The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust Book 5)

by Craig Schaefer

  “Eh, he’s pretty laid-back,” Jake said. “As long as it won’t risk his trustee job, he’ll probably help out for a few bucks on his commissary account.”

  I craned my neck, glancing at a clock set above the door to the yard.

  “Okay, I’m going to be inside the infirmary at ten sharp. At five minutes after, precisely, I need Zap to deliver a message.”

  * * *

  “Message from the front office,” Zap said, sounding breathless. “You’ve got a phone call.”

  Valentino glanced at the counter behind him where an old beige phone sat quiet and neglected. “They couldn’t transfer it to me?”

  Zap shook his head. “Interoffice lines are dead again.”

  “Fourth time this month.” The doctor sighed. “Did they take a message?”

  “No, that’s the thing,” he said, then looked my way again. “Um, could I speak to you privately real quick? It’s…it’s about your wife. There’s been an accident.”

  The doctor spun around, wide-eyed, the tail of his open lab coat swinging in his wake. The moment I’d been waiting for. I leaned forward, my fingers dipping into his oversized coat pocket and latching onto his key ring. The ring slid out effortlessly as he strode for the door, and I clasped the keys against my palm to muffle them.

  Valentino joined the trustee out in the hall, keeping one foot in the door as they conversed in hushed tones. I didn’t need to listen in. I’d written Zap’s script.

  St. Edna’s, the small hospital in Aberdeen, was calling with an urgent message about the good doctor’s wife and her involvement in a car crash. At least, that was what Zap was telling him. Valentino poked his head in.

  “Stay right here,” he told me. “I’ll be back.”

  Then he was off to the races, with Zap in tow. Leaving the wolf in the henhouse.

  It was understandable. Everything was locked down tighter than a submarine door, and the camera in the corner was there to ensure good behavior. Of course, that assumed anyone was actively watching the screen, one of dozens if not hundreds all across the prison.

  I wasn’t planning any mischief in here, anyway. My business was in the room next door.

  I jumped up from the padded bench, ignoring a sudden twinge from my cut, and darted to the swinging door. The air dropped ten degrees on the other side. The chemical-lemon scent of antiseptic clung to every surface, sticking in the back of my throat.

  Two examination tables stood on a water-stained granite floor, with a drainage vent between them. Both had an occupant draped under ivory sheets.

  I pulled back the sheet on the first body. Not Paul, but I instantly recognized him from the flowery neck tattoo that read Emilie. It was the con I’d come in with, riding side by side on the prison bus. The one Jablonski had truncheon-whipped.

  He had more than a head wound, now. His face looked like he’d gone ten rounds with a meat tenderizer, one eyelid a puffy mound and the other caved in over an empty socket. I wasn’t sure if that had killed him or the savage rents that peppered his chest, leaving his flesh torn and ribs cracked.

  Jesus, I thought, what happened to him?

  I had a sneaking suspicion that whatever he’d gone through, it had happened in Hive B.

  All the more motivation to get the hell out before it could happen to us, too. I replaced the sheet, stepped to the second table, and pulled back the other one. Paul could have been sleeping, if not for the ash-gray skin and the crumpled ruin where his heart used to be.

  I figured, given the distance between the infirmary and the front office, I had fifteen minutes at most. Enough time for Dr. Valentino to get up there and find nothing but a dead phone line. Then he’d call St. Edna’s; they’d have to search for his wife’s name and ultimately tell him there was no such patient. If I were really lucky, he’d call his wife to make sure she was okay, and they’d chat for a while.

  As far as Zap went, he’d just claim he got duped by a prank caller. Happens to the best of us.

  A rack of mortician’s tools hung on the wall, secured in a wire cage—bone saws and rib spreaders and hooks and hoses. A padlock dangled from the hasp of the cage door.

  I felt the minutes ticking away as I tried one key, then another and another, fumbling my way through the ring until one made a hollow click. The wire cage opened with a rusty groan.

  The Hand of Glory was old-school sorcery, dating back to the eighteenth century. One of the earliest attempts at an invisibility spell, or at least one of the earliest that actually worked. Sort of. Right now, it was exactly what I needed to secure our escape plan. I was familiar with the spell, but I’d never actually used it, because it was so hard to find the key ingredient these days.

  The severed left hand of an executed murderer.

  “On the bright side,” I told Paul’s corpse, “in a way, you’re still breaking out with us.”

  Then I surveyed the rack of tools and picked up a bone saw.

  I may have committed a tiny little murder, Paul had told me when he signed on for the escape plan. One requirement down. As far as the other part, well, he’d been shot by a prison guard. If Jablonski didn’t go down for killing him—and he wouldn’t—that made it, by default, a legal execution.

  I cheat at magic.

  I took the sheet covering Paul and tucked one end into my shirt, wearing it like an oversized bib. Dead bodies don’t bleed, but they do leak. I stretched his left arm out on the slab, turning his palm facedown, and fired up the bone saw. The circular blade screamed like a dentist’s drill forged in hell.

  It chewed through his wrist, spitting a stream of brown and red flecks that drifted down to the concrete floor along with a trickle of blood that had pooled in the base of his arm. The air filled with a stench like rotting meat mixed with burnt microwave popcorn. I just held the saw steady, careful, cutting as clean as I could until the last sinew sliced apart and the severed hand pulled free.

  I tucked Paul’s arm against his side and covered him back up. All I could see was the clock, the minutes counting down like seconds as I ran to a washbasin and gave the blade a quick rinse in cold water. Far from perfect, but it looked clean enough at a distance. Valentino would discover Paul’s missing hand before he discovered the tool that did the deed.

  And by then, we’d be long gone. Assuming I wasn’t about to get caught in the act.

  I locked up the tool cage, slipped Paul’s severed hand under my shirt, and hustled back into the infirmary. I poked my head out the door. Just as planned, Westie was right outside with his trusty mop and bucket, taking his time as he swabbed the grimy floor.

  He slid the bucket toward me with his foot, and I tossed Paul’s hand into the water. It made a tiny splash and bobbed in the soapsuds.

  “Jesus Christ,” Westie said, his horrified gaze snapping from the bucket to me. “What the hell did you do in there?”

  “I told you: here’s where it gets weird. Head back to the hive and meet me outside the bathrooms on tier three.”

  He covered the hand with his mop and rolled the bucket away, muttering obscenities under his breath.

  I’d barely gotten back to the bench, sitting innocently and catching my breath, when Valentino stalked into the room.

  “Your wife okay?” I asked.

  “Some people,” he seethed, “have nothing better to do than—yes, she’s fine, thank you. Now let’s see how that cut’s clearing up.”

  I lifted my shirt and he rubbed the cut with rubbing alcohol again, mopping away the dried blood. The alcohol felt freezing and hot at the same time, with a sting like whiskey going down my throat.

  “Hm, doesn’t need stitches, I don’t think. Might have a hairline scar, but it should heal clean.”

  He turned on his stool, reaching for the cardboard box of gauze pads he’d taken down earlier. As he leaned to one side, I gently slipped the key ring back into the pocket of his lab coat.

  I held a pad in place as he taped it along the edges, covering the cut under a fluffy white blan
ket. “Just keep that in place for a couple of days,” he told me, “and let me know if it seeps through.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” I said, “you’re a real lifesaver.”

  I hoped so, anyway. My little adventure in the infirmary had yielded the key ingredient for a Hand of Glory. Now came the hard part: making it work.

  26.

  Jake and Westie waited for me outside the tier-three bathrooms, where I’d had my run-in with Mister Kim. I needed an hour with privacy, no guards and no cameras, and that grimy hellhole was my best bet.

  Jake handed me a plastic bag. “Everything you asked for.”

  Westie just slid his mop and bucket my way. His usually ruddy cheeks were as pale as Paul’s.

  “All right,” I said, “you guys stay out here and stand guard. Don’t let anybody come in after me.”

  “Mind telling us what you’re gonna be doing in there?” Jake asked.

  I smiled. “That’d spoil the surprise.”

  Inside, I checked the stalls and made sure I was alone. Then I fished Paul’s soggy hand out of the bucket, tearing off fistfuls of toilet paper and patting it dry. I tossed the damp wads of paper into the closest sink.

  I knelt down, the filthy tile hard and cold against my knees, and unfolded Bentley’s instructions before checking the bag Jake had handed me. Everything I needed. Well, almost.

  My hacker buddy Pixie had once asked me to explain magic. I’d tried to put it in terms she’d understand and told her magic was the cheat codes for the universe. You carried out the right gestures, the right phrases, made the right sacrifices, and suddenly things that shouldn’t have happened, happened.

  That was the simplified version. There was more to it, the foundations every sorcerer had to learn: visualization, breathing, how to raise and channel raw power without giving yourself a heart attack or burning your brain into a charcoal briquette. I could talk to a Taoist alchemist from Hong Kong, a Senegalese medicine man, or a blood witch from the backwoods of Kentucky, and up to a certain point we would all be speaking the same language. Working with the same primal cosmic forces, even if we gave them different names.

  The deeper you went into a given tradition of magic, the stranger stuff got. Could I explain why offering the blood of a white dove over graveyard dirt on a Saturday at midnight could help break a family curse? Nope. But I’d been paid to do it, and I knew it worked. That was why, when you were working with somebody else’s spells—especially the really old, really esoteric stuff—it paid to steer as close to the original as possible. You never knew when one tiny change might yank out a metaphysical load-bearing wall and make the whole ritual come crashing down.

  I was making a lot of tiny changes here.

  Instead of a meditative circle of candles, I had a filth-smeared floor and broken toilets. Instead of a murderer’s hand pickled in brine, it’d been marinating in soapy mop water. And technically, the murderer was supposed to have been not just executed, but specifically hanged.

  The last execution by hanging in the United States was in 1996. You can’t always get what you want.

  I laid the hand before me and rested my hands on my knees, palms up. My breath slowed, my pulse slowing with it. The stench and the outside clamor faded away, and so did the light, my world eclipsed in a glowing darkness.

  I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. Glacial now, like distant rumbling thunder. A drumbeat for a dirge.

  Bentley’s cramped handwriting glowed like blue neon. I felt the words more than read them, the half-Latin, half-English chant rolling off my tongue in a sibilant whisper. As the chant hastened, my pitch deepening, my upturned fingers clenching at shadows, a lance of fire burned up my spine. Power from the dark, raw and eager to be used.

  Sleep, now sleep. Silent in my wake. Be as the dead for this dead man’s sake.

  I bent back the rigor-clenched fingers, one by one. The fire in my spine arced across my arms, from my fingertips to the hand’s. Then came the twine, and the final ingredient.

  Traditionally, a Hand of Glory’s light burns from white candles, candles rendered from a human corpse. I didn’t have those. What I had was a suspicion that what really mattered wasn’t the candle, or even the flame: it was the smoke.

  I unwrapped the cellophane from a pack of Marlboros and shook out five cigarettes.

  The chant unceasing, my voice and my hands working in unison, I lashed a cigarette to each of Paul’s fingers with twine. They stood like tiny smokestacks at the end of each bloodless fingernail. I held the hand high above my head, energy coursing into it. The grimy bathroom mirrors rattled in their steel frames, and my ears filled with an electric hum.

  “Sleep, now sleep,” I hissed at the climax of the spell, “silent in my wake. Be as the dead for this dead man’s sake.”

  With a faint crump, the cigarettes ignited.

  Their tips glowed vivid orange, like alien suns, and sent up wispy streamers of silver smoke. The streamers wrapped around me like tinsel garlands as I rose with my prize clutched in both hands.

  Outside the bathroom, Jake and Westie’s energetic conversation suddenly fell silent as the enchantment washed over their senses. They stood there, slack-jawed and empty eyed, toys with their batteries yanked. I walked past them, and the silver smoke trailed behind me. As I climbed down the metal stairs to the hive floor, an oppressive silence spread in all directions.

  Heads drooped. Shoulders sagged. Men stood like broken statues, lost in opium dreams. Where I walked, no one saw me. Where I walked, no one saw anything at all.

  Ahead, the ultimate test: the ring of red paint around the base of the central guard tower and the sign reading “NO WARNING SHOTS WILL BE FIRED.” I steeled myself, took a deep breath, and stepped over the line.

  No shots rang out, and the silver smoke swirled as I strode toward the tower door.

  “No lock deters the Hand of Glory,” I whispered, focusing on the key-card reader beside the steel door. “No secrets shall I be denied.”

  The red light above the reader flickered and turned green. The door handle clicked. I let myself in.

  As I climbed the stairs, weaving past stupefied and slumbering guards, my heartbeat quickened. I had a new problem, and I wasn’t sure how to fix it. My version of the Hand worked just how it was supposed to, despite my substitutions and corner-cutting, but it wasn’t built to last.

  A proper Hand was supposed to endure for hours. My improvised cigarette “candles” had already burned halfway down. I had just enough time, if I was lucky, to snag the night-vision goggles and get them back to my cell before the cigarettes burned out and shattered my spell.

  The original idea had been to hide the Hand, take it along to help with the raid on the motor pool, and use it to get the prison gates open once we’d secured our rides home. Now I was jogging up the steps two at a time, just to make sure I could get the first part of my plan done.

  No Hand, no open gates. The shining road to freedom was turning into a great big electrified roadblock.

  Focus, I thought, swallowing down a surge of sudden panic. Worry about that later. We’ll find another way.

  Another part of me, the part that squirmed in the back of my brain like a cornered rat, wanted to run. Run for the front offices, steal some clothes, and get out. If I were fast, I’d have just enough time to reach the open highway. Hitch a ride to Aberdeen—jack a car if I had to—and figure it out from there.

  I couldn’t do it. I’d given my word to Jake and Westie. I could escape alone, right here and now, but I wouldn’t like how I’d feel about myself when the deed was done. Then there was Buddy. If any part of that craziness his twin had shown me was real, the fate of the world might hang on his “message” getting to the right ears.

  And I was the only person who could make that happen.

  Jablonski sat in a chair overlooking the hive floor, stupefied, sniper rifle cradled in his arms like a newborn son. I resisted the urge to pitch him through the window headfirst. It wasn’t a sense of mercy,
just the knowledge that a mysteriously dead guard would lead to the entire prison getting locked down tighter than a bank vault. I turned my gaze to a rack of equipment and monitors along the back wall. There they were: four pairs of black rubber binocular-style scopes with head straps and icy winter-green lenses. I helped myself to a couple and hustled back downstairs.

  The cigarettes burned low as I pounded up the steps to my tier, racing for my cell, and flecks of hot ash spilled down onto my hands. I made it just as the first light burned out. The wreath of silver smoke convulsed around me, fraying as if slashed with invisible knives. Then the other four cigarettes burned out one after another, and the magic died.

  I stashed the now-useless severed hand under my mattress. Have fun coming up with a reasonable explanation for that, I thought. The image pleased me, until I realized they’d probably assume I was a necrophiliac.

  Outside the cell, life was back to normal. Cons milling around and shooting the breeze, guards on the catwalks. Nobody noticed the lost minutes. And there’s Emerson again, I thought, glancing up, keeping tabs on the other guards and doing a crap job of being subtle about it.

  I met Jake and Westie outside the bathroom. Westie did a double take, while Jake pushed open the door and peered inside.

  “How the hell did you get out of there without us seeing you?” Jake asked.

  “Magic. Hey, out of curiosity, if the guards found a severed hand under an escaped prisoner’s bunk, what would they think?”

  “Necrophiliac,” Westie said.

  “Major necrophiliac,” Jake agreed.

  Okay, so there might be some embarrassing newspaper articles in my near future. I’d live with it.

  “Changing the subject,” I said, “we might have a little hitch in the plan. Don’t worry about it, though. I’m working on it.”

  The confidence in my voice was a dirty lie. Without a working Hand of Glory, I had no idea how I was going to get those gates open. With every night in this place bringing the risk of a one-way trip to Hive B, though—and my cell number next on the hit list—we’d never get a better chance than now.