Level 26

by Anthony E. Zuiker

  Wycoff looked stunned, as if he’d swallowed a peach pit. His security detail looked taken aback, too. For that matter, so was Riggins.

  “Hey,” he said. “Dark, look, you—”

  “We’ve discovered something at my house. You want to take a look?”

  Dark started walking them through the evidence, one piece at a time.

  This was the only option that made sense. If they were going to take Riggins out over this, then it was clear they wouldn’t stop at him. They’d hound Dark, day and night, quite possibly bringing in Sibby and her family—and years of their income tax filings, and work records, and medical records, and whatever else they could dig up—and keep hounding, pressuring, needling, until it would grind their lives to a halt. What was worse, Dark would be left without an ally he could trust in Special Circs.

  No, sparing Riggins’s job was the only way to take control of the investigation.

  Because it was clear that this monster had taken an interest in Dark again, and Dark wasn’t going to get him to go away by ignoring him.

  And Dark wasn’t going to give up until he a put a bullet in the real thing, not an image in a mirror.

  The job was over. Nellis and McGuire returned to their van. Sleep awaited, then their new assignment. Nellis wouldn’t admit this to anyone, not even himself, but he’d been looking forward to sliding that needle into Riggins’s meaty neck and watching the life flutter out of his eyes. Watching that smirk fade from his lips. His body turn cold, and then still. Leaving now, to be honest, was a little disappointing.

  But then again, who knew? Maybe they’d be back to clean this mess up some other day.

  chapter 34

  Somewhere in America

  Sqweegel patrolled his basement naked, sawed-off shotgun in his left hand. Cinnamon grit dusted his sweaty, wiry body.

  He watched his row of monitors as he paced. It was too exciting to sit still and watch passively. His nerves twitched with excitement, his very muscles telling him to move. He breathed quickly, excitedly.

  There was much more to be done, now that the hunter was finally starting to listen. But first things first. Now it was time to feed the finches.

  The monster made his way over to a wooden table—the same one his grandmother used to keep up in the kitchen. Its surface was crisscrossed with slash marks going back decades. The grooves were deep and black. Sometimes Sqweegel would stick his tongue down into one of them to see whether he could still taste the remnants of long-since-cooked ingredients. To see whether his tongue could bring back a forgotten sensory detail.

  Not today, though. Today he busied himself with loading the shotgun.

  He rested the stock on his hip, shoved a round into the magazine tube, then racked the action bar, slamming it into the chamber. The clack echoed off the basement’s stone walls.

  The finches in the cage across the room reacted to the sound, fluttering up and down in a panic.

  Sqweegel lurched over to the makeshift aviary, and then squeezed his thin fingers between the wire bars. He had built the cage himself, fashioning it from old refrigerator shelves he found at a junkyard. The base of the cage was an old steel baking pan.

  He longed to pet their heads, to rub the tiny soft feathers over their bony little skulls, but they never let him. In fact, they didn’t seem to like their home at all. There were several broken eggs at the bottom of the makeshift cage, as if the male finches were unable to bring themselves to mate.

  “Why do you fly?” Sqweegel purred to them. “Why don’t you sing? Set you free and you die. In a cage with no wings.”

  In one lightning-quick move, Sqweegel raised his loaded shotgun to the cage and pressed the barrel right up to the wired bars.

  The movement terrified the finches all over again.

  But then he stopped.

  Lowered the gun.

  “I know,” Sqweegel said. “You’re hungry.”

  He sucked on the tip of his index finger briefly before tapping it into the birdseed dish—a soap dish from his grandmother’s bathroom. He kept it outside the cage so he could control the finches’ diet plan. It had been a day; they would be hungry.

  Several half-ripe grass seeds clung to his saliva-coated fingernail. Sqweegel gently rubbed his finger over the edge of the black gun barrel, leaving a few seeds behind.

  Then he placed the barrel flat against the edge of the cage.

  “Tweet, tweet,” Sqweegel said. “Time to eat, eat.”

  One brave finch, eyeing the seeds, ventured over to the edge of the cage. His clawed feet gripped the wire bars, and his head cocked toward the barrel. He seemed curious. What was this? A new way to eat?

  After a few moments, the finch let its hunger overcome its trepidation. It pecked at the seeds.

  “There you go, little one. There you go…”

  Sqweegel smiled, revealing his black teeth. The very sight should have been enough to frighten the bird back to the other side of the cage, but somehow the bird was assured. Nothing to worry about here. Just another way to feed.

  Soon the finch finished the seeds and poked its head farther up the steel cave to see whether maybe—

  Klik.

  Boom.

  The entire finch—as well as much of the cage behind him and his former roommates—was pulverized by the blast. Feathers and pieces of steel wire flew against the stone wall of the basement. Tiny chunks of bird meat clung to the remnants of the cage, tiny wisps of smoke curling from them.

  Sqweegel bent down and picked up a few feathers, stroked one of them softly against the skin of his cheek. There was no way to know for sure, of course…but Sqweegel had a feeling the finch never even heard the click.

  PART TWO

  dark rising

  chapter 35

  Griffith Observatory, Mount Hollywood

  Wednesday / 6:30 P.M.

  Up here you could see everything—all of Los Angeles, in infinitesimal detail, all the way out to the Pacific.

  Dark had never bothered with the observatory until Sibby had dragged him here a few months after they had started dating. How often, she’d said to him, do you have the chance to feel like God? Dark, much to his surprise, had to admit that he dug the view, even though he’d grown up in L.A., and dismissed the place as a tourist trap.

  Early in their relationship they would bring a picnic lunch up here, along with a cold bottle of wine. They’d drink and let their brains go fuzzy and joke about being God and what they’d smite first, down on the sinful streets of L.A.

  But they weren’t here for a picnic. Not this evening.

  Ever since telling Riggins he’d join the hunt for Sqweegel, Dark had felt the day spin wildly out of control. There were frantic calls to Sibby after realizing that the wriggling little worm had been inside their house—but she didn’t answer the house or her cell phone for an agonizing half hour. Finally she’d called back to tell Dark that she’d been shopping and hadn’t heard the ring. She’d had to get out of the house for a while.

  Dark had thought about it for a second, then said, “Good. Stay out all afternoon. Don’t tell me where you’re going; don’t tell anybody. Keep it random.”

  “Are you serious?” Sibby had asked, a laugh in her voice.

  “Humor a crazy ex-cop,” Dark had said, wincing as he spoke the words. Ex-cop. Technically, his retirement was thirty-five minutes in the past; he was back on the job.

  “Okay, okay,” she’d said. “See you at home tonight.”

  “How about you meet me at six thirty tonight at our old place. Up in the hills?”

  Sibby had started to say the words. “Old place? Wait, do you mean the Grif—”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Buy good stuff. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, even if you’re weird.”

  Dark had arrived an hour early—mostly to scope out the place. The backlit walls and dark golden domes made the observatory look more like a religious gathering place than a tourist attraction. Then again, that descript
ion also seemed to apply. Human beings gathered here to gaze at the heavens and consider their place in the universe. Almost like a church for atheists.

  Sibby had arrived at six thirty sharp and quickly shot down Dark’s attempts at small talk and light conversation. She knew him too well.

  “Okay, stop,” Sibby said. “What am I missing here? You drag me up here to one of our favorite places, we haven’t talked all afternoon…Are you leaving me or something?”

  Dark looked at her. This was just like Sibby—right to the point. No pretense, no games.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  Sibby smiled at first, until she looked at his face and knew he was, in fact, telling the truth.

  He was leaving her.

  The angry look on her face slammed a thousand hot needles in his heart. It knocked the breath out of him until she turned away, staring down at the Los Angeles basin below.

  “You know, if this is your idea of a joke…”

  “No, it’s not.”

  Sibby turned back to face him again, scanning his tired eyes for the little tells that only lovers—soul mates—can see. She saw that he was telling the truth, and then her own eyes went dead. Cold.

  Dark reached out and touched Sibby’s arm. It was stiff. Unmoving.

  “We took the broken glass from our home to the forensics lab this morning.”

  Nothing on Sibby’s face. It was like the frozen-over surface of a lake.

  “The reconstructed window showed that someone had used a glass cutter to break into the house, then smashed it later to cover it up.”

  Still nothing. Her face was Arctic permafrost. Were any of his words penetrating?

  “This guy…this sick son of a bitch…was the one who left the watch. Who broke our window. He got in with a glass cutter, made it past the dogs, and somehow hid for more than an hour. You must have slept the whole time. He was inside when I came home.”

  “No,” she said coolly.

  “No? What do you mean, no?”

  “I’m a light sleeper. There’s no way someone could have been inside our house.”

  “Sibby, the forensics don’t lie. Someone broke in. And he might have been in your room.”

  “Did you hear yourself say that, by the way, Steve? Your room? Like you’ve already left me?”

  There wasn’t time to talk her through this. And now he saw his mistake. He’d wanted to leave her with a happy memory. The happiest memory possible, anyway, given the circumstances. Her favorite place. Dark, though, supposed he knew what would happen all along. He could have done this anywhere and the result would have been the same: a momentary flash of confusion, quickly masked by a fierce and powerful self-defense mechanism.

  What made Sibby strong was the same thing that enabled her to throw up her mental shields. And God help anything that tried to break through.

  It was how she dealt with her parents’ divorce, when she was only thirteen.

  How she dealt with a dorm-room rape, when she was only seventeen.

  How she was able to love him now—freely, unconditionally, because she knew how to guard herself in case the world came crumbling down. Like it seemed to be doing right now.

  Sibby stood up, even as Dark continued speaking.

  “I’ve packed our things and had them sent somewhere safe,” he was saying. “The dogs have been boarded…”

  But Sibby wasn’t listening—she was leaving. She took a few steps before Dark realized it and was walking toward the concrete stairs, moving surprisingly fast. He cleared the distance between them and took her hand. She pulled it away.

  “Please listen to me, Sibby. Your life is in danger. That’s the only reason I’m doing this…”

  But it was too late. The shields were up, and Sibby was gone.

  chapter 36

  Go, Sibby thought. Just walk away from the observatory. Across the lawn. To the car, then down off the top of this damned mountain.

  A few steps away she almost stumbled, her right ankle on the verge of twisting, but she caught herself. She was not going to fall down now. She was going to find a way out of here. Hole up for a while—maybe at her father’s. He was only an hour away, up the coast. Sibby surprised herself by how quickly the plan formed in her mind, even as she strode across the plaza to her car.

  What bothered her wasn’t the fact that Steve wanted them to separate. He wanted to protect her; she got that. She knew how his mind worked. It was completely wrongheaded, and she wanted to scream at him for even thinking it, but she understood.

  Your life is in danger. Is that what he’d said? Didn’t he realize that when crisis strikes, you don’t pull apart—you come together?

  But honestly, that wasn’t what made her uneasy now. It was the fact that she had lied to Steve that morning.

  She didn’t tell him that she had been in a strangely deep sleep.

  She climbed into the driver’s seat, turned the key in the ignition.

  She hadn’t been able to bring herself to confess that her hips had been sore.

  She shifted gears and took off back down the mountain.

  And she hadn’t even let herself remember, until right this very moment, as she shifted in her seat and felt the fatigue in her core muscles and her back, the very worst part—it wasn’t the first time.

  Dark gave her a few moments, then walked across the lawn, climbed into his Yukon, and hurled it down twisty Hollywood Drive after her. Not so much to intercept her or change her mind—frankly, that didn’t matter now. All that mattered was getting Sibby away from L.A., out of the reach of the twitchy little freak who seemed to be fixated on her.

  Look at you, Sibby. Trying so hard to keep your emotions in check, even in private. You won’t even indulge yourself when nobody’s looking.

  Well, Sqweegel thought, watching on a monitor in his basement lair, I happen to be looking. But you don’t know that, do you?

  Sibby rocketed down the 101, changing lanes at every given opportunity. It was still technically rush hour—then again, it always felt like rush hour in L.A. She saw a gap; she pressed down on the accelerator and slid into it, then raced forward and looked for the next gap. She wanted to be as far away from Steve, from the observatory, from everything, as possible…for now. Think about it later.

  Especially the soreness. And what it meant.

  Dark followed her down the 101, then through downtown on the 110 and over to the 10, all the way out to the Pacific Coast Highway. Could go either way from here. She could take the exit to their place in Malibu, or she could continue north. If she blew past their exit, Dark could relax a little. That meant she’d be heading directly to her father, who’d watch over her like a hawk.

  There was a sea of red eyes in front of him, blinking with varying degrees of intensity. L.A. traffic was a living thing, and Dark was the first to admit that Sibby was much better at negotiating its circulatory system. It took a lot of concentration just to keep up.

  Sqweegel stared at Sibby’s face on the monitor, entranced.

  Human beings reveal their emotions through not only words but also a symphony of facial tics and movements. You could watch most movies without sound and follow the story almost perfectly. The details didn’t matter; it was the hesitation, the fear, the pain, the confusion, the agony that played out on the faces of the actors that told the real story.

  Actors were no match, however, for the real thing.

  And to enjoy that particular show, you had to be clever.

  Modern car gadgets have made it easy. GPS units are increasingly common, and Sqweegel found it simple to attach a remote camera—piggybacked on the existing wireless signal—to such a device. Like the one Sibby Dark kept in her car.

  Enough watching, though. Now it was time to step into the movie himself.

  Sibby was stunned when her cell phone started playing the opening riff of “Personal Jesus.”

  Now? Of all times, this creepy son of a bitch texts me now?

  She knew she should ignore it, foc
us on the road, but she couldn’t resist. She plucked the cell from her purse and glanced down at the screen.

  GOOD SEEING YOU AGAIN LAST NIGHT

  Sibby had to read it twice to comprehend, and the second time the implications exploded like little bombs in her brain. Last night? Again? They distracted her from the pulsing, weaving traffic of the 10 for just a few seconds.

  One second, though, was all it really took.

  chapter 37

  Sibby’s foot hammered the brake, but it was too late, the gap too narrow. The front bumper and her grill collapsed from the force of the impact, followed a tenth of a second later by the hood, which was ripped from its moorings and sent smashing into the windshield. Glass exploded. Her instincts were to continue to press down, make the brakes work already, as if pressing them any harder could minimize—or somehow undo—the damage still playing out around her body. But the car had been going fifty-seven miles per hour, and the gap was too small for braking systems to even matter.

  A tenth of a second later the airbag exploded in Sibby’s face, smashing into her nose and mouth. The steering wheel bent under her grip, the brake pedal snapped free beneath her foot, and the column beneath the wheel rushed forward as if to impale her. The impact, however, had caused her body to shift to the left, and the column missed her—as well as the baby inside her—by inches.

  The column slammed into and through the passenger seat, ripping fabric, crushing springs.

  Her door and the passenger doors were ripped from their hinges. The backseat was wrenched from the frame and slammed into Sibby’s seat from behind. By this time, she was already being thrown from the vehicle, tumbling through the air toward the concrete barrier that separated her lane from the horrified drivers in the eastbound traffic.