Blood Avatar

by Ilsa J. Bick

  Ramsey pulled open the door, slid past the bouncer and stood, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Couples gyrated on the dance floor while a very bad male singer sang off-key about broken hearts, backed by a band that sounded like three cats stuck with a dog in a burlap bag. Then he spotted Amanda, waving him down to his right. The waitress appeared as he slid into a seat. He ordered a beer, got another white wine for Amanda then looked around. “Pretty popular place,” he said. He had to lean in until his lips were practically in her hair. “I saw our boy Boaz.”

  Amanda did the eyebrow. “Yeah,” she shouted back, “I was hoping he’d leave before you got here. Didn’t really feel like patching him back up.”

  “Hey, he slipped. He see you?”

  She nodded. “Didn’t look very happy about it.”

  “Well, look at this way. If he got embarrassed, he won’t hit on you again.”

  She made a face. “I doubt that. As soon as you leave town, he’ll be back. But he’s like that. A guy has to talk about it all the time, he’s probably made best friends with his right hand.”

  “Mmmm.” Ramsey massaged his chin and pretended to think. He leaned over and shouted, “But what if he’s a lefty?”

  * * *

  The band played another five minutes then took a break. Ramsey’s ears were ringing, and he thought maybe a couple of his fillings had jostled loose.

  “Anyway, I’m glad you’re here,” Amanda said. “Those two guys at the bar have been gawking for . . . oh, for crying out loud, don’t turn around and look.”

  But Ramsey did look. Both were bald, with bullet-shaped heads and muscles like melons, and wore basic biker black. They didn’t look away, and Ramsey gave them a hard look for a long five seconds then turned back. “Nice class of guys you attract.”

  “Present company included?” She didn’t smile. Instead, she sipped wine, made a face, said, “Ugh,” and then asked, “So what happened at dinner?”

  With the buzz of conversation all around and since he could lower his voice, he told her. She listened without comment, asked him to repeat the part about bang sticks, said, “Hmmm.”

  “Hmmm, what?” he asked.

  “Hmmm, I think it’s worth looking into.” She lowered her voice another notch and switched gears. “I don’t suppose she’s telling the truth? That she doesn’t have a ghost agent?”

  “No, she’s lying, and I think that somebody’s already here. So does Garibaldi. We wait her out. Meanwhile, there’s always Summers.”

  “I can’t see Doc as involved. He’s just not that kind of man.”

  “People will surprise you.”

  “Yes, but not Doc. I know, I know,” she said as he opened his mouth. “There’s the cat and Emma’s wigs. But why dress that way? Doc’s already got the hair.”

  “Maybe the killer dressed up as a woman. What’s so scary about a little old lady?”

  “You obviously haven’t met some of my patients,” she said.

  * * *

  The band played no better than before, but the dance floor snarled up again with sweating couples. Leaning in, Ramsey said, “I heard from my captain back in New Bonn. He says IA’s going to make its recommendations.”

  “What does he want you to do?”

  “Stick it out. I offered to resign, but he refused.”

  “He sounds like a good man. He sounds—” And then she jumped as if she’d been scalded and began fumbling with her belt.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Pager.” She held up a thin, wafer-sized device with a winking, angry red light. She read what scrolled past on the illuminated display and then fished for her bud again. “Honestly, with this SatNav, it’s one of these you can’t run, you can’t hide kind of things.”

  “We got those, only they’re smaller, like a wristwatch. Uniforms have to wear them on duty. Once you make the jump to detective, the theory is you got to be reachable day or night. I got one of those.”

  “So where . . .” she began, then said, “Hospital” into her bud, and then looked back at Ramsey. “So where is it?”

  “Home. Probably under my socks.”

  “Speaking of socks,” she said, and then held up a finger, turned away, and listened, stoppered her right ear with her pinky, said, “Say that again?” a couple of times and then shouted, “Hang on” twice. She turned back to Ramsey. “I’m going outside just to take this. Either it’s the noise or maybe a crummy connection, but I can’t hear myself think in here. And my brain’s turning to oatmeal listening to that band. Tell you what, bring your dirty socks back to my place, and we’ll throw them in the wash, and I’ll find us something decent to drink.”

  He put a hand on her elbow as she stood. “I’ll pay the tab and meet you outside.”

  She nodded, mouthed “Okay,” grabbed her purse and jacket and hurried out. Ramsey got the check from the waitress, dug around for change, paid the bill and stood. The beer picked that instant to remind him that he was, after all, only renting, and he figured Amanda would be a few more minutes.

  After the men’s room and as he came out of the short corridor, he heard the bartender announce last call. The bar was on his right, and he glanced that way. A reflex action. Wasn’t thinking too hard about it, or even looking at anything in particular. But something off-kilter snagged his attention, and he stopped, looked again, puzzled over what was wrong for a good five seconds. And then he knew.

  The bikers were gone.

  38

  Monday, 16 April 3136

  0045 hours

  Troy was sitting at the kitchen table when his mother’s car rattled down the drive. Waiting for his mother was always scary because while he knew exactly what she’d be like when she stumbled in, he was never certain who she’d bring home. Once, she brought home his principal. That had been embarrassing, as much for him as the principal whose daughter was in Troy’s grade.

  He’d scrubbed his bike. Jimmying free the scrap of khaki fabric had taken some doing, and his fingers were black with sprocket grease before he worked the strip out. He studied the bit of cloth for a few seconds and he remembered the sound of bullets cleaving air, and then Noah’s scream. Remembered the man coming for them. Jamming the scrap into his jeans pocket, he wheeled his bike into the shed.

  After, he was wobbly from fatigue, emotion, and lack of food. In the kitchen, he checked his sugar. His sugar was low, big surprise, and so he downed a glass of orange juice, then another and waited until the shakes went away. They did, and his knees stopped feeling like water. When he returned the carton to the fridge, he saw that he was down to his last vial of insulin for his pump. The vial would last him a week, and he usually changed out on Sundays. Had to remember to bug his mom about the script.

  He pulled up his shirt. The pump was about the size of a deck of playing cards, dark blue with a digital readout, and clipped to his belt. He wore the pump pretty much around the clock, detaching it from a clear plastic cannula attached to a catheter inserted through the skin of his abdomen when he took a shower or bath. The rest of the time, insulin was delivered in pre-programmed infusions which Troy controlled himself. Now, he checked the level in his pump, reasoned he had enough for several more hours before he had to change out to his last vial, and made himself a fried egg sandwich on toast with lots of butter. Then he got a book and waited up for his mother.

  The hall chrono had just called out the half hour when he heard the crunch of gravel beneath tires. A wedge of yellow light slid along the far wall as headlights brightened a set of fraying lace curtains in the kitchen window. Troy closed his book, slid from the table and peeked between slats of a vertical blind that hung over a square of six-paned glass in the kitchen door. He recognized his mother’s car and, then, with a jolt of surprise, realized that the car that had slid in behind was a sheriff’s patrol car. Oh, my God, had his mother gotten herself into trouble? He waited, his nerves tingling.

  His mother slid into the pool of light from the side door. Her hair was tumbling down ar
ound her shoulders, and she was having a hard time negotiating the steps. An instant later, another figure emerged from the darkness, came up behind his mother, grabbed her arm and spun her around. They pressed up close to one another, his mother swaying, grinding her hips against the guy’s front. When his mother pulled away and tripped up the stairs, light skimmed the guy’s face and Troy’s stomach knotted.

  Oh, no, not him . . .

  The rattle of a knob, and then his mother’s giddy laughter sloshed across the threshold, dragging with it the smell of cheap beer and men’s sweat. “Sweetheart!” She wrapped him in a bear hug and planted a woozy, wet smack on his forehead like he was, maybe, three. “I brought a friend home.”

  His mother must be the most popular person on the planet. “Hi.”

  “Hey.” The guy stared at Troy a long second, and then his eyes slid to Troy’s mother. “Where to?”

  “I’m going upstairs.” Troy’s cheeks flamed. He flashed on punching the guy in the face, maybe bashing in his nose or mouth more than it was already mashed in—for all the good that would do. And he needed his insulin. Should’ve taken that last vial when he was thinking about it. But no way he was doing that now, just no way. Now he’d have to stay awake and listen, and there were some sounds he just didn’t want to hear.

  As bad as this was, the worst part was yet to come. Tomorrow morning, his mother wouldn’t remember coming home, or who she’d brought. That was worse.

  His last view of his mother was of her butt sticking in the air as she rooted around the fridge. “You want beer or wine? I got wine and I also got . . .”

  Troy scooted up the stairs, fast as he could, his hands over his ears and the burn of tears on his cheeks.

  39

  Monday, 16 April 3136

  0045 hours

  Ramsey elbowed his way through a crush of patrons pressing toward the bar for last call. There were exclamations and one guy took a swat at him but went wide and ended up smacking a woman to his left. Then she hit the guy, and then more pushing and now Ramsey was wading through a wave of curious onlookers and the bouncer banging his way through, yelling, “Hey, hey, hey!”

  Ramsey squirted through, burst out the door and onto a narrow strip of sidewalk in front of the bar. No Amanda, but he caught the glint of something metallic a few meters away. Amanda’s earbud.

  Where was she? He remembered the turbos he’d passed up the road. They could have taken her away already. But then another thought occurred to him.

  What if these are Kodza’s ghost agents? What if this is to shut me down?

  She’d put up a fight. He was counting on that, because if she fought, he could . . .

  Then he heard a scream. He wasn’t even sure it was a woman’s but it was very short, abortive, terrified: “Gah!”

  Parking lot. Instantly, he was moving, crouching low, wanting to run and knowing he couldn’t because he didn’t know if there were only two or where they were, or whether he had cover. He ran out of sidewalk fast and then ducked into a long inky peel of black shadow at the left side of the building. Too late he remembered the Raptor in his loaner, debated a half second then kept moving. Faster now, keeping his head down. What seemed like an ocean of vehicles in the lot, but there was enough of a glow from the light above the bar’s rear door and another at the very top of a fire escape that he could pick out some details. He hunkered down, leaned against the right rear wheel of a vehicle that smelled of oil, gasoline and road dust, then eased round.

  He caught movement out of the corner of his left eye, looked that way, and then he saw them. One biker, his back turned, his jeans sagging around his knees, his buttocks a dull glabrous gleam, his hands fumbling at Amanda’s waist. The other, standing behind Amanda, his beefy biceps clamped around her neck in a stranglehold and the other wrapped around her arms. And Amanda, struggling, rearing back, her mouth open but making no sound because she couldn’t get air, and the one with his pants down muttering, “Come on, man, keep her still. Keep the bi—”

  “YAAAHHHH!” Ramsey exploded with the fury of a pent-up volcano. Still screaming, he charged, head down, legs pistoning, pounding asphalt. He hit the biker with his pants down—literally—and just as the man half-turned. They collided, hard, and the biker flew back, Ramsey still with him, on top. They landed, the biker on his back and Ramsey astride. The biker’s head hit the asphalt with a solid and audible thunk, like the sound of a full plastic milk jug breaking on tile. The biker went uhhhhhhh, a cross between a moan and the slowly deflating wheeze of an accordion, and then he flailed with one arm, took a drunken swat: “Nooooo . . . fuhhhhh . . .”

  Ramsey’s hands were scrubbed raw and already bloody from asphalt, but he clamped the biker’s head on either side and slammed the biker’s head once, twice, three times against the blacktop, would have done it more, was going for blood even though the biker was unconscious after the first slam. But then, from behind, Amanda’s ragged, gasping shriek sliced through: “Jaaaaahhhh! NIIIIII . . .!”

  Knife! In a flash, he was up, pivoting right, shifting his weight, left foot whipping and then coming down and bouncing up onto his toes into a classical stance: knees slightly bent, right foot back, left foot in the lead and turned slightly in, balled fists held high and level with his chin.

  Knife, knife, where’s the knife? A fraction of a second to find the knife—where where where? A glint of reflected light . . . There! Right hand, coming around fast, and now the biker lumbering in, feinting clumsily with his left, dropping his hands, screaming, “Motherfu . . .!”

  Quick as lightning, Ramsey danced in, his left fist shooting out, banging against the biker’s right forearm and knocking him off-balance. The biker staggered to Ramsey’s left, and Ramsey closed now, his eyes on the knife and then his balled right fist jackhammering fast bambambam! His hand exploded with pain, streaking like hot lava all the way to his shoulder. There was a crunching sound like crackly cellophane, and for an instant, Ramsey thought he’d broken his hand. Then he looked and saw the dent in the biker’s face. Blood bubbled through a mass of pulped flesh and bone that had been the man’s nose and upper jaw. But he was still roaring, staggering back, shaking his head like a groggy bull. And he hadn’t dropped the knife.

  “Maaahhfffuhhhh, maaahhhffffuhhhh!” The biker wheezed. Blood streamed down his face. “Cuuuulllll ooooo! CUUULLLLOOOO!”

  But before Ramsey could make a move, Amanda was there, her hair flying, her face contorted into a Medusa’s mask of naked rage. “Fucker!” she screamed, and her booted foot connected with the biker’s back, right between his shoulder blades.

  All the biker’s breath came out in a whooshing, bloody spray: HUNH! His arms flew apart, and his back arched like he’d been shot. His fingers opened, and the knife skittered away, spinning across black asphalt. He stumbled, tried to keep to his feet, couldn’t, and sprawled facedown.

  Amanda, still on him, her boot swiping a low arc that clocked the biker on the side of the head. “Fuck, you fuck, you fuck!”

  The biker coughed out a scream, but she kept at him, kicking his chest, his belly, his face. She was still kicking and screaming when Ramsey hauled her off, and she kept on screaming until Ramsey wrapped her in his arms. And then she buried her face in his shirt, but she didn’t cry.

  * * *

  That pretty much emptied out the bar. Four deputies whose names Ramsey couldn’t recall were first on the scene, followed by Ketchum who tumbled out of his car looking rumpled and fit to be tied. The deputies pushed back gawkers. But Ramsey still felt eyes, and he craned his neck up, and saw a figure at the top of the fire escape.

  He turned back as the ambulance whooped once, twice, and then pulled away with a wail of siren, speeding for the hospital where a med-evac tilt-wing, already en route, was on its way from New Bonn to whisk the men to a hospital where the needed reconstructive surgery could be done on the one biker’s face, and the other monitored until he awoke. As luck would have it, Ramsey had not cracked the man’s skull, but th
e biker had a nasty gash that had split the scalp and over which the med-tech had slapped a coag bandage. The med tech had done a quick check of Ramsey’s hand, told him he should get it 3-D’ed first thing, wrapped the hand in bioice, and gave Ramsey a pain med to chew, which Ramsey promptly dropped in his pocket. Aside from scratches and a necklace of bruises around her neck, Amanda was physically okay.

  Ketchum gave them both a one-eyed once-over. “Amanda, you gonna press charges, right?”

  Amanda, her face white and eyes dark, glistening and huge: “Yes.” She wore a scrub top that the med-tech had given her. Her blouse was in tatters, and she held it now, wadded in her right hand. “They need to be off the street.”

  “Oh, I can guarantee you that whether you charge them or not. But I also guarantee they’ll find themselves some pie-eyed public defender to protect their sorry backsides—and you”—he jabbed Ramsey in the chest with the point of a finger—“you’re already in trouble.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Ramsey had his arm around Amanda’s shoulders. She was shivering like she was catching her death. “They had it coming and you know it.”

  “Probably. But it’s not your place to say how much and when. That’s why we got courts so justice gets done.”

  “No,” Ramsey said, and hugged Amanda harder. “That’s why we have me.”

  40

  0130 hours

  Sandra Underhill passed out from a combination of too much beer and the amnestics he’d dissolved in her bottle when she went to the john. She lay on the couch, left arm flung back over her head, mouth unhinged. A snail’s track of drool glistened on her right cheek. A low-heeled black pump dangled from the toes of her right foot.

  Pig. Gabriel wanted to scald his mouth against the taste of her sour, beer-flavored tongue. Now when he thought back to what he’d been forced to do, and what he’d let her do to him . . . he felt physically ill.