Beneath the Cracks

by LS Sygnet

  I rubbed my chin. "This is new."

  "The goatee?" It was darker blond than his hair and added roguish appeal to his face. "It's that time of year, Doc. The weather turns cold and men's thoughts turn to keeping warm."

  "We should probably join the party. Everyone else is inside already."

  His fingers manacled my wrist before I could turn away. "Or you could tell me why you haven't called in all these months. Don't get me wrong. I'm thrilled to rate an invite to this impromptu gathering tonight, but I've been worried about you. Guess I was hoping we'd have a chance for a private meeting before dinner with the gang."

  The warm hand sent a cold chill through me. I shivered. Moonlight peeking out from behind puffy clouds magnified the blue in his eyes. My nerve endings hadn't forgotten the effect his touch had on me. My stomach hadn't forgotten how to summersault under the intense gaze either. I looked away quickly.

  "Maya told you I've been busy."

  His thumb caressed the inside of my wrist. "She also said you're fine. She didn't tell me that your hair is longer and chestnut now, or that you don't look at the world through harried eyes." Johnny leaned close and brushed his lips against my temple. "You look beautiful, Helen."

  "We should really…"

  "Go inside," Orion sighed. "If I must share, I must share."

  He kept his word – sharing me with the other guests. While Maya fluttered around with hors d'oeuvres trays and wine refills, Johnny drifted from the great room to the kitchen. I wondered how far he'd wander in curiosity about the new house. I slipped into the kitchen after him while Maya played hostess and chatted up the other guests. I wondered why they were really here. Morbid curiosity about my house? About me? Were they aware of the bloody images of Datello's suffering at my hands playing on a continuous loop in my blackened brain?

  Orion was standing in the family room, staring up at a balcony that opened to the recreation room above. I wasn't sure he was aware of my presence until he spoke.

  "You could put a massive Christmas tree in here."

  "I could, if I celebrated Christmas."

  "Oh, you've got to with a place like this. Damn. I can't believe how incredible the house looks. It's hard to believe this was all ash and charred timber a few months ago."

  "They did use new materials to build the new house."

  "I like it. It's very…warm. Very you."

  How little you know me.

  "Do you use the fireplace?"

  "Yes. It's a little chilly here for my tastes."

  Johnny chuckled. "Washington has its share of brutal winters. It doesn't generally snow in Darkwater Bay."

  "No, it's just cold and damp and foggy year round. We have a saying about summer back east. It's not the heat, it's the humidity. The same applies to the cold, or so I've learned. I think I've cleaned out Macy's winter stock of leather getting ready for when the temperature really drops."

  "I have a confession to make. When Maya told me you were too busy to call, I thought she was giving me some sort of gal-pal brush off. I was wrong. This is really amazing what you've done."

  "I like it. It's very different from…"

  "What you had in D.C.?"

  "Yeah. We had an old brownstone that we spent what felt like forever restoring. There's definitely something to be said for painting on a blank canvass. No lead plumbing. No faulty wiring. We actually had a fuse box if you can believe that. And mortar. It's far superior in the 21st century to that of the 19th."

  "You were happy there."

  "For a long time. That doesn't mean I felt peaceful. Getting away from murder and mayhem has been the best thing I think I've ever done."

  "Hmm. That doesn't speak well to our ability to entice you to help out with certain cases as they crop up."

  "Tony has had a couple," I said. Suddenly the rim of my wine glass became utterly fascinating to me. "All he had to do was pick up the phone and call."

  "Yo, Eriksson!"

  I spun around toward the sound of Briscoe's voice.

  "Winslow thinks you're some kinda goddamned concert pianist. I got a Jackson riding on you givin' us a little show."

  I glanced at Orion. "A Jackson?"

  "Andrew. Twenty bucks. Tony bets on anything."

  "Should I be concerned?" I handed Briscoe my wine glass and walked into the great room. "Apparently my friend has an overactive imagination."

  Maya grinned. "We want to hear you play, Helen."

  I cracked my knuckles. "Chopsticks?"

  "Aw, c'mon, Helen. Don't be coy. Who puts a piano like this in their home if they don't play?"

  I cut her off with the very simplistic opening music everyone knows on a keyboard. She buried her face into her hands until I started adding increasingly complex runs up and down the keyboard before bursting into a full on Liberace-esque rendition. Jaws around the room dropped. I grinned and segued into a mambo beat for the grand finale.

  "Hah! Pay up, suckers!" Briscoe burst out in glee when I finished.

  I winked at him and held out a hand. "My percentage of course."

  "I knew I liked you the minute we met," he grinned and peeled off twenty percent of his take. "You should get you one of them tip glasses, Eriksson. We could take this show on the road and make a killing."

  The mood of the party spiked toward jocularity. I started feeling a little less separate from the guests. Even Darnell was smiling and forking over a twenty to Briscoe with good humor.

  His head throbbed in time with the wild beating of the muscle nestled deep in the left side of his chest. What should've been painful was muted by a haze Preacher couldn't quite identify.

  What the hell had happened? How could he feel so miserable on the surface, yet at the same time fantastic. Waves of euphoria crashed through him. Invincibility. Confidence. God, what a rush! Preacher wanted to savor it, to sink his fingers inside his skull if for no other reason than to reassure himself that any of this was real, the brain quivering beneath flesh and bone, so alive and aware, was really his.

  He moved two fingers, a twitch really. Yeah. His hand, his nerves awake in a way he'd never felt before.

  But the sudden movement, slight as it was, awakened more nerves, others not so free to move. Preacher's eyes snapped open. The flood of light in his eyes should've hurt in its brilliance, but there was no pain. Only keen vision, and the sudden acuity that felt unnatural somehow, even to his finely honed instincts.

  Vision traveled down his bared arm, one sleeve having been torn away, and came to rest on a metal band that bisected his left wrist. I know what that is, recognition registered swiftly followed by the automatic response to it. He jerked his wrist. The sharp edges of the handcuff dug into the tender flesh.

  "No!" Preacher rasped. "Let me loose!"

  "I don't think so." A single chair scraped over the floor into his field of vision followed quickly by a face he vaguely recognized. The light bounced off sun-pinked skin of a smooth scalp.

  Preacher's eyes absorbed every detail, the stubble on the squared jaw, black as the dirt he'd been digging in his last lucid memory, the shiny gleam on the freshly shaven scalp, the tiny nicks in the skin here and there where bony bumps weren't so cautiously shorn of stubble. Veins on the arms stood out like living ropes that twisted sinuously beneath the skin barely containing them. He followed the writhing highway from the back of the hairy hand upward. The thin sliver of blood oozed out from a darker track at the bend of the elbow.

  The chilling laughter went straight to Preacher's gut.

  "I shared," the man chuckled. "I do that when it suits my purpose. But now, it's time you and I had a serious chat, Preacher. For starters, I think it's high time we stop dancing around the real issue at hand. You feel awful good right now, but I promise you, that'll all change if I don't hear what I want."

  Preacher's body tensed without volition. Restraint cut into his ankles, and the euphoria he'd felt only moments ago evaporated into panic. His arms tightened and jerked while his legs bounced with su
ch force that the chair hopped several inches over the slick gray floor.

  "You're not going anywhere. Might as well tell me why you volunteered for the job, Preacher."

  "Bed and meals," he rasped. "Warm place to sleep."

  "You had that at your cozy little shelter. Funny thing though. One of the guys over there tells me you didn't spend as many nights under that roof as some of our other volunteers. Got me wonderin' why that was. You ready to tell me the truth now, Preacher?"

  He struggled for the carefully practiced words. "In the beginning was the word, and the word was –"

  "Knock that shit off. You're about as religious as I am."

  Preacher's eyes widened when the light caught the glimmer of thin silver, a clear droplet drizzling from the open beveled tip.

  "We can do this easy, or we can do it hard. You're choice, man, but you're not getting out of here until I get some fuckin' answers, and I mean right now. Who are you really? A cop? That's the word on the street you know. You got too much money to be a bum."

  His eyes fluttered shut. So careful. So much work. So much ridiculous suffering with the lice and the smell and the active resistance to any inclination toward basic hygiene. All for nothing.

  Part of Preacher's brain resisted the temptation to crumble. The other part craved the return of euphoria and the certainty that he could do anything. A parched fleck of dry muscle poked through lips dying for a little moisture. Futile. As futile as escaping the shackles at wrist and ankle.

  He clenched his teeth and whispered, "Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name."

  The needle advanced, pierced the tender flesh in his arm. Another wave of euphoria was aborted quickly by the crushing pain in his chest of a heart that could not possibly beat harder for another moment. In the end, his only comfort was knowledge that whatever had been in the needle had not stripped him of his loyalty.

  It was a faint smile that played about Preacher's lips before they parted with the expulsion of his last breath.

  Maya was hauling a platter from the butler's pantry to the dining room. Her guests followed the savory smells that wafted through the house as though nothing else mattered. My impromptu recital was a minor diversion among old friends.

  I was outside all of it, superficially engaged in the conversation that rippled around the table, volleyed in bursts between detectives and police officials, that dragged my thoughts away from murder and mayhem of my own invention into Zack Carpenter's world of prosecutions and Steve Smith's never-ending passion for crime scene photography.

  I was present but not there. When Maya asked Chris Darnell if he'd do the honors and carve her beautiful brisket, I imagined sliding a scalpel through Danny Datello's flabby flanks. Instead of relishing the melting beef on my tongue like my guests were, I relished the imagined shrieks of Datello's prolonged agony.

  Everyone was in the moment, that happy place where nothing could disturb the pleasure of whatever it was they desired. For them, it was camaraderie. For me, it was vengeance. Reality, in all it's brutal glory came half way through the meal when a cacophony of cellphone ringtones pierced the jovial conversations.

  "Sorry, chicklet," Maya pulled hers off her belt first. "Billy? We're up."

  "Us too," Briscoe said.

  "Yeah," Forsythe glanced at Smith. "Must be serious if we're all getting the call at the same time."

  Shelly had her cell phone in hand. "They're calling me too. It must be worse than serious."

  Hasty apologies followed the mass exodus from the dinner table. Carpenter excused himself at Shelly's request. Even Darnell dashed off to see if Shelly might require OSI's assistance. I closed the door and pressed my forehead against it. Part of me, if I were honest, regretted not being part of the pack running out to right a wrong. The other part liked the new house just fine the way it was without another psycho coming after it.

  I lifted my head, dazed a little bit that it was over, that they were gone and again, I was alone with my red-black rage, those thoughts that not even fear of becoming a monster could suppress. I turned around to start the tedious process of cleaning up after my guests – and saw Johnny Orion watching me from the dining room doorway.

  Chapter 4

  "Don't feel obligated to stay. If Darnell thinks OSI might need to be out there –"

  "I can't openly work their cases, Doc. It might be hard not to rush into the thick of it, but Chris will let me know what needs to be done from our end, if anything." He held out one hand. "Let's finish dinner. I'll even stick around to help clean up."

  Would it be inhospitable to beg off on the rest of dinner? My appetite was nonexistent on a good day. What I really wanted was a roaring fire and whatever remained in the open wine bottles. And solitude for my thoughts to age, to gel all these delicious notions of revenge.

  "Of course," damned social protocol. "Just because everyone else had to leave doesn't mean you can't finish dinner."

  Orion returned to the dining room. "Grab the glasses, would you?"

  I followed him into the kitchen where he promptly deposited our plates at the smaller breakfast table.

  "Much better." He surveyed his handiwork. "Not that the dining room isn't something that looks like Martha Stewart might've flown to Darkwater Bay to design it herself, I prefer being a little more informal if it's just the two of us. C'mon. Let's finish dinner."

  I spent half an hour rearranging food on my plate, watching the clock and giving bare minimum responses to Johnny's conversation.

  "It bothers you, doesn't it?"

  "Hmm?"

  "That they're all out there working and you're here, safely away from the action."

  "Not really. I don't think anyone ever tried to kill me before I came to Darkwater Bay. It wasn't an experience I'd like to repeat. Every time I start the car, there's this fraction of a second where I wonder if we got the right guy."

  "Do you need to get that?"

  Phone. Ringing. I hadn't even noticed. I glided to the wall near the kitchen counter.

  "Hello?"

  "Hey Eriksson, it's Briscoe."

  "Oh, hello. Did you forget something when you ran out of here?"

  "Brisket on a kaiser to go," he chuckled, but sobered instantly, "I was wondering if you might be free to head over to Downey tonight. This big thing that busted up your party is the fourth in a series of similar circumstances we've encountered since the beginning of the year. Winslow said there's been a couple more in Darkwater proper, and we ain't got the first clue what sorta rhyme or reason is behind the whole thing."

  I glanced over my shoulder at Orion, studiously trying to look disinterested. "Why don't you fax the notes from your investigation over to me, and I'll take a look whenever they arrive?"

  "Eriksson, are you draggin' your feet on this one for any particular reason? We got guys stackin' up in dumpsters like there's no tomorrow. I'd think –"

  "Homeless men?"

  "Does that matter?" Only Tony Briscoe could inflect rising dander so succinctly.

  "Not in the way that you're thinking. Of course it doesn't matter who the victims are, Tony. But in terms of profiling the killer in this case, it matters a great deal. Homeless people are at higher risk for violence. They're considered a more vulnerable population for a number of reasons, one of which is the fact that they have no safe abode."

  "Oh," he muttered. "Well it ain't like we didn't realize that part."

  "Fax me your notes when you get a chance. I'll do what I can to help you narrow the likely suspect pool."

  I hung up the phone and turned around. Orion was staring now. Perched against the counter, I asked, "What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

  "I'm familiar with this growing problem, Doc. It was one of the first cases that Maya brought to the attention of OSI when she started working in Bay County."

  "And this requires an assistant district attorney's involvement at the investigative stage of the case?"

  "It was probably wishful thinking on Sh
elly's part, that this time there would be evidence at the scene that would point to a suspect. If so, Zack could get the warrant for a search, et cetera. I had a feeling when they shot out of here that way that another stiff might've turned up."

  "When was the last one?"

  "About two weeks before you got here."

  "No clues?"

  "The last I heard, Maya was having a hard time even identifying the victims. They weren't just homeless. They were chronically homeless."

  "Drunks, drug addicts, like that?"

  Orion nodded. "So Chris and I talked about getting one of our state guys undercover in Downey to see if anybody knew anything. These people aren't exactly amenable to opening up to the police."

  "How is that going?"

  "He's starting to make a little headway. He's got some people at a mission down in a pretty rough part of Downey that are at least used to seeing him around now. This isn't a warm and welcoming bunch, Helen. It's every man for himself."

  "That's why Chris went? To find your undercover man and see if he knows anything about the latest murder?"

  "It makes sense. It's probably the source of Shelly's wishful thinking that Zack's skills at obtaining hassle free warrants will come in handy."

  "You don't share that optimism." I grabbed the pot of coffee and a couple of cups. "Tell me why."

  "I talked to Jake a couple of weeks ago. It's been months since the last body turned up. Those who have the brain cells left to remember something that long ago still weren't talking, and those without aren't credible witnesses anyway."

  "Other than being homeless, what makes you think they're related? You just said it, Johnny. These guys aren't stellar specimens of health and good living." I tugged open the stainless steel refrigerator door. Maya had done most of the work on dinner, but I prepared one of the few things I do well inside a kitchen – New York style cheese cake. I pulled out two plates to enjoy with the strong coffee.