Dead Mann Running (9781101596494)

by Petrucha, Stefan

  “My mouth can’t foam. And don’t you tell me you trust that government questionnaire. Not after they took Jonesey.”

  Her face went a little sad. She’d liked Jonesey, too. “You said yourself he tried to eat you in an alley.”

  “He got better.”

  “You’re also the one who told me once they go, it’s only a matter of time.”

  “Something I heard on TV.”

  “Watching your girlfriend again? The one you won’t speak to even though she got you out of jail?”

  “I heard that a long time ago. Good Morning Fort Hammer, I think.”

  She hung the coat on a stand and came closer, which didn’t take much. My office, the front room, the half bath, and the walk-in supply closet she used as a bedroom would all fit in a stretch limo.

  She gave me a somber once-over. “Your memory’s getting better.”

  “Because you drill me every day.”

  She slapped my shoulder. “Every other day. You know that.”

  “It’s a fucking game, Misty. Passing doesn’t make me safe any more than failing made Jonesey dangerous. Look how many idiots get driver’s licenses. That’s a test, ain’t it?”

  “You are one big dead baby, Hessius Mann. I’m trying to hold on to hope here, that’s what keeps it from happening, right? Or do you enjoy acting like a piece of furniture? I can’t even feel comfortable going out with Chester for a few hours with you…” Her voice trailed off.

  She had more energy and I was getting slower. We’d become a bad combination. That much was obvious even to me.

  “About the boy toy, I’ve been meaning to tell you…”

  “He has a name,” she said. In a huff, she turned her back, walked off and grabbed a towel.

  “So do I. He ever use it, or is he still calling me it?”

  I was trying to be nice, but couldn’t manage it. I could say chakz have trouble with emotions, but really, I was being an asshole.

  “He’s working on it. It’d help if you’d talk to him. Even nod at him.”

  I could see from a mirror that she’d scrunched her face, sending rainwater from her hair down her cheeks, into the towel. The smile she came in with was gone. Great, now I’d ruined her evening.

  I raised a hand to slow her down. “That’s what I’m trying to say. I think I misjudged you two. I mean, I thought he needed sex and you needed a favor. Maybe that’s how it started, but, it doesn’t look that way anymore. You’re still going to meetings, and more often than not, you look…happy.”

  The smile came back in a flash. I didn’t know whether to feel good or bad about it.

  “So I have your permission to date him now, Dad?”

  “No, but he’s got a salary and a real place. If you wanted to leave…”

  When she turned back I finally noticed that the ice green blouse she wore looked new. She wasn’t unhappy again, but she was serious. “And what would happen to you if I did? We’re in this together, remember? How can I think about moving out when all you ever do is…what the fuck happened to the window?”

  I was wondering when she’d notice.

  “Oh, that. An arm punched its way out.”

  “Your desk is soaked.” She rushed toward it with the towel and nearly tripped over the briefcase. “And what the hell is this?”

  A few drops of rain fell from her to the case.

  “The arm dropped it off before it jumped out the window.”

  She laughed, and then stopped. “Seriously? Have you been drinking? Can you drink?”

  “I can go through the motions.”

  She looked back down at the case. “What’s in it?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “You didn’t open it?”

  “If I did, I’d know.”

  She lifted the case and plopped it on my desk, mushing a few soggy bills in the process. “What if it’s a job, something to work on? Better yet, something that pays.”

  Before I could answer, she flipped the latches.

  “Misty, don’t…”

  It opened easily. Whatever was inside bathed her in a quiet blue light.

  “Fine. Have it your way, Pandora. What’s in it?”

  She twisted the case away. “You want to see, get off your leathery ass.”

  “Misty…” I groaned and shifted, planning to get up. I wasn’t fast enough. She picked up the case and headed toward the front room.

  “Now you have to walk for it. Shamble for me, zombie-man.”

  “Don’t play with that thing! What if it’s poison? Remember the nerve gas?” She stopped. “And if there’s any fingerprints, you’re ruining them.”

  Gently, she put it back on the desk where I could see. Inside, it was mostly foam, the edges stained a sickly brown from the dirt and water that’d seeped in. In the center were two glass vials, each nearly filled with a clear, bluish liquid. The streetlight outside the window had given them the glow. We stood there staring like we were watching an interesting movie.

  Misty broke the silence. “You really think it could be poison?”

  “Doesn’t matter what I think. It is what it is. Best guess? Drugs. Drugs is always a good guess. A stash swiped off a dealer by a stupid chak who didn’t get away in one piece.”

  “Wasn’t there a chak living down the block that was just a head, torso and arm?”

  I prodded the foam. “No arms. One leg. Vernon Gray. They took him to the camps a month ago after he tried to fill out the test with his foot.”

  She gave me a look. I knew what it meant. “Yeah, I remember some things.”

  “So, what’re you going to do about it?”

  “Me? Not a damn thing. Cops would never come here, but you could call Chester. Then it’ll be the police’s problem.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “What? You want me to taste it?”

  “You’re a detective. You could try, you know, detecting.”

  “I am! Handing it over to the cops is the smart move! Stop being so damn cheery and get realistic. It’s a briefcase with two glass vials. What else am I supposed to detect? I could yank the foam out and see if there’s anything underneath it, but if the blue stuff is dangerous some of it could get loose.”

  She crossed her arms. “That case was brought to you for some reason. Are you really going to just give it away?”

  “Why not? If a bullet’s got your name on it, does that mean you shouldn’t duck?”

  She turned away. “Have it your way. I’ll call Chester.”

  We were stuck in a stupid dance, but I didn’t know how to get out of it. I didn’t want to drag her down, but I didn’t want her dragging me up.

  As she went into the front room to get her cell, I couldn’t help looking at the vials again. Unmarked, clear glass, real thick. Could be from a high-security lab or a dollar store. Damn.

  A frigid blast turned me back to the window. I grabbed the towel she’d left on the desk, balled it up and stuffed it into the broken pane. The effort gave me a view of the roof across the alley.

  Something moved.

  It was probably a shadow, but I shuddered just the same. If I were the melodramatic type, I’d say it looked more like a figure that’d been watching, and now it’d seen enough. After all, an arm had just brought me a present. Who knew what else was out there tonight?

  3

  If a killer hides in the dark and no one sees him, does he make a sound?

  My eyes trolled the roofs, the brick sills, the broken awnings, all the angles that made up our little chak-slum. It was lively out there, a real Broadway show. Heavy drops sparked the edges of everything, briefly lighting whatever they hit. Other than the rain, nothing moved. But my body wouldn’t accept that we were alone.

  I called to Misty, “Any luck?”

  “Left a message.”

  She went back to drying her hair, unconcerned.

  “Any other way to get ahold of him?”

  “What’s your hurry?”

  I looked at the window
again. The towel had reduced the wind to a whistle. Water meandered on the remaining panes, drawing tiny rivers. “Probably nothing. I’ve just got a feeling that sooner would be better than later. The arm was kinda antsy…”

  She stuck her head in the doorway. “The arm was antsy? Was it fidgeting?”

  “It wasn’t like it could do much else. I was just thinking. You like it when I think, right? If the blue crap’s important enough to drag up here, it may be important to someone else, and they may come looking.”

  She walked in and stared at the open case. “Drug dealers, huh? What kind of dealers would bother with such a fancy case?”

  She had a point. It was leather, insulated, the foam neatly cut to match the shape of the glass. The vials had been given an awful lot of care.

  “I don’t know,” I said, but just to contradict myself I started rattling off ideas. “Maybe it’s a concentrate, ready to be cut for street sales. Angel dust can be liquid, and there’s hashish oil. That’s usually brown but it can be clear. Blue? For all I know it’s liquid explosive, heisted from a black market arms dealer.”

  She cracked a grin. Not the reaction I expected.

  “Explosions are funny now?”

  “No, but…an arm stealing from an arms dealer…”

  I don’t have to breathe, but I exhaled through my nose to show her I wasn’t amused. “I’m not kidding about getting it out of here. Unless the laws of nature got revised again, and nobody told me, at some point that arm had a body. Something split them up.”

  I closed the case, clicked the latches, and looked for a place to hide it. One pile of crap looked a lot like another. I could shove it under something and never find it again myself. I picked up a pile of laundry, then thought better of it and tried to kick it under the couch. Chak clothes need so much bleach, they’re usually rags within a month.

  “Maybe he’s on Facebook.”

  “You still joking about the arm?”

  “No, Chester. He has an account. I could message him.”

  I was half listening. Under the bureau? “Right. Closest computer’s at the Styx.”

  Her smile widened. “Not anymore.”

  That got my attention. She disappeared a second, reappearing with a small netbook.

  “Gift from my man,” she said, flipping it open.

  I attempted a whistle, which, thanks to a dry throat, came out like a Bronx cheer. “Forget about you, I want to move in with him. He got a storage shed? I don’t take up much space.”

  It was refurbished, probably a lower-end model, but a man doesn’t get a woman a netbook unless he wants to stay in touch.

  “What’re you going to connect to? It’s not like we have Wi-Fi.”

  “I got us cable by splicing into that coax, didn’t I? If anyone nearby has a signal…”

  “In the Bones? Forget it. It’s chakz and addicts for half a mile. We’re lucky when the cell phone works.”

  “Got one.”

  I squinted at the screen. “CB Mobile. What’s that mean?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” she shrugged. “It’s password protected.”

  I guess Misty’s memory drills were paying off, because I remembered something from my days as a liveblood detective. “Try ‘password’ or ‘admin.’ Those’re usually the defaults. Most people don’t bother changing them.”

  She clicked the keys and announced, “We’re in.”

  That little trick earned me an admiring wink. “Look at you, Hessius Mann, firing on all cylinders. Feel better than sitting in a chair and moping all day?”

  “Not really.” The downside of paying attention was realizing when things weren’t right. Wi-Fi in the Bones made less sense than an arm out on its own.

  I thought about taking the case to the cops myself, keeping Misty and her pal Chester out of it, but that wouldn’t have worked. Last we spoke, Chief Detective Tom Booth had promised to spend his off hours figuring out new ways to destroy me. My old boss hated chakz, slept with my wife, and still blamed me for her death. I was three for three.

  Ten minutes after Misty sent Chester a message, we heard a car stop outside, another warning that something was wrong. We reached the front window at the same time to gawk at the police car. It was like seeing the Loch Ness Monster in the Vatican. Nothing happens that fast in Fort Hammer, not when you need it, not when you don’t.

  I had to ask. “Chester patrolling tonight?”

  When they’d met, he was a clerk. Two weeks ago, they’d given him his first beat. Must’ve killed Tom to let someone dating my assistant have a patrol, but since the Registration Act passed and the guard had to be funded, the police had been forced to shift resources.

  “No. At least I don’t think so.”

  A uniform got out. He was a little shy of average height, stocky like a longshoreman. His cap was on for the rain, so I couldn’t see a face.

  As he headed for our stoop, all around him, things moved. Figures shifted in the nooks and crannies formed by the wreckage of buildings, the falling rain giving away their presence and shape.

  I knew them. Hell, I was one of them. They were chakz, the ones who weren’t as lucky as I was. These were my lesser brothers, who couldn’t even remember to get out of the rain, who, more often than not, didn’t have an arm to raise an umbrella or piece of cardboard. From here it seemed a few had entrails dangling, but it could’ve just been torn clothes, made ragged by endless bleaching.

  That’s the thing. Even the worst of them, the ones who could barely speak, knew that a squad car in the Bones was weird. Even Chester had been warned to visit only in an unmarked car.

  It was easy for the cop to ignore them, they looked like bare branches swaying in the trees. He did pause to wipe the rain from his face, giving us a glimpse of dark hair and a handsome face with an aquiline nose.

  I nudged Misty. “Know him?”

  She shook her head, no. “You?”

  “No, but in my case that doesn’t mean a whole helluva lot.”

  Misty tried to shatter the gloom. “Aw, Chester must have sent him.”

  The rain picked up, falling sharp. I looked to the rooftops again. My best guess was that there was nothing there, and may never have been.

  Just the same, I stuffed the case under a recliner cushion. The damn chair was so old and beat up, I nearly shredded the cover. On the lighter side, the big lump didn’t make the chair look much different.

  Misty watched. “First you can’t wait to get rid of it, now you’re hiding it?”

  “It’s an instinct, like a squirrel with nuts. Wouldn’t Chester have called first?”

  Her face told me she was worried, at least a little. Good.

  Hoping to beat our visitor to the punch, I made for the door and opened it. Soaked, the hand-painted sign that read HESSIUS MANN, INVESTIGATIONS flopped into a puddle. The crazy downpour had stifled the hallway wind, but water ran from the ceiling like a fancy showerhead.

  I heard shoes splash below, then try to stamp themselves dry.

  A male voice called, “Hello? Hessius Mann?”

  The tone was too cheery for a Fort Hammer cop, and there was no trace of an accent. I don’t trust people without accents. They’re hiding something. And he’d asked for me, not Misty. Chester never used my name.

  Before I could stop her, Misty answered, “Up here.”

  “Great. Stay put.”

  Right, all one big happy family. I first saw our new buddy in silhouette. His cap was on, water dripping from the rim. I also noticed his holster was unclipped.

  All the little details, on their own, meant nothing, even the holster, given the neighborhood. And when you add things up, you can be wrong.

  As he rounded the top step, lightning flashed and we saw each other at once. Like I said, my body can be unpredictable. Right then, my startle reflex decided to work. I jumped nearly a foot.

  Our visitor’s face dropped. He reached for his gun. Misty gasped.

  An image of myself pushing her out of the way fla
shed in my head, but before I could act on it, he stopped himself and gave us a broad grin.

  “Thought you were a chak,” he said.

  “I am.”

  “Yeah, of course, but, you know, I thought you might be feral.”

  I gestured at the gun. “Bit of advice? If I were, you might stop me with that, but you’d have to empty the clip and hit all the right spots.”

  Truth is, one feral isn’t much to worry about, and he looked like he knew it. The salesman grin didn’t waver. His eyes twinkled like it was something he could get them to do at will.

  “Got something for me?”

  “Depends who you are.”

  He turned to Misty like I was the stupid kid and she the adult. Again, not unusual. Lots of cops ignore chakz. “Jack Gambrell. Chester sent me. I was over in Collin Hills when he called.”

  Collin Hills was a gated community on the far side of Buell Park, the closest a cop would get to the Bones. That much made sense, at least.

  “Badge?” I asked.

  Happy Jack kept ignoring me. If he was going out of his way to do Chester a favor, my question might’ve seemed offensive.

  Misty asked the next question for me. “Why didn’t Chester call to say you were coming?”

  Happy Jack shrugged. “His battery was dying, cut him off in midsentence.”

  She laughed. “He’s always forgetting to charge that thing.”

  He laughed back. I didn’t.

  We stood there until he got tired of waiting and pushed his way in. “This about some kind of vials in a briefcase?”

  His head turned like a lighthouse beam. He scanned the walls, the floor, the desk, first one way, then the other. “We’ve been seeing liquid PCP. Maybe someone swiped a delivery.”

  “That’s usually brown, or yellow. This stuff’s blue,” I said.

  His gaze settled on me. My knee twitched, like it wanted to run and it didn’t care whether I came along or not.

  “You used to be a cop, didn’t you? So what’d you do, hide it? Good thinking. Chester said you were a smart one.”

  I half expected him to put a sugar cube in my mouth and pat my head.

  He was also digging himself in deeper, talking like he’d heard about me in passing. Among the Fort Hammer blue, I was as famous as Charles Manson, one of their own executed for murder. And when they tried to convict me of blowing up an abandoned hospital not so long ago, my ashen face was plastered across the papers. Was this guy even local?