Underground

by Kat Richardson

  “Probably one of your missing homeless.”

  Quinton nodded. “But is he doing something specific or just rampaging around at random? Right now, the pattern is just homeless people who were down in or near the bricks. The bricks isn’t very far from the breakthrough point, but Jenny was found father north, so he’s moving his territory closer to the Square itself—there hasn’t been anything south of the stadia.”

  “Maybe there’s something special about the Square—it never seems to have gone beyond the northern boundary at Cherry Street—or maybe its hiding place is near there.”

  “Between the Square and the bricks is where the most activity has been. That puts Oxy Park in the middle of the pattern. I think we should start there.”

  “What about the ogress Grandma Ella mentioned? She’s Sistu’s keeper, so she’d have to be nearby, too. Ella said Sistu had been returned to . . . what was her name?”

  “Zeqwa?”

  “No . . . that means ‘monster.’ ” I thought a moment. “Kammits? ”

  Quinton brightened up. “Qamaits! Right. Ella said Sistu had been returned to the ogress in 1949. She’s his keeper and she’d keep him down, unless she had some reason to let him run loose.”

  “Like punishing someone for pissing off the gods, as Grandma Ella said—or repaying a favor.”

  “And the undergrounders aren’t the sort to avoid someone just because they look a little scary—they’re a scary bunch themselves— so it’s not like they’d refuse to give a god a drink or something,” Quinton said.

  “So . . . what do you think? Someone helped Qamaits out of the construction pit and the first thing the monster did was eat someone whose leg was found in the excavation?”

  “Seems like a possibility.”

  “Even if I were an ogress, I think I’d be more grateful than to let my pet eat my rescuer.”

  “Maybe she couldn’t stop him. Ella Graham said Sistu’s a hunter. . . .”

  “I guess he’s graduated from seals to people, then. But if he’s hunting for a reason, maybe there’s a pattern to who’s been killed. We’ll have to start at the beginning of this spate of deaths. We need to find out who was at the excavation the night before the leg was found. If they’re still alive and not a monster’s lunch, we need to talk to them.”

  “And Qamaits.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, but I think she’ll be easy to spot—after all, she’s a legendary monster, too, so like Sistu, she’ll look like one thing to some people, and something else to others.”

  “Like you.”

  I pulled a face. “Probably. But I don’t know what she’ll look like, and a lot of people and things have shadow shapes. She could be anyone. We have to find her, or anyone who saw Sistu come out of the hole—anyone who might have an idea what it’s up to, what it might be ‘hunting,’ or why.”

  “We’d better get downtown before it gets too late and everyone’s asleep.”

  “But it’s most likely we’ll get information from people who don’t sleep in the shelters all the time—people like Tanker and Lass.”

  “And Sandy—she’s sharp-eyed and crazy enough to sleep rough a lot more often than most women down there.”

  I shook my head. “She’s nuts all right, if she’s doing that.”

  “More than half of them are—it’s protective behavior.” He slurped up the last of his soda. “Let’s go.”

  I regarded my half-eaten food and decided I didn’t need to finish it—the burger was huge—but after talking about the homeless I felt bad about throwing it away.

  Quinton saw me looking at it. “Wrap it up. If nothing else, we can give the burger to Bella.”

  For a second, I wasn’t sure whom he meant, then I remembered Tanker’s dog. As I hesitated, Quinton reached over, wrapped the burger in its paper and tucked it away in one of his capacious pockets.

  We went back to the Rover and drove down to Pioneer Square. I didn’t park in my regular spot, though, just in case the NSA had been doing their homework. Instead, I put the truck into a slot under the Alaskan Way viaduct and we walked in from the western edge of the historic district. Coming up beside Marcus’ Martini Heaven, Quinton nudged me and pointed into the dark alley on the other side.

  “Looks like Tanker,” he said. I recognized the shape of the stocky dog, and as we crossed the street, Quinton shoved the wrapped food into my hands. “I’ll talk, you feed.”

  Tanker turned with a jerk as we got close and Bella stiffened for a moment until she recognized Quinton. Then she went all over wags and friskies. “Heya, Tanker,” Quinton said as he knelt to pet the dog.

  “Hey Q. Miss Thing.” I guessed he was feeling a little more sociable than last time but hadn’t quite forgiven me for apparently accusing him of lying.

  “Hi, Tanker,” I said and held out the packet of leftovers. “Mind if I give this to Bella?”

  He eyed the wrapper. “What is it?”

  I peeked into the wrapper. “It’s a . . . meatloaf sandwich.” I’d forgotten about Quinton’s unfinished lunch—he’d switched packages on me.

  Tanker laughed. “Damn, woman, you gonna spoil my dog.”

  “She’s a good dog. She won’t spoil. Can she have it?”

  He waved a casual hand at the dog who was looking in every direction, trying to figure out who she should be paying most attention to. “Sure. Go ahead. She don’t like to eat out of hands, though. Gotta put it down in front of her.”

  “OK,” I said, crouching down near the dog with a creak from my knee as Quinton stood up and moved closer to Tanker, pulling out the leftover burger and offering that to the man, getting back into his good graces.

  “Hey there, Bella,” I murmured. “Got a treat—I think.” I’d never had a dog as a kid and as an adult I’d never had a lifestyle that lent itself to the kind of care dogs need. I took my neighbor’s pit bull for walks once in a while, but that was about the extent of my dog contact. I was just a little nervous of Bella’s powerful jaws as I put the opened wrapper down on the brick alley floor in front of her. The dog licked her lips and wiggled, looking at the food, but didn’t move to snap it up.

  “It’s OK, Bella, eat,” Tanker said, eyeing his own leftovers.

  The dog let out a happy yip and dove in on the food. I scratched her ears as she ate and I listened to Tanker and Quinton talk.

  “Tank, I’m kind of worried. Do you remember when Tandy disappeared?”

  “Why’d you be worried about that old drunk?” Tanker asked around a mouthful of burger.

  “Just bothered. I mean . . . bad shit’s been happening, and I think I haven’t seen Tandy since before it started.”

  “Man, Tandy ain’t smart enough to do nothing but raise a bottle.”

  “Not much, I agree, but have you seen him—or Bear or Jolene?”

  Tanker swallowed a bite of burger. “Hmph! I think I saw Bear a while back before Christmas. Jolene I don’t know—she don’t stand out much. And I don’t give a crap in a paper bag about Tandy. Him and Lass drink together all the time. You should ask that peckerhead where his friend is, ’cause I don’t know and I don’t care. He could fall down a sewer and drown in shit and I couldn’t care any less than I do.”

  Quinton nodded as Bella finished off her sandwich with a joyful smacking of her jaws, her master only a few bites behind on his own food.

  “Huh,” Quinton grunted. “I wonder if something could have happened to them. You think anyone would hurt one of them?”

  “Everybody likes Bear and Jolene! And nobody give enough of a damn about Tandy to do him hurt. I don’t know why anybody’d kill poor ol’ Jenny, neither. She was kind of a stupid woman, but she wasn’t mean ’less she was needing a fix.” He chewed the last of the burger and swallowed with a smile.

  Bella felt I needed my face washed with meatloaf-scented doggy tongue.

  “Bella, off,” Tanker said. “Don’t go slobbering all over the lady.” Apparently the food had bought some goodwill from the owner as well as th
e dog.

  Bella stopped licking me and gave me a half-apologetic look with her tongue hanging out one side of her mouth.

  “That’s all right,” I said, getting back to my feet after a final scratch behind the dog’s ears. “She’s a nice dog.”

  “I trained her myself,” Tanker said with pride.

  “You did a good job.”

  “Dogs like to know who’s boss, else they get in trouble. But if you’re a good boss, they’ll do anything for you. Anything. I swear, I’m gonna let her eat that damned Lassiter next time we see him. Don’t know why I didn’t let her this last time. That damned asshole done something to her and it’s only ’cause I don’t want her eating on nothing so trashy as him I didn’t let her rip his leg off. Can’t trust no man’d hurt a dog.” Tanker had begun to glower and the aura around him had gone red with his anger.

  Quinton patted Tanker on the shoulder. “Bella’d get a stomachache from Lass. Better not let her get a good bite.”

  Tanker snorted. “Keeping away from him, for sure.”

  Quinton nodded. “You seen Sandy tonight?”

  Tanker scratched his head through his hood. “Yeah . . . Round on Second Ave. Extension by the Quick Mart. She might have gone back to the park, though—it was getting cold and I think she was watching someone.”

  “We’ll find her. Thanks, Tank.”

  “Yeah. You the same.” Tanker nodded at us awkwardly and clucked at Bella, “C ’mon, girl.” We walked back out of the alley as he continued deeper into it.

  We slunk around to Occidental Park, staying out of the sight lines to my office building. Quinton pointed at the bear totem.

  “John Bear used to like to sleep under that. That’s what Blue Jay meant when he talked about Bear sleeping with the bears. You can see there’s no one sleeping under it now.”

  Just beyond the totem, a trash can fire burned to warm the hands of a small circle of homeless. The obese woman at the foot of the other carving scowled at us as we passed and pressed herself into the dark. I couldn’t see much of her in either the Grey or the normal, cowering as she did in the black fold of the totem’s shadow. It occurred to me it wasn’t a nice totem—Nightmare Bringer. I wasn’t too surprised it cast a very dark shadow and I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to sleep near it with such an association. The woman pulled a black blanket over herself and hunched into a shapeless mass.

  We walked on down to the burning trash can and found Zip, Sandy, and the man I often saw pacing and talking to himself. We were offered cigarettes by Zip and drinks from an unseen bottle in a paper bag. Sandy nodded and the talking man told us the voice of the turtle would be heard in the land.

  “God, Twitcher. In’t no turtles here ’bouts,” Zip complained. “In’t likely to be talking noways.”

  “Even the End of Days must have an end,” Twitcher replied.

  “I think that’s supposed to be the Final Judgment,” Sandy said. “I don’t think we’ve quite got to that yet.”

  “Aren’t the dead supposed to rise up and be counted or something? ” Twitcher asked.

  “Yes,” Sandy replied uneasily, giving him a sideways glance.

  “Ah. Then I guess it’s not time after all, or the streets would be full of ’em.” Twitcher nodded to himself and settled into nervous jiggling from foot to foot and flapping his arms.

  “Perhaps,” Sandy said.

  “Hey’m, Harper,” Zip said. A waft of beer and rotting teeth made me turn a little away as I answered.

  “Hey, Zip.” I put myself closer to Sandy and upwind of the incredible stench Zip had acquired.

  “How’s your case?” Sandy inquired.

  “Could be better. How’s yours?”

  “Gone to ground for a while I think. Lost him earlier today. Hope to pick up his trail later tonight, maybe tomorrow. What brings you here?”

  “Trying to find out who was down by the hotel construction in the last few months.”

  “We’ve all been down around the hole,” Sandy said, but she had a thoughtful frown on her face.

  “Yeah,” Zip added. “Sometimes t’ey got wood scraps we kin winkle out. Lockin’ up t’garbage since that leg were found, though.”

  Quinton poked Twitcher in the ribs. “Hey, Twitcher. You know anyone’s been down there, or who had a mad on for any of the lost?”

  “Not to mention all of them,” Twitcher replied. I noticed that he stopped jiggling if he was talking or doing something, but when he had nothing to say, he twitched. His spasms were less controlled when he tried to stand still and I realized he walked and muttered to keep some control over his body’s incessant movement.

  “Try that again,” Quinton requested. “Are you saying every one of them was someone someone else wanted to hurt? Who?”

  Twitcher shook his head rather violently and bounced on his toes. “No, no. Nobody didn’t like Little Jolene or Jan and we all didn’t like Hafiz. So that’s everybody and nobody. Go-cart got a lot of people mad, but they didn’t usually stay that way. Well, Tanker never did forgive him for running over his foot that time. . . .”

  “An’ Bear were good, but he weren’t allus a easy fella t’be friendly wit’,” Zip said. “Him ’n’ Lass’d go around—you’d think they hated ch’other.”

  “Can’t go by Lass—he doesn’t like anybody,” Twitcher said. “You call me twitchy—hah!”

  “Lass in’t twitchy, he jes crazy.”

  “But . . .” said Sandy, “I’d rather be on Tanker’s bad side or Bear’s than Lassiter’s.”

  “Oh? Why?” I asked.

  “He’s sneaky. Tanker and Bear both let you know when they’re mad.”

  Zip hooted. “Lass in’t so good at keepin’ his temper on the QT. Remember when him’n Hafiz got into it? Hoppin’ at ch’other like frogs on a griddle.”

  “Not that everyone didn’t get into it with Hafiz sometime, the mouthy so-and-so,” Twitcher supplied.

  “What about Tandy?” Quinton asked. “Anyone ever get into an argument with him?”

  “Nah,” Zip said. “Couldn’t git inta nothin’ with him. He’s allus drunk and happy.”

  “Drunk and sloppy,” Sandy corrected. “He’d drink with anyone who could keep him upright enough to tip the bottle.”

  “When was the last time anyone saw Tandy?”

  The three undergrounders fell silent, thinking.

  “Thanksgiving,” Sandy finally said. “Before the windstorm.”

  “Where did you see him?” I asked.

  “Down near the football stadium.”

  “Near the hotel construction?”

  “Not that close, but he could have walked there. He wasn’t too drunk at that point.”

  “Was he with anyone?”

  “Actually, he was with John Bear and Little Jolene.”

  I glanced at Quinton, who shook his head. “Bear and Jolene were seen later than that.”

  “But Tandy wasn’t,” Sandy added.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Well, I never saw him after Thanksgiving and I watch.”

  “When was Hafiz killed?” I asked.

  “He was found the Monday after Thanksgiving, but I think he’d been dead a day or two,” Sandy said, thinking aloud. “The body was under some tree limbs that fell off the plane trees here in the windstorm.”

  “He was killed by the falling boughs?”

  “Oh, no. They just hid the body.”

  We kept chatting with the three until our toes were numb in our boots and we couldn’t feel our faces, but nothing else useful emerged. As Quinton and I walked on to find more undergrounders, he said, “Tandy and Lass used to drink together a lot—but Tandy did drink with pretty much anyone, as Sandy said.”

  “So he could have been with Bear and Jolene or he could have been with anyone else whom we haven’t talked to yet.”

  “But the fact that he disappeared just before the leg was found makes him prime suspect to be the owner of that leg.”

  I shivered. “Ugh.
So that would make Tandy the first to disappear, then Hafiz was killed—but he seems universally disliked— then what?”

  “After that, Jan and Go-cart were both found dead—in that order. But there was a good lag between Hafiz and Jan.”

  “Who disappeared between those?”

  “I’m not sure. I’d guess the order was probably . . . Jheri, then Jolene . . . then Jan was killed . . . then Bear and Felix disappeared, and Go-cart died. And Jenny.”

  “That’s about one a week, average. Pretty hungry monster.”

  “Yeah.”

  I paused, frowning and thinking there had to be a connection I wasn’t making. “I want to talk to Lass. His name keeps coming up. Then we might want to go back to Tanker.”

  “You think Tanker knows something he hasn’t told us?”

  “Someone knows something, and the only people who can be ruled out are the confirmed dead.”

  We walked around the area for a while but didn’t have much luck finding Lassiter, so we went below.

  Down in the bricks, we found Tall Grass, raging in a corner and waving a soft brown object in the air. When he spotted us, he raced down the crumbling floor and shoved the object into my hands. “You wanted it! You take it! Take it away!” He shook me, shouting into my face.

  “Grass, Grass, calm down,” Quinton murmured. “They’ll hear. Be quiet.”

  Tall Grass turned on Quinton. “You brought her down here. She wanted the hat. It’s your fault! It’s your fault Jenny’s dead!”

  Quinton pulled his face back from the other man’s. “Grass, you’re out of your head. It’s not our fault. Something or someone killed Jenny, but it’s not me or Harper. And it’s not you.”

  “It’s that hat!”

  “Damn it, Grass, get a grip. It’s not the hat.”

  “It was Bear’s hat. Bear’s dead. It was Jenny’s hat. Jenny’s dead,” Tall Grass babbled, his voice cracking toward hysteria.

  “Grass. How do you know Bear’s dead? We don’t know Bear’s dead. He’s just—”

  “I saw it! I saw his spirit! And the creature—the monster—I saw! I saw!” He was hyperventilating. Then he began to scream, staring at nothing at all, bellowing in terror, his eyes rolling up to show too much white.