Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4)

by JC Andrijeski

  Mozar had taken over the meetings.

  I still hadn’t seen Hawking, but I’d confirmed with Nick and Angel that he was running the SWAT team down at the lake. He’d also been running down a different set of leads for the past few days, mostly ex-special forces and potential current players in the gun for hire game. Hawking had done something similar in Los Angeles already, since he had contacts from his military days down there and in Washington. Since he and Mozar arrived in San Francisco, he’d been doing the same thing up here.

  Oh, and at the top of that list of suspects?

  Quentin Rayne Black, licensed Private Investigator.

  Apparently, even before that gruesome dragon sculpture got left at Stow Lake, Black was fast becoming Mozar’s favorite suspect.

  That’s what all the weird looks at the lake had been about, when Nick told them the animal art resembled one of Black’s tattoos. Even after Black got shot, Nick told me Mozar floated the idea that Black might be working with a partner and things went south––until he found out from the nursing staff that me and Black were married.

  Apparently that information conflicted enough with their F.B.I. profile that he’d more or less crossed Black off the list all over again.

  Nick still hadn’t asked me about the marriage thing.

  In fact, telling me about Mozar was the only time he’d even mentioned it.

  But everything Nick told me about Mozar explained the back and forth see-sawing from the rest of the cops and Mozar himself, and all the weird looks I’d gotten in both directions.

  It still didn’t fully explain Hawking to me, however.

  When the cops in the debriefing room seemed to be talking in circles again, I found myself going back through the files of known victims, only half-listening as I tried to understand why the Templar had fixated on me and Black. Since I sat alone at that desk in the hospital, in a quiet, unused administrator’s office, I just pulled the files out of the box next to me and began going through them. I kept the tablet’s microphone muted as I scanned pages, so I could listen to them talk without disrupting them while I worked.

  Before me and Black, the Templar’s victim pattern had been more random, and yet weirdly more consistent in terms of ideology.

  There had been thirteen victims in Los Angeles... thirteen they knew about, anyway. I read through the list again, even though I was familiar with most of them, even just from the news.

  The first had been a Hollywood mogul type, who’d recently got off on charges of beating his wife. The man was a big name, and there’d been some speculation in the media about jury tampering and paying off witnesses in his case, so that one got a ton of press, even before they realized it would end up being the first in a pattern.

  The second was another celebrity-type criminal: a well-known photographer who had an outstanding case still pending at the time of his death, accusing him of raping his teenaged stepdaughter. He’d also been accused of child pornography.

  The next two victims had been wealthy defense contractors, living in Malibu. The cops didn’t have anything sex- or crime-related on either of them, but the police figured the Templar didn’t like what they did for a living.

  The fifth victim was an investment banker, living in Rancho Palos Verdes. The sixth owned a series of pornographic film studios and had been accused of trafficking. The seventh was a Hollywood agent who also had rumors dogging him about drugs and liberal use of casting-couch type manipulations with young girls. The eighth was a wealthy media mogul who donated billions of dollars to various radical political causes.

  The ninth and tenth worked for the Los Angeles’ Mayor’s office. The eleventh was another defense contractor. The twelfth and thirteenth were a husband and wife team of corporate lawyers who lived in a mansion in Beverley Hills.

  I went through all of them, one by one, but I couldn’t find any type of real pattern there.

  None other than the ideological one Mozar’s people already noted.

  The police down there received three different letters from the Templar. All three made mention of “cleansing” and “Light” and implied the Templar saw his work as part of a greater mission. He talked about his victims as “vampires,” “parasites,” “animals,” “snakes.” In one of the letters, he said people like them had ruled the world long enough.

  All three letters also contained warnings that he would continue “his work” until God commanded him otherwise, or the people rose up to help him “carry the Light.”

  Re-reading each of the letters three times, eventually I had to stop.

  None of it brought me any closer to knowing who the guy was, or how to catch him.

  Despite my going through the victim and witness files from Los Angeles, I still caught most of the discussion by the cops at the precinct. A handful of the people in that room––including Nick’s Captain, a tall, black, ex-college football star and avid weightlifter with the incongruous name of Littlewhite––now argued that the killer in San Francisco probably wasn’t even the same person they’d called the Templar Killer in Los Angeles.

  A lot of them now thought it was probably two different people.

  Black being hit by a sniper rifle differed too much in method from the rest of the kills, they argued, and moreover, the Templar killer went after people for ideological reasons and this killer seemed to have some personal connection to me and Black.

  I saw and heard Littlewhite arguing with the others that the San Francisco killer probably just copied the thing with the sword for the press attention.

  That possibility had crossed my mind, too.

  It didn’t feel right though, and I told Nick as much when he picked up the phone to speak to me privately on that very topic, and to get my take on the discussion more generally.

  “You still think he’s our guy?” he said about Hawking.

  I exhaled, realizing of course Nick would think I thought that, given what I yelled at Mozar in the hospital waiting area. But I wasn’t entirely certain I did think Hawking was the Templar. I just knew I didn’t trust him and Mozar anymore, and not only because they’d been investigating Black behind our backs.

  “Honestly?” I said. “I don’t know. But the Templar feels sort of like him... not exactly like him, but close enough to make me wonder.” Feeling Nick’s puzzlement, I added, “People go into different mental states, Nick... even whole different personalities... depending on what they’re doing. Even normal people do this to an extent. The lawyer isn’t as much of a lawyer when she’s at home being a mother to a toddler. The son isn’t as much of a son when he’s playing father to his own child, or out drinking beer and looking at strippers with his friends. The married person might be totally different while having an affair... and so on. But some people have more profound and disconnected flips from their different roles and partial personalities...”

  “So you might not recognize this guy. When he’s not ‘in character,’ you mean... is that it?” Nick said. “He might feel like someone else?”

  I sighed, as frustrated as Nick sounded.

  “Yes,” I said, anger leeching into my voice. “I might need to keep a line on him––psychically, I mean––until he flips again.”

  “You’re watching him now? Hawking?”

  My jaw hardened to granite. “Yes,” I said.

  I felt Nick nod, even before he spoke. “Okay. Just don’t shoot anyone until you know it’s them. Okay, Miri? I know how you feel––”

  “No you don’t.”

  He fell silent, then exhaled again.

  “Okay. Fair enough. Maybe I don’t. But don’t do it anyway, all right? I know you, Miriam. If you make a mistake and get the wrong guy, you’d never get over it. I want this bastard off the streets too, which is why I’m telling you... don’t go off half-cocked right now, okay? Make sure you have the right guy first. Then let me handle it. Okay?”

  I nodded, hearing him.

  I even agreed with him, in principle anyway, but his words still
annoyed me.

  Maybe I was just sick of being lectured. I’ve never much liked being told what to do. Maybe it was from having parents die when I was too young and uncles who took off and then adults all of a sudden inserting themselves and giving me unwanted advice.

  I remember thinking even as a kid that the people who did that always seemed to want it both ways. No one wanted me or Zoe when we were kids, in the sense of actually taking responsibility for us. We were always told to suck it up, to learn to make do, to be self-reliant––but then those same people wanted the right to wag fingers at us when we did our best and the results weren’t picture-perfect. People always want it both ways.

  But I wasn’t having it. I wasn’t having it then, and I wasn’t having it now.

  Black and I were alone in this.

  I couldn’t wait for anyone to fix this for him. Or for me.

  Even with my uncle’s help, and Nick and Angel’s, and Black’s employees, something about our situation, surrounded by all of these people, made me realize just how alone we were.

  Or maybe I just realized for the first time, or admitted to myself maybe, that Black was in a different category. Not just a different category from my friends, but a different category from all of the people who’d ever been in my life.

  All of them except maybe my sister, Zoe.

  Something about that realization hit me hard––hard enough that it struck me as containing a truth I’d been avoiding with all of my being up until now. That was the part of all this I hadn’t really wanted to face, even before Black got shot, even before I was faced with the prospect of losing him. He really was my family now.

  Nick and Angel were my family too, of course, but not in the same way.

  I couldn’t even explain to myself in what way it was different.

  I just knew it was.

  Weirdly, that knowledge made it easier not to argue when the people at the hospital treated me the same way. When Black finally got out of the second surgery, and my uncle’s medical technicians told me it was better if he just rest and replenish light with me for awhile, I didn’t feel anything but relief.

  I went right into his room as soon as they let me.

  When they didn’t kick me out, I pulled up a chair, laid my head on the bed next to his arm, and held his hand. Once I was settled comfortably, where I could see the door if anyone tried to come in, I started doing that thing where I gave him light again.

  By then, I’m pretty sure the main visiting hours were long over.

  I knew there were uniformed cops stationed outside Black’s door.

  I knew my uncle’s people might still be there too, although I hadn’t seen either of the guys from earlier and I knew for a fact the seer medical techs had left. They told me just before they went, assuring me they’d be back early the next day. They also said to call if I needed them back earlier, that they’d be staying at a hotel just down the street and would keep the phone nearby.

  I admit, all of that reassured me.

  It assured me more than when the human doctors told me essentially the same thing.

  I still hadn’t seen Black open his eyes, but I could feel him breathing now, and he’d gotten some of his color back.

  The human doctors definitely seemed puzzled when I talked to them, but they also assured me the surgery had gone well––better than they’d feared, given his condition when he was first brought in. The coma concerned some of them more than they admitted to me––I read that much on the head surgeon––and they definitely had questions about Black’s physiology, but the seers must have done something to make those questions less alarming than interesting to them.

  I knew from reading them they’d also gotten the same cover story Black used at his company, so a few were curious about his genetic history, as well.

  Either way, I probably felt more relieved than his current condition warranted.

  I could tell from what the seers told me and what I could read off the human physicians that Black wasn’t out of the woods yet.

  Even so, just being able to be in the same room as him, watching him breathe, made me relax more than I probably should have. Having his warm, bare arm pressed to mine, being able to give him light as I rested my head on the mattress next to him, holding his hand, made me relax in ways I couldn’t begin to express, not even to myself.

  None of it made sense to me, but I was too damned exhausted to care.

  And yes, as unlikely as it would have sounded to me even an hour earlier, after Nick and Angel left and the doctors left and the nurses dimmed the lights...

  I must have fallen asleep.

  Fifteen

  SILENCE

  MY HEAD JERKED up from a deep sleep, but I don’t think there was a noise.

  Strangely, I think now that the silence must have woken me.

  According to my internal clock, at least a few hours had gone by since I could last remember anything. The hospital felt truly dead now. The private room Black Securities and Investigations must have procured for Black for some exorbitant amount of money was silent of anything but Black’s breathing and the muted beats of a heart monitor.

  The corridor outside the room was deathly still.

  I still held Black’s hand. I must have gripped it even tighter as I woke, because releasing it was almost an act of will. Once I had, I rubbed my face with the same hand, exhaling as I leaned my forehead against his arm, and ended up resting my cheek there for a few breaths.

  That silence deepened somehow.

  Then it occurred to me. I couldn’t hear anyone outside Black’s door.

  It’s not like the two cops sitting there had been loud. But they hadn’t been totally silent either. I’d heard them move around, murmur to one another, flip pages, talk on the phone in quiet voices. I’d been listening to them right up until when I’d fallen asleep.

  I’d also been watching Hawking, using a kind of psychic thread or line I’d spun between his mind and mine, something Black had mentioned doing when he tracked people.

  I’d never really done such a thing consciously before, but I’d wanted to keep an eye on Hawking, and make sure I’d feel it if his mental “flavor” changed. I specifically wanted to know if it changed into something closer to what I now recognized as the Templar, both from the two murder scenes and what I’d felt in Chinatown.

  So far, I couldn’t be sure.

  Hawking’s mind was quiet. At times it was even silent––with a similar flavor of “hunting” there as what I’d felt on the Templar––but I flat-out couldn’t decide if they could be the same person. If Hawking was the Templar, he disguised that fact when he was playing cop. Maybe he even compartmentalized those two sides totally, like I’d speculated with Nick.

  The flavor there was definitely... different.

  Now that I was more or less conscious again, and the silence grew increasingly deafening outside the private hospital room’s door, I found myself looking for Hawking again. Concentrating on the flavor of his mind without lifting my head from Black’s arm, I tried to reconnect to that thread I’d established while I’d been focusing on him during the briefing meeting down at the Northern Police Precinct. He’d shown up there eventually, after about three hours of working with the team around Stow Lake.

  When I finally managed to find him, it felt almost like Hawking was asleep.

  I concentrated more, and grew more sure of it.

  Eventually, I could even see him lying on a hotel room bed, breathing deeply, rhythmically, wearing only sweat-pant shorts. Something about watching him there felt really invasive though, so I clicked out once I was sure.

  Exhaling in relief, I decided I was overreacting.

  The cops outside might be dozing too. That, or one of them had gone for coffee or food and the other was just being unusually still for some reason. I was still thinking about that when I stood up from the chair, straightening with a grimace from my legs being stuck in the same position for too long and stretching my whole bod
y.

  I looked down at Black.

  It was dark, and I couldn’t be certain, but it looked like he’d regained more color again. His face still looked overly pale, but it didn’t look as hollow-cheeked as I remembered, and some of the tension had left his forehead and the area around his mouth and jaw.

  That might have been the drugs dripping down into his IV, of course. I was sure they had him doped to the gills for the pain, since they’d spent most of the afternoon sawing into him and sewing pieces of him back together.

  The surgeons had assured me that the bullet missed his spine, which had been their initial fear they told me, especially given how still he’d gone after being hit.

  Leaning down, I found myself stroking the hair out of his face, avoiding the oxygen tube before I kissed his forehead.

  “Okay,” I said to him. “I need the bathroom, Black. And probably a vending machine with instant coffee and someting stale to chew on. I won’t be gone long, okay? Promise. I’ll come straight back, and I’ll eat whatever I find in here.”

  He didn’t move.

  His breathing didn’t change, his eyelids didn’t flicker, and his body remained as deathly still as before. Even so, for some reason, I was glad I’d said it.

  Combing my fingers through my own hair, I stretched out my arms again, swinging them in a few quick circles as I walked towards the door to the corridor.

  As I did, it hit me that I hadn’t thought to bring any actual money with me. I hadn’t taken a purse with me from Angel’s house when we all drove to the park and Stow Lake. I’d just grabbed my ID and a credit card, figuring that would cover it.

  But at this time of night, I’d probably need actual dollars.

  I wondered if one of the cops would lend me some cash. I could have Angel bring my purse in the morning. She and Nick would probably be here early anyway––probably before these guys changed shifts and they brought in the next crew.