Returning Fire

by Frans Harmon

  Gavin’s brown eyes narrowed as he gave her a thin smile. Anstice sensed an attitude, a taunt of sorts, as if anyone, not MBI associated, were backwater amateurs.

  Gavin pocketed his ID. “Look, we appreciate your quick response and covering this incident for us until we could get here. Lansing is a bit of a—”

  Anstice cocked her head. “Excuse me, covering? Detective, this is Detroit, not a rural township. Detroit has suffered many things, but we can still investigate our murders.”

  Gavin held up his hands. “I have no doubt. Lansing thinks highly of DPD’s Major Crimes. However, Lieutenant Governor Meiler was here and thought we should be also. So, for now, could you just bring me up to speed.”

  “Fine, do you know Mace Franklyn?”

  “Of him. He’s a consultant, works directly for Director Ashford.”

  “Well, they just carted him away to be checked out at Chandler. He was searching for Sharlene McCrary.”

  “The activist singer?”

  “Yes, she was due to perform, and her staff said she was missing. Mace thought she was in this car and approached it. Fortunately for him, that guy over there reached the car before Mace did.”

  “Have you verified the victim inside?”

  “I was about to take a look.”

  The low pulsed growl of a diesel drew their attention over to the carriage entrance. The tall entrance doors hacked away by the firefighters now provided access for a flatbed truck.

  “My crime scene or not, it looks like your FSD boys are coming for this mess.”

  “Well, before they do, shall we do it together then?”

  “Sure.”

  They approached the burned auto. Anstice focused on the body, put the back of her hand to her face adjusting to the coppery stench, and pulled a pair of latex gloves from her jacket pocket. Gavin seemed more interested in the vehicle. Noticing Gavin wasn’t putting on gloves, she yanked another pair from her pocket. “MBI short on supplies, or are you always this prepared?”

  “I was at dinner when I got the call.”

  Anstice nodded and reached over the yellow tarp and drew it back. Underneath, a blackened torso with splayed legs and fingerless arms contorted towards the chest. Sightless coal-black voids stared back at her from a skull devoid of features, and now a charred orb.

  “Going to be tough to identify, Gavin, whichever forensic lab gets the body.”

  Gavin was intent on smelling the melted mass of the wreckage. Anstice thought he was olfactory challenged. “This was no random act. Enhanced Napalm, triethylaluminium accelerant was used to burn at a higher temperature.”

  “That is some nose. You an explosives expert.”

  "No, just seen this before. Car fire like this is a known serial killer's hallmark. Someone we are pursuing, and that is why from here on, this is an MBI case. We'll keep you in the loop, of course."

  Anstice smirked and shook her head in reluctant agreement.

  The truck backed to within a few yards of the wreckage, its flatbed tilted towards the floor. “And I think they targeted Mace.”

  Anstice replaced the tarp. “Why do you think that?”

  “Mace was once a special agent, FBI, claimed he knew the identity of a serial killer, dubbed the Vulcan by the press. He had a similar MO. But then Mace had some sort of breakdown, killings stopped, and then the Vulcan went silent. That was five years ago.”

  “So, you think the Vulcan did this?”

  Gavin coiled his face into a sneer. “He did, and when I get him, which I will, he’ll pay.”

  Chapter Five

  Sharlene was aware of her being tossed back and forth, her feet dragging across the ground. Questions rolled through her consciousness, intensifying and fading, like waves in a heavy sea. Why was the door locked? Why drive me? Why so tired? Do I care? The tiredness held her. It was a comforting grip. A spark in her brain summoned her attention. Where am I going? Oh, let me sleep? How much champagne did I drink?

  Sharlene couldn’t find the answers, her mind caged in a fog. Her arm scraped against rough concrete; the resulting shot of pain screamed wake up. She shook her head, the haze slipped two fingers from its grasp, and cracking her eyes, she saw a blur of white and gray. She heard heavy breathing, but it wasn’t her. She slipped from the force, holding her up.

  Down she was going down, falling, a feather-free, floating lower. It was okay. No, what’s happening. She attempted to focus and reconcile the blur. But her head fell resting on something cold and hard. She couldn’t lift it, too heavy to care. She felt it creeping over her, a dampness, a cold damp, like after winter rain. A wisp of air passed over her carrying a pungent smell that stung her nose. She twisted away; every inch was an improvement.

  She opened her eyes and tried to focus, but just lay staring. She heard heavy breaking. Wherever she was, she wasn’t alone. Bulky, dull brown shoes stood together inches from her face.

  Sharlene spun over scooting on all fours, her skirt bunching up at her waist, she plastered herself against a wall. A stout man in black denim stood in the shoes. His arms and legs were thick and taut. He remained unmoving, a life-sized gargoyle.

  “Mr. Bigelow? What… where are… why?”

  His face, a large beak-like nose encased in a shaggy ring of beard, large rounded orbs for eyes, dark and hungry for her fear, stared down. “Bigelow had an accident; he ran into my knife.” Then he smiled, a grin broad and long in the tooth, filled with a jagged mismatch of teeth each seemingly in a competition to supplant the other.

  Sharlene started shaking; her grogginess flushed away by fear-driven adrenalin. “What does he want with me? Am I still at MCS?

  “Security.”

  Bigelow, or whatever his name was, burst into laughter, then with a mocking pout, slowly shook his head.

  No security. Sharlene was fully conscious; reality throttled her brain. Kidnapped and against him, probably helpless.

  “Stay away from me. Don’t move, or I’ll… just don’t move, okay.”

  Her words were met with gurgling laughter, but he didn’t move. Sharlene swallowed hard, and with her back against the wall, inched herself upright, pulling down her skirt. He was no more than two steps away from her. To her left, she saw a stairway, the source of her earlier feeling of falling. Likely the way out. Fearing she would telegraph her intentions, she kept staring back at him. From her quick look, she judged it was four strides to reach the stairs. If she made it, she would have the advantage. Working the Stairmaster was central to her daily gym routine. Judging by his looks, he had massive strength, but at a cost to his endurance.

  Sharlene glanced toward the stairs and then back at him. What were the odds? She surveyed the room. The walls were naked concrete; there was a damp, musty smell, and no windows. The man stood among a row of metal tables. Pale blue sheets covered two the farthest away, their irregular surface sending chills surging through her. Were they bodies? A third closer but several paces away from the man had metallic tools on it. One she eyed would make a decent weapon, she thought.

  “What is this place? Why did you bring me here?”

  “Ulama has need of you.”

  “Ulama? Who the hell is this Ulama?

  From the shadows beyond the tables came a voice, calm, measured, almost mechanical. “I am he.”

  Ulama rolled into the light, his motion jerky, suggesting mechanical movement. He was sitting in a wheelchair and dressed in loose-fitting black pants and shirt. His face, hidden under a turban with an end wrapped across it, pronounced an oddity. The visible area around his eyes was dark, but his eyes, catching the light, were bright, burning. He rolled closer but remained in the shadows. “Did you fail me?”

  “No, no, my Ulama, I did just as you instructed.”

  “He lives.”

  “Not for long, my Ulama, I have prepared his car. I took it to the hospital, and it waits for him now.”

  The Ulama nodded. “Excellent, now we must prepare. Time is short.”

  Sharlene
didn’t know who they were talking about, but they weren’t paying attention to her. She had to act.

  She twisted, hugging the wall, lunging for the stairs. A raised fist plummeted towards her. Hands raised, she ducked her head, but he connected crashing down on her before another step driving her into the floor. Everything went black.

  Tugging at her blouse, impatient Sabriel, her blond curly-haired seven-year-old, was insistent. “Mommy, mommy, wake up.” Mommy’s here curly-cue, why do you think I’m sleeping? Adrift on a frozen pond, a smooth coldness caressed her, and then a warmth lifted her slipping off her blouse. Her bra hooks released, her blue sequined skirt drifted from under her. Sharlene’s nakedness immersed in an icy touch, summoned survival, adrenalin surged. Eyes failing to open, her head twisted, her leaden arms struggled to lift, to push away, but they raised only a body hair off the cold surface.

  Leather, the smell of it, a musky soap, landed smooth and broad over her legs, her thighs and chest restrained below her modest round breasts. A strap tightening against her throat spurred a gasp for air. Her eyes shot open.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Preparing you for my Ulama.”

  He dropped a terrycloth sheet over her.

  Warmth began to build into her limbs. She struggled against the restraints, but now rather than comforting, they cut into her flesh. If the Gargoyle covered her, he was not going to rape her, at least not now. If he were going to kill her, he would have done it already. No, he or they needed her for something. She needed help. She needed a friend, and the Gargoyle would have to do.

  “What is your name?”

  “No names.”

  “You remind me of a bear. So, Bear, why did you bring me here? Why am I tied down?”

  Bound to a cold surface, she explored using every nerve ending. She was on some sort of table. There was a space under her genitalia.

  Ulama sat watching, just outside her restrained view. “Already you are trying.”

  “I’m naked and strapped to a friggin table, what am I trying?”

  “To escape. Your spirit is strong. Allah will be pleased with the sacrifice.”

  “Sacrifice? What are you going to do you perv, throw me into a volcano?”

  She perceived Ulama was smiling, a thin smile, one of amusement, like watching a child at play. “That is the trouble with you corrupt Americans; you only think the way Hollywood tells you to think. I can tell you this, you will get your chance at freedom, but first, you must be purified.” He drifted back into the shadows. “Sar will attend to you now. You will awake with the others, and I’m sure they have much to tell you. But first, you must be purified.”

  Sar, the stout man, moved closer to Sharlene, rolling a tall medical pole with an IV bag hanging on it. He wiped her arm with an orange-red substance.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Cleansing your skin. We don’t want you to die… yet.”

  The IV line began to fill, Sharlene tried again to engage Sar. “What… what is this table used for?”

  “Embalming.”

  Chapter Six

  His body sedated; his mind continued processing the trauma.

  Mace raised his head off the littered MCS concourse floor. A gaping blue door attached like crumpled paper to a blackened car frame exposed a pair of legs. “Vulcan, Mace, he’s back. I thought you took care of that.” Said a voice in his head, that of his old FBI boss,

  A roar of flame brought his attention back to the car. The front seat a charred black hole, flames licking at every side. And the legs, unmoving, logs on a fire. No, there was something else; he had to get to her. They were Sharlene’s legs.

  He struggled to get up, but some invisible force, rubbery and tenacious in its grip, held him down. Then inexplicably, he was at her legs. Got to get her out. He grabbed her calves, but something didn’t make sense.

  The images jumped. He heard it before seeing. A deep hissing from flames hungry to add him to the pyre. Mace dove for the floor. A searing hand thrust over him, scooping him like leaves before the wind, tossing him across the floor.

  His face contorted with the dream, struggling against medical restraints, synapses holding memories from a different time fired.

  He was on a street corner. The corner street signs read 2nd Ave. and Ledyard St. A lone slender figure, head down, dark hoodie shrouding his face, weaved through the eddies of abandoned sculptured storefronts on Ledyard toward Cass Street. Mace knew the cloaked man not by sight, not by voice, but by what he did. A gust blew his hood back, his hairless head twisted, their eyes locked, and Mace called, “Jirair, Jirair.”

  Two hands, gentle, careful hands, tenderly pressed down on his chest. “Mr. Franklyn, Mr. Franklyn, you have a visitor.”

  Mace blinked open his eyes, a glaring blur of white assaulting as he sought to focus on the soothing voice. Why was I dreaming about Jirair? What brought that on?

  Gentle Hands had brown eyes and full lips, which rendered a welcoming smile. She wore a crisp gown of narrow pink stripes with her gray hair pulled tightly back.

  She removed the restraint on his arm, inspecting the tube taped below his elbow as she did. “Careful how you move this arm. You should stay awake for a while; we have taken you off the sedation.”

  “A visitor? What day is it, anyway?”

  “Monday,” she said, raising the bed and punching up his pillow, “you suffered a serious concussion, we kept you over the weekend to monitor the swelling; it went down.” She said and flashed a smile.

  “Good to hear,” he said and fell back into his pillow, his eyes closing. “Okay, I guess I’m ready to talk, show Helyn in.”

  “Helyn?”

  “Yes, my ex, my visitor.”

  “Sorry, no, it is the police,” she said, pulling a privacy curtain to the wall.

  There was another bed in the suite. It was empty. The nurse stepped into a hall separated from his room by a sliding glass door. She motioned to someone out of sight from Mace.

  A woman in a light gray jacket and matching pants appeared. Her tightly-curled red hair framed a slender face, pale but, oddly, also seeming to have a red hue.

  “Mace, hi, I’m Anstice Behrenhardt, detective Sergeant, Major Crimes, Detroit Police Department, do you remember? We talked briefly at Michigan Central.”

  Mace pushed himself up, bracing against the pillows. “Yeah, it’s fuzzy, but I remember your voice.”

  Anstice held up a plastic bag with Mace’s phone in it. “I wanted to return this. We downloaded your logs. The text message was from Sharlene’s phone, but we haven’t found it yet. At least detective Gavin McIlrath hasn’t said as much.”

  “Gavin?”

  She put the phone on a side table next to the bed. “Oh, I thought you knew him, detective Sergeant, MBI. They took over the investigation.”

  “Great. No, I don’t know Gavin, but I’m glad state is taking point on this. I have a lot of questions myself.”

  “Do you remember anything else about what happened?”

  “I thought MBI was lead.”

  Anstice scowled, her hazel eyes narrowed. “Yeah, well, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not a mushroom.”

  “Kept in the dark, okay, I get it.”

  “So…”

  Mace gave her a blank look.

  “So, walk me through it. What happened?”

  “Right. We were talking with Cassandra Meiler…”

  “We?”

  “Helyn was with me. Anyway, they wanted to talk about politics when Lesley, Sharlene’s assistant, tapped my shoulder and asked for my help in finding her boss.”

  “Sharlene McCrary.”

  “Yes, that’s right, Sharlene. I thought it was an over-reaction, but I was looking for a conversation exit. So I agreed to help. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have reacted that way. Sharlene wanted to meet because she thought someone was stalking her. I went backstage and found out she had walked off toward underground parking with some Ford rep to see her new Must
ang.”

  “Did you find it?”

  “No access to parking, and worse, it was locked from the inside, that’s when I got worried. Retracing my steps, I found the real Ford rep, Mr. Bigelow, bleeding, and buried under some boxes. I put pressure on his wound and texted my ex to get help. She took over. That’s when I recalled a blue Mustang creeping onto the concourse earlier, and that is where I headed.”

  “Directly to the car?”

  “Well, almost. A family and an ice cream vendor were close by where the Mustang was parked, and I don’t know why, but I got all border collie about it and just had to move them away. That may have cost that other fellow's life.”

  “John Black, the other body we found against the opposite wall from you.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. He approached the car, I tried to warn him off, saw the tripwire on the door, yelled, and dove for the concrete.”

  “Good thing you did. That and your leather jacket likely saved your life.”

  “Actually, I was fine at that point. It was the second explosion that nearly killed me.”

  “Second?”

  “Yes, I remember rolling over on my back and seeing the car about twenty feet away, legs protruding from the front seat. Thought it was Sharlene. I scrambled to her and grabbed her calves to pull her out. But hell erupted. Next thing I knew, I was lying against the wall, and this woman with her hair on fire was asking me questions.”

  Anstice smiled and nodded.

  Okay, I’m flirting. Why? Focus Mace boy, you still have to get straight with Helyn. But he admitted to himself, it felt good, a spark of freedom.

  “Did Bigelow say anything?”

  Mace shook his head. “Have you talked to him? Oh… he didn’t make it.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Anstice said, shaking her lowered head.

  They were silent for a moment, and then Mace cocked his head, looking at a blank space on the bed.

  “You remember something?” Anstice asked.

  “Yeah, he said, ‘shaggy.’”

  “Shaggy? That’s all?”

  Mace just nodded in reply.