“Dude. This is . . .” Parker gave a deep sigh.
Depressing. Exactly. Last one: the woman just getting into her car in the white blouse and baseball cap? She’s part of a network of hackers that operate just down the street in an old warehouse. Clipped 25k this morning from some old man’s account at Chase Bank in Kentucky—wiped out his entire savings—and she couldn’t care less.
“What? We shouldn’t just let that hang. We should report it to — ”
Leave it be, Parker. It’s already being investigated. And you’ve got bigger things to focus on. Are you ready?
“For what?”
Napoleon reached up and lightly touched Parker’s left temple. I want you to take a closer look now.
It was as if he’d slid a pair of 3D glasses, the kind you get at the movie theaters, over Parker’s eyes. The world took on a beige tint, as if Napoleon had shared the aura that usually surrounded him. Before Parker, the scenery was mostly the same, save a few things. He gasped.
Each of the people Napoleon had just pointed out had a friend.
Next to the hacker was a sinister looking tall creature with long fingers and small rounded horns on his head. On the back of the man with the hidden can of Old English, with its arms wrapped around the man’s neck and its legs wrapped around his waist, was a smaller demon with black leathery skin that glistened beneath the harsh overhead lights of the gas station. And the young girl with the upcoming college exam? A flock of tiny demons, brown in color, were weaving their way in between her legs as she walked.
You see?
“Y-y-yeah,” Parker stammered. “What the hell?”
Exactly. They each have what are called “escorts”.
Parker looked around further, but he saw no other demons. “Escorts, uh? So, why don’t I see any others?”
Because the other people around you, at least right now? They may be wrestling with sin, but that’s normal. That’s natural. Part of being human. It’s when you fall into that sin, headfirst, and let it become a part of you, that you’re assigned an escort.
“So, there’s not a demon assigned to everyone?”
Napoleon scoffed. No. No more than—contrary to all the stories you’ve heard—there’s a guardian angel assigned to everyone. That’d be impossible.
“Why?”
Six billion people on the planet? With six billion demons on one shoulder and six billion angels on the other? This isn’t a Bugs Bunny cartoon, Parker.
Inside the mini-mart, Klink was being rung up by the cashier. “So, why only some . . . ?”
Because some who live evil lives choose to return here to cause others to fall, while some of us who did our best not to succumb to that evil choose to stay. To help stop them.
“And if they’re called escorts . . . then what are you called?”
Sentinels.
“Incredible,” Parker said.
And the creature we’re trying to find now? He’s done a lot of damage. Twenty-nine souls so far.
Parker raised his eyebrows. “Twenty-nine?”
Yes. Individuals that he managed to keep close to the breast of sin all the way to their deaths. So that they died in sin. Smothered in it.
“Shit.”
Napoleon nodded. Yeah. It’s beyond tragic. And before you ask? Yes. That means that the twenty-nine sentinels assigned to stop him either failed or were dragged to hell and died, once and for all, with those they were charged to protect.
“What? I thought you were already dead.”
There was a small delay before Napoleon replied. There are two types of death, Parker. Mortal. He paused again. And eternal.
“I’m not even trying to understand that right now, man.”
Napoleon chuckled. Yeah. There’s a lot to get used to, for sure. Like moving through walls and not sleeping, to name a few.
Parker moved on. “Twenty-nine, though. Lucky you, then? You get to be number thirty?”
Yeah.
“So. I’m not sure I’m following, though. Because Charlie Henson is only ten. How in the world does a ten-year-old fall enough into sin to end up being assigned his own agent of hell?”
He doesn’t. It’s who has him, whose taken him, that has.
“So, we got a lesser demon and a perp?”
Napoleon nodded somberly. Which is why we’re working this case together.
Parker nodded. “Got it. We’ve both got someone to catch, here.”
Exactly.
“Great. Okay. But I’m curious about something else,” Parker rushed, seeing Klink coming out of the mini-mart and begin walking to the car. “Just really quick: what about Kyle Fasano and Hector Villarosa? How do they fit into the scheme of things?”
That’s different. They were what’s called “millionths”—humans chosen to give hope to other humans. By their missions and their sacrifice, if successful, they could give a million others engaged in the sin that caused them to fall to take . . . pause. To reflect. To pray for a way back out.
“So, are you working with any millionths?” Parker asked.
Napoleon laughed. Hard. Are you kidding? I’m just getting started.
“What does that mean?”
It means that I can barely keep your sorry ass in line and help one person at a time right now, much less be put in charge of someone who may have an effect on a million people!
“And so . . . now what?”
Now you go to the station and work your clues. I’m gonna start doing some of my own homework and I’ll catch up with you soon. And, well, I have training.
“Training?”
Napoleon held out his hands and, as if summoned by will, a blue, pulsating energy began to pool into baseball sized orbs. He caged them by partially closing his fingers and they vibrated on his palms.
Parker smirked. “Not your standard issue firearms, I take it?”
Napoleon smirked back. Nope. And before you ask? Yes, I do miss my Glock.
“You have time to do your homework, help on this case and train?” Parker said with a small measure of skepticism in his voice.
Napoleon looked at him somberly. Time? Yeah. That. Well, let’s just say time moves a little slower on this side of the veil, Parker.
Napoleon disappeared just as Klink opened the car door and leaned in. “Man, 9:00 p.m. and it’s still hot as hell out here.”
You have no idea, Parker thought. As the beige coloring in his eyes faded, the demon-escorts around him disappeared, but he knew they were still there, torturing their assigned victims in whispers and temptations.
But he was back to seeing the world mostly blind again.
And he wasn’t entirely unthankful for it.
Chapter 8
They were gathered in Captain Holland’s office in a loose football huddle, the cap at his desk, with Murillo and Klink to his right and Campos and Parker to his left. Having started their shifts at 7:00 a.m. that morning, they were now all nursing cups of coffee. Except for Campos, who’d discovered green tea after being shot and now—surely the oddest spokesman one could ever imagine for the product—swore by its health and antioxidant benefits. Parker didn’t know how Campos had been brought in on the case yet, but he was happy to see him.
Murillo was leaning against a file cabinet, his arms folded across his chest. “You want me to lead off?”
The cap nodded. “Why not?”
“Okay. It’s a chilly-ass neighborhood over on Oak Circle. Demographically it’s mostly lower-middle-income families. Which means—”
“Dual incomes and both parent’s working?” Parker chimed in.
“Yep. Very few stay-at-home moms. And none that live near Charlie’s house or the cut-through. So, all we have is the elderly lady, Mrs. Wanda Perkins. She was doing breakfast dishes while her husband was watching Good Morning America in the living room when she saw Charlie leave his house and head into the cut-through at around 8:45 a.m.”
“That’d be thirteen minutes after he exchanged messages on his Xbox with thi
s WillowWalker10 character,” Parker added.
“I’ve got more on him later,” the cap murmured.
The football huddle analogy was even more apt now. There was something about the intense, creative flow of people putting their minds together for a singular cause that created its own sort of energy. Instead of calling out plays they were calling out facts, but the idea was the same: find a way, anyway, to keep advancing the ball down the field. It was like this with any investigation, but with a missing child on the line, Parker noticed a definite shift in intensity.
Murillo rubbed a thick hand through his thinning hair. “Besides Mrs. Perkins? No one saw nothin’. Furthermore, these people all barely know each other, even though some of them have lived on the street fifteen, twenty years. Some are acquaintances, at best. No Fourth of July block parties. No after school babysitting. None of them go to the same church. Nothing.”
“Any idea as to why?” Klink asked.
“Sign of the times,” the cap sighed.
“Good fences make good neighbors, maybe?” Parker said with a shrug. He’d read that somewhere.
“Good God, Parker,” the cap said. “You? Quoting Robert Frost? The next time that happens, I’m going to fall over, I swear.”
Parker shrugged.
“What?” Murillo said, obviously thrown off.
“Sun-na-nitch, Murillo,” Campos said. “The gringos are talking poetry, man. Let ’em be.”
The cap looked just as stunned that Campos knew who Robert Frost was. Meanwhile, Parker still didn’t know who the hell they were talking about and it was obvious that Murillo didn’t care.
“Whatever,” Murillo said as he twisted up his mouth in a frustrated sort of grimace. “It’s weird. The neighborhood thing? I mean . . . part of it I think is cultural. You got whites, Hispanics and Asians all culled together on this street. Some of the older whites, like Mrs. Perkins, have seen the neighborhood go full circle from all white Hollywood-fringe back in the sixties to full-on Mexican gang territory twenty years later, to the gentrification that’s going on now from all the hipsters squeezing out of Los Feliz and Silverlake.”
“And the Asians?” Klink asked.
“No idea where they came from, but regardless . . . there’s not going to be a ton of hanging out together between these groups due to age and life experience, I guess. But, I mean, c’mon . . . not a single kid’s birthday that merited a brief visit or get-together? It’s odd.”
“So, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that of the twenty neighbors on that street? No one is more than a passing acquaintance to the other . . . and nobody knows anything of substance to give us something to sink our teeth into.”
The enemy works best in division. In separation, Napoleon said, his voice coming to Parker from only a few feet away. Parker imagined that someday he wouldn’t jump a bit when this happened. But he wasn’t there yet. He looked around cautiously, and seeing that no one had noticed, he gave a subtle nod to his old partner.
Meanwhile, Murillo continued. “All we have is what info the uniforms were able to get from one of them, that Charlie’s mom and dad moved in and then he left to go back to Missouri and that Charlie was a quiet kid that kept to himself.”
“And that he was picked on.”
“Yeah.”
“So. Gossip. That’s something.”
Gossip is the oral form of lust, Parker. Just as selfish. Just as hurtful.
“Sure. But it was low level and it stopped there. Or they all say it did. I mean, it’s fishy.”
“Why?” the cap said in a prodding voice.
“Most of us have seen Charlie’s mom, Ms. Henson. She’s not a supermodel but she’s attractive enough. But no one saw any cars coming or going to her house, nothing but her own car in the driveway. No visitors. No friends. No strange face watering her lawn out front or bringing over takeout to watch a movie. Zilch. There are a few single guys in the area that I interviewed; none of them tried to hit on her. Most of the neighbors say she was quiet and a bit standoffish. But beyond that? They don’t know where she works, how old she is, if she’s from Nebraska or Sweden. Nothing. In fact, getting back to the Asian neighbors?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“That’s the only time the neighborhood could get together: to stop an Asian family from adding on to their small home. Two parents, four kids. They buy a small two-bedroom thinking they can expand, because, well, according to Mrs. Perkins, others in the neighborhood have with no issues. But this time? Nope. They shut that family down. And this even after it came out that the mom was fighting breast cancer. No matter. The family sold and moved away.”
“That’s some cold shit,” Klink said as he put his coffee down on top of the file cabinet and stretched his neck against his shoulders.
“Okay. So that’s it? We got dick outta the neighborhood?”
“Pretty much. Yeah,” Murillo said with a shrug.
“Okay. Well. As most of you have seen, our valiant desk warrior Campos here asked to be in on this. So, I turned him loose on data. And?” the cap said, looking at Campos.
“Ms. Henson and her husband were married back in 1997. She was eighteen. He was twenty. Both from Missouri. They were married nine years before the divorce. Charlie is their only child. Neither went to college, though Mr. Henson landed a gig as an underwater welder making solid coin. He came here to work on a project in San Pedro for his employer, Rodenzieg Shipping. I talked to him by phone. He knows about Charlie and he’s flying in tomorrow. He told me over the phone that the move here was supposed to be temporary. A one-to-two-year thing. But Ms. Henson fell in love, first with LA and then with some dude at her job.”
“Whoops . . .” Klink said with genuine surprise in his voice.
Campos nodded while the rest of them shook their heads.
“Turn over enough rocks, you’re bound to find a worm,” Parker said.
“Yeah. Well. He says the lover was Ms. Henson’s manager at her company. Totally inappropriate affair.”
“Is there ever an appropriate one?” the cap asked.
“Pfft. True,” Campos said. He scratched at his ear and continued, “So the Hensons decide to go their separate ways.”
“Just like that?” Klink asked.
“Just like that.”
“Hmm.”
“Mr. Henson says he never loved her anyway. Only married her after she got knocked up and had Charlie. He was . . . um . . . happy to bail.”
Murillo raised his eyebrows. “Happy?”
“To bail on his own son?” Parker said a little incredulously.
“Yeah . . . well,” Campos said, hesitation in his voice.
“What?” the cap asked with genuine curiosity in his voice.
Campos cleared his throat. “Right before he got off the phone with me? He said he wasn’t even sure Charlie was his, that Ms. Henson was seeing more than one guy back in Missouri when they were dating.”
The room grew heavy.
“Shit,” Parker said.
“Yep.”
“Is it just me,” Klink said sadly, “or did our little story just turn into a white trash version of a romance novel?”
“It’s not just you,” the cap and Campos said at the same time.
No one said jinx as the room grew quiet and the clock on the wall ticked its seconds away.
The cap looked tired as he sipped his coffee. He looked at Parker. “Well? What’d you and Klink come up with?”
Parker sipped his coffee in return and let it fly. “HotGirl57’s real name is Ava Thomas. Twenty-one. Single.”
“Prime of life,” Campos said to no one in particular.
Since he’d been on his first tour in Afghanistan on his twenty-first birthday, Parker couldn’t relate. Instead, he pushed on. “She lives alone in an apartment across town. Finishing up online college classes at Cal State LA while working downtown full-time as a graphic designer. Three-point-five GPA. Dean’s list. She’s a gamer.”
“I’ll say,” the cap replied with raised eyebrows before he betrayed his age by adding, “Dean’s list while working full-time? That’s a gamer, all right.”
Parker froze. That wasn’t what he meant but he didn’t want to embarrass the cap, so he played it off with a shrug. “Yeah. And in more ways than one. She was into Xbox. So, she’s a video gamer, too.”
“That’s gotta be unique.”
“Not as rare as it used to be, but yeah, still a bit unusual.”
Klink joined the conversation. “She says she knows Charlie from online play only. She never met him in person. Knows little about his personal life and actually thought he was older than he was.”
Parker nodded. “Yep. Only realized after talking to us that his questions about girl problems were probably questions about how to protect his mom.”
“Here we go,” the cap said, shaking his head. “Go on.”
“He said he had a girl who was a friend. That her boyfriend was grabbing her and pushing her around.”
“And Charlie wanted advice on how to help her?”
“Yeah. Or reach her or something. She was depressed. Sullen. Withdrawn. That sort of stuff.”
“Poor kid.”
Parker faded away for a second, remembering Charlie’s bedroom, the emptiness of it. The way it felt like a box of loneliness. The memory threw him off and it took a second for him to realize that everyone in the room was waiting for him to continue. He cleared his throat. “Anyway. I was gonna get into asking about the other people they played with online, maybe even this WillowWalker10, but since she handed over her Xbox without a fight, I figured to play it low-key for now.”
“Smart move. Especially if this Willow dude is a friend of hers.”
Scattered nods filled the room.
“Anyway. The tech guys have that Xbox now, too.”
“Good. Klink? You guys went to see the bully next. What about him?”
“Oh, boy. He’s a piece of work. Troubled kid. Troubled home. Dad’s in jail. Mom’s working double shifts some days to feed him and his two siblings. You could feel the frustration in that house from the street.”
Chalk Man Page 5
