Hollingsworth

by Tom Bont

  “Me neither.” She understood Danny’s distaste. Urine-soaked bricks and the rat-infested dumpsters offended her nose. His must have tolerated it as easily as a sucker punch. She took in the assortment of old, beat-up cars. Part of her hoped Chris’s car was here, but another part hoped it wasn’t; the big sister in her truly yearned for him to be working a job somewhere. The cop in her knew he wasn’t. You don’t miss meetings with your parole officer. She tightened her coat against the wind. “He used to hang out here on the corner, buying and selling his drugs.”

  They rushed inside out of the cold and stood at the counter until Jesus the Clerk finished with the customer in front of them.

  “Can I help you?” he monotoned.

  Angela showed her badge along with a picture, a large mugshot of Chris. “Have you seen him around here lately, Jesus?”

  He took the picture and glared at it. He didn’t appear nervous around her at all.

  Probably used to cops coming in all the time looking for someone.

  “Si, I’ve seen him.”

  Angela snapped, “When?”

  “A couple of days ago.” He handed the picture back. “Bought a beer or something.”

  Danny surveyed the busy store. “You remember one guy from a few days ago? Don’t get me wrong, I’m tickled you do. Just curious why.”

  Jesus pointed to the street corner. “Because the puta pissed on the wall outside. I threatened to call the cops if he didn’t leave.”

  Angela cringed.

  He’s definitely off the reservation again.

  “Any idea where he went?”

  Jesus shook his head. “No. Just somewhere else.” He peered over Angela’s shoulder at the customers piling behind them. “Is that all? My boss’ll chew my ass if I let the line get too long.”

  “No, that’s it. Thanks.”

  Back out in the car, Danny crossed his arms. “Where to next?”

  “No idea. This is the last place I can think to look.”

  Gunfire intruded into her melancholy as a man sped out of Thirsty’s towards a car parked by the curb, pistol in one hand and a paper bag in the other. Danny had already scrambled out and taken a defensive position behind another car before Angela cleared her front fender.

  “Police!” he yelled while Angela screamed, “FBI! Drop your weapon!”

  They both dashed up in alternating cover and approach formation, but the man ignored them. He slid into his car as Danny sprung in front of him.

  “Whatever’s in that bag ain’t worth it!” Danny yelled at him. “Don’t make me shoot you!” The car engine roared to life, and Danny fired three shots into the man’s chest, right through the windshield.

  Angela only got off one shot through the passenger window into the man’s side before he gunned the engine. “Danny!” she yelled.

  Danny had the pale blue eyes of a lupus, and his face sported three-day-old stubble. The car thundered towards him, and he leaped onto the hood, springing off the roof and landing on the concrete behind. He spun around and sprinted two steps before he paused and snarled back at Angela, his heavy breathing producing clouds of misty breath in the chilly air. The untamed wild of his heritage twisted his face. He took three deep breaths and pulled the renovatio under control.

  “Let’s go!” he growled, racing for their car. His facial scruff had disappeared, but his eyes still glowed pale blue.

  Tires squealed as Angela swerved onto the roadway.

  Danny called in the chase. He glanced at Angela from the side, and she nodded curtly. He followed his report with, “Suspect has assaulted a police officer. He is armed and dangerous.” Every cop from miles around would join the pursuit now. “Did you see his eyes?”

  “No!” She veered around a small foreign jalopy with its turn signal stuck in the on position.

  “Soulless. Spooky.”

  “There he is!” she exclaimed, tilting her head up the road. Two Fort Worth Police Department black and whites skidded into pursuit. “Spooky, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He was dressed in a suit.”

  He glanced over at her. “And driving a Maserati.”

  “Gonna be hard to catch him in this.”

  “I shot three times!”

  “I know. I shot once.”

  “I didn’t miss.”

  “Neither did I. Could’ve had a bulletproof vest.”

  “Maybe…Uh, oh, watch out!”

  A third black and white whipped on the road in front of the suspect and slid sideways, blocking the path of the escaping car. The Maz veered hard to the left, cut across opposing traffic, and dodged further to avoid a delivery truck. It vaulted off the curb and rammed into the corner of the Fort Worth Bank and Trust building, a man-sized chunk of early 20th century brickwork shattering in a blast of reddish dust. Police cars swarmed around the disabled vehicle, emptying of officers who were yelling for the suspect to put his hands on the steering wheel.

  Danny radioed as they rolled up to the scene, “We need the suspect alive!”

  The driver sprung from the car and staggered down the sidewalk, stumbled on the brick debris, and nose-dived to the ground. He tried to get up, but three police officers crowded around him and slammed him against the sidewalk.

  Bad Girls! Bad Girls! As always, Angela couldn’t stop the tune from running through her head along with the adrenaline of a chase.

  She and Danny ran up, showing their badges. Angela dropped next to the suspect and put her thumb against the robber’s neck. “No pulse!”

  Danny ordered, “Turn him over!”

  The driver’s skin was flour-pale and his confused irises, white. She tapped his chest. “No vest!” she yelled, ripping his shirt open to inspect his wounds.

  Abruptly, Angela transported back to her days at the Academy, standing over cadavers, sticking her fingers into bullet holes and knife wounds, and sniffing for different chemicals. The holes in the man’s chest, as well as the pasty, dead-colored skin, reminded her of those classes. No blood oozed from them, but the bullets had clearly caused soft and hard tissue damage. She pinched his fingernails, checking for blood flow. They were already white.

  The suspect struggled against the restraints.

  Angela lurched up and backed away. “What the hell?!”

  The cops all moved back with her, a mixture of surprise, fear, and disbelief on their faces. Two of them made the sign of the cross.

  One of the cops handed the man’s wallet to Danny.

  “William Travolta.” Danny let out a nervous chuckle. “Travolta? I’ll be damned.”

  Another cop handed a paper bag full of cash to him.

  Angela, though, continued studying the man. Other than tugging at his cuffs and looking around with those freaky, white eyes, he appeared…well, dead, dammit!

  “What’s that around his nose?” Danny knelt and scraped a sample of a yellowy powder into a small evidence baggie. “Smells like horse piss.”

  “Well, don’t put it up to your nose!” Angela exclaimed.

  “I don’t have to put it up to my nose. It reeks.” Danny abruptly shook his head, trying to fling off the stink his lupus nose was hanging on to.

  Mr. Travolta closed his eyes.

  A few minutes later, the ambulance arrived and took him to the hospital. As Angela and Danny followed it, the bad news came across the radio. Mr. Travolta had started bleeding while in the ambulance. In fact, indications were he’d come back to life. Heartbeat, color, everything. Then the bleeding stopped. And he died. Again.

  Angela dropped her empty coffee cup into the trash and pulled out her keyboard. She typed in the facts of the case. No bleeding from gunshot wounds. The bleeding occurred later. White irises. No struggle once captured. Upper-middle-class. She pressed the Search button, sat back, and stared at the computer monitor.

  While she waited for the results to show, she tried to decide whether to email her mother or phone her to tell her she couldn’t find Chris. She was too chicken for Option 3
, telling her in person. Watching her mother’s heart break again was not easily added to the day’s agenda. Her search finished, and its results filled her screen. With a moan, she promised herself she’d go over and deliver the news face-to-face…after she finished reviewing the…3,451 entries?

  This might take a while.

  She scanned a few random pages. It appeared the Task Force W archives concurred with her assessment. Zombies.

  She punched in, “Substance: yellow powder. Location: upper lip.”

  The number plummeted to 19, all of them confirmed zombies. “That’s better,” she muttered with a happy lilt. Caribbean Santeria sects employed the yellow powder, assuming what she had was identical, to create a zombie-like trance.

  Santerians in north Texas? Well, why not? We’ve got confirmed zombies! Why not witch doctors?

  Ping, Ping! She grabbed her phone, and a message from the lab lit up the screen. “Task Force W/Ft Worth - Unknown Yellow Substance 1. Order 87. Estimate: 6 weeks, 2 days.”

  “Dammit!” She typed back a lengthy response, densely populated with some rather choice words best reserved for sailors.

  After mulling over it for a few moments, she slapped Delete.

  She plucked a stick of gum from her pocket and shoved it into her mouth as she stormed down to Kent’s office. “I need to register a Confidential Informant.”

  Kent glanced up from the folder he was reading. Disbelief painted his face in a rare display of emotion. “You’ve actually got a CI who can help with W cases?”

  “She’s more of a technical expert.” She showed him the message from the crime lab.

  He shook his head. “It was 50th in line this morning.” He spun the folder he’d been reading around. “Three more cases have popped up in the Metroplex and two in Houston since yesterday.”

  “All got the yellow powder?”

  He stared at her and nodded once.

  She slipped her phone into her pocket. “Then we need her. She’s not really confidential, but I can’t pay her without padding my expense report.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Heather O’Leary. M.D. down at UT Southwestern Medical. Used to do research. Got tired of constantly begging for funds. Now she works the emergency room. Lives on adrenaline.” Angela sat down on the edge of a chair. “She’s already helped out a few times, analyzing things for me. That chupacabra blood?”

  “I wondered how you managed to get the crime lab to vet those findings so fast.” He leaned back in his chair and rested his interlaced fingers on his stomach. “I guess the fact I haven’t seen her research on the blood in the papers answers the question as to whether she can keep her mouth shut.”

  “Yes, sir.” She bit down on her gum. “But…she’s got a thing for Danny.”

  “How big of a thing?” He caught his breath and raised his eyebrows. “Wait…can werewolves and humans…you know…?”

  Angela nodded. “I checked—to make sure Heather didn’t become infected. According to archives—” she pointed to the bottom of her fingernails “—little sacs of venom form here during the change. When they scratch someone, the venom is applied. Besides, I’m not sure I could stop them if I wanted. He isn’t running away from her.”

  Kent let his breath whistle out through his teeth. “We know he can keep a secret.”

  Angela simply nodded at the unspoken, “…so we don’t have to worry about pillow talk on the nightly news.”

  “Okay,” he decided. “Let’s not go the CI route though.” He leaned forward and typed an email. “Laboratory Services should be contacting you. I have a small budget for hiring contractors and the like. Never use it. Hard to find civilians with all their marbles willing to help on cases, Wichita shamans and werewolves exempted, of course.”

  The aroma of roasting jalapenos, pepperoni, and cardboard pizza box made Angela’s stomach growl. She pressed the doorbell button again. “Come on, Heather!” she yelled at the crack in the door. “I gotta pee, and my hands are full. I can’t get the key!” She chewed hard on her gum, trying to forget about her angry bladder.

  The door swung back, and Heather stood there in a bathrobe and hair mussed like she’d crawled out of bed.

  Angela thrust the pizza box and a bottle of strawberry wine at her. “You sick or something? It’s noon!”

  “Wait,” Heather exclaimed.

  “I won’t be long!” Angela hurried down the hallway, flew into the bathroom, and sat down on…nothing but toilet water. Then as she tried to extricate herself from the throne, the scene she ran past in the living room flashed through her head. Chinese food containers. Throw pillows next to the hearth. Cowboy boots in front of the couch. Snakeskin cowboy boots. She threw her gum into the trash, dropped the toilet seat a little too loudly, and did her business.

  Cowboy boots? Who the hell wears snakesk…oh, hell!

  Trying to harness her patience, she washed her hands a bit more vigorously than was necessary. Drying them on her pants as she stepped into the kitchen, she yelled, “You can come out, Danny!”

  Her partner lumbered down the hall wearing his jeans and an unbuttoned shirt. She had to admit he kept himself in shape. And with his sleep-mangled hair…no more cowboys!

  He paused at the entrance to the kitchen. “How did you know?”

  “Toilet seat.” She pointed over at his boots. “And you wore them the day Chris got out of prison.”

  “Oh.” His gaze drifted to the pizza box. “Smells good.”

  Angela ignored him. “In the middle of the day, guys?”

  Heather giggled. “We just got to sleep.” She pulled a corkscrew from a drawer. “That secret didn’t last long.” She peeked over at Danny, a snarky grin decorating her face.

  Danny’s ears had gone red, but it didn’t stop him from taking a large bite of hot pizza. “She’s is an FBI agent,” he muffled. “They’re smart that way.” He quit chewing and stared at her. “Am I fired?”

  Angela shook her head. “No.”

  Heather pulled the cork on the bottle of wine. “What gives, sister?”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “You chew gum when you’re pissed, you eat pizza when you’re frustrated, and you drink wine or eat ice cream when you’re fighting with the family. You came in grinding your gum like it was boot leather and—” she pointed at the wine and pizza. “I’ve got the trifectas of aneurysms here in my kitchen.”

  “Am I that easy to read?”

  Danny and Heather nodded in unison, exchanging sharp, knowing looks.

  Angela threw herself into a chair at the table. “I told Mom and Dad I couldn’t find Chris.”

  “Oh.” Heather poured three glasses and raised hers. “Here’s to family. You can’t choose ‘em and…well, that’s it. You can’t choose ‘em.”

  Angela took a deep drink from her glass as she dropped a folder of papers onto the table in front of her friend.

  Heather slid paper plates in front of everyone and flipped the folder open. “What are these?”

  Angela slipped two pieces of pizza onto her plate. “They’re contractor sign-up forms. For you.”

  Heather’s laughter filled the room. “You want me to be an FBI agent?” She made a pistol with her hands and stood in a perfect representation of the Shooter’s Fighting Stance, evidence her Marine Corp General father had spent many hours with her in the shooter’s box. “I get to crash through doors and shoot the bad guys?”

  While Danny grinned around a cheese and tomato sauce mouth full of pizza, Angela laughed and shook her head. “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Good. I don’t want to break a nail.” She leered at Danny. “I have special…uses for them.”

  Danny nearly choked on his pizza, and his ears went red again.

  “TMI, Heather!” Angela cried.

  “Okay, okay, what do you need me for then?”

  “Your crack lab research skills. The FBI crime labs are a month behind on everything. And that’s being nice to them.”

  �
�Okay.” She flung her hair behind her shoulder. “Where do I sign?”

  Her friend’s flippant attitude took Angela back a bit. “You don’t want to know the particulars? At least read them.”

  “Sister, if you were going to screw me over, you would have taken Danny here for yourself.” After she signed everywhere Angela pointed, she held the stack vertical and aligned them, banging their edges on the table. “What’s my first assignment, General?”

  Angela pulled an evidence baggie out of her pocket. “I need you to analyze this yellow powder.” She eyed Danny. “And we have to hurry. Five more cases have been reported since yesterday.”

  Kent put Heather’s report on the yellow powder on his desk. “Hammerhead worm?” He, Danny, and Angela were staring at a picture of a worm that appeared to be a cross between a hammerhead shark and a flattened worm with a racing stripe along its back. “How big do they get?”

  Danny pointed out the highlighted section of text on the next page. “Six inches or so is the longest one recorded according to what I could find on the internet.”

  Kent set his cup of coffee down. “And Heather says this is what’s causing these people to go crazy?”

  “That she doesn’t know. She only told us what’s in the powder. Tetrodotoxin. It’s a neurotoxin usually found in puffer fish. This particular strain comes from the worm, though.” Angela picked the folder up and flipped to another page. “She also found traces of a species of Central and South American tree frog.”

  Danny slipped a printout of another Google search onto Kent’s desk. “I did find this. It’s the only thing that makes sense right now. The ingredients in the residue are nearly identical to the ingredients in what is commonly referred to as zombie powder. Used quite a bit in Haiti. And according to the archives, this is the same substance found in other cases. Close enough anyway.”

  “So, we’re looking for someone who’s importing hammerhead worms and/or—” he flipped another page up “—Osteopilus dominicensis…tree frogs…and using them to make zombies to rob liquor stores?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kent’s face remained neutral and his voice low. “You would think that after all these years, nothing would surprise me any longer.”