Pinching the bridge of my nose I said, “What the hell is that?” I nodded toward the jukebox.
“It turns out I’ve discovered why the replacement jukebox was such a good deal.”
“You didn’t request this song?” I asked.
“God no, the first time it happened, I pulled all the CDs out and reset it. There isn’t a Backstreet Boys tape in that thing. But every once in a while, it will play one of their songs anyway.”
“That’s some scary shit,” I said.
“Tell me about it.”
I thanked him for the beer and settled into the darkest corner of the room, a circular booth with lots of tabletop space and a view of the door, bar, pool tables, and dartboards, all reflected in the large mirrors running from one end to the other.
The crowd was thin this early in the afternoon, and I was fine with that. I hoped it would be a slow week night. Not dead, not for Peaches’ sake anyway, but thin enough that I wouldn’t have to pack up my notes until I was good and ready to do so.
I pored over the photographs I had. Eric Sullivan’s, circa 1995, courtesy of the DMV. Maisie Michaelson’s, courtesy of her mother, and Rachel Wright’s charming mug shot for the indecent exposure charge. And a fourth photo, also from the DMV—Henry Chaplain. He had a smarmy pirate look about him, or it could’ve been the eye patch, more than the olive skin, dark curls, and sharp cheekbones. I wrote notes for each case, asking myself questions to start me down one path or another.
Maisie: What were the circumstances of her adoption? Where are her birth parents? Were there any family members who were not happy with the adoption? I’d be looking for a father of course, a man with blond hair like Maisie’s.
Rachel: What’s the connection to Henry Chaplain? Is Henry Chaplain protecting Rachel by using his influence to throw someone off her trail? Do they have a bigger crime planned and Holly was simply misdirection?
Chaplain’s record was clean with no priors. If I wanted to know who he was and what he was about, I’d have to use other sources. I had an address, but I couldn’t walk up and knock on the door. Nothing shuts mouths faster than showing a badge. Even perfectly innocent people clam up when you do that. But at least I had a good suspicion that the way to find Rachel was through Chaplain.
I put Eric’s picture beside Maisie’s and there was just something about it. Those faces were speaking to me, but I couldn’t make out what was being said. I hated that. I hated knowing that I saw something but just didn’t make the connection.
I asked Peaches for another house pint in a fresh frosted mug and he obliged. I was halfway through my third pint before my head cleared enough, the throbbing subsiding and my unsteady hands growing still. I turned my full attention to Sullivan.
Charlie wanted him caught, but why? He wasn’t a criminal. There were no entries for him in the system. The only entry I found belonged to the FBRD database. It was only a standard entry for those with known NRD. I had his name, basic public information and death day, some of it courtesy of Memphis. But I doubted any of this would help.
I had two choices.
I could request the files from Jerome, or I could follow the money. When Eric got out, he would’ve needed money. His assets would’ve gone to his wife and kid, and since it didn’t seem like he filed the paperwork to get them back, he must’ve gone a different route. So who did he get money from? And where did he go with it? Because a man has got to eat.
I lifted the pint and drained the last of it. Before I drank the last drop, I saw a dark shape in the bottom of the glass grow larger. Someone was approaching me. I tuned my ears to the sounds of the bar. I listened for tension, anger, threats. Nothing. I still drew my gun under the table, resting the barrel against my leg.
“Hey man,” a voice said.
I lowered the glass enough to see the man speaking, but damned if I was going to let go of the mug. A gun in one hand and a thick glass mug in the other was better than no weapon at all.
“Yeah?”
“Peaches said you won the dart tourney. That true?”
“Yep,” I said. I measured the kid. 5’11. Thick, calloused hands. Scruffy face and blue eyes. He had the look of a laborer in his jean jacket. Factory work or construction maybe. Either was possible around St. Louis, or maybe he was from Illinois, across the river where rents were cheaper. Plenty of the blue collar boys came over to drink in the bars, though they couldn’t afford a room here.
“You want to play?” he asked.
I leaned forward so that the front of my jacket would hang open enough to make the movement casual and slipped the gun back into place.
“Sure, kid,” I said. I could’ve been a bastard and refused him, but why? I needed to step away from my notes anyway and give the facts a minute to settle in my mind. The words were blurring on the page, and not because I’d had three pints.
“But let’s keep it simple. I’m working,” I told him. “How about three throws and the one who hits the bullseye most, wins.”
He grinned as if he’d already won. “All right.”
First, I repacked the folder and handed it to Peaches for safe keeping.
“Don’t look at these, or lose them, or I’ll have to kill you,” I warned him. I winked for show, but his laugh was tight. Good ol’ Peaches, he thought I’d actually put a bullet in him. Good. Not that I liked to threaten my friends, but a man was only as good as the threat he could make.
I kept my eyes on him until he tucked the folder under the register and then I turned to the kid. He had six darts in his hand and gave me three, the ones with red tips on their little green flights.
I let him go first. He was pretty good. He hit the innermost circle each time, two tips touching the outside edge of the red bullseye and one dead center. With all three stuck, he grinned triumphantly and turned to me. His friends clapped. Then he went to remove his darts.
“Leave them,” I said.
“They’re all on the bullseye. It’ll mess up your shot, man.”
“I’ve got plenty of room,” I insisted.
Peaches laughed behind me. “Go easy on them, B. It’s too early in the week to be breaking hearts. We’re still getting over Monday. ”
“I’d like to see you do better,” the kid scoffed. Shit talk. The biggest difference between young pups and old dogs. At some point, you get your ass handed to you enough that you quit talking shit and simply hand it out if you can.
“Would you?” I asked and smiled at him. “All right.”
I threw the first dart and bullseye. I threw the second and thumped against the board right beside the first, knocking it to the right a little so the little flights veered in opposite directions, two of his darts fell off the board.
“Don’t hold back, Danger,” Peaches said, chuckling.
I winked at the kid and closed my eyes. I visualized the bullseye in my mind and where I wanted the dart to land. Then I exhaled and threw it. I opened my eyes after I heard the thump against the board. My three crowded his dart in the center. It looked threatened and surrounded.
“Damn. I don’t believe it,” the kid said.
I slapped him on the back. “Practice kid. It’s just practice.”
“When the hell did you have that much time for practice?” he asked. “Prison?”
“You think they give you sharp objects in prison?” I motioned for two more pints. Peaches nodded and pulled out the mugs. “How did you learn?”
“Pool and darts is a good way to earn cash. I just went around the bars and played the best, learning what I could where I could. You ain’t gotta pay taxes on what you get.”
“A man has got to eat,” I said and put a pint in his hands. “On me.”
Cash under the table. He was right. There were plenty of ways for a man to make cash under the table if he was desperate enough. If Sullivan didn’t want anyone’s help, he didn’t have to take it.
It wouldn’t make sense to try and trace the money. I’d have to start with Jerome. Though the fa
cility was closed, hopefully, there was still enough there to point me in a direction.
I’d just handed the darts to one of the boy’s friends when I got the distinct feeling I was being watched.
A black woman sitting alone at a table across the room wasn’t blinking. She had a pint in one hand and an unreadable expression on her face. It wasn’t friendly. Certainly not the kind of look a woman gives you across the bar, if you’re lucky.
I held her gaze for a moment. I wasn’t trying to intimidate her. I was just wary. She looked damn capable of trouble if that was her prerogative. So I let her look, but I had no intention of letting her come closer.
The blue collar boy said something and I turned to respond. When I looked back, the woman with the close cropped hair was gone. Her pint, still full, rested on the vacated table.
Chapter 16
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
After getting my file from Peaches, I headed home. Only I didn’t make it that far. Charlie called me from his cell when I was about two miles from Blackberry Hill.
“I need you to come to Lafayette Square. Down here off of 18th. Do you know the Square Root Brewery?”
“Yeah,” I said and hooked a U-turn while the road was clear. Some bastard still honked though he had plenty of room.
“Head that way,” he said. “You’ll see the lights. Black and whites are all over the fucking place.”
Charlie ended the call without saying goodbye and I pressed my foot down on the accelerator. He didn’t say I found your girl. He would have if it was Maisie or Rachel. But there was definitely a body.
No other reason would have a bunch of cops and agents standing outside the pub.
I was still two blocks away when I first saw the lights. Great blue and red flashes bouncing off the brick buildings lining the Lafayette square district. The district is what I liked to call ghetto chic. This was one of the nicest areas in the city. Even the brick buildings had fancy molding and big picturesque windows. The landscaping helped to give it an upscale look, but the architecture smacked of row houses no matter how you packaged it.
I parked at the edge of the scene and climbed out of the car. Immediately, my breath fogged in front of my face and the ice in the wind chapped my knuckles. The cold air creeping into my jacket and those flashing blue-red-blue lights woke me up a bit, chasing back the edge of my last Blackberry pint that I shared with the Bobby George wannabe.
The wide, empty avenues running along each side gave a sense of foreboding, but dark empty streets always did.
I walked a few yards past the brewery, past the rubbernecking lookie-lous straining against the yellow tape, until I found my first uniformed officer. I flashed my badge so he’d lift the tape for me.
“Thanks. Can you point me toward Agent Swanson?” I asked.
The officer jabbed a stubby finger toward the edge of the park across the street. I saw a thinner crowd, only a few guys standing between a row of park benches. The white magnolia blossoms glowed like ghostly spectators in the flashing darkness above them.
I crossed the road.
“Swanson,” I said, loud enough so he could hear me.
Charlie turned and waved me closer. It was him, another FBRD agent, and the CSI guy taking photographs of the body.
Because there was a body.
A girl lay dead on the sidewalk near a park bench. A large dark puddle of blood and brain spreading out from the back of her head. She wore jeans, sneakers, and a nice sweater—or at least it must’ve been before chunks of her brain hit the sidewalk.
“What happened?” I asked Charlie, who’d finally finished talking to the other FBRD agent.
“Witnesses say the girl is Kaitlyn Green. The girl over there in the white jeans is her cousin. She confirms they came together. They met a couple of guys, were having drinks. Apparently all was fine and dandy until Kaitlyn told her death story.”
“Her death story?”
“Yeah, apparently, last year she was out for a jog and got hit by a car.”
“Drunk driver?”
“No. The driver had just turned around in her seat to swat her kid. It killed Kaitlyn but she woke up the next day, diagnosed with NRD. She was very proud of her condition, according to the cousin. She liked to tell everyone about it. Do you know there’s a website for this shit? People put their death stories out there for the whole world to see.” He looked down at his notes. “Heather Fan is the cousin.”
“What does that have to do with the guys?”
“Heather thinks the shooter who put the bullet in her cousin’s head is one of the guys. Brian Taft. He apparently reacted badly to Kaitlyn’s story, said some shit and left early. Then when they were walking to their car hours later, a man in a mask fitting his physical description grabbed Kaitlyn and roughed her up a bit. Kaitlyn fought back, has blood under her nails and all that, for all the good it did her. He still put a bullet in her brain.”
Brains on the concrete. That’ll do it. The girl wouldn’t be waking up again.
“Where was the cousin?” I asked.
“With her until she ran.”
I placed my hands on my hips. “So what do you want me to do? Find the—”
“No,” Charlie said. He put away the notebook and turned to me. “You’re still on Sullivan. No new cases until you wrap that up. I called you here to talk to the press.”
“Me?” I snorted.
“You’re good with this shit,” he said. “Diplomacy.”
“If you say so,” I said and looked over toward the news vans clustered at the edge of the crime scene. They strained against the yellow tape like ravenous dogs desperate for the girl’s bones.
“See,” he said. “You’re doing it already.”
I put my cold hands in the pockets of my jacket, and leaned a thigh against the black iron arm of a park bench. “What do you want me to say? Or not say.”
“I just don’t understand why some of them feel the need to be all loud and proud about this. Zombie pride or whatever the hell you want to call it. Do you know how many people would love to hide how different they are? How many kids go around wishing they were a different race or had both arms or whatever? They aren’t helping themselves by being all in-your-face with everyone.”
“So you want them to hide who they are? I suppose we can go back to the days when the coloreds were lucky if they could pass. Is that what you’re saying?”
Charlie sighed. “No, Jesus. Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m just saying that I want to tell Necronites to stay indoors. Do not announce themselves to everyone they meet or they’ll all end up with their brains blown out by some bigot. But we can’t say that.”
“It would be a bad idea,” I agreed, wiping at my nose turned cold by the wind.
“So just paint a rosy fucking picture, would you? Let them know they need to be careful, but also that everything is going to be OK.”
“Is it going to be OK?” I asked Charlie my friend, not my superior. I knew he understood when he ran his hand over his face.
“I hope so,” he said. “Eventually.”
I slapped his back a couple times, mentally forgiving him for being a dick earlier, and jogged toward the white news van perched at the far end of the tape where a black reporter and his camera crew waited. I wondered what he’d say if I’d just repeated Charlie’s spiel to him.
“Sir.” He called as soon as he saw me. “A few questions if you please, sir?”
I opened my mouth to give my military rank and stopped. Old habits.
“Agent Brinkley.” I offered my hand.
This caught him off guard, as it always does when you act civil to the press, instead of treating them like scavengers tearing at roadside carcasses. He had to switch his microphone to the other hand in order to shake mine. A petite little thing, compared to the massive camera on her shoulder, was already positioning herself behind the man for filming.
“Agent Brinkley,” the reporter said. “I’m Hal Hemsworth with Channel
6 News. What can you tell us about what happened here tonight?”
“We are not sure about the details yet, Mr. Hemsworth, but it appears that a young woman was shot. It will very likely be ruled homicide.”
“Gun violence has been nonexistent in the prominent Lafayette Square district. Is this a new trend?”
Gun violence is a problem all over St. Louis, I thought. Rich neighborhoods were no exception.
I flashed a restrained grin. “I’m no real estate expert, Mr. Hemsworth. Though this looks like a hate crime. Those usually target people, not locations.”
The black man’s back stiffened. “A hate crime?”
“Yes,” I said. “The young woman may have been targeted for her medical condition.”
“Was she NRD-positive, sir?”
“That is what we have heard.”
The man turned to the camera then as if I wasn’t there. “Once a public safety concern, now a medical marvel, NRD-positive refers to a neurological disorder that allows certain individuals to resurrect from death, assuming their brain was not damaged in the death itself.”
I disliked the word resurrect, which definitely had a horror film ring to it, but I didn’t correct him. After all, I wasn’t part of the 2% who has this disorder, so who was I to speak for the Necronites? I sure as hell wasn’t much of a champion for their cause. Sure, I was trying to find the ones falling through the cracks, but I was no legislator. I was trying to keep them alive and accounted for. That had nothing to do with improving their quality of life.
“So she was shot in the head?” The camera girl asked. The newsman froze.
“It’s fine, we can voice over the clip,” he said, his showman face dropping away. “So the young woman was shot in the head?” the newsman asked in the same rehearsed voice as if the girl had not even spoken.
“That is correct,” I said. I was looking at the girl and wondering what her interest was. The pained look on her face, what was it saying? This petite, pretty little blonde. Did she have NRD? Was she grateful she could pass? Or was she just pissed to be upstaged by a man and talked over.
I gritted my teeth and stepped back from the crew. “Unfortunately, that is all the information I have at this time.”
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