by K. C. Finn
“That little indiscretion of Cae’s that you’ve been spreading around?” She begins again, “Well it’s been erased from police memory. Nobody up at that station knows about it, and if you were to tell them, well there isn’t any evidence…anymore.”
Cae turns from enjoying Redd’s worried face to look at Kendra. No evidence? Has she destroyed the security footage detailing his little trips to contraband? If she has, then he owes her more than one apology for his recent actions.
“And well,” Kendra continues, stepping right into Redd’s personal space with a grin, “You know how those police folk really like their evidence.” Strands from Richmond’s perfect wave of hair start falling into his face as he tries to stare her down. He’s taller than Kendra, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference anymore. “So if you think you’re going to get away with murder, figuratively or otherwise, then have a little rethink right now. And keep your finely tailored ass out of our way from now on, okay?”
Redd says absolutely nothing until Kendra steps back at last, giving him room to shift out from between her and Cae. He stands before them and pushes back his hair, his olive eyes glowing bright with indignation. He gives Cae a filthy look, but the detective is more than happy to receive it. It is his turn to wear the smug smile tonight.
“I hate it when you two get together,” Redd bites, and with that he thunders away, brushing at the shoulder of his tux where Kendra had accosted him.
Cae turns to Kendra to find she is still wearing that same grin. Every muscle in his lean frame relaxes when he catches that smile, and he matches it with one of his own.
“Well that was fun,” he remarks.
“That was the good old days, right there,” Kendra adds with a nod.
A lot of scratching and snuffling alerts Cae back to the tank beside him, where it appears Cara is once again vying for his attention. She looks at him with her huge green eyes, then starts pacing again nervously.
“What’s with the cat?” Kendra asks.
Cae stands up straight to whisper to her. “She’s pregnant,” he explains, “There’s at least two hundred grand’s worth of kittens in there.”
“I guess I’d be stressed too,” Kendra muses.
A sad pang of realisation hits Cae as he thinks about Kendra and pregnancy in the same context. Could she even have children? What had those military doctors done to her biology when they made her so strong and so fearless? Kendra catches him giving her a funny look, which Cae immediately exchanges for a little sigh.
“Well, are you staying to help me cat-sit?” He asks brightly.
“Hmmm,” Kendra replies, her keen eyes tracing over the crowd once more, “Actually I think I’m going to take a walk, push a few people around, see if I can find somebody who’s talkative.”
“Nice thinking,” Cae nods, watching her go with a smile.
23.
“That cashier chick seems nice,” Kendra muses, relaxing into her usual chair in Cae’s dark living space, “I sure hope she isn’t the next target.”
“Nice?” Cae questions as he searches his cupboard for liqueurs, “Are you talking about Mai?” He turns to find Kendra nodding happily. “She always has a sour look when I see her.”
“Oh, she hates guys,” Kendra explains, holding out her coffee cup expectantly, “And I mean really hates them. Her husband left her in a real bad way. Penniless, you know?”
Cae marvels at the information the chief has gathered. “How long were you talking to her?”
“Only five minutes or so,” Kendra adds triumphantly, “but actually if you ask me, she’s one of those women just waiting for another girl to come along to tell her sob story to.”
Cae frowns, finding it peculiar to hear Kendra broach the subject of girl talk. After he pours a healthy measure of something mildly alcoholic into their coffees, he sits down opposite his chief. A short moment helps him to realise that the familiar itch for the little powder bottles is a lot dimmer than it was, and Cae finds he now has at least two reasons to be pleased with himself. Three if he starts thinking about Redd Richmond’s bitter face again.
“What are you smiling at?” Kendra asks.
“I’m glad you’re back,” Cae answers. Kendra allows herself a smug little smile. “So Maigret Zeus has a motive then? She’s poor and desperate, would you say?”
Kendra rolls her eyes. “You can’t stay off the case even for a second, can you?” She chides. “Yeah I guess so. She was found with Lady Locke and she was there when the robot collapsed, right?”
“Right,” Cae adds with a thoughtful sip.
“But you don’t think it’s her, do you?” Kendra presses, amused.
“No,” the detective answers.
“Do you still think it’s Andre?” She asks.
“No,” he answers again.
“Then, who? Who are you thinking of?” She demands.
Cae loosens his polo neck with a half-sigh. “I haven’t a clue,” he replies.
“You’re useless without me,” Kendra concludes, sipping her drink.
The young detective sits in silence for a moment, both amused and worried that she might be right.
When Cae climbs into his bed later that night, he feels a strange contentment that he hasn’t known for quite some time. With every possible mystery sitting ahead of him unsolved, the detective would, in the past, have been a frazzled mess, determined to stay up all night hunting out the possibilities, desperate to race to a solution. But now as Cae lets his weary, broken skin hit the soft hypoallergenic sheets of his bed, he finds it terribly easy to settle into sleep.
The young detective knows well that the lines of fate are converging on him. His real enemy, the elusive Face, has sat up and taken notice of Cae’s attempts to find him, and this little game that he thinks he can play with the detective will only serve to lead Cae to forcing him out into the open eventually. As for the mysterious attacks at the House of Cards, knowing that Kendra is back on the case with him makes catching a prospective catnapper seem more like the trivial task that it actually is.
Cae drifts off with thoughts of Cara’s haughty green eyes floating in his vision, until the ring of his phone shakes him back into consciousness. He grabs around him wildly in the dim light of the early part of sunrise, catching the clock as he reaches for the offending piece of technology. 6:03 A.M.. His heart thumping from the shock of sudden waking, Cae answers the phone in a hoarse, breathless tone.
“Hello?” He says sleepily.
“We have her,” answers a digitised voice, “the co-ordinates are on their way to you.”
Caecilius Rex drops the phone into his lap, a sheen of cold sweat bursting suddenly onto his skin. He has had this call before.
24.
“I don’t understand,” Kendra says as the pair pile into her car with haste, “You said you had this call six years ago, about your mother?”
Cae nods too many times, his nerves on fire. “And these co-ordinates,” he adds, the phone shaking in his hand, “these are the same numbers. Someone wants me to go back to the quarry.”
“The quarry where she died?” Kendra demands, her eyes wide, “Are you sure we should be doing this? “Cause it sounds to me like we’re walking-“
“Straight into a trap,” Cae completes, “I am aware of that, yes.”
“Okay then,” Kendra sighs.
He drops the phone to his knees and feels around for his weapons. Two pistols at his hips and one under his shoulder. A knife in each boot. A taser in his back pocket. He can feel his heart slamming against his ribcage and he tries in vain to stem his ragged breathing as Kendra revs up the ignition.
“Whoever made this call knows the exact details of how it happened last time,” Cae explains with an almost giddy kind of fear, “This is genuine Kendra, this could even be The Face himself.”
The ex-sergeant swerves the car sharply as she reaches for the co-ordinates on Cae’s screen.
“Hey I have no qualms about me getting out of
this alive,” Kendra warns, “But you; you’re a mess right now. And we both know what happened to you last time.”
Her bluntness is not without merit. Cae can feel his acid-burned skin breaking and bleeding from the speed at which he got dressed, and his nerves are making a frantic dash around his body like they’re training for a sprint.
“I have to know,” Cae insists, his mind alight.
“Just don’t do anything stupid,” Kendra orders, “Let me lead the manoeuvres.” She speeds up the battered car; Cae watches her dark fingers turning white as she grips the wheel. Perhaps she is just as afraid as he is, but a lot better at channelling it into a more useful emotion, like rage.
With Kendra’s erratic driving and total disregard for public safety, they reach the quarry just after the sun has made its proper ascent into the sky. The phone reads 6.33 A.M. as Cae stuffs it back into his pocket. He was later last time. Too late, in fact.
The gates to the quarry site are locked, but Kendra makes short shrift of them with a half-size crowbar in seconds. Cae doesn’t even want to know where she was concealing it. When they burst through into the grey, dusty rubble, everything is silent and far too normal. But Cae knows this part of the story well, and though it has been six long years since he has set foot in this place, his feet are already telling him which way to go.
He breaks off at a run into the smoggy space, but Kendra catches him immediately, stopping him with her superior strength. She gives him a dark look.
“Nothing stupid, remember?” She presses with a whisper.
“But that call,” Cae insists in any equally hoarse tone, “The Face might have someone here, a body for me to find, like last time.”
“We have her,” Kendra repeats, the whisper echoing through her gas mask, “Have who?”
They walk on through the quarry, Cae leading the way with strong, quick strides, tracing a path through the rubble mounds and trying to trust every instinct from the memories he has pushed away for so long. Even in the midst of the toxic smoke, his feet find firm footing at every turn.
“It’s sad you know,” Kendra whispers beside him, matching his speedy pace. She takes his gloved hand and gives it just one squeeze. “This is the only time I’ve ever seen you have a sense of direction.”
“Be sad after we’ve caught this monster,” Cae says. He can taste the words in his mouth like poison. He stops at the foot of a huge hill of pale grey stones and dust. “It’s somewhere around here,” he says with a bitter certainty.
“Up and over,” Kendra suggests, “it’ll give us a good vantage point.”
Cae nods, and they begin to climb the pile. As he clambers up the crumbling rocks Kendra overtakes him, reaching the top a good few minutes before he can. He follows her lead and lies low when he reaches the summit of the mound, lying down and crawling along on his stomach until he can see over the top of it. The bright light of the morning cuts through the tendrils of brown smoke well enough for them to look down into a clearing in the rock.
“Oh God,” he murmurs as his bright blue eyes take in the scene below.
“Is that a tin bathtub?” Kendra asks in disbelief. “What the hell’s that for?”
“It’s a vat,” Cae breathes slowly, “that’s how I found my mother. They-” He stops, searching for oxygen under the heat of his mask. “They filled it with acid and threw her in.” Cae observes the deserted, oval structure, wondering with a sickening sensation if there is already a body inside.
“I’m so sorry,” Kendra whispers, but when Cae looks at her there is no sadness in her face. She is biting back her rage, white teeth sinking into pale brown lips.
“If there was someone in that vat,” Cae begins, holding back a wretch at the thought, “Then they’re already gone. We can’t help them.”
“So we wait,” Kendra orders with heavy, angry breaths, “we wait for those bastards to come back and clean up their mess.”
But even as the ex-soldier speaks the words they hear the rumbling of an engine. A small three-wheeled van appears from within the smog, parking sharply near the vat. Two men get out of the front of the van and move quickly to its back doors, flinging them open. From inside they pull a third figure. Her arms and legs are bound, but her orange prison-issued gas mask is impossible to miss.
“Angelica Lane,” Kendra stammers.
25.
The two men drag the once-perfect blonde along the rough terrain of the quarry, her hair flying out in all directions as she collides time and again with the ground. She is in those same pyjamas that Cae had seen just a few short days ago and she looks so much younger as she struggles against her captors. Her face and neck are purple with bruising down one side, and even at their relative distance, Cae and Kendra can see her glassy eyes are impossibly wide with shock and fear over her mask.
Her captors wear gas masks that cover their entire heads, and Cae watches them looking around nervously in the toxic smoke. He clenches his fists against the rubble he is laid out on. The Face ripped Angelica from her bed and brought her here just to play a game with him. One of those men could even be the magnate himself, ready to kill her at the drop of a hat, just to make a point. But Cae won’t let that happen for his sake.
“There are only two of them,” Cae says quietly to Kendra, “We can take them.”
“What if they’re the bait?” Kendra asks harshly.
“And what if they throw Angelica into that vat whilst we sit here watching?” Cae urges.
“How many were there last time?” Kendra questions.
“I don’t remember,” Cae mumbles, “I know there were people, but it was after I saw her. Stuff isn’t clear after I saw what was left of her.”
A grave silence falls upon them and Cae watches in horror as the two men look into the vat. Angelica tries desperately to wriggle away along the ground, but the men soon catch her and pull her back, laughing at her. Then between them they lift Angelica’s petite body, starting to carry her back towards it.
“Let’s go,” Kendra says suddenly, leaping to her feet.
Cae charges down the rubble pile after her, retrieving his guns as he goes, but he hears Kendra’s gunshots ring out ahead of him before he can even take the safety off his own weapons. A thud tells him that Angelica has landed once again on the ground instead of into the vat, but he has no time to look as he searches in the smog for someone to shoot.
Kendra has already found a target; the taller of the two men is bleeding from his thigh as she grabs him hard. Cae points his guns at the second man, but he either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, because he’s already racing back towards the vat. Cae shoots him, clipping his shoulder as the shorter man dodges the shot, but as he fires again the man ducks behind the acid vat to evade the bullets.
And then, with an almighty shove, the short man tips over the vat.
Bubbling, bright green acid spills out in a torrent as Cae stands mesmerised by its horrifying glow. Kendra and the taller henchman are the closest to the spill, and in her panic as she evades the acid, the man head-butts her with a sickening crack and makes a break for it. Kendra makes to pursue the men as they race away, but Cae shakes from his amazement to realise the direction in which the acid spill is heading.
“Kendra!” He shouts, “Help me move Angelica! Now!”
The terrified officer is trying her best to escape from the dangerous brew rushing towards her. Cae sees the relief in her fearful eyes as he grabs her middle whilst Kendra finds a good grip on her bound legs. They retreat in a clumsy gallop until the acid stops flowing. The toxic brew has created a steaming river of contamination between them and the now abandoned van, and as Kendra sets to work unfastening Angelica’s bonds, Cae surveys the murky, smog ridden space from which the van emerged.
There is man standing in the distance.
Cae can only derive his outline, but he knows that the man is not wearing a full gas mask. He is cast into darkness by the bright morning sun, his black suited figure accompanied by a short sh
adow that pools around his confident stance. Cae can only watch in fury as the man’s hands rise. He applauds, just three, slow claps, until Kendra catches sight of him too. Cae clenches his jaw.
The man steps back into the cover of the endless smog and Cae leaps forward to pursue him. But a moment later he finds Kendra’s heavy frame on top of him as she smashes him down into the hard ground.
“No way,” she demands angrily, “You’ve walked into enough trouble for one day. We’ve gotta do this on our terms, not his.”
And though Cae knows that she is right, he still can’t believe that he’s just let The Face get away.
26.
Under Kendra’s forceful advice Cae tries to gain a little more sleep back in his office at Dartley Station. As he reclines in his chair he realises how much he has missed the comfort of this private little space and instead of napping he starts to put his desk back into some sort of organisation. As he sharpens pencils and lines up old case notes for filing, Cae tries to put the thought of the shadowed figure from his mind. Because this, this awful nervous mess that Cae is in, is exactly what The Face is trying to do to him. If he gives in now and allows himself to be driven mad by the game that the criminal magnate has set up, then he can never hope to win against him.
After lunch Kendra escapes her duties to accompany Cae down to the House of Cards. He calls Lady Locke on the way, pleased to find that she is already there, and even more pleased to hear that she has some new information for him. The news seems to placate Kendra too, who nods confidently at the windshield as she trains her eyes on the road ahead.
“You see?” She insists with a hard expression. “If we track him down this way, we’ll have the upper hand. We’ll be the predators, not the prey.”
“I hope so,” Cae half-agrees, though he can’t help worrying for the safety of the people who have been helping him along the way. He can’t bear to think what might happen to Lady Locke if The Face were to find her giving him yet more leads.
The House of Cards looks strange in the daylight without its usual neon banners flashing. The building shows its real age against the backdrop of the ugly brown smog; even the gilded foyer seems less glamorous now that it is devoid of customers. Lady Locke rushes out from the coat check space when Cae and Kendra arrive, greeting them as they pass through the clean air partition and de-mask.
