Shadow of the Ghoul (Halfblood Legacy Book 2)

by Devin Hanson

  Now what, though? I didn’t have a single lead to follow on tracking down the ghoul, or on finding out what it was doing in LA. I found Sam’s number and called it. I might not know, but it’s possible Sam did.

  “Detective Friday,” Sam said.

  “Hey, Sam. Find out anything?”

  “Oh. Hey, Alex. Feel like earning your keep?”

  “Ooh, is it naughty?”

  Sam choked out something strangled. “I thought we… Alex—”

  “Sorry! Sorry, Sam. That was reflex. Ah, where should I meet you?”

  “No, I’m fine, Alex just surprised me.” I heard Lara’s voice, indistinct in the distance. “Yeah, she’s coming. No, I haven’t had a chance to tell her, I—Okay. I’m doing it, relax.” There was a click of a door shutting. “Lara’s in a twist about this. How fast can you get to the precinct? Never mind. Skip that. Got a pen handy? Take down this address.”

  I pulled my helmet off and breathed in the salt air. There was a fishy undercurrent that told me I was near docks. I was at the address Sam had directed me to, or at least as close as I could guess. I couldn’t actually see the ocean from where I was, but the cranes towering over the stacked cargo containers were a giveaway.

  I was parked on the verge a few dozen yards from a rolling gate granting entry to the storage depot. Razor wire ran along the top of the gate and along the ten-foot fence. Weirdly surreal ice plant growths blanketed the stubborn dunes along the road and oozed green juice where my scooter’s tires had crushed them.

  Sam and Lara were nowhere in sight. I locked my helmet to the back of my scooter and unzipped my jacket. The ride down had been chilly, but now that I wasn’t moving, the inevitable southern-California sunlight was starting to make me sweat.

  The gate rattled open a few feet and a uniformed guard came sauntering out toward me. His uniform made him look as close to a cop as possible without carrying a gun or a badge. I watched him come impatiently, then when he was almost close enough to call out to me, I lifted my phone up and called Sam.

  “Hey, you can’t just park here. Didn’t you read the sign?”

  I held up a finger as I listened to Sam’s phone ring. The guard huffed to himself, but stopped a few paces off and waited for me to finish with an air of irritated politeness. Sam’s phone went to voicemail and I sighed and hung up.

  “Can I help you?” I asked the guard.

  “Yeah, you can move your vehicle. Sign says no stopping any time.”

  I nodded. “Is this private property?”

  The answer was obvious, but I wanted to watch the guard squirm before he admitted that it was not. “No, but—”

  “I’m not leaving my vehicle, so I won’t be obstructing any traffic. Anything else I can help you with?”

  “It doesn’t matter, the zoning says—”

  “Look, guy, I’m here on police business, okay? I’m not hurting anything, so why don’t you go back to your booth and jerk off to porn, or whatever it is you rent-a-cops do when you’re not harassing people.”

  The guard flushed and I wondered how close I had come to the truth. “Do you have a badge?”

  “No. I’m not a cop.”

  My admission restored some of his deflated ego and he straightened his shoulders and renewed his glare. “If you don’t move this vehicle, I’ll have to call my supervisor, and he will call the police.”

  “Oh, would you? That’d be great.”

  I heard the thrum of an SUV engine behind me and I twisted around to see Sam pull onto the verge behind me. Ice plant popped and crunched beneath his tires as he came to a stop. Sam killed the engine and got out of the SUV. He came to stand next to me, his arms folded and a look of bored surety on his face.

  “Hey, Alex. Making friends?”

  “You know me,” I rolled my eyes.

  “Sir,” the guard sputtered, “you can’t park here. The right-of-way has to remain unobstructed—”

  Sam fished his wallet out of his sports jacket pocket and flipped it open to show the guard his badge. “I’m Detective Friday. We called ahead. We and our consultant here,” he nodded at me, “have business inside the depot.”

  The guard looked between us, trying and failing to find something else to protest about.

  “Told you,” I shrugged at the guard. “Nice timing, Sam. I’ll follow you in.”

  Sam went back to the SUV and pulled out onto the road. I gave the guard a little salute before pulling out after Sam, leaving the guard to walk back to the booth on his own. After a brief conversation between Sam and the booth attendant at the gate, another guard came out to roll the gate aside, and we moved on into the depot yard unhindered.

  We didn’t get far before Sam pulled into a parking lot outside an office building composed of a few double-wides stuck end-to-end. I parked next to Sam and climbed of my scooter. I thought about getting out my tonfa from the seat compartment, then decided against it. I didn’t know what we were doing here, and carrying weapons might hurt more than it helped.

  Sam got out of the SUV, stretched and took a deep breath of the crisp air. “Ah… I miss the ocean sometimes.”

  I sniffed the air. The salt wind was mostly obscured by the scent of oil and the sharp, green smell of the ice plant pulp ground into the SUV tires. “Yeah, delightful. What are we doing here, Sam?”

  He dropped his arms and grinned at me. “Our research efforts paid off. In the last year, there were no less than four separate incidents that took place here, at these docks. Each time we found payments to victims shortly afterward.”

  “This place is a hotbed?” I glanced back at my scooter and thought about going for my tonfa again. “Do we have a warrant or are we just poking around?”

  “So, get this. We checked the traffic with the port authority, and each time an incident was logged, MSC Bari has been in port.”

  “Let me guess. Bari is in port today?”

  “It’s almost like you are a PI or something. We don’t have permission to board, but we can, as you put it, poke around.”

  I felt a thrill of unease go through me. “Is this a good idea?”

  “Lara doesn’t think so, but we don’t have anything else to go on and the captain is livid.”

  “Yeah, I think I’m with Lara on this one. You armed?”

  Sam pulled open his sports jacket enough to flash me the leather of his armpit holster. “Why, you think we’ll run into our friend?”

  “Honestly? I have no idea. It’s just a hunch, but I doubt the dates logged in those journals are when they went out for Mexican food. Whatever we find, I don’t think it’ll be friendly.”

  “This might come as a surprise, Alex, but we’re not in the business of busting friendly people. Besides, what are you worried about? You’re as tough as they come. Tougher.”

  I scowled down at the ground. “It doesn’t work that way, Sam. I haven’t had sex since we… I’m running on empty.”

  “We, what?” Lara asked from behind me.

  I winced and Sam looked up to Lara with a bland smile on his face. “She’s probably talking about a month or so ago when she broke up with that guy… what’s his name?”

  Thank God for Sam’s quick mind. And impressively smooth lying face. I picked up where Sam left off and ran with it. “David,” I said the first name that came to my head. Always better to tell the truth as much as possible when you lie. It’s easier to keep track of your stories that way. “It’s been longer than that though. I haven’t gotten properly laid since my birthday.”

  “Shit. I’d have the itch too if I went two months dry.” Lara sighed. “Try to stay focused, you two. And keep it professional, hm?”

  “Sure thing, boss,” Sam said.

  “I’m going to go inform the superintendent where we’re heading. Shouldn’t be a problem, but its always easier to play nice with the locals.” Lara started off toward the office building.

  “Uh, Detective Moreno,” I called after her. “Maybe not be too specific? Never know who is c
ooperating with whom.”

  Lara frowned back at me, but gave a small nod. “Understood, Alexandra.”

  “You think the super is in cahoots?” Sam asked once Lara was out of sight.

  I heaved a sigh and rubbed at my forehead. “You could have warned me she was right behind me.”

  “And done what, signaled with semaphore?”

  “Okay. Point taken. I don’t know, Sam. I’ve no idea what is going on in a place this big, but the super probably knows if there’s anything strange happening. If there was, it’d be easy to, ah, convince the super to look the other way. I just have a bad feeling about this, is all.”

  Sam rolled a shoulder. “We’re not port authority or customs. I don’t think the super would cover up something on the scale of homicide.”

  “Depends on what is doing the killing,” I said darkly. “Would you rat out a monster if you were in his position? Not a scary guy, but a literal monster.”

  “I take it that isn’t a rhetorical question…?” Sam’s mouth creased into a frown.

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know why we’re here! What were the incidents about?”

  “We couldn’t find any news stories that fit, but we found payments to the account of a Mason Holt that coincided with log entries with his initials.”

  “Who’s Mason Holt?”

  “He’s dead. One of the victims in October’s murders.”

  “We don’t know why we’re here, in other words.”

  “No, but Holt was doing something here. Lara spun it close enough to the judge’s liking that we were granted a warrant for any landed containers. If it is something on the Bari we’re out of luck.”

  “Unless we have probable cause?”

  “Maybe, but that will be Lara’s call.”

  “Fine. If Holt matches the patterns, I guess he was here on some sort of altruistic mission. Four times, and each time something having to do with the Bari.” I rubbed my forehead then shrugged.

  “Pretty vague, I know, but we had to act now. MSC Bari is scheduled to cast off with the tide.”

  I glanced up at the sun, now creeping close to the horizon. It was after four and we had maybe twenty minutes of daylight left. “When is that?”

  “We have four hours. Bari casts off at 8:30.”

  Lara stepped out of the office and glanced up at the setting sun before flipping the collar of her jacket up. The cold breeze coming off the ocean was turning into a cutting wind. If I hadn’t been wearing my riding jacket, I would have been shivering.

  “You catch Alexandra up?” Lara asked when she reached us.

  Sam shrugged. “As much as I could. Did you find out anything from the super?”

  “Only that Bari is doing some last-minute loading. We’ll find her down at slip 19.”

  Lara had a printed map that led us toward slip 19. We would have gotten hopelessly lost without it, but following the diagram of the depot and making educated guesses about the landmarks got us to the container storage outside slip 19 without too much wasted time. Still, crossing the depot on foot took us the better part of an hour and it was full dark by the time we reached our destination.

  MSC Bari was a medium-sized container ship, according to the paperwork from the superintendent. That didn’t mean it was small; Bari was massive, more like an aircraft carrier than what my mind had suggested a cargo ship would look like. It was the size of three football fields laid end to end, and from where I stood, I couldn’t make out the aft of the vessel. The black-painted hull towered overhead, three or four stories above the surface of the water. A superstructure in the middle of the ship soared even higher, almost as high as the loading cranes. On the flank of the ship, the bold lettering “MSC” proudly declared that we had the right ship even before Sam pointed out the relatively tiny Bari on the bow.

  “She’s riding light,” Lara said after we all had had a moment to take in the size of the ship.

  “The waterline?” Sam asked.

  Lara nodded. “When she’s fully loaded, the black paint is level with the water.”

  There was a band of reddish paint below the black hull, presumably the waterline the two detectives were discussing. I didn’t fail high school physics, but I suspect my C grade was my teacher taking pity on me more than a reflection of my actual aptitude on the subject. I grasped the concept of heavier loads making the ship sink lower in the water, but that was about it. Riding light or not, it still looked like there were several hundred containers stacked on the Bari’s deck.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  Even Lara seemed at a loss. The ship was so much bigger than anything I had prepared myself for. Searching a vessel of that size would be virtually impossible for the three of us. We’d need an army of police officers, and that didn’t take into account the sheer multitude of containers on the deck. In places the containers were stacked six high and two dozen across. Having the cranes unload every container so we could look inside would take a week.

  No wonder the judge didn’t give us permission for that.

  “We’re not going to find out anything standing out here,” Sam said.

  I couldn’t help but feel like we were wasting our time. It would take weeks to get familiar with the shipping yard, and even longer to be able to spot when something was out of place. The two detectives looked like they were having the same second thoughts I was. Still, we started down the access road. Exercise in futility or not, it was the only lead we had.

  As we grew closer to the Bari the smell of seaweed and fish grew stronger and I could hear the slap of the waves between the ship and the concrete dock. The gathering dark made it difficult to see details at a distance, but it looked like a gangway had been lowered from the ship down to the dock. A few figures moved about, clustered around three or four shipping containers.

  I heard the vehicles behind us, but paid them no mind until headlights came around the corner and swept over us, casting our shadows into sharp relief in front of us. Sam caught my elbow and dragged me to the side of the access road a moment before the first vehicle rolled past us.

  A fleet of SUVs drove by us, all identical black Escalades. I counted six vehicles before the last had gone by, leaving a drifting haze of dust in their wake. They drew up around the gangway and in the light of their headlights, we could see more figures climbing out of the vehicles.

  “That wasn’t suspicious at all,” Sam muttered.

  “We still need probable cause,” Lara reminded him.

  “Well, we’re not going to get it from here,” Sam pointed out.

  “There’s got to be like ten people down there,” I said doubtfully. “If they’re unsavory types, we’d be horribly out-numbered.”

  “Just because they drive Escalades doesn’t mean they’re cartel,” Lara rolled her eyes. “Come on. We’re wasting time.”

  “What she meant to say,” Sam grinned down at me after Lara had started off down the road, “is that they’re not always cartel.”

  I saw him reach into his jacket and check his sidearm. My nagging feeling of apprehension grew. “Please tell me you’re joking,” I grumbled.

  “Ever since Nixon started the war on drugs, this kind of big-container shipping fell out of vogue. Too much liability having all your product in one container. I’m almost positive we’re not walking into a drug deal.”

  That was a little comforting, but it wasn’t drug dealers that I was worried about running into. As we got closer, I started hearing shouting coming from the cluster of vehicles. I shared a look with Sam and we broke into a jog.

  I fell into a soft-footed walk as we neared the clustered SUVs and crept up behind one of them. In the focused flood of the collective headlights, I saw three men, all heavily tattooed wherever I could see exposed skin. They were engaged in a furious argument with the SUV drivers and wouldn’t have heard me approaching if I had came running up with bells on.

  Sam grabbed my arm and hissed in my ear, “Alex. Look inside.”

  I tore
my eyes from the argument and peered into the rear window of the SUV. I had to squint to make out the details, but then something shifted and I suddenly made sense out of what I was looking at. The back seats had been lowered and a narrow gurney took up half the floor space. A woman was strapped to the gurney, with an IV bag hung from the coat hook over the door.

  Next to the gurney, two people huddled, handcuffed and hobbled, with blindfolds on. One of the two people was straining against his chains, rocking back and forth as he struggled with some internal agony. Both of his hands were freshly bandaged and blood was beginning to seep through the palms.

  My heart stuttered in my chest and I grabbed Sam by the front of his shirt and dragged him down behind the SUV. I pressed a finger to my lips when Sam looked at me in alarm, then leaned around the corner of the SUV to look back toward the argument.

  Those weren’t dresses the drivers were wearing—they were robes. It looked like Tovarrah had made her move against the Satanist church. By some terrible stroke of accidental luck, we had found the fleeing Satanists and their possessed victims.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “What is it, Alex?” Sam asked softly.

  I turned, looking for Lara, and found her crouching behind an SUV next to ours. She had sunk down on her haunches when I had ducked out of sight, and she looked a question in my direction.

  “This is bad,” I whispered frantically to Sam. “Really bad.”

  “Are they smuggling invalids out of the country?” Sam asked.

  I shook my head. There was no time to explain things to Sam’s satisfaction. Hell, I was still trying to come to grips with the situation myself. “No. Yes. In a way.” I straightened up enough to look through the back window of the SUV again. The possessed man with stigmata was groaning to himself. Fresh abrasions circled his wrists where he had rubbed the skin raw against the handcuffs. “Shit.”

  “Talk to me, Alex,” Sam said urgently. He had his hand inside his jacket, already reaching for his gun.