Search For Reason (State Of Reason Mystery, Book 2)

by Miles A. Maxwell

  A warble cut through. She held a finger up to her cameraman, “Hold it there a minute, Herb.” She stepped over to the van and pulled out a satphone.

  “Really?” she said, eyes flipping in Everon’s direction. “Okay, yeah, thanks!” She flipped the phone shut.

  “Have you heard anything about an attack on your brother’s secretary?”

  “What?” Everon answered. “Are you sure?”

  “Apparently she was murdered less than an hour ago.”

  “His secretary? At the church? I haven’t heard anything about it.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Student. We have to go. Thanks so much for your time. Come on, Herb!” She pulled at the cameraman’s coat sleeve.

  The news team loaded up and the van rushed off.

  “What was that all about, E?” Right asked.

  “I don’t know but it doesn’t sound good. I have to talk to Franklin.”

  The Fit

  “Pattern . . . length — you know a feather is like a fingerprint,” Dean Adlan said. “No two are the same.”

  “It matches,” a puzzled tone creeping into Franklin’s voice. “The same coloring.” The dead owl sat in the rear of the aviary on Dean’s twelve-foot-wide exam table, its eyes and beak ringed with red pustules.

  “And it fits perfectly,” Dean agreed, sliding the feather into a gap in Harry’s splayed-out left wing. The brown-striped pattern now continued uninterrupted. “A guy from a restaurant brought you this?”

  “How-how-how-HOWWW —”

  Through the overhead vertical screens at the top of the wall that divided the rear offices from the jungle, the long call echoed back among the others. Some bird reminding Franklin of Harry, asking — daring them to find out how it happened.

  “A few hours before the bomb went off, a guy pulled a boat up to his restaurant. The feather was inside a toolbox he was carrying. And it sounds like Harry was too.”

  Dean stared at him. “Whoever had Harry before you, must have exposed him to a heavy dose of radiation.”

  “Why do you say that?” Franklin asked.

  Dean pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from the pocket of his Hawaiian shirt and handed it to Franklin. There were rows labeled things like microRNA, RBC and White Count. Columns labeled Very Low, Caution, Average, Above Average and Unacceptable. And they were filled with —

  “A lot of numbers. What’s all this mean Dean?”

  “See here?” Dean pointed. “Harry’s white count was almost non-existent. That’s his immune system. The way my friend explained it, a nuclear bomb produces both beta particles from fallout, and gamma rays directly from the blast. The gammas are what cause cell damage.

  “When any of the beta particles get on or inside the body — Harry’s body in this case — the betas also decay, releasing more gamma radiation.” Dean frowned a moment. “Harry wasn’t hit by any fallout, was he? He wasn’t under the nuclear cloud?”

  “The cloud didn’t drop any of that black goo on us until we were flying out of Teterboro.”

  “You didn’t give him a bath, wash him or anything?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Look.” Dean crammed the report back in his shirt pocket, and moved a thick probe like a large microphone over Harry’s body, along his wings. A red digital display on top flickered between one and zero.

  “Nothing? There are no betas?” Franklin pictured Melissa, happily sleeping in the little wood rocker. “That means no fallout. No left over radiation?”

  “No.” Dean looked thoughtful. “And anyway, if Harry’d been close enough to get radiated by the bomb, he’d have been burned to bits.”

  “So then where did his radiation damage come from? If there wasn’t any contamination on his feathers — I even had him under my shirt. I feel fine.”

  “That’s the thing,” Dean said. “If there are no fallout dust particles — no betas — the damage to Harry’s cells had to have been gamma, absorbed by his body from a radioactive incident before the New York bomb was detonated.”

  No Reason At All

  Leaving the Adlans’ jungle behind, Franklin went out the double doors into the aviary’s front office shaking his head. Harry dead from radiation poisoning! But I found him right next to Melissa!

  She’s okay. I’m okay.

  He felt more bewildered now than when he left Erie. He had a lot to think about on the way home.

  The feather’s obviously Harry’s. Why would some guy bring him into the city on a boat, inside a toolbox? The bomb’s supposed to have gone off near the shore — Whoever Harry belonged to, wouldn’t they have seen me on the news? Tried to contact me?

  Outside the floor-to-ceiling front office windows, a gray sedan pulled into the parking lot, paralleling Franklin’s course to the front door. The dark-haired driver, intent on parking, had the bulging neck of a sumo wrestler, and a wide, ageless Asian face.

  The huge bulk of a man entered the aviary’s office, eyes widening with recognition. With nothing but a scream he lowered his head and charged straight at Franklin.

  Franklin didn’t know why — there was no time for any rational understanding — but something fell into place, a last tumbler clicked and said: This! This is what a mass killer looks like! And at the same time he knew such an idea to be completely ridiculous.

  BOOF! The giant’s head collided with Franklin’s stomach and Franklin flew back over the reception desk, legs-over-head, knocking Sally’s chair aside. BAM! his head collided with the wall behind. Tiny stars twinkled. Struggling to suck short painful breaths into his paralyzed chest, he tried to find his feet.

  The big man’s hip caught on the desk’s corner, spinning it a quarter turn. It barely slowed the giant down.

  “Why are you attacking me?” Franklin gasped out. The answer was a vicious fist aimed at his head. But the desk had given him an extra half second to slip right. The hamlike fist brushed across his left cheek, sinking in drywall up to the man’s elbow, punching out a parrot head in the wall paper. “Aarrgh!” the big man yelled.

  “Stop!” Franklin coughed, trying to catch his breath, “Please stop!” holding his hands up palms out. “Why are you doing this?”

  Gritting his teeth, the monster twisted his massive arm free, but he was off balance. A voice in Franklin’s head taunted, Turn the other cheek? Since leaving the military, he’d always believed the right words could change anyone, solve any problem. He was wrong.

  There was a time for violence.

  As the giant’s fist came out of the wall, Franklin struck back, pushing off the wall, forcing every ounce of energy into slamming the fronts of both fists into the base of the sumo’s neck.

  The sound was hollow. Useless. The slap of a hand hitting a tree trunk.

  But the man’s own twisting momentum forced him sideways. His own massive weight toppling him into Sally Adlan’s office chair. Thc-thc-thc-thc-thc-thc — skidding backward across the floor . . . a hollow thud as he slammed against the office front wall, head-shaped dent in the drywall, taking out half a condor.

  “Nyaah!” he screamed a low guttural cry, like a giant dog shaking it off, pushing to his feet.

  “Nyaah!”

  He charged Franklin like a bull. His heavy right fist shot out, connecting with Franklin’s chest.

  PAA! air bursting from Franklin’s lungs. He flew backwards through the double doors . . . into the screened-in birdlock.

  His own wiry-strength was no match for the man’s sheer bulk. There was no way to defend himself. Unable to get his feet underneath, he backpedaled, tripping through the second set of doors into the jungle.

  Fighting Birds

  Franklin splashed backward through green ferns wet with dew. Tiny stars orbited in the air about his head as he struggled for breath. Wide green giant-bird-of-paradise leaves spread above him. And . . . blue bird feet?

  He blinked rapidly, shook his head, sucked in a long gasp of air, and the stars faded. The blue feet belonged to a white-t
hroated toucan. Behind its curved banana beak, the big man’s head and shoulders bulled through the jungle after him.

  “Who are you?” Franklin hoarsed out, scrambling on his butt like an inverted crab. Without a word the monster pushed the jungle out of his way and came on.

  Franklin began to get his feet beneath him but tripped backward, falling through a bushy green robellini into a grassy paddock. A hundred dark eyes glared down at him! The wide-spread ass-end of a screeching peacock. Something bright flashed as the big goateed man pounded in after him, almost as if he were enjoying himself. He had a knife out! A curved blade with a nasty hook at the tip.

  Why’s he doing this?

  Franklin scrambled on knees across the peacock run. Finding his feet, he crossed the dirt trail that ran down the aviary’s middle. A dark lilac long-tailed parrot in a floppy banana palm rolled over upside down. Playing dead wasn’t going to help Franklin. He glanced over his left shoulder. The giant was only feet behind.

  Franklin twisted through a flaring cluster of lush green majesty palms. When his back collided with a gnarled eucalyptus, a group of miniature lime-colored parrots poured from its branches, fluttered around the giant’s head. One parrot landed on the big man’s shoulder. He flicked it away.

  Franklin spun into a group of almond trees and date palms. Three red-yellow-blue macaws took flight.

  Bam! End of the line. The trees had grown to disguise the aviary’s outside wall. He could retreat no farther.

  The big man pushed through the fronds, knife in hand.

  “Why are you doing this?” Franklin shouted.

  The sumo moved in with a slicing motion. Distracted by a squawking, fluttering gray parrot, the slice went short, the knife’s tip barely catching on a downward diagonal inside Franklin’s open jacket.

  Pain. My chest! The smell of iron. I’ve been cut!

  GOOOSH! A long “Arrrrgh —” came from the big man as he lifted a mucky foot. He’d stepped in a thick white mound of bird crap.

  Franklin had no idea who the giant was — why he seemed so intent on killing him. There was no time to reason it out. Ignoring the warm ooze inside his shirt, Franklin pulled himself around the trunk of a big elm with one hand, grabbed an overhead vine in the other and swung his feet through.

  PAH! Sweat flew!

  A terrific blow squarely into the giant’s face. Any ordinary man would have been knocked out. The huge Asian merely staggered to one knee.

  But Franklin detected something. A puzzled look, a momentary shock in the sumo’s eyes.

  Nobody ever fights back!

  The man’s tremendous bulk and natural ferocity must scare anyone who even thinks about it. Franklin couldn’t allow himself time to be scared. He needed to think. He wished he had his own climbing knife. Anything. How do you take down a moving mountain? There wasn’t time!

  The giant shook his head like some midnight-freeway-motorist desperate to keep awake in haloed headlights. There was no time to test the vines above Franklin’s head. He hoped they were strong enough. The sumo was recovering, rising.

  Fast as he could pull, hand-over-hand Franklin climbed. He glanced down — a few feet more! If I can just get out of reach! Biceps contracting, hands gripping the hard smooth vines, legs whipping back and forth . . . higher . . .

  A little higher . . .

  The big man reached out. A terrific jerk. Twice. Hundreds of pounds of force ripped the vines from the trees that held them.

  Franklin fell, with time for only that one universal “Oh, sh-i-i-i-t —” but without conscious thought his right foot flew out, slamming into the giant’s head. It felt like he’d slammed into a boulder.

  The sumo staggered backward. Franklin landed on his other foot.

  The giant fell back on his butt, but he wasn’t out. He shook his head. Struggled to rise again, “Yeaaahh!” screaming his way to his feet.

  Franklin’s one thought: Get away! Warn Dean! Warn Sally!

  Franklin dodged around thick diseased-looking sycamore branches, ducked under cherry limbs. The dirt path ran down the aviary’s middle. He splashed through the stream that connected the two small lakes, tripping into soft beach sand, sprawling to his hands. The intertwined swan-necks of two pink flamingos shrank nervously away. A blue heron eyed him on one frozen leg. Fingers of his right hand poked into crab holes while a pair of white-breasted kingfishers pointed red anvil heads in his direction.

  And then a pelican flapped straight at him from the jungle green. And veered off.

  The monster right behind!

  He wasn’t playing — knife swiping the air as sandpipers skittered around the giant’s feet, Franklin in reverse, barely an inch beyond the blade’s rising silver arc.

  With blurlike quickness, the sumo’s blade reversed and angled downward. “Ahhh — !” Franklin gasped as the knife tip sliced through the leather of his jacket like butter, and into the meat of his right shoulder.

  But as the big Asian swiftly pulled the knife back for another swipe, a group of seagulls screeched into the air and Franklin seized his only opportunity. A swift kick hard as he could manage, right into the sumo’s groin.

  Dead on! Shoe toe deep into the big man’s crotch!

  With a grunt the giant bent over, eyes wide.

  But he didn’t go down!

  Franklin was stunned. Does the man even have balls? He isn’t human!

  The Chain And The Cross

  Chest covered in blood, Franklin smashed backward, flattening a low chicken-wire fence. “Ahhhh!” he gasped, finding himself face-to-face with one of the scariest things he’d ever seen — the vicious softball-size head of an angry gray ostrich, tiny pointed teeth exposed in a wide-open jaw — as if it would love to rip a bite out of his face.

  The ball-like head snapped away, the bird’s attention locked onto the big Asian. Inches apart, the two giants stared each other down, the big man slowly exposing a gray set of teeth.

  A shudder ran through the big bird. Its neck swerved hard, head thrusting into a nearby bush.

  In the aviary’s rear, Sally Adlan looked up from the feed inventories she was auditing on her computer screen. Crashing sounds were echoing from somewhere.

  “What do you think is going on up there?” she said to Dean.

  A huge golden eagle wearing a leather hood sat nearby, perched atop its cage. Dean glanced up as it flapped, annoyed by some disturbance.

  “Sounds like a couple of the macaws again,” he muttered back, sliding a loose feather in and out, bent over Franklin’s dead owl. “Probably Daniel and Bertie causing trouble in the peacock pen.”

  “Do you hear voices?”

  BOOM!

  “What was that?” Sally said. “Sounds like it’s getting closer!”

  “Um — you mind checking?” Dean said absently.

  “No, no — do what you’re doing. I’ll go.” Sally pushed back her chair and went through the door into the green.

  Franklin could see the sides of his vision going gray. He was losing blood. On wobbly feet he struggled across the lake sand.

  Near the aviary’s wall, he tripped over a wide flat stone.

  As he went down, the only piece of jewelry he’d ever worn, the gold cross on its neck chain, fell from his shirt collar and swung beneath a hidden radiator valve near the floor.

  Franklin pushed himself to his knees, jerked himself upward — Clink! He ducked down, trying to slacken the chain.

  Clink! Clink!

  He was rushing. Not leaving enough space to clear the chain beneath the black knob.

  The big man emerged from the bushes less than thirty feet away.

  CLINK! The chain was really caught. For whatever unknown reason, the giant was going to kill him.

  First Admission

  The monster’s hand reached underneath Franklin’s neck.

  Clink! He couldn’t —

  Franklin gave one hard desperate jerk as the blade’s edge came back across his skin and SNAP! —
the chain broke! But his neck felt hot and wet, a warm flow running into his collar.

  Before he could move again, a massive paw came at him. Open-handed the monster pushed Franklin’s chest up, forcing him to his feet, slamming his back up against the wall.

  Franklin’s head felt light. Warm blood oozing down into his shirt. Gray peripheral vision closing in. The huge man’s wide flat face pulled close, fetid breath demanding answer to a single question: “Ting was stolen from me! Where is TING?”

  “Ting?” Franklin guessing wildly, “The owl? Are you talking about Harry?”

  “HARRY?” the sumo screamed.

  “If you mean the owl, I brought him here from New York. He died from radiation connected somehow with the New York bomb.”

  The giant froze. “You lie! Ting, dead? Pali Kongju has not told Zhou this! Ting is ZHOU’S!”

  Sounds like Zjów, a J in the middle, Franklin thought woozily. Calls himself Zhou?

  “Harry — Ting, was yours?” Franklin blinked rapidly as the jungle shimmered. “I’m sorry.”

  The Asian’s huge head leaned back, great chest expanding, eyes rolling toward the aviary’s sky. “Ting! Never would Zhou have released the fire! Oh, Ting! It cannot be!”

  Released the — the fire? Franklin hoarsed out. “New York?”

  Head back, Zhou’s answer screamed into the jungle sky: “The fire comes to those of you it must, but it should never have taken Ting!”

  Something inside Franklin pulled pieces together.

  A radioactive owl.

  This man. A glimmer.

  New York! Deep pain boiling up.