’s contact info.

  This was the part he hated. Telling a person that someone they loved had died, badly. He never got used to that. It never got easier.

  He punched in one of the McCloud numbers and waited. A young woman’s voice answered. “Hello, McCloud residence.”div width="1em">“Hello, this is Detective Samuel Petrie, of the Portland Police Bureau,” he said. “I’d like to speak to Rosa Ranieri, please.”

  13

  B

  runo massaged Lily’s naked ankle. She winced and flinched like she had a multiple compound fracture that was gushing blood, for God’s sake. What a wuss. Odd, knowing how tough she actually was.

  “It’s not swelling,” he said for the tenth time. “It’s not sprained.”

  “Well, it hurts! I’m the one inside my body, OK?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Lily. What part of ‘the sun will go down soon, leaving us stranded in pitch-black, sub-zero cold and hundred-mile-an-hour wind gusts if you don’t get off your ass’ do you not understand?”

  “So leave me here! Collect me on the way down! I won’t move, I promise. I’d get eaten by a grizzly or instantly lost. So just go!” She flapped her hand at him, in a “be off” gesture. “Buh-bye! See ya!”

  He stared at her, stony. “You’re sticking to me. Like glue.”

  Her eyes burned. She was furious, with good reason. He could see it, and feel it, too, from her point of view. It made him feel like shit. But he couldn’t follow her to the realm of bugfuck lunacy. Mamma, involved in a sinister plot with an evil mastermind? Not. She’d just had bad taste in boyfriends. And in any case, the subject was charged with such lethal emotional voltage, a single touch would fry him.

  So he wasn’t touching it.

  But if he couldn’t support her version of reality, the next best thing was to try to keep those shitheads from killing her until she could get the help she needed. That help was out of his depth, maybe. But kicking shitheads’ asses, that was a job he could wrap himself around.

  He wrapped both hands around her delicate ankle, trying to impart some of his body heat, and started inserting her clammy foot back into her sock. She responded by kicking his chest, knocking him onto his ass. Ouch. Ingrate.

  “I’m capable of putting on my own sock, thanks,” she snipped.

  “Do it, then,” he growled. “And hurry.”

  She shook his arm off when he tried to help her up.

  He stopped at the turnoff, debating whether to do the pilgrimage. Didn’t seem like a great idea under the circumstances, but as soon as he thought the sensible decision was made, and tried to proceed on up to the bluff, the impulse sank in and forced him right off the path. So. That was how it was going to be. He gave in and struck off horizontally across a long, treacherous slope of broken rock.

  “Hey! “ she yelled. “Didn’t you say the cell reception is at the top of the bluff?”

  “Quick detour. Something I have to do first. Come on. Keep up.”

  “Detour?” Her voice cracked in disbelief. “What the hell could you possibly have to do up here in the frozen wastes?”

  He didn’t bother to turn. “It’s personal.”

  “Is it, now! Well, excuse me for wondering why I’m being dragged across a goddamn rockslide!”


  He could estimate how far behind him she was from her labored breathing, and she was doing all right, so he just pushed on, scrambled up the steep part, and crawled over the lip of the small hanging valley.

  It was almost level up there, a long, gentle slope, with a broad swath of trees, larger and taller than the scrawny malformed ones on the more exposed, wind-whipped side of the bluff. It was a pretty place.

  He walked over to Tony’s silver pine, laid his hand on it. The contact calmed him down. He’d been up here maybe four or five times since he’d lost Tony. He’d found that it helped. For a little while.

  Lily clambered over into the valley, plainly uncharmed by the beauty of the place. She glared as she leaned over to pant, bracing her hands against her knees. So much for the calming aspect of this side trip.

  “Would you mind turning around for just a second?” he asked.

  Her brows snapped together. “Come again?”

  “I asked you to turn around.”

  She looked affronted. “I got that part. What I don’t get is why.”

  He sighed. “I have to take a leak,” he explained. “Do you mind?”

  “What? You’re kidding me. You dragged me all the way over that so that you could piss on your favorite tree?”

  He turned his back and got down to business, letting her mutter and fume. It was a long one, after all the coffee. By the time he was done and all buttoned up, he’d decided she deserved an explanation.

  “Tony used to bring me and Kev up here, when I was a kid,” he said. “When it wasn’t snowed in, we’d come up on weekends. Every time we came, we would hike up here and take a piss under that tree. It was, I don’t know. A thing, with us. With Tony. A ritual, I guess.”

  Her expressed softened. “Ah.”

  “Anyhow. That’s why. Sorry for dragging you along.”

  She didn’t have a single sharp word for him as she struggled across the rockfall back to the winding deer path.

  “So peeing there makes you feel closer to him?” she asked.

  He shrugged. Didn’t really want to examine it. Impulse was impulse. You squelched it or you followed it. A guy could twist his brain into knots if he thought too much about that stuff.

  “At home, there was this place in Riverside Park,” Lily said. “My dad and I used to go there before . . . what happened to him. We’d play cards. He’d do his work stuff, I’d read comic books. We ate salami on hard rolls from the deli on Ninth Avenue. Mint Milanos and Snapple.”

  “Yeah,” Bruno said, warily. “And this is relevant exactly why?”

  “I go there, once in a while, to the park,” she said. “I buy Mint Milanos and Snapple, and sit there with my laptop, with whatever term paper I’m writing.” She forced out a breath. “When I can stand it.”

  Bruno stared at her. His throat was getting tight. “Let’s go.”

  “It’s OK, if it makes you feel better,” she said softly. “I get that. It connects me to him. My memories, anyway. Of how he was.”

  “Don’t get all misty on me,” he said. “It’s not the same thing.”

  “No? How do you figure?”

  “Oh, gee.” He snorted. “Snapple? Urine? World of difference.”

  “Because you’re a guy. They are connected bodily functions, right? Depends on which end of the mechanism you’re looking at.”

  He held up his hand. “Don’t go any further with that. Please.

  “You’re the one waving it in my face. Like a flag.” Her eyes dropped to his crotch. “So to speak.”

  He set off, hoping she’d let it go at that. At least feeling sorry for him had put her in a softer place. That had to be a good thing.

  “Why that tree?” she called up. “What was special about it?”

  “That wasn’t the kind of question you could ask Uncle Tony,” he replied. “Two possible answers. Best-case scenario was a grunt.”

  “Ah.” She scrambled behind him, panting. “Worst-case scenario?”

  “The back of his hand across my face.”

  Her crunching footsteps stopped. “Sounds like a swell guy.”

  He stopped to let her catch up, thinking about Tony. How he’d pitched out of a window hugging a bomb to save them. How he’d made Rudy and his thugs disappear. Yeah, Tony had been a bad-tempered, violent man. And even so. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “He was a swell guy.”

  She stumbled, thudding to her knees with a gasp, and no wonder with those oozing scabs. He lunged down the slope, grabbing her elbow.

  She yanked it back, almost rocking off balance again. “Hands off!”

  What the fuck? “You’re still mad?” he asked. He felt almost hurt. “I thought we were having a tender moment.”

  A grin flashed on her face as she struggled back up to her feet. “We were. Just don’t touch me with that grubby paw until you wash it.”

  Oh, for God’s sake. He struck off again, but the stupid grin on his face lasted him almost all the way to the top of the bluff.

  Mt. Adams was fogged in. A froth of gray clouds were piled up like dirty cobwebs in the canyon between the bluff and the slope of the nearby volcano. Bummer. Seeing the mountain was the payoff for all that effort. He led her to the lee of the cliff, where the worst of the wind would miss her, and left her huddled there to find the next best spot.

  There were text messages for him on the Virgin phone. The first was from Aaro. Short, succinct, rude. A phone number, and then:

  Det. Sam Petrie, PPB. Knock yrslf out butthead

  The next was from Kev. Even briefer.

  WTF? call me now

  And another, from Sean McCloud.

  W8ting 4 news ??

  Scariest call first. He hunkered down, pulled out one of the new cell phones that Aaro had brought for him, stuck in his own chip. True, once the cop had a warrant out for his arrest, he’d be able to identify where the signal had originated, but by that time, he and Lily would be long gone. And hopefully this whole situation would be already resolved.

  He sucked in air, dialed the detective’s number.

  It might be suicide, but damn it, he was not a criminal, and he would not behave like one. It was his civic duty to let the cops know how matters really stood. They were doing a tough job as best they could, protecting the citizens of Portland. It was the right thing to do.

  Whether or not he was fuckg himself up the ass by doing it was another matter entirely. His jaw twitched, clenching painfully.

  The call connected and the guy picked up. “Sam Petrie here.”

  “Hello, Detective,” he said. “My name is Bruno Ranieri. I’m calling about one of your cases.”

  There was a dead silent, blank moment. “This is who?”

  “Ah, Bruno Ranieri,” he repeated. “I’m calling about the three dead guys behind Tony’s Diner on Sandy Boulevard this morning.”

  There was another pause, and then, “I’m listening.”

  “So, uh, I was coming out the door of the apartment building, and those men attacked me. In the process of defending myself, I, uh . . .”

  “Killed them,” the cop finished, heavily. “And left them there. On the ground. For your neighbors to find.”

  Oh, shit. This wasn’t going the way he’d hoped. “It was legitimate self-defense,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm, even. “They were armed, I was not. There’s blood spattered around the scene, some of it’s mine. Vomit, too. Also mine. Just, ah, so you know.”

  “Why didn’t you call us? Why didn’t you stay at the scene?”

  Bruno forced the trapped breath out of his lungs. “I had reason to believe that we were still in danger,” he said tightly.

  “We?” Petrie repeated and waited. “Tell me about this reason.”

  “I don’t know much yet,” he hedged. “I wish I did, believe me.”

  “Let’s take this a step at a time. Who is ‘we,’ Mr. Ranieri?”

  Bruno decided there was no reason to be coy. Lily had claimed not to be in trouble with the law. And the bad guys
already knew her identity. Maybe this guy could help find answers for her.

  “Her name’s Lily Parr,” he said. “She’s from New York City. These people are trying to kill her. They’re highly skilled and well organized. She’s been fleeing them for six weeks now.”

  “Ah.” Petrie’s voice was relentlessly bland. “Who are these people? Can you identify them?”

  He gritted his teeth. “No, I can’t. And neither can she.”

  “Neither can she,” Petrie repeated slowly. “That’s fascinating. Does she know why they’re pursuing her?”

  “No,” he said. And it sounded so very wrong to him. A big, fat lie that only a pussy-whipped idiot like himself would believe.

  Petrie grunted, clearly no idiot. “You’d think she’d have an idea.”

  “Well, she doesn’t,” he said, trying not to sound belligerent. “She’s trying to find out every way she can, but she doesn’t.”

  “What is Lily Parr’s relationship to you, Mr. Ranieri?”

  Whee, haw. Who the fuck knew. “We met early this morning.”

  “And you killed three men defending her? And you believe that she has no idea why they attacked her?”

  He swallowed. “That’s correct.”

  “She must be a very persuasive woman.”

  Bruno cursed himself for making this call. “The forensic analysis of the scene will bear up everything that I say. Talk to the techs.”

  “I usually do,” Petrie said, mildly. “In any case, you and Ms. Parr are urgently wanted for questioning. How soon cn you get here?”

  “I’m not sure,” he hedged. “Right now, I’m stranded with no vehicle. And I have to make sure Lily gets someplace safe first.”

  “Did you not hear what I said, Mr. Ranieri? Ms. Parr is wanted for questioning, too. We can come and pick you up. Where are you?”

  “Look, she did nothing! All she did was get attacked!”