“Didn't he think you were nuts?”
“I called him from a psych unit, Ben. Of course he thought I was nuts. He wanted to bring me a rosary. I told him I was afraid the humanist staff members would make it difficult for me if they knew I was religious; that I felt awash in a sea of evil. That got him on my side. Nobody resists a conspiracy. You were too cheap to spring for them when you had your chance. There you go, blessed ash.”
“Great,” Ben said. “But I was too cheap to buy a copper stake too. So we're still screwed.”
“Make one.”
Everyone stared at Rickie.
“That's a fine idea, Rickie, but we don't have any copper.”
“A penny has copper,” Rickie said. “A penny's got copper. Nickel's got nickel. Dime's got tin.”
“Tin?”
“Dime's got tin. Quarter's got—”
“Got it,” Ben said. “There's metal in coins.” He turned to Nestor. “Is there still copper in pennies?”
“He knows there's tin in dimes and you're asking me? What do I know?”
“Doesn't matter.” Ben put the car in gear and pulled out of the stall. “There aren't any banks open. There's no way to get pennies.”
“I got pennies,” Rickie said.
“I don't think there's much copper in a penny anymore.”
Undeterred, Rickie said, “Got lots of pennies.”
Ben checked the rear view mirror for help. Nestor and Forester stared, refusing to throw a bone from the peanut gallery. “Rickie, to make a stake… You'd need to melt a thousand pennies. Heck, who knows, you might need to melt ten thousand pennies!”
“I got sixty-two thousand, eight hundred, twelve pennies.”
Ben hit the brakes, skidding. Like animatronic dummies, all three turned to Rickie, the child-like, middle-aged man who'd spent five decades riding from phone booth, to soda box, to candy machine, apparently scoring like a Vegas shark. “Sixty-two thousand, eight hundred?” Ben asked.
“Sixty-two thousand, eight hundred, twelve pennies,” Rickie repeated matter-of-factly.
The toys turned in Ben's head. “We'll need a torch,” he declared. “Cast iron pots, conduit, a sturdy ladle. Coconut oil. Garlic. We need gas cans.”
“Walmart!” Nestor shouted.
Ben hit the gas.
With images of Peter Chandler hanging lifeless in the Shot Tower flashing in her splitting head, Erin returned to the Port District intersection where she'd knocked Rickie from his bike. He'd been scared into a panic and she wondered, by what? With no other starting place, she would track him backwards, go where he'd been. She eased her cruiser down the dark street in the direction from which Rickie had come. Two blocks later, she drove under the bypass and into the Port's tourist playground. She passed the hotel and water park, Diamond Ed's tiny inland casino and, nearing the harbor, the river museum.
She thought of Ben making a horse's ass of himself, swimming with the fishes, and shook her head. Then she thought of him responding, the instant she'd called, to help her get Rickie to the hospital, and even now, seeing Rickie safely home. He was a sweetheart, and God, she loved him. But, geez, the guy was nuts. She returned her attention to the Port and her search, pulled up on the quiet street between the museum and the harbor, and climbed from her squad.
What had frightened Rickie so? Where had he been? He saw the big bat. He saw the ticky bird. He saw the lady put her legs on and jump the fence. The fence? Her eyes fell on the tall wooden fence at the back of the river museum. Behind it lay the native displays, wetlands, and the entrance to the dredger steamboat. He saw the lady jump the fence, Erin thought, and he ran off. From where or what? At the hospital, Rickie had said something about the boat or a boat. It was a harbor; boats were hardly in short supply. What boat could Rickie – and the legs – have been aboard? The William T. Greene? What else had he given her? Nothing else. She sighed and scanned the night sky.
Erin worked down the fence line, kicking the slats. Three-quarters of the way down, one popped up. The next two in line did the same. They looked secure but were free at the base. Rickie, it seemed, had a secret entrance. She'd have to remember to give him hell. In the meantime, though she didn't want her brothers and sisters in police and fire there with her, she knew it wouldn't hurt to have them near. She flipped her cell phone, dialed 9-1-1, and when dispatch answered, said, “There is a body in the Shot Tower. There is a body in the Shot Tower.” And snapped the phone closed.
Erin pushed the boards to Rickie's secret access and slipped into the museum property.
Thirty – Six
They were the living definition of a Motley Crew; Ben, Nestor, and Forester hurrying around Rickie's apartment like decapitated chickens readying themselves to face aswang. The reporter sorted their purchases. Nestor heated one cast iron pan overturned atop another. Copper melted at just under 2,000 degrees, he knew. His propane torch reached 3,600. Rickie scurried about, through a trove of coins, cans, bottles, metals, and rock treasures collected over decades, searching for squirreled away items that matched, or might stand in for, those on their list. Bitching a blue streak, Ben carried bags of pennies to Nestor's workplace in the kitchen.
“He's charging us a penny apiece!”
“Us?” Nestor asked. “You got a mouse in your pocket? They're pennies. They're worth a penny apiece, aren't they?”
“There you go again, giving away my money. I thought we were in this together?”
“We are. Rickie gave us a headquarters, didn't he? After Erin ran him over? Show some gratitude, he could charge two pennies apiece.”
“Do you have any idea how much sixty-two thousand, eight hundred pennies comes to?”
Rickie entered carrying a cardboard box. “Sixty-two thousand, eight hundred, twelve pennies,” he said, correcting Ben. “Six hundred, twenty-eight dollars, twelve cents.”
“See.” Ben pouted. “Like it's nothing.” He scowled at Nestor. “All that crap compassion you were selling. Poor Rickie. Have you looked around? Televisions, plural. Stereos, CD players, video games, metal detectors. He's richer than Julius Caesar!”
“I haven't looked around,” Nestor said. “I've been busy. We're all busy. What the matter with you?”
“I'm worried about Erin!”
“Me too,” Nestor said.
“Me too,” Rickie said.
“And me,” Forester shouted. “One for all and all for Erin.”
“I'm sorry,” Ben said. “I appreciate you all.”
Rickie unloaded his box; a collection of crucifixes, empty glass bottles that had once held perfume, and several fat rolls of stripped Romex wire.
Ben gawked. “Is that copper?”
“Yes,” Rickie said. “If you don't want the pennies.”
“Forget the pennies.” Ben examined a roll. “This will melt faster with no slag. It's just copper.”
“Yes.” Rickie pulled a scale from the box. “Copper. Seventeen cents an ounce. Two dollars, seventy-eight cents a pound.”
For a tourist attraction, the scene was grim. Flickering red and blue lights rupturing the night on a lonely point beside the Mississippi as squad cars, fire apparatus, and the stoic figures who operated each moved somberly about the Duncan Shot Tower. A generator howled on the scaffolding. Cords hung from the broken window and the interior of the civil war relic glowed with floodlight. Shadows danced as Tucker, Arbuckle, and even Pontius, struggled with their burden.
On the ground, Castronovo stepped from the entrance to his brother-in-law nearby. “It's him,” the fire chief said. “Chandler. He's long gone. Any ideas?”
“None,” Musselwhite replied. “The 9-1-1 call lasted less than five seconds. The dispatchers had to play it back just to get it. All that was said was, 'There is a body in the Shot Tower' twice.”
“Now what?”
“Add another file to the pile; begin a new murder investigation. And start by searching for our lead investigator, again.” Castronovo looked a question. “Erin Vanderjagt's d
isappeared. She isn't answering her phone or radio. No one's heard from her.”
“Where do you start?”
“We're in the Port District,” Musselwhite and Castronovo stepped aside as Pierce and the 'B' Shift gang carried Chandler's covered body past on a stretcher. “It's as good a place to start as any.”
Erin thought the same. The murder events, the Garfield explosion, the Opera House, the Fourth Street Elevator, the hospital attacks, the Clock Plaza, the Shot Tower – all had happened in and around the Port District. Rickie's trail led there too, and to the river museum. Hadn't Ben seen it; a shadow on the museum dredger? Hadn't he seen it again recently, the same moving shadow? She'd ignored him and mocked him. Now Erin stood at the river museum, beside the dredger.
The USACOE William T. Greene was a national landmark vessel, the last side-wheel working dredge, used on the Missouri River by the Army Corps of Engineers during World War Two. Tourists could walk the decks and visit the engine room when the museum was open. But it wasn't open now. The dredger sat moored in darkness, with a pilothouse on top looking like a great place for a bird's nest and an engine room below, that Erin felt, might well make a cold black bat cave.
A strange sensation came over Erin as she moved up the gang plank. It wasn't that she felt it move. The boat was 280 feet long, held a crew of forty-nine, and could dredge 80,000 cubic yards of river bottom a day; a one hundred and fifteen-pound woman stepping aboard barely registered. Still, Erin knew she'd left the land, and more, she felt the awe of the unknown in the air and around her. Moonlight glistened on the water but vanished on the flat gray deck as if it was absorbed. She stepped aboard, and with effort, made out the biggest objects, thick bulkheads with heavy inset doors, ladders (stairs to landlubbers) , and as her eyes adjusted to the dark, the smaller, nearer objects; winch cables, piped rails, and signs warning tourists away from roped-off non-public areas.
Where to start, she wondered? Up or down? Nest or cave? Big bat? Ticky bird? Or was she hunting nothing but a wild goose? She'd found Chandler in the highest spot in the river valley, so Erin opted for the nest. She took a deep breath, grasped the rail, and on cat's feet, started up the first starboard stairs. She thought of the crib notes version of island mythology Ben had given her at the hospital, what little she'd committed to memory. She regretted doubting, regretted not taking it more seriously. If it was true, she was unprepared and knew it. But she was there and had a job to do. One stealthy lap around the second deck, seeing and hearing nothing, and she headed up again. She eased her head above the top deck, saw nothing moving, and hurried to the aft stairs of the pilothouse. The large square windows to the fore and sides of the wheelhouse glinted moonlight. The dark window in the aft door reflected her image like a polished mirror. She took a quiet breath and slipped inside. She looked out to see the moon on the still harbor water in the otherwise black port. She saw the scant lights in the Port District and the town beyond. She saw the emergency lights at the Shot Tower and silently rejoiced. Chandler had been found. She pulled her flashlight, trained it low, and flicked it to life. She saw the binnacle, the compass, the tiller controls, but nothing else. Then Erin stiffened as she heard:
Tik. Tik. Tik. Tik. Tik, tik, tik. Tik, tik, tik.
“Great rhythm, but hard to dance to.”
Erin spun around, lifting her light to the figure in the doorway; green eyes glinted back. She caught her breath and made out the features of a dark-skinned beauty with long black hair. This was, Erin knew, the long-sought exotic woman. Like an eerie musical score, the ticking continued outside. The woman stepped onto the bridge, and like a runway model, circled slowly around Erin, displaying her wares. She stopped behind the binnacle, said, “I'm Vong,” and, reaching to her shoulders, slipped her thumbs beneath the straps of her dress. “You're Erin, Ben's girl. Ben's pretty little girl.” She pulled the straps free and let her dress fall to the deck. The cool April breeze hardened Vong's nipples. “You're carrying Ben's baby.” Vong inhaled deeply, exhaled with exaggerated satisfaction, and ran a hand across her naked stomach. “Shall I say something pithy like a villain in your American films?” Vong smiled viciously, then pursed her lips. “How about; 'Oohh. The take-out has arrived'.” She laughed. “Or perhaps, 'I think I'll try the soul'.”
“That's a good one,” Erin said. She drew her Glock and squeezed the trigger.
The semi-automatic barked thirteen times in eight and a half seconds. Thirteen times the slide dissipated the recoil, chambered a new .40 caliber round, and ejected a spent case. A hot casing hit her on the fly leaving a half-moon burn on her cheek. Erin kept firing. The muzzle flashed like lightning, blinding her in the darkness. Vong screamed once, and grunted twelve times more, as her body received Erin's answer. At that range, the bullets that didn't hit bone passed through Vong and shattered the windows behind her. Glass fell like rain.
The shooting stopped. Erin's blindness passed quickly, but in the gun smoke, she still couldn't see. Burnt powder, and the musky scent of a wild animal filled her nostrils. The ringing in her ears ebbed and was replaced by guttural breathing. The smoke began to clear.
Thirty – Seven
Vong lived. A dark fluid, blood-like but not blood, poured from nine bullet wounds in her chest and abdomen, six of them impressively grouped above her left breast. Moaning in pain, reeling, she reached above her head, clutched the metal cage protecting the light bulb, and steadied herself. She gritted her teeth with a wild look in her green eyes.
Then reality vanished as Erin was dragged into a world of foreign legend and superstition.
Vong flexed her arm and howled as she seemed suddenly to grow taller. A moment passed and the stunned detective saw it for the illusion it was. Vong wasn't growing, her abdomen was stretching, stretching, then tearing. In seconds, beyond all reason, she had ripped herself in two at the waist. The screaming head and bullet-ridden torso dangled by her arm like a chimp in a zoo cage, dripping black blood on the still-standing legs she'd left behind.
Erin was so appalled, other changes took place without her noticing. Vong's nails became claws that clicked menacingly on the light cover. The flesh on her head and torso turned from exotic brown to sickly green-black, as if she'd been consumed by gangrene. The strands of her straight hair began to undulate like snakes on the Medusa. Coarse hair appeared in patches between the gunshot wounds, on her stomach, breasts, and shoulders. And, even more unbelievably, her torso sprouted wings; foul leathery wings that exploded and grew from her back until, even half-folded on a single-hinged joint, each extended five feet, to the overhead on the left, to the deck on the right as the creature hung cock-eyed from the fixture. The wings shuttered, thwacked on the walls, in a space too cramped for flight.
Doubt now was stupid; aswang existed. To say it was to mouth a punch line: There wasn't a lady and a big bat. The lady was a big bat! To see it was to experience terror. Whatever artist in Hell had designed this beast had done so with infinite care.
The creature's face was worse. The pointed tips of green-black ears jutted from the riot of hair on either side. Her slim nose had blossomed, pugged and flared, into the wet snout of an animal. Her odd top lip stood even more pronounced between green eyes glowing with hatred and a mouth of dingy fangs issuing a growl… that became a shriek… as a long tongue unrolled toward Erin.
Gyrations that should have been death throes became something else entirely. The creature's breasts rose and fell as her chest muscles flexed. Her grip on the light tightened. Her wings flapped a frantic beat on the bulkhead. The tongue rolled in and out like a ludicrous party favor. She gurgled and the same fluid that poured from her wounds bubbled from her lips. She sucked air, she snorted, she hissed. Her muscles rippled up her chest. One of the wounds swelled monstrously, the black blood gushed and the surrounding tissue tore. From beneath the skin, a mushroom-shaped object appeared in the wound, glinted in the stray moonlight, then fell and hit the deck with a dull clink. Erin stared in horrified awe.
It ha
ppened again. Aswang grunted and flexed. Another wound bloated. An object was ejected to hit the deck. Erin watched wide-eyed as, again and again, the bullets she'd fired into the creature were spit out by muscle contractions. Behind each, the wounds began to heal. The ninth and last projectile hit the deck. The final wound sealed itself. The dark thing leapt for Erin, slapped the gun from her hand, and latched onto her hair. It propelled the detective against an intact port window and smashed the glass out with its shoulder and Erin's head.
Erin was knocked out. And aswang looked out. Beyond the deck, the harbor, outside the museum fence, a junk Impala pulled up. The creature didn't know the others intimately, but it knew Ben and saw him and his companions piling out. It levered itself into the window and pulled Erin up with it. It lifted her, flapped its wings, and took to the air above the deck. Then it descended and landed with its burden on the paddle-box below. Another stroke of its wings and aswang lit on the main deck. It dropped Erin, opened a hatchway door, then dragged her into the darkness.
Barely had the creature vanished with Erin, when Rickie's secret door opened. Ben, Nestor, and Forester slipped through the fence wearing nā lei of garlic bulbs like escapees from an idiots' luau. Forester toted five-gallon gas cans in each hand. Nestor carried gas and his chest of ashes. Both wore civilian clothes with pockets stuffed with accoutrement. Ben wore his turnout coat and a loaded and sagging truck belt with equipment pouches, hand ax, and flashlight dangling. Nestor had teased him about going to a fire. “Fire, hell,” Ben replied. “We're going to war.”
Rickie waited outside. One meeting with aswang had been enough and he refused to enter the museum again. Everybody understood, Ben assured him, then asked him to guard the fence. Forester told him it was a very important job.
When The Tik-Tik Sings Page 23
