Blood of Angels

by Marshall, Michael

  I pulled back into Thornton a little after midnight. The town lay quiet under faint moonlight, flat and inexplicable as someone else's dream. I drove slowly past the sheriff's building, considered calling Nina. Realized that she'd either be too busy or no longer there. The car that had what looked like reporters in it was still present, but empty. Presumably they were inside, and the Julia Gulicks story would break tomorrow. The white van I'd seen was gone.

  When I got to the hotel I saw Reidel's car parked out front and Monroe's a couple of slots away. I went inside, hoping that whatever late-night conference they were involved in was happening somewhere other than Nina's room. The bar and the restaurant were empty, however, closed in that hotel-specific way which seems to declare they're shut now, they were never fucking open in the first place, and they sure as hell never will be again. There was no one around in the lobby, nor at reception.

  I shambled down the corridor, wondering whether I could reasonably tell the other cops to fuck off to bed. Or if I might do it anyway, reasonably or otherwise. That afternoon Nina had looked more tired than I'd ever seen before. She needed sleep. So did I.

  I knocked on the door to give them due warning, and then opened it with my swipe key. Silence inside. I shut it behind me.

  'Nina?'

  No reply. The conference was evidently being held elsewhere. Did I even know what room Monroe was in? I walked down the little passageway past the bathroom, thinking maybe I'd just lie on the bed and let Nina join me in her own time.

  When I got to the main room I stopped as if walking into sheet glass.

  At first all I could see was blood.

  Chapter 19

  I knew I was making sounds. I knew because they were hurting my throat. I just didn't know how loud they must have been.

  It looked like someone or something had been destroyed with a chainsaw. There were splatters of blood over the walls, the television set, the chairs, the bedspread, the big mirror on the wall. The room reeked of copper and death and there was so much dull red everywhere it was like a noise. For a second I was stunned into immobility. I couldn't get the scene to resolve itself into anything that made sense.

  There was so much mess, in fact, that it was a long minute before I realized I could so far only see one body.

  It was Reidel.

  He lay underneath the window onto the parking lot, twisted as if he'd been thrown there hard enough to dent the wall. He'd lost half his scalp and his face was red-brown and wet. His eyes were open but there was nothing left to see out through them. It looked like someone had tried to cut his clothes off with a hatchet and then just lost it and started swinging wildly instead. There was a blood-lined slash across the wallpaper beside his head. There were far deeper cuts across his throat, arms and into the left side of his chest, and a pool of darkness on the carpet spreading two feet to either side.

  One body.

  Only one body.

  I spun into the passageway and kicked open the door to the bathroom, gun held out and my finger a breath away from emptying it. It was surreally clean in there compared to the rest of the suite, and empty of people either living or dead.

  I turned back into the main room and yanked the bed aside. Maybe I thought Nina might be hiding under there and hadn't realized it was me bellowing her name, or that something that had once been her had been shoved under there, part by part. I had it halfway across the floor when there was a sound from behind me and I whirled to see a woman in a hotel uniform standing in the passageway.

  She started to scream like a big plane taking off.

  'Go find Agent Monroe!' I shouted. 'Find him now.'

  She stumbled backward, trying to get away. She was shrieking in earnest now and the noise and all the blood was making my brain white out and it took me a second to work out it was me she was trying to escape from. I had a gun and I was smeared with blood and there was something horrible slumped on the other side of the room. I'd have run from me too.

  I stuffed the gun in my pocket and managed to grab her arm. Got the other hand on her opposite shoulder and held her still.

  'It wasn't me,' I said, trying to keep my voice level, trying not to break her bones. Her eyes flickered around in their sockets, seeing everything but me. I put my face up close and said it again, louder. 'It wasn't me. Now go call the cops and find Special Agent Monroe.'

  I pushed her away towards the door. She ran.

  I tried to be methodical. I knew I shouldn't mess up the scene but I'd done enough damage already and I had to see. If Nina had to be found then it had to be me who found her.

  I dropped to the floor and looked under the bed just to lay that idea to rest. I got back up and threw open the small wardrobe. Nothing but Nina's few clothes. I left the doors open so her body couldn't suddenly materialize in there, falling apart and leaking blood. I looked behind the big television, swept aside the curtains either side of the window. I had to step over Reidel several times in the process and I knew there was something particularly wrong about him but didn't immediately understand what it was and it wasn't my main problem right then.

  I went pointlessly back out into the bathroom and looked in there once more, moving the door and shower curtain with my elbows, trying not to contaminate the room with blood from the other nightmare.

  She wasn't there. She was nowhere in the suite. I couldn't make a value judgement on that fact. I just had to find where she was.

  I ran out into the hallway and towards the lobby. I passed Monroe after ten yards, turning into the corridor in his shirt sleeves, looking old and confused.

  'What's happened?'

  'Reidel's dead.'

  His mouth dropped but then I was past him and out through the front doors and into the cold parking lot.

  I sprinted into the middle of it and back and forth searching in car windows but there was no one in any of them and no one was driving away and finally I slowed and stopped. Everything was still except for clouds scudding overhead.

  There was no one to chase and nothing I could do. Whatever had happened had already happened and I was too late. In the distance I heard the sound of approaching sirens.

  They were too late too.

  •••

  An hour later I was perched on a kerb and smoking a cigarette. The hand which held it was smeared with blood. My jeans were too. I was staring down at the pocked asphalt to give my mind something to hold on to. I'd spent much of the intervening time in Nina's room and couldn't be in there any more. The barely-contained fury and panic amongst the local cops had melded with my own and turned my head into an icy ache of helplessness. The hour seemed to have passed in jump-cuts. Nothing useful had happened. The time had merely fled, taking the initiative with it. I could see a couple of cops walking the lot, bent over, looking for signs of blood. I'd already tried.

  I heard the hotel's automatic doors open and looked up to see Monroe coming out alone. The lobby behind him was full of milling staff and guests, with cops trying to get them to go back to their rooms or offices or anywhere so long it was out of the way. Half the guests looked scared. The rest looked like they'd lucked into a walk-on in some particularly juicy reality show. I wanted to go in and hurt them. Hurt them badly.

  'Anything?'

  Monroe shook his head. 'The hotel is being pulled apart. Basement, roof, every storage area we can find. But she's not here.'

  I went back to staring at the ground.

  'Every cop in town is in here or out there on the streets,' he added. 'All off-duty officers have been called in. Owensville, Andley and Smithfield sheriffs are on alert. I've notified the two nearest bureaus. People are on their way.'

  'It's too late.'

  'No it isn't. A federal agent has been kidnapped. We have a history of responding decisively to that kind of event. We look after our own. Whatever it takes, we'll get her back.'

  'Where are you going to start looking, exactly?'

  'There are road blocks already up at the three main routes
out of Thornton. When other agents get here we'll get the whole town locked down. We'll do a house-to-house if necessary. We'll find her if we have to pull this place apart brick by brick.'

  I assumed Monroe couldn't hear the note of heroic desperation in his own voice.

  'What time did you people return to the hotel this evening? How long before I found what's in there?'

  'About an hour,' he admitted. 'Maybe a little longer.'

  'Makes it over two by now. He could be in a different state.'

  'He? Who do you think this is?'

  'Who do you think? Someone's just attacked two of the key people investigating the murders. Reidel's been hacked apart with the same kind of weapon used on the victims, a heavy cleaver—didn't you see the slash in the wall?' I had since realized one of the things that had been wrong with Reidel's body. 'His hand was lying three feet away. This is down to your killer. Who else?'

  'Julia Gulicks is still in a cell. There is a guard outside it.'

  'Of course she is, Monroe—because she didn't do it. Nina was right. Your case is hot air built on Gulicks finding Widmar's body, muddied by an alleged sighting from a jealous woman in a bar. Even if Gulicks was guilty and astral-projected herself out of the station I don't believe she's capable of what happened in that hotel room. Reidel was built to fight and Nina could look after herself. You really see Gulicks taking them both down? Really? I mean, can you see it?'

  'No,' he admitted.

  'So it's a man, and it's someone who's done serious killing before. Gulicks is innocent and the real murderer has brought the fight to us and we have no idea who he is or what he's capable of.'

  Monroe ran a hand through his cropped hair. I knew he cared about Nina a great deal but also that some loud and buzzy part of his head would be thinking how it looked to have an agent kidnapped on your watch, not to mention a butchered cop. He was forced to make a reluctant suggestion.

  'It doesn't have to be the killer. Couldn't it be him?'

  'Who?'

  'Your brother.'

  I stared at him. 'Why would he be killing locals here? And he was still in Pelican Bay when the John Doe got killed.'

  'I know. But there's a version where Gulicks is still Thornton's killer, but your brother tracked you two here tonight. Nina shot him in the woods earlier in the year. Maybe he's come and got her back.'

  This hadn't even occurred to me. 'And the hand-cutting is just a coincidence? I don't think so. And you'd better pray it's not. If it's Paul all bets are off.'

  'I'm sure you're right,' he said. 'I just don't know where else to go on this.'

  'Nobody in the hotel saw anything? No one on reception, no one on room service, no late guest getting back? Somebody got in that room and turned it into an abattoir and pulled Nina out of the hotel—and yet nobody saw or heard a thing?'

  'We're still interviewing the guests but it's dead air. Room service stopped at ten thirty. The receptionist for the last three hours was the girl you scared to death. She spent the evening in the back office—standard practice: do prep for next day's business and only come out when someone rings the bell. Getting past her on the way in wouldn't be hard. Coming back out…'

  'Nina was unconscious. Must have been.'

  Monroe looked away. 'Or…'

  'No,' I said. 'Not that. Unconscious.' I stood up. Jittery, needing to be on the move. 'I'm out of here.'

  'Where are you going?'

  'To do what I should have done an hour ago,' I said. 'Go looking. She's not here. So she's got to be somewhere else.'

  I got a piece of paper out of my pocket and scribbled my cell number on it. 'Call me. The second. Anything at all.'

  'I will.' He looked at me hard. 'You too. Don't think about dealing with this by yourself.'

  'You think I'll promise you that?'

  'No. But if you find him, I want to be there.'

  'You won't stop me killing him.'

  'I didn't say anything about stopping you.'

  •••

  I drove around the town randomly and fast, windows open wide, listening for the sound of sirens. It occurred to me to go check the sites where the two bodies had been found, but the lot at the walk-down to Raynor's Wood was empty and I hadn't paid enough attention to find the second murder scene again. I called Monroe with the idea and he said he'd send someone.

  So I kept moving faster and faster, searching the town on a grid. I saw cop vehicles flashing in different directions but nobody paid any attention to me or stopped my car despite the fact I was driving like a maniac and—had they looked—liberally smeared with blood.

  A second sweep brought me past the cop station and I pulled to an impulse halt. I was out of the car and walking up to the front doors before I knew what I had in mind. The interior was deserted, just one cop behind the desk looking tense. Luckily he was someone who'd seen me go in and out that afternoon.

  'Sir, are you okay? Are you hurt?'

  'No,' I said. 'I've just come from where Reidel got killed. Where's Gulicks?'

  'In the cells. You can't go in there.'

  'Yeah, I can,' I said. 'Call Special Agent Monroe. Tell him it's Ward Hopkins.'

  I walked past him through into the back half of the building and headed down the corridor past the interview room from that afternoon. At the end was a sign indicating the overnight holding area, three grim-looking doors in a row. Another twitchy-looking cop with a gun was standing outside the middle one.

  'Open the door,' I said.

  'I'm not doing that, sir.'

  I stood where I could see through the slot window in the cell door. The area beyond was small, nine feet by nine, dark except for light leaking in from the corridor. A narrow bed took up one side, a sink and a functional metal latrine on the other. A chair was positioned against the back wall in between.

  Julia Gulicks was sitting bolt upright on it, head lowered. As I stared in through the slot, she raised her head. Her face was pale and her eyes were wide.

  She looked straight at me. And something happened in her face.

  I don't think it was a smile. But she did something with her mouth that wasn't right.

  'Sir—' The cop from the front desk came walking fast down the corridor behind me. 'You've got to go. Right now.'

  'I want to talk to her,' I said. She was still looking at me.

  'That's not going to happen, Mr Hopkins. I just talked to Agent Monroe and he said not to arrest you but to escort you the hell back out of here, right away.' He put his hand on my arm. 'I don't want to have to…'

  I shrugged him off. The guard cop was watching me closely. 'I'm going,' I said.

  The cop shepherded me hurriedly back out of the station onto the pavement. He was extremely pissed and I knew I wouldn't be able to pull something like that again. Not that it had done me any good.

  Except -

  The look that woman had given me had meaning. No one smiles that way without something strange on their mind. Gulicks must know something serious had happened in town—the station would have been chaotic when news of Reidel's murder broke. She could have heard specifics through the door. Was she just reacting to that? To the news that the cop who'd harried her that afternoon had been killed?

  I stood on the sidewalk, knowing the cop was still watching me from behind the desk. I had been exhausted even before I got back to the hotel after meeting Unger. Now I could barely think.

  I sat down heavily on the steps.

  Assumption, or hope: Nina wasn't dead. If the idea had been to kill them both, the attacker could have done it a lot more easily in the hotel room.

  So: why would someone kill Reidel but take Nina alive?

  Either the killer originally went there to murder them both and for some reason changed his mind, electing to kill the cop and abduct Nina instead. Or, the killer arrived with the intention of pulling Nina out. In which case either Reidel's presence was unexpected—and he got killed just because he was there—or the killer went in already expecting one fata
lity, one kidnapping. Either way, he succeeded in doing what he wanted.

  So: assume Nina was the target. What did that mean? And who did it point towards?

  Everybody's assumption had been that it was the killer at large in Thornton. From some hidden vantage he had observed Nina on the investigation, decided she was a danger to his safety or that he'd like to work on her next. I didn't like this last idea at all, but thankfully there was a problem with it—a complete switch of MO and victim profile: from the stealth killing of two middle-aged men to forcibly abducting an armed and female federal agent.

  So: consider instead the idea it was somebody else.

  Monroe's suggestion that it might be Paul had shaken me but it didn't stand up. It was true that my brother was capable of the attack on every physical and moral level. I just didn't make him for it. Partly because I believed he would have been there waiting when I returned to the hotel room. Also I didn't want to believe it because I knew if it was Paul then I would never see Nina again, no matter what I did next.

  So who else? Other agents of the Straw Men? They'd doubtless have other people who would kill police officers without qualm: I had seen one of them empty his gun into Charles Monroe in a public place six months ago, and I had been to a location where the dead bodies of their victims had been buried in the gardens of high-value real estate. These were not people who understood boundaries on behaviour.

  Then something clicked in my head.

  •••

  I had no problem getting out of Thornton: I don't know which three exits were supposed to have been covered, but I evidently found some other way without any trouble. I put my boot down and got to Owensville fast. I dropped speed once I got to the main drag because there were more cop cars around here—Monroe's alert had evidently had an effect. I found the Days Inn and forced myself to enter the building slowly enough to look casual.

  Three o'clock in the morning and the Inn still had someone behind reception. He looked dozy, to be sure, but he was there. Maybe if the place in Thornton had the same policy Nina would still be in her room, and I'd be there with her.