by Gwen Hunter
“Because there was a whole lot more?” I wanted to add you doofus but thought it might not be politic. “But it was all so fast and I spent the last half of it blinded.”
“And they attacked you with a bowstaff?”
I nodded.
“A martial-arts weapon, not just a stick?” Again my nod. “And you know that how?”
“Because Jubal uses one in karate practice. They hang on the wall in the do jang, just below the swords.”
Madison’s entire forehead wrinkled up with the last word.
Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Never tell a cop more than he asked for. Swords. How stupid can I get?
“Do jang?”
“It’s a tae kwon do gym.” I waited, but Madison decided not to pursue a train of thought that included edged weapons and fists of death and such.
“Uh-huh. You think the men were after you? That maybe they were the same men who took your brother?”
I hadn’t said that. I had very carefully not said that. The men who attacked Davie on the security footage had used fists and feet, but it was a primitive beating, not skilled. There had been none of the balanced poetry of the trained martial-arts practitioner. But something in the original security footage had set my teeth on edge, something besides the violence. What if they were the same guys, pretending to be street hoods one time and revealing their true colors the next? Why bother? Was it because they hid who they were when filmed? Part of some plan? “It could be possible,” I said slowly, “but I’m not sure it’s logical.”
“Why would you think that?” the detective asked just as carefully, his hound-dog eyes steady on me, his index fingers now quiescent.
Not sure I could put into words what caused my disquiet, I closed my eyes and thought back to the attack, separating each distinct moment into an individual memory, like a series of photographs I could view in overlay. Instantly I understood what I hadn’t had time to process at the moment of the assault. “They were lying in wait. This wasn’t a crime of opportunity. They had weapons that were suited to us specifically. They used more sophisticated attack modes than the men who attacked Davie, and they didn’t try to rob us.”
I fast-forwarded through the images of my impressions. “They separated the moment they reached us, one guy after Jubal, one after me. The guy after Jubal was fast. Vicious. Lots of quick strikes to the head, like this.” I opened my eyes and demonstrated with a fist in the air that twisted on impact. “And kicks to the knees. They wanted to bring him down, knock him out, hurt him. These guys were trained, smooth. Not brawny rednecks like on the film of Davie.”
I could feel the attention of the men behind me. Bartlock’s interest, Jubal’s fear that I would say too much. “The guy who came after me gave body blows with the bowstaff, which seemed intended to temporarily incapacitate me, not kill or maim. I think he hit my elbow by accident. The bowstaff is a deadly weapon in the hands of someone who knows how to use it. This guy did. He could have taken me down with two strikes, but he didn’t knock me out or break a joint or bone.”
“Let me see the elbow?” Madison asked.
I pulled off my down jacket and shoved up both sleeves, T-shirt and undershirt, to reveal the small purple spot just above my elbow. The bruise was sharp at the edges, fresh. I bent my arm and winced slightly. “It hurts but it isn’t broken. And he could have shattered the bone with a bowstaff.”
“Why did your brother hire Quinn Baker?”
The question seemed to come out of left field. “My brother has money. A daughter. He needed a bodyguard.”
“But why Quinn Baker?”
I explained the story of Quinn being arrested and Davie taking pity on him, helping with his legal problems and getting him trained to be a bodyguard. All the while I talked, Madison’s eyes roved my face and back to his desk, where he now took notes with pen on paper. When I finished, his focus locked on me and he said, “Did he know that Quinn has ties to the Roman Trio?”
“What is a Roman Trio?” I asked, feeling his intense interest, like a razor cutting into the edges of my mind. “Sounds like an Italian restaurant run by a set of triplets.”
“They’re a small-time crime organization based in Atlanta, with a strong foothold in Asheville. The Trio has ties to larger organizations. They help move drugs through the mountains for New York and Miami operations, as part of an established path from the Florida Keys to New York City and all points between. But drugs aren’t their main niche. They run illegal gambling in the western part of the state.”
“Gambling?”
His interest sharpened. I looked down at my hands, not knowing what to say and what to keep silent. What if Davie hadn’t told me the truth about his years away? I had always known he was keeping something back. What if he was keeping something dangerous back? Something illegal? Illegal gambling? He had once admitted to a problem…. No. Not Davie.
“If you know anything, you should tell me. Your brother’s life might depend on it.”
I looked back up at the detective. He would have promised me the moon if it would have made me talk. But he was right, and that counted for more than vague threats or empty promises. “Davie disappeared when I was a kid. Left home, ran away. I was fourteen. When he came back a few years later, he told me he had made a fortune in gambling. Davie has money. I accepted what he told me as truth.” But what if it wasn’t and bad guys were after him because of connections to the Mob? What did that have to do with the gold in the storeroom? I rubbed my forehead. Madison’s concentration was phenomenal, but he was projecting and I was having a hard time concentrating on my own thoughts and not his impressions of the moment. It gave me a headache.
“Where was he all the time he was gone after he ran away?”
“I don’t know.”
“He never said?”
“I never asked.”
Madison sat back in his chair. He didn’t believe me.
“Why not?” I asked.
Madison blinked. I had responded to a statement he hadn’t made aloud.
I decided to go for broke. “Why don’t you believe me? What good would it do for me to lie to you? My brother came home with a child and made a life for himself here. All I ever wanted was for him to be nearby. To be family. When he came home I accepted what few stories he was willing to tell. His heart was broken because his wife had died. I figured he’d tell me more when he was ready.” Except Davie’s readiness had never come around. And now maybe it was too late. Davie’s letter suggested that his past had caught up with him, and because I didn’t pry back then, I couldn’t help now. Tears gathered in my eyes. I rubbed my head again. I needed aspirin.
“Is that all, Detective?” Bartlock asked from behind me. Huge paws landed gently on my shoulders. Instantly calm descended on me. The hands began to knead tight muscles in my neck and shoulders. Warmth curled through me, chasing the chill away. “My cousin has been shaken up, attacked. She needs rest and she still hasn’t seen the video.”
Madison sighed. “Yeah. We’re done.” He flicked a card into my lap and continued by rote, sounding both strained and bored. “Don’t leave town without notifying us. Here’s my card. If you remember anything else, give me a call.” He nodded to the far hallway and looked up at Bartlock. “You’re welcome to take care of the viewing. I’ll check in with you in a bit.”
I picked up that the detective intended to watch us through a one-way glass as we watched the video. Devious little snit. But I was good; I didn’t say it. I just rose and followed my long-lost cousin several times removed and my best friend into a small interrogation room and sat down after rearranging the chairs, my back to the mirrored window out of spite. Jubal sat beside me and held my hand, lending me his strength. I gripped his fingers hard.
The video from the school was in black and white, and the man who had tried to pick Jane up from school never lifted his head for a straight-on shot. It was the man from the rock-and-gem show. The medium-brown man who had knocked me down and stolen my bag
only to leave it where it could be found, with nothing taken. The same man who had ransacked my hotel room. Was he looking for the gold? Had to be. Should I tell the cops about the gold in my storeroom? Couldn’t.
“It’s him,” I said softly. “The guy from the show.”
“And he wasn’t one of the guys in the alley tonight?” Bartlock asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“I don’t think so, either,” Jubal said. “This guy moves with a rough, homespun rhythm. The men who came after us were fluid when they moved. Dangerous. This guy looks like he has something stuck up his backside.”
“We likely have multiple players in this thing,” Bartlock said. “Two men who attacked you in the alley. This guy. And maybe two more, the men who attacked David, assuming they aren’t the same ones from tonight. We’ve got a computer program running comparisons on kinetic recognition right now. We should know something by morning.”
“Can I take Tyler home now? She’s beat,” Jubal said.
“Sure. I’ll be by in the morning.”
“Come for breakfast,” Jubal said. “We’ll be having something special since the kid’s staying over.”
“Pancakes or waffles,” I said, offering a tired smile. “Isaac cooks a mean rasher of bacon.”
“I’ll be there. And the police will be making regular runs by the store and your lofts tonight. To keep an eye out.”
“Thanks, man,” Jubal said, rising and pulling me to my feet.
I turned to the mirror and said, “You can come, too, Detective Madison. There’s always room for one more.”
Bartlock laughed out loud. He seemed to think I was funny.
We were on the way home, Jubal’s small four-by-four crawling along a shoveled, salted, iced-over roadway, when it occurred to me to ask Madison about the police tap on my phone. I had also forgotten to get Davie’s cards back. Timing is everything. I’d have to wait and ask Bartlock in the morning. I sighed.
“I agree.”
I looked up at Jubal. “With what?” I was pretty sure I hadn’t spoken aloud.
“That she’s either slutty or has short-term memory problems.”
I followed Jubal’s gaze to the front window of the Red Bird Coffee Shoppe. Gail Speeler sat at an intimate table in the almost empty restaurant, her head bowed close to a man. The man’s back was to us, but he had high-swept, jet-black hair and was wearing a shirt with one of those standup, round collars people wear in the city. Neru collars, or something. My sigh had obviously led Jubal to think I had already seen the couple and was reacting.
As we glided past the coffee shop, Gail put her hand on the man’s arm, one of those feminine gestures that says, See me. I am the only woman in the world. Then we were beyond the window and, though I swiveled in my seat and leaned back, I saw only brick and mortar and ice-frosted window glass.
I wasn’t sure, but the man Gail was touching could have been Colin Hornsburn, a developer with interests in high-end growth projects. That’s what they called it now. Not housing developments or retail-commercial expansion—high-end growth projects. PC for the building business.
Colin Hornsburn had spearheaded successful projects all across the Appalachians. At a county council meeting last year, Davie had called him a rapist to his face, in front of witnesses. Raping the land, raping the mountains of their timber and water runoff, raping the animals of their habitat. Hornsburn had not been happy with the epithet. Davie was a dedicated environmentalist. Development of any kind made him edgy.
If Gail was so in love with my brother while on TV, why was she tête-à-tête with the enemy? I felt a spike of temper, the first since we were attacked in the alley. I rotated to face front. “I’m going with slutty.”
“Yeah, me, too. Breeders,” he said with false contempt.
I socked Jubal’s shoulder. “I’m a breeder. My brother is a breeder. Not everyone can be gay. The species would die out.”
“Breeders are disgusting.” He backhanded me, hitting me in the chest. “Men and women. Together. Doing it.”
“Gays are warped deviants and damned to the fires of hell.” I socked him again. We both grinned. The exchange of blows and words made us both feel better.
“Holy tights and codpieces, Batman!” he said, stealing the last word. “The good guys are queer!”
I laughed softly.
Life would have been far easier for him if Jubal had been straight, or at least faked it and lived as if he were. But it seemed to me people were attracted to fairly specific types of things. Long black hair, or blond hair and blue eyes, or hairy backs. It wasn’t a choice what turned me on, I knew what I liked. And it wasn’t anything with boobs. So I figured gay people were in the same situation. You like what you like. It was only how you lived with the preferences that mattered.
A recently converted Bible-thumper had called Jubal names and for weeks made life miserable for Jubal and Isaac not long after Isaac moved in. Because the preacher had quoted scripture from the top of his lungs, standing on a street corner across from the shop, spewing hate instead of love—God was supposed to be about love, wasn’t he?—I had a pretty good idea what the Bible said about people like my friends. I always wondered if there wasn’t a way to get God’s point across without resorting to hate, but I had never seen it.
Back at the loft, Isaac met us at the door with sleepy eyes and a relaxed posture. It was clear without asking that no one had attacked the place in our absence. “She’s been asleep since about ten minutes after you guys left. No calls, no messages,” Isaac said, folding a martial-arts magazine beneath one arm. I tugged him down and kissed him on the cheek. The men locked up, slipped out the side door and walked across the narrow rooftop garden to their place.
The SUV ride had been too short for the heater to warm up and I was frozen. I quickly stripped off my boots, coat and jeans and climbed into my bed with Jane. Her small body had heated the mattress and sheets and I snuggled up next to her, falling into sleep instantly.
I forgot to wall my thoughts against outside impressions. I forgot about fear and the openings to the mind in the dark of night. I forgot about dreams.
I opened my eyes to a cold world, gray and dark and alone. The small window beyond my feet glowed with false dawn. My wrist ached where frozen metal encircled it. Shoulder muscles were so stiff they pulled and howled with pain when I rolled over on the thin mattress. Springs groaned below me.
On the far side of the wall, I heard a scrape of metal on wood, the movement of a chair on the hardwood floor. I had caught glimpses of it when they brought me here.
Fast glimpses of a desk piled high with papers, rolled scrolls, books, calculators, an outdated computer. Memory pictures.
The paper they made me sign, giving up all rights to all properties I owned. The sight of my own hand, a finger broken. Wrist inflamed, swollen.
The feel of my chest where they had broken my ribs. Behind me, a door opened, flooding the room with light. “Well, I see the little rich boy is awake.”
Fear caught me. Pain spasmed across my back and chest.
Misery and tenderness flooded through me. “Oh, Davie.”
Shock took me up. “Brat?”
My eyes opened, my heart pounding. A cold sweat sheathed my body and I shivered. A headache throbbing over my left eye. The dream-that-wasn’t-a-dream was gone. Outside, the night had faded to early dawn. Jane slept at my back, her small body snuggled into me for warmth, her breathing regular and smooth. I slid from the bed and padded on stocking feet to the window.
“No,” I whispered to myself. Holding my head with a palm to keep my brain from exploding, I moved around the apartment until I found a window that revealed the shade of gray in my dream. “East,” I said, speaking the words aloud so I wouldn’t forget. “Davie’s window faces east. No stars showed in it.” Ignoring the cold, I placed a hand on the window frame and leaned in, putting my aching forehead on the icy glass. “He’s in a business of some kind or a house with an office in it.
They’ve made him sign papers. He has a broken finger, broken ribs, chaffed wrist, is handcuffed to a metal-framed bed on a mattress with no sheets. He has no covers and no heat. He has a watchdog, male, with a local accent. A bully who likes to hurt him.”
I shivered with cold and with Davie’s remembered fear and pain. He was afraid for Jane and me, as much as for himself. He was mortally afraid he couldn’t hold out much longer. Davie was hurt….
I remembered the gun Jubal had taken and placed out of sight. I had left it somewhere in the front of the shop. I promised myself to get the gun, buy ammunition and get some target practice. Frozen, I took two Tylenol, padded back to bed and snuggled against Jane. Deliberately I left my mind open to the night and closed my eyes. And slept.
7
Tuesday, after dawn
When I woke again, it was to a dawn-grayed apartment, an elbow in my ribs. “You snore,” Jane said.
“Do not,” I mumbled.
“Do too. Like a hog in mud.” She smiled at me, her long brown hair in a swirl across her face. “Haurghff-haurghff,” she grunted, very piglike.
“Do not, do not, do not.” I was reminded of Madison’s comb-over and brushed the silken tresses off her brow. My hand was still touching her when she spoke.
“He must be weird. Why do men do that, anyway?”
I froze, hand in contact with her skin. Jane stilled, feeling my reaction. “I got that out of your brain, didn’t I?” she asked.
I nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“Like Daddy?”
I nodded again, my ear scrubbing on the pillow.
“And you can get stuff out of my brain, too? Just like that?”
I nodded yet again. “Sometimes.”
“This sucks a great big ostrich egg,” she said, quoting one of my favorite phrases.
“Yeah. It does. I know it’s scary for you.”
“Daddy says you got a wall that stops you from getting stuff like that. Can you teach me how?”
Quickly I stuffed the fear her question created into a dark hole in my mind and slammed shut the door. “I can try. But I’m not trained like Davie was. Mom was still alive and Davie was sent to live with Aunt Matilda when he came into his gift. She was there to teach him. I was alone and never got trained. At all. So I’m not sure how to share all the tricks of the trade.”
