Twice

by Lisa Miscione

  “They’re not cops, Rain. They’re friends of Danielle’s.”

  There was a pause and then a deep, cruel laugh. “That crack ho doesn’t have any friends.”

  “Yes, she does,” said Dax, offended. He didn’t like it when people insulted his friends, even if what they said was true.

  They stood silent for a moment and Rain was so still that he looked as though he could fade into the black and be as gone as if he’d never been there at all.

  “What do they want?” he asked finally.

  “They’re here for The Virus.”

  As they talked, Violet continued to move forward slowly toward Rain and she was dwarfed by his height and size. Jeff and Dax hung back, waiting to see how the standoff would go.

  “We’re the cure,” said Dax, his voice quiet but resonating against the concrete.

  Rain nodded but kept his ground. “And then what?”

  “And then we leave and never come back,” said Jeffrey.

  “And you never tell anyone that you came here.”

  “Sounds like a deal.”

  “Leave the body. We’ll take care of it. No one will ever find it.”

  And with that he seemed to meld into the darkness and was gone. Jeff was left with a chill down his spine and a feeling of dread in his heart. They’d be murderers when this deed was done and he wasn’t sure that rested well with him, no matter the reason. It was justice, of that he had no doubt. It was whether they had the right to dispense it that worried him. He knew how Lydia felt about it; they tried to take care of it her way… the “right” way. They’d failed, and now Jed McIntyre was free, uncontained. And that was unacceptable to him.

  The three of them started walking again in silence. He didn’t want to talk anymore, to just pretend the bizarre unreality of this made it all a bad dream. If he hadn’t been one hundred percent certain that he had no choice, they wouldn’t be here at all. As it was, he’d willingly trade his soul for the woman he loved and the child she carried inside her.

  chapter ten

  “What are they thinking?” said Lydia at the wheel of Ford’s Taurus, speeding back to New York City. Ford had let her have the keys because he knew her head was going to explode if she didn’t have something to do on the way back to town. Now he regretted it as she pushed the old car beyond its limits, driving it as if it were her small tight Mercedes. Which it definitely was not. Ford heard an unfamiliar noise from the engine.

  “Look… there’s no point in overreacting and there’s no point to racing back there,” said Ford. “We should just proceed to Haunted as planned. They’ll call when they’re done.”

  “Done with what?” she asked. “Even if Jed McIntyre is lurking in the subway tunnels, what exactly do they plan to do?”

  “That’s not information I need to have. And you should just let it go, too. They’re big boys, they can take care of themselves and anyone who tries to fuck with them. What are you going to do when we get there? Race into the tunnels and try to find them? Sit at your apartment, wringing your hands?”

  Lydia pulled the car over to the side of the road and put her head on the wheel. He had a point. But her whole body was electrified with the need to get back to New York. What if something happened to them down there? The thought of Jeffrey crawling beneath the streets looking for Jed McIntyre made her sick with anxiety. How could he do this? Without telling her? When she knew he was okay, she was going to kill him.

  Ford put a warm, callused hand on the back of her neck and she sat up, taking a deep breath. He had a kind, fatherly face, even if it was a little hard around the edges. She’d seen it change from warm to cold in under a second. Brown eyes communicated a depth and a sensitivity that Lydia found rarely in career cops, told her that he still had a humanity and compassion that were often casualties of the job. A thin smile disappeared into deep creases around the corners. A seemingly permanent five o’clock shadow made him look a little tough, a little unkempt. He smelled of Old Spice and sesame chicken.

  “Pull it together, girl,” he said. “Let’s go to Haunted.”

  She was about to agree with him when his cell phone rang. He removed it from the inside pocket of his lined beige raincoat.

  “McKirdy,” he answered. “Oh, yeah?” he said after a second, his eyebrows raising in interest. Another pause, then, “What do you mean, ‘unusual’? He tapped an impatient finger against the dash. “Well, I’m more than an hour away.”

  He looked at his watch and then at the sun hanging low and white in the sky, the sky growing dim as night began to fall. “Okay. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “What’s up?” she asked as he put the phone back into his pocket.

  “Turns out there’s a surveillance tape from the Ross building.”

  “Really? What’s on it?”

  “They can’t tell. One of the junior detectives I got working with me says they can’t make sense of what they’re seeing. The camera was in the basement of the building, in the laundry room. They see something strange around two-thirty in the morning and then it goes black.”

  “Huh,” said Lydia. “So… what?”

  “So looks like it’s back to NYC after all. Haunted will have to wait until tomorrow.”

  She pulled out onto the road and headed back toward the city. Relief and anxiety fought it out in Lydia’s stomach. Part of her wanted to head toward Haunted and away from everything that was happening in her life, as if to lay distance between her and the possible outcomes of Dax and Jeffrey’s mission were to make it less real. And the other part of her wanted desperately to be there, to be present, as if just being in the city would prevent the worst from happening. It was the helplessness that she couldn’t handle, that tied her up inside, that caused a dull ache in her head. She gripped the wheel and forced her foot down on the gas. The car struggled in response, but she kept pushing as if going faster would speed up time.

  “This is as far as I go,” said Violet. “I’ll wait here to take you back.”

  They stood at a point where two tunnels met. About a hundred yards away they could see in the beam of Dax’s flashlight a metal staircase leading to a landing and a narrow catwalk that led to a door.

  “Is he in there?” asked Dax.

  “I know he lives just past this divide,” she said. “I don’t know if he’s in there or not.”

  “Let’s wait a bit,” said Jeff to Dax. “Turn out the light and let’s just see if there’s any activity.”

  “Come on, man. Let’s take this fucker. We’ve waited long enough. I’m getting fucking claustrophobic down here,” said Dax, cracking the tension out of his neck.

  “There’s no point in just busting in there if he’s out and about. We’ll just give ourselves away and lose our chance. Patience.”

  Dax turned out the light and Jeffrey motioned for him to follow as he made his way toward the staircase. Beneath the metal landing there was a narrow break in the wall that looked like it had once held an emergency phone. There was enough room for both of them to stand side by side. There they could see anyone coming from either direction and were just below the doorway.

  Dax sighed and crouched down on the ground. He pulled the Magnum Desert Eagle from the holster at his shoulder and examined it, clicking off the safety. Jeffrey removed his new Glock from his waist. He’d never recovered the gun he’d lost in Albania a few months ago, and this one had never been fired off the range. He liked the semiautomatic and generally carried one, but it always seemed like a wild card compared to the revolver. Revolvers were workhorses, they never jammed; semiautomatics were less reliable but had more rounds.

  He tried to get a feel for their situation, but it was as if being in the tunnels had dulled his senses. He had always believed as a young FBI agent that you knew when you were walking into a mess, when the house that was supposed to be deserted, wasn’t; when a bust was going to go wrong; when a negotiation was about to fail. But he’d learned over the years that there was no way to tell ho
w bad things were going to get, even if you had the instinct that things weren’t going to go your way.

  He leaned against the wall and ran his free hand through his hair, which was damp with sweat and the moisture in the dank air. He regretted walking out on Lydia without saying good-bye. He felt it now in the form of an ache in his solar plexus; it had been arrogant to assume he’d be back before she knew he was gone. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, or how long it would be before he saw her again. He would have strangled her if she’d tried to pull something like this over on him. The only comfort he had was in knowing she probably would have done the same thing.

  “I heard something,” said Dax.

  “From where?” asked Jeff.

  “From inside the door.”

  Jeff listened carefully in the darkness and then he, too, heard a shuffling from above them. “Let’s move,” he said quietly.

  The metal staircase was surprisingly strong and didn’t creak under their weight even slightly. They climbed carefully and then edged their way along the catwalk, backs flat against the wall. At the landing, Dax stood on the far side of the door examining the hinges. He was glad to see that the door opened in; it made for a much easier and more surprising entry. The heavy gray metal door had a latch for a padlock but was unlocked from the outside anyway. Dax touched it with his finger and it moved just slightly. It was open.

  Jeff held up one hand and counted to three on his fingers, and before he’d reached go, Dax had pushed open the door with one hand and was moving in with his gun aimed in the other.

  “Get down on the fucking floor,” yelled Dax at no one, as Jeff followed him in, gun in one hand, flashlight in the other. His booming voice echoed against the walls.

  The room was empty except for a large rat rustling through a Balducci’s bag. The rodent looked up resentfully at the intrusion. Beside the bag lay a copy of Lydia’s first book and a piece of notebook paper on the floor.

  “Motherfuck,” said Dax, feeling his face flush. He picked up the piece of paper and held it up for Jeff. It read, “You didn’t really expect it to be that easy, did you?” Then he crumpled it in his fist and threw it against the wall. The rat moved past them slowly, unafraid.

  “Looks like that game of ‘Telephone’ goes both ways,” said Jeff, staying in the doorjamb in case someone was looking to surprise them from behind.

  “He’s slippery. I’ll give him that,” said Dax, trying to keep his voice light but unable to control the tight line of his mouth. Jeff saw the anger in his eyes, how it turned his normally affable face cold and hard.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Jeff, the walls suddenly closing in on him. He took a last glance at the room, shining the light onto the walls and up onto the ceiling. There was no other exit from the room. Jed was gone before they had arrived. Just as Jeff was about to turn around and leave, he caught sight of something on the wall… pieces of masking tape with shreds of paper stuck beneath. It looked as if something had been affixed there and then ripped from the wall in a hurry.

  “What’s that?” asked Dax.

  “I don’t know,” Jeff answered, moving in to examine the pieces. He could see the edges of some type of drawing, but couldn’t begin to make out what it might have been.

  “Shit,” he said, the frustration of Jed McIntyre slipping through their fingers raising his blood pressure.

  As Dax and Jeff moved down the stairs, Jeff shone the flashlight over to where Violet had been standing, but he didn’t see her there. He wanted to call out her name but thought better of it, not sure who was skulking in the darkness. He suppressed a feeling of panic when they rounded the corner and Violet was nowhere to be seen. They stopped and looked at each other.

  “Oh, bloody hell,” said Dax quietly, grabbing the flashlight from Jeff and shining it down into the tunnel they had come from. The light seemed like the tiniest thread in a field of black.

  “Violet!” Dax yelled, his voice bouncing all over the tunnels. They were answered by a low laugh that seemed to come from everywhere. Then a giant form melted out of the tunnel walls and into the beam of their flashlight. It moved slowly toward them, seeming to glide rather than walk. Jeff and Dax held their ground with guns drawn.

  “Freeze or I’ll blow your fucking head off,” yelled Jeff, in his best stop-’em-in-their-tracks voice, leveling the Glock against his target, though his heart was racing in his chest.

  “This is no time for bravery, boys,” came a voice behind them suddenly. “Run. Follow me.”

  The Midtown North Precinct was a circus of activity, phones ringing, perps yelling, civilians waiting to file police reports, as Lydia and Ford entered through the tall wooden front doors. The desk sergeant with a unibrow and a permanent scowl buzzed them through the gate. Both Lydia and Ford checked their weapons with the rookie who sat guarding the lockers. It was over warm in the precinct to combat the dropping temperature outside and a large, sloppily decorated Christmas tree wilted in the corner of the room. They were buzzed through another door and they began the climb up the stairs to the third floor to homicide.

  The homicide office was dark and quiet in comparison to the cacophony that followed them up the stairs. Computer screens glowed green in the dim light and somewhere a phone was ringing. Lydia glanced at the window and noticed that the last moment of light had passed from the sky and it was officially dark, officially night, with no word from Jeffrey. She checked her cell phone again to see if she’d maybe missed a call. She fought a feeling of dismay that lingered, waiting to push its way through as soon as she let it. Walking toward the back of the offices behind Ford, she focused on the task at hand, knowing anything else was pointless.

  Two men sat in the audiovisual room, which was really just an interrogation room where they kept a television, VCR, and tape cassette player on a metal cart that could be rolled out if the room was required for its original purpose.

  “What have we got, guys?” said Ford, entering the room and shedding his raincoat. Lydia kept her cashmere coat on, wanting its warmth around her in the chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. She sat at the table after being introduced to Detective Joe Piselli, a short, dark-haired man with girlishly long eyelashes, a bright smile, and a strong handshake, and Detective Al Malone, an awkward man with bad acne scarring and stooped shoulders. Neither of them looked older than twenty-five, and if they’d seen any kind of action at all, Lydia would have been surprised. They still had that bright and eager look in their eyes, the shine of idealism about the job they were doing.

  “We’ve watched it over and over and we can’t figure out what we’re seeing,” said Piselli as he walked over to the television. He pressed play, then fast-forward, and Ford took a seat beside Lydia.

  The tape showed a row of ten washing machines that faced a row of dryers. The camera, which must have been mounted over the door, captured most of the large laundry room. The room was washed in a harsh fluorescent light and as the time-elapsed play progressed, a short, plump woman in a maid’s uniform skittered in, threw in a load of wash, and left in under a second, her fast-forward movements making her look like a windup doll. She returned and changed the wash to the dryer a few minutes later.

  “Can we speed this up?” said Ford impatiently. “It’s a laundry room. If all you have is a bunch of people doing laundry-”

  “Just a second-” said Malone. “There.” He reached over and put the machine back to play. Lydia leaned in closer and saw the ghost of a movement, the edge of something that was just out of reach of the camera’s lens. Then the screen went black.

  “Is there another entrance to that room?” asked Lydia.

  “Not that we saw,” answered Piselli. “It’s just that one door. And the super says there’s no other way in.”

  “How much of the room can you see on the tape?” asked Ford.

  “I’d say about seventy-five percent. You can’t see under the camera and the far back of the room. And apparently there’s
an area to the right of the camera that’s out of range.”

  “So someone familiar with that could have come in the door and stayed to the right, out of range of the camera?” asked Lydia.

  Piselli gave a nod and a shrug.

  They rewound the tape and Lydia watched it again, leaning in close to the screen. The fluid nature of the movement and the faint pattern Lydia saw on second look made her think it was fabric.

  “It’s a hem,” she said, putting her finger on the screen. Piselli rewound the tape again and they all leaned in. “It’s the hem of a dress. See… it’s a dark color with tiny hearts.”

  “So why would someone be skulking around the laundry room at two-thirty in the morning? And why would they be purposely staying out of range of the camera?” asked Ford, thinking aloud.

  “It would have to be someone pretty small to be able to stay out of sight,” said Malone.

  “And how did the camera get turned off without our seeing who did it?” asked Piselli.

  “So maybe it’s down here where we’ll find our missing murder weapon and Stratton’s ring… not to mention his finger,” said Ford.

  “Well, we’ll find something down there,” said Lydia, getting up and moving toward the door. “Let’s go.”

  “With a cure like you guys, who needs disease?” said Rain with a short disdainful laugh. “I thought you boys had an edge, were going to take care of the problem. Instead I have to save your sorry asses.”

  “What was that back there?”

  He didn’t answer, just kept moving on ahead of them. Rain was an older man with smooth chocolate skin and a full white beard. His liquid eyes were clear and sober, but his face was etched with the lines of struggle and pain. Without the robes, he was just a stooped old man who walked with a limp. Most people didn’t live to be his age in a place like this, and Jeffrey wondered what his story was but declined to ask. Ahead of them, he could see some kind of light; it looked like the glow from a street lamp shining through a grating. They couldn’t get there fast enough as far as he was concerned.