“I’ve been trying to get through it. Trying to find a way to fix it.”
“That’s all well and good, but it’s not the point.” Getting up from the stool, he walked over to the medical kit and sifted through it. “I may not be able to see much, but I’ve noticed the way you hold that arm. When you bring it in close, you’re not coddling it or working out a kink. You’re hiding it. I saw that same thing after a buddy of mine came back from the army with a gimp leg. He hated people staring at it more than he hated his physical therapist. And if anyone acted like they felt sorry for him…hoooo boy!”
Once the sample was in a little plastic bag, Ned walked over to the rocker and stopped its motion with a well-placed hand on its back. “I know what it’s like to be injured and I know what it’s like to be pitied. You and I don’t take either very well. If there’s one more thing I can teach you, it’s that you shouldn’t be ashamed of getting hurt. Even if it was your fault, groaning about it won’t do anyone any good.”
Paige stood up and rubbed her arm. The spot where Ned cut her was hurting, but pain was a lot better than numbness. As she massaged the hardened flesh and wiggled her fingers, she realized she could feel her hand on her forearm a little more than she could a few hours ago.
“Take this up to your friend Daniels. If you trust him, then let him work. Otherwise, kindly escort him out of my house.”
“Gotcha. Thanks, old man.”
He nodded and handed her the Baggie.
It was one thing to watch him operate on her as if he was carving a ham, but Paige had a hard time holding the chunk of flesh he’d taken. She tried to imagine it was a piece of lunch meat, which lasted until she was about two steps from the door to the upstairs room where Daniels was setting up shop. Tossing him the sample, she asked, “Where are those Nymar?”
He’d already laid Peter’s body on both layers of plastic and was currently organizing his test tube racks. “They don’t seem very organized,” Daniels told her. “I tried contacting them through the usual channels but they seemed distracted. They’re supposed to call me back any time, though.”
“I think I’ll head out on my own for a while. I need to get out of here.”
“Take my car. Just don’t mess it up.”
“You sure about that?” she asked.
Daniels had already fished his keys from his pocket, and now handed them over. “If it’ll get you away long enough for me to work, then yes, I’m sure.”
Rather than argue with the Nymar, Paige took his keys so she could do some hunting the old fashioned way.
St. Louis was a sprawling tangle of old and new structures, streets that changed names depending on where they led and a constant flow of traffic that never let up no matter how late it was. Driving through it all, Paige either felt exhilarated or aggravated, depending on how slow the other cars were moving.
Every so often a subtle twinge rippled through the scars left behind by her weapons, to let her know there was something lurking nearby. Traces of Nymar could be felt as she got closer to downtown, and shapeshifters of some kind were scattered farther north in University City. None of the traces, however, were strong enough for her to follow to a source. Either the locals knew more Skinners were in town or they were roaming too quickly to be tracked.
Paige had just turned off of Delmar Boulevard onto North Hanley Road when her phone rang. She went through the wriggling dance of getting it out of her pocket while driving, looked at the number displayed on the screen and let out a relieved breath. Making sure no trace of emotion came through in her voice, she hit the button and asked, “What is it Cole?”
“How much cash did you bring with you?”
“Fine, Cole. And how are you?”
“I’m serious. I need you to come down here and bail me out.”
Steering into the first parking lot she could find, Paige wound up in front of a little white building with a sign that read AMERICAN CLEANERS. Now that she wasn’t a moving violation waiting to happen, she asked, “Bail you out? You’d better be kidding.”
“I don’t have a lot of time to explain it to you, but I seriously need to get bailed out!”
“What happened?”
“Rico and I got into some trouble.” Not only had his voice dropped to an insistent hiss, but he must have also cupped his hand over the phone because the background noise became muddled as well. “We made it to that club, but found some people with some familiar black tattoos.”
Knowing he was talking about Nymar, Paige nodded and started thinking through a dozen different angles at once. “How’d you wind up in jail?”
“We got into an accident and…there was a bus…and Rico…” She could tell that Cole was having trouble coming up with an effective way to get his point across without saying anything to make things worse, then he snarled, “Just get me out of here and I’ll explain it in person. If you don’t have enough to bail us both out, that’s fine. This psycho friend of yours could use some alone time.”
“What police station are you at?”
“We were in Sauget, driving away from that club.”
“What station?”
“I don’t know! Is there more than one around here? We got handcuffed, tossed into a car, and driven to a big room with a fucking cage. Did you want me to write down directions?” Another voice from the background barked at Cole and was muffled completely as he covered the phone receiver. After a few seconds of garbled arguing, he said, “I gotta go, but the officer will tell you where we’re at. Just bring some cash out here quick, all right?”
“Umm…I don’t have the money to bail you out.”
“What? What happened to those funds from…all the traveling money and…?” Considering his surroundings, Paige thought, he didn’t want to mention the fact that they had a psychic bounty hunter feeding Skinners the occasional winning bunch of lottery numbers, or a group of investors who tossed money their way to thank the people who got them out of any number of supernatural binds.
She had to give him credit for keeping his mouth shut. “We’ve got bills to pay, Cole. Times are hard.”
“On top of everything else, I’ve got to hear that shit again? Maybe I can hang myself from my shoelaces.” The muffled voice in the background didn’t like that too much.
“Is Rico there?” Paige asked.
“Yes, but they’re only letting one of us make a call.”
“So you’re both all right?”
“Yes,” Cole said in a somewhat calmer tone. “We’re all right. There’s something going on at that club, though. Our tattooed buddies came out of nowhere to grab one of the dancers. I think they were just waiting for a chance to rush the place.”
“Sit tight,” Paige told him. “I don’t have much money, but I should be able to arrange for bail. If anything comes up and you have to call me quickly, just say you’re calling your lawyer, and odds are better you’ll get to use the phone again.”
“Oh. Okay,” Cole said as the muffled voice in the background said a few words of its own. They must have been good because Cole swiftly added, “I have to go. ’Bye.”
The connection was broken and Paige saved the number to her phone. She then sifted through her contacts to make another call. It was answered in one ring.
“Hey, Prophet. It’s Paige Strobel. I need a big favor.”
Chapter 11
After spending some time in the cell without incident, Cole was starting to relax. In fact, the cage was bigger than his first apartment, and its television had better reception. On the other hand, that television was bolted to the upper corner of an open room that contained three short, steel benches, a pair of miniature toilets, and seven other inmates. Three of the inmates were asleep against the cement walls. Two occupied one of the benches. One paced along the iron bars, and the last one waged a losing war against his most recent meal upon one of the toilets. Since that toilet wasn’t far from the TV or the benches, he didn’t have much choice but to watch.
“W
hy don’t you take a load off?” Rico asked from his bench.
“I think those two want the benches.”
Rico twisted around to look at the pair of inmates sitting nearby. They were so dirty that it was tough to determine what they might look like beneath the grime. Rico greeted them with a curt nod and they scowled back at him just as they’d scowled at Cole.
“They’re fine,” Rico said with an off-handed wave. “Sit down.”
Lowering himself onto the bench, Cole took a position that allowed him to keep his eye on as many of the inmates as possible. The pacer was impossible to watch all the time, and the guy on the crapper was impossible to miss. Leaning over to Rico, he whispered, “This is my first time in prison.”
“No shit.”
“What about you?”
“First off, this ain’t prison. It ain’t even jail. It’s a holding cell. Three very different animals. I actually got fond memories of jail. There was a place up in North Dakota where I spent a few nights with some friends of mine. Served the best franks and beans you ever had. And no, that ain’t slang for a hot date.”
Cole laughed uneasily and said, “Beat me to the punch.”
“After eight weeks there, I got transferred to a real joint in Illinois.”
“What did you do to earn all that?”
“It was a bullshit RICO case that’s been following me around for too long.”
“Did you just start referring to yourself in the third person or did they name the case after you?” Cole asked.
“More like I was named after the case. It’s the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. When Ned introduced me to Paige, she only knew me as the RICO guy. Name stuck and so did that goddamn case. Pulled my ass out of a cushy jail cell like this one and tossed it into a goddamn hole that served slop for every meal on every day but Thursday.” Before Cole could ask, Rico added fondly, “Taco day.”
“So you’re some big-time mob guy?” one of the two bench warmers asked.
Rico straddled his seat and locked eyes with the inmate who’d just spoken up. “You conducting interviews now?” he snarled. “So what’s that make you? Barbara fucking Walters?” Shifting his gaze to the darker-skinned of the two, he added, “That’d make you Star fucking Jones?”
“You’d best chill,” Star said. “I’m just sittin’ here.”
“All right then,” Rico said with a nod. “What about you, Barbara? If you want The View, I can give you a good one of the inside of a shit bowl when I pull your face off and flush it down that toilet.”
Barbara did his best to keep his chin up, but had to maintain a delicate balance between not wanting to back down and not wanting Rico to make good on his offer. Since there didn’t seem to be a third, more desirable choice, he backed down.
Rico turned around and said, “I served some time in Pekin, but that was only medium security. Before I got transferred to a max security hole, someone convinced a judge that I wasn’t supposed to be there.”
“Who?” Cole asked.
Rico leaned over and told him, “Some connected guys were having trouble with a bunch of Nymar encroaching on their drug routes. I put the bloodsuckers down before getting arrested and was mistaken for a professional contractor. When I turned up in the system again, one of my new connected buddies stepped in to make it right. Even after all that, they still owe me a few favors.” Straightening up and allowing his voice to go back to its normal volume, he said, “Sometimes it’s good to do right by the wrong people. Remember that.”
“So should I get used to this sort of thing?” Cole asked.
“Being locked up? Probably not if you’re with Paige. She can sniff out cops pretty good.”
“Is that why you call her Bloodhound?”
Rico gazed up at the television and smirked. “Not exactly.”
When Cole looked up to see what might have caught Rico’s attention, he found a rerun of the nightly news from St. Louis. An attractive brunette with short hair and a cute, round face was speaking next to a picture of a sidewalk labeled as North Skinker Boulevard. Several cops and an ambulance were gathered around what looked like a pile of charred garbage partially propped against a building. The moment he spotted the gnarled, leathery tentacles extending from the pile, Cole jumped up and approached the television.
“Sit the fuck down!” Star said. “I’m watching that!”
Cole reached up to the corner where the television was bolted, causing a guard from down the hall to shout, “You break that and you’re paying for it!”
Looking along the top of the cell, Cole quickly found the pair of surveillance cameras protected by little steel boxes mounted on the ceiling. He looked at one of the cameras and said, “I just want to turn it up! I need to hear it.”
“Then shut up and listen!” the guard shouted.
Since the guard wasn’t about to hand him a remote, Cole looked up and watched the rest of the broadcast.
“As of this time, there is no indication of whose remains these are, but this death is presumed to be linked to the triple homicide earlier this evening,” the cute brunette said. “Police found evidence of a forceful entry at that earlier scene along with signs of a brutal struggle that left all three victims completely drained of blood. Authorities are not releasing an official statement about this newest gruesome discovery. Please be warned that the images you are about to see are graphic and may be unsettling.” After that disclaimer was given, the picture was enlarged to fill the entire screen, with police officers forming a ring around a mess of arms, legs, and thick leathery tentacles.
“Pestilence,” Cole said. “That’s what Peter looked like after he…popped.”
Barbara chuckled from his bench, muttering about something of Cole’s he’d want to pop.
“Things may be going crazy, but this isn’t like anything I’ve seen or heard about from Kansas City or anywhere,” said a man identified by a strip of text along the bottom of the television screen as Patrolman Nick Hencke. “Some of it looks human enough, but the rest…well…” The uniformed police officer turned away from the camera to where a group of people were wrapping the corpse up so it could be lifted into the back of the ambulance. “For all we know,” Nick continued, “this could just be some sort of joke.”
The picture shrank down to fill a quarter of the screen so the cute brunette reporter could conclude with: “While there have been reports of several dog attacks possibly stemming from the disease that affected so many animals in Kansas City last month, police sources have declined to say if this could be a new strain that has mutated to affect people. If the situation changes, this station will update you immediately.”
“Thank you, Katherine,” the brunette’s partner said while shifting in his seat to properly address the camera.
“That’s what Peter came to warn me and Paige about,” Cole said as he spun around to look at Rico. “It’s Pestilence. What if it starts affecting people instead of just Nymar? Aw hell! I got it on me! What if I get sick?”
Rico stood up. With his patchwork jacket seized and nothing but a gray thermal shirt covering his thick chest, he looked like a cement wall separating Cole from the rest of the cell. He squared his shoulders, hung his head like an oversized vulture and said, “Paige is getting us out of here, so you need to calm down.”
“What if Pestilence is spreading?”
“Then we tell Paige and Ned, not every goddamn drunk in this tank.”
Barbara and Star were on their bench, enthralled by the weather report. Pacer was still pacing. Crapper was still crapping. Two of the guys were still sleeping against the wall, but one was watching him intently from his corner directly beneath the television. Although Cole had noticed the lanky guy before, he’d been so quiet that he’d practically blended in with the drab, sour-milk-colored walls.
“I don’t think these guys are our big concern,” he said. “Maybe I can get another phone call.”
“You were lucky to get your first one,” Rico
pointed out. “It ain’t as much of a requirement as you might think.”
“But it’s been hours since I called her!”
“And we’ll probably be in here for hours more before she scrapes together enough money to spring us both. Maybe she won’t scrape the money together at all.” Seeing the strained expression on Cole’s face, Rico shrugged and sat back down. “Just bein’ realistic. Let’s think this through before we waste a call.”
As Cole turned away from the TV, he noticed the guy in the corner was still staring at him. The inmate may have had some muscle under his faded Rams T-shirt and cutoff sweatpants, but not enough to make him imposing. His arms were covered in wiry hair and greasy sweat, but the legs protruding from his shorts were encased in a muddy crust. Plain white canvas shoes were held together with dozens of rubber bands that had probably been stolen from an entire neighborhood’s supply of rolled-up newspapers.
Watching Cole with bloodshot eyes that were pinched at the corners, the man squatted down to claw at the floor while mouthing random syllables with cracked lips. He cocked his head to one side and let out a slow, grating breath.
“You need something?” Cole asked in his best attempt at a threatening tone.
“Pestilence?” the man asked.
“Yeah?”
“Pestilence is the Lord’s way of cleaning His house.”
Cole took a step back and then shot a glance back to Rico.
“I guess that’s one way of putting it,” Rico said.
Since the only other sound within the cell was a teaser for the sports report and the strained grunting from the man on the toilet, Cole walked away from the filthy guy in the shorts. He didn’t get far before hearing the shuffle of wet rubber soles and the scraping of fingernails on the floor.
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