‘Indeed,’ Frost said. ‘Shall we go and say hello?’
‘Look man, they’re all yours. I’ll just stay out of your way.’
‘Nonsense,’ Frost said. ‘Hop in. The rear door sticks on this side, you’ll need to really give it a pull.’
But Wasserman raised his hands and took a step back instead. ‘Yeah, that’s OK. Claire’s probably going out of her mind. I should call.’
Frost raised the dart pistol and aimed it out the window.
Wasserman’s eyes widened again; he thrust his hands out in front of him in a warding gesture, shaking his head vigorously. ‘No, no, hey, wait wait wait—’
Frost pulled the trigger. Wasserman flinched, yelped, then turned his left hand over to look at the tufted dart sticking out of his palm.
‘Oh, come on,’ he pleaded, already sagging to his knees.
That rock I threw this morning.
Ben had a quick mental flashback: Abe charging the creature like a kamikaze lunatic; him grabbing her and shoving her to the ground; a fist-sized rock hitting nothing but breeze as it sailed away into the timber.
‘Please, please, please,’ he said, ‘tell me you’re joking.’
She shook her head. Nope.
He put his head in his hands. A faint humming sound seemed to emanate from somewhere in the small, interlocking bones deep within his ears. The sound built in gradual waves until it filled his brain with white noise. Somewhere on the periphery, he felt light, almost feathery pressure: a gentle hand on his shoulder.
‘Ben.’ The hand gave a squeeze. ‘Hey, come on. Say something. Don’t check out on me now.’
‘You’re telling me all this could have been finished.’ He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyeballs until he saw fireworks. ‘Done and over. At sunrise this morning.’
‘Nobody can say that with 100 percent certainty.’
‘You had everything under control.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far, either.’
‘Until I stepped in.’
Ben heard Charley mutter something under his breath. Just two little words, barely audible: That figures.
‘Hey,’ Anabeth said sharply. ‘That’s not fair, Charley.’
‘Nothing’s fair,’ Charley grumbled. ‘Ever.’
‘Well! Welcome to the human race, sunshine. And you.’ She patted Ben briskly on the shoulder. ‘Pull yourself together and look at me.’
Ben dropped his hands and sagged back against the wall, shaking his head slowly. ‘He’s right again. I screwed everything up.’
‘How? By instinctively trying to protect me? I’m nearly a complete stranger to you, Ben. You’ve said so yourself. Repeatedly.’
‘I’m a hero, all right.’
‘Oh, grow up. Both of you. I swear.’ Abe kicked him in the foot with the toe of her combat boot, then Charley, then turned and plopped back down on the bed. ‘Who left their post this morning? You? Who decided to stop for coffee and flirting instead of taking care of business?’
‘Abe, stop helping,’ Ben said. ‘Please.’
‘I’ll tell you something else, just for your information. Part of me cheered when you stepped in front of me the way you did. It told me everything I needed to know about you.’
‘That I’m a born idiot?’
‘That despite what you clearly believe, you’re a good man,’ Abe said. ‘A good father. That the stranger I’ve been waiting to save all these years turns out to be worth saving.’
Before Ben could think up a response to that bunch of well-meaning nonsense, there came an authoritative pounding on the door. He couldn’t suppress a gallows chuckle as he looked at Abe. ‘You were saying?’
Pound pound pound.
Anabeth sighed. ‘I guess story time’s over. Let me handle this.’
Charley jumped up and said, ‘I got it.’
He was to the door before Ben could react. Abe lunged from her spot, calling out, ‘Charley! I said let me.’
Charley threw off the chain and opened the door. Ben, to his utter confusion, did not see a police uniform on the stoop.
He also did not see a pale, hairless, disfigured supernatural arms dealer.
‘Oh,’ he heard Anabeth say. ‘Well, now. Hello.’
Ben sat with his mouth gaping for several beats before his brain finally caught up with his eyeballs. ‘Frankie?’
Francesca Montecito stepped into the room and gave Charley a quick, sisterly hug – waist bent, hips a foot apart – then leaned back and looked him in the eyes. Ben heard her say, ‘You OK?’ Saw Charley shrug, then nod his head.
He stood. ‘Francesca, what the hell are you doing here?’
‘I texted her,’ Charley said.
‘You what? When? Why?’
‘I wanted to go home. But then it turned out we all needed a ride anyway, so …’
‘So you sooooo owe me,’ Frankie told him, popping a hip as she looked around the room. ‘Like, for the rest of forever. This place is a dump. Can we stop being here now?’
‘That’s an excellent idea,’ Abe said, raising her voice as she turned toward the closed bathroom door. ‘Reuben? Honey, come on out. We’re leaving. Quick-quick-fast.’
No response.
‘Reuben?’
Abe glanced at Ben. He shrugged, following her over. She wiggled the knob. Locked. She did some pounding of her own. ‘Reuben? Are you OK in there?’
Ben shouted: ‘Water boy!’
No response.
‘OK, stand back.’
Abe saw Ben’s intention. To the door, she said, ‘Reuben? If you can hear me, please stand clear. And maybe cover your eyes just in case. We’re coming in.’ To Ben: ‘Be gentle with him, please.’
He took the greatest care possible in splintering the jamb with his boot. The door flew open, banging against the toilet. Abe caught it on the rebound as she slipped into the bathroom. Ben followed her inside.
The bathroom of Room 103 at the River Bend Inn and Suites was remarkable for being the only motel bathroom he’d ever seen – possibly the only residential bathroom he’d seen anywhere in the past thirty years – with a tub but no shower. The window over the tub was open. Aside from the tub, the pedestal sink, and the toilet, Ben saw no other water carriers.
‘I don’t believe this,’ he said.
Abe was already shoving past him, heading back out the way they’d come in. ‘It isn’t good.’
‘Is he OK?’ Charley asked.
Francesca said, ‘Is who OK?’
Abe had already rushed out of the room, straight through the door Francesca had left standing open behind her. Charley and Frankie looked at each other and followed along.
Before Ben could catch up to them, Gordon’s prepaid buzzed in his pocket. He dug it out and answered on the move. ‘Gordon. Little busy. What’s going on?’
‘You’re asking me?’ Christine’s frantic voice shouted in his ear.
TWENTY-ONE
‘Christine, thank god.’ Ben stopped in his tracks and lowered his voice, reflexively pushing the motel room door closed so Charley wouldn’t hear them fighting. Old habits died hard. ‘We’ve been calling you all day.’
‘Ben, what have you done now? Where are you? What have you done?’
‘Honey, listen, Charley’s OK. Frankie’s OK. We’re—’
‘Francesca? What do you … Ben, goddammit!’
‘She’s with us. Everybody’s OK. Whatever you’re hearing is 100 percent wrong, and you’ll have a hard time believing me when I explain, but we need your help. This is serious.’
‘You’re telling me this is serious? They took a dead man out of my yard, Ben. And that awful mess down in Ashland. They’re saying you—’
‘Christine. I know. Please just listen.’ Ben stopped. ‘Wait. What happened in Ashland?’
But Christine’s voice was gone. A new voice came on the line. Still female, but calmer, more official, unfamiliar to Ben. ‘Mr Middleton? This is Detective Sergeant Valerie Contreras, Omaha Police.
I want you to stay on the line with me now and—’
Shit.
Ben hung up immediately, thinking: I thought giving up the sauce was supposed to make life get better. He pulled open the door and hustled outside, into the parking lot. Francesca’s Subaru was parked just outside the room. He scanned left, where he saw nothing, then right, where he saw three things at once:
A black Lincoln Town Car that looked like it had come in last place at the county fair dirt track; Anabeth Glass and Francesca Montecito standing with their backs to the parking lot, palms pressed up against the next door over; and an albino-looking beanpole with scar tissue for a face holding the nozzle of a portable jet injector to his son’s neck.
The fourth, fifth, and sixth things Ben saw a moment too late: a shoulder sling, a smile, a fist coming at him.
Then what felt like a speeding cinderblock landed in the center of his face. The world exploded in a crunching of nose cartilage and a blooming supernova of light. Somewhere in the far distance – possibly inside his own head – Ben heard a voice say: Goddamn, I been waiting all day to do that.
Then the light faded into a cool, engulfing darkness.
‘Guys,’ said Gordon Frerking, ‘I don’t know what else to tell you. We’re really, truly not jerking you around, here.’
‘Gee,’ Deputy Tom Curnow said. ‘I wonder why I’m having trouble believing that.’
‘Look, man, I know we got off on the wrong foot this morning.’
‘Deputy Curnow,’ Tom said. ‘Or Sir, if you like shorter words better. “Look, man” me again and see how far it gets you.’
Frerking sighed. He seemed to be the informal leader of these numbskulls. ‘No disrespect intended.’
‘Water under the bridge. Now cut the shit and start over from the beginning.’
Devon Miller piped up. ‘Deputy, if I may …’
‘Nerd,’ Jeremy Zwart muttered under his breath.
‘Eat a dick,’ Miller snapped.
‘I’m gonna have to,’ Zwart said. ‘Yours didn’t come anywhere close to filling me up.’
‘Gentlemen,’ Dr Truong interjected. ‘Perhaps the condition of the patient may further our understanding.’
They were gathered in an administrative conference room at the hospital: Tom, the paintball idiots, two Omaha PD patrol officers whose names Tom couldn’t remember, and Dr Khoa Truong, the surgeon who’d removed a poker chip-sized section of Ajeet Mallipudi’s skull to relieve pressure on the young man’s brain.
‘Couldn’t have said it better myself, Doc.’ Tom pointed at Frerking. ‘You. Go again. Start with finding your buddy on the ground.’
‘With all due respect, Deputy, it’s gonna sound exactly the same a second time.’
‘What it sounds like to me is bullshit.’
‘I know! But I’m telling you: we’ve got it all on video. The cameras are in my van. If we can just look at that footage, you’ll see what we’re trying to—’
‘Actually,’ Dr Truong said, ‘I was attempting to add something to what these young men have said.’
Tom turned to him, thinking: Am I doing something wrong, here? ‘By all means, Doc. Feel free to jump in.’
‘Yes. Well.’ Truong adjusted his eyeglasses. ‘In preparing the patient for surgery, my nurses recovered a sample of material.’
‘What kind of material?’
‘A small amount of residue from beneath the left corpus unguis of the patient’s third distal—’
‘Pretend I’m a dumb cop who couldn’t get into medical school.’
‘The middle fingernail.’ The paintball idiots snickered as Truong demonstrated the fingernail in question. ‘I thought nothing of it at first, given the clay-based soil in our region. However—’
‘Clay, you said?’
‘That was my presumption. But the material exhibited unusual properties. We’ve transferred the sample to our—’
‘These unusual properties, let me guess,’ Tom said. ‘It was cold. And it smelled like ass.’
The Omaha cops looked at each other. The surgeon looked directly at Tom. ‘Yes, actually. And extraordinarily viscous. Forgive me, I mean … sticky.’
Frerking pointed urgently at Tom. ‘You’ve seen it too! Haven’t you? So you know we’re not—’
Then his mobile phone buzzed on the table in front of him, interrupting the flow. As he reached for it, Tom extended his hand instead. ‘May I?’
‘Got a warrant?’ As soon as Frerking said it, he relented, handing the phone over. ‘I mean, yeah, sure. Knock yourself out.’
Tom glanced at the screen. Then he turned the phone to show Frerking the incoming text. ‘Red Ball One. What’s that supposed to mean?’
Frerking glanced at his pals, then back to Tom. ‘No idea. Who’s it from?’
‘Just a number.’
‘What’s the last text in that thread?’
Tom looked. ‘There isn’t one. Just “Red Ball One.”’
Frerking looked at his pals again. More of a glare this time.
Jeremy Zwart raised his hands, wiggling his fingers. ‘They’ve been on the ends of my arms this whole time.’
‘My phone’s right there,’ Devon Miller said, pointing to the table. ‘Anyway, we’re in your contacts list.’
‘I wonder why sometimes.’ Frerking turned back to Tom with a shrug. ‘Wrong number, I guess?’
Tom scrutinized him closely.
Then he sighed. He slid the phone back across the table. ‘OK, Doc. Tell me more about this sample. You say you sent it where, again?’
Ben’s eyes creaked open to painful, piercing light. His throat was dry, and he couldn’t breathe through his nose. His head pounded like a subwoofer. The light flared and then receded, slowly resolving into the image of a water-stained ceiling.
‘She’s clean,’ a deep voice said.
A second voice seemed to come from the ceiling itself: ‘Betsy. Take this only for what it’s worth, but you seem uncharacteristically underprepared for the job at hand, if I may say.’
‘Don’t worry, it’s in a safe place.’ Abe’s voice. ‘And don’t call me Betsy. You know how much I hate that.’
Wincing, Ben lifted his head to see the man in the shoulder sling – now wearing a Bergen Mercy hospital t-shirt with his suit pants and dress shoes – shove Abe roughly toward the chairs near the air unit. He saw Charley and Francesca already sitting in the chairs. Charley had his knees up, head down on his arms. His shoulders bounced in time with his quiet sobs, which he was trying to hide but couldn’t. At least not as easily as his face. It was the classic Charley Middleton breakdown position. Ben hadn’t seen it in several years now.
Over them all loomed the tall, knobby carnival mutant now calling the shots in Room 103.
Frost.
‘If you’re keeping the stone in the same van you used to coldly murder my second-best employee,’ he said, ‘I’ll be very disappointed.’
‘Give me some credit. Speaking of things that aren’t here, where’s Reuben?’
‘Also in a safe place. Well, that may be putting too positive a spin on it. But for now he’s only napping.’
Ben tried to sit up, but the room started spinning. He gulped, sucked in a breath. Pressed his palms into the mattress.
Then he lurched to one side and vomited weakly on to the carpet beside the bed, setting off a small bomb inside his brain and starting his flattened nose gushing again.
‘Dad?’
Francesca: ‘Gross.’
‘Not to worry,’ Frost said. ‘A mild concussion, I should expect. Entirely survivable. With sufficient group cooperation, of course.’
‘Mal,’ Abe said, ‘just stop. Somewhere, deep down, I know you’re better than this.’
‘You have a point,’ Frost agreed. ‘Honestly, I can’t help feeling like all of this is really much easier than we’ve been making it.’
‘Easier than taking five people hostage in broad daylight? In full view of a busy highway? Across from a parking lot
full of police officials?’
‘Still grading my performance, I see.’
‘I’m not grading you, Malcom. It never worked anyway.’
‘Knowledge acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. Plato said that.’
‘Didn’t he fly too close to the sun? Wait, that was another guy.’
While he was hanging over the bed, Ben’s eyes came into focus long enough to spot a familiar object beneath the edge of the bed: Gordon Frerking’s prepaid phone. He braced himself for the pain and pretended to retch again, hanging off the mattress a few inches farther, scooping up the phone as he did. He had just enough time to tap a few buttons and press Send before his knuckles exploded, his hand went numb to the wrist, and the phone thudded to the threadbare carpet.
‘Dad!’
‘I’m OK,’ he said, gritting his teeth as he shook some feeling back into his fingers.
‘Sneaky,’ said the man in the shoulder sling, stooping to retrieve the phone he’d pistol-whipped out of Ben’s hand. On the subject of pistols, he’d outfitted himself with a new one since Ben had seen him last. This one was fitted with a silencer.
Frost accepted the phone as the man in the shoulder sling handed it over. ‘Thank you, Lucius.’ Without a glance, he tossed the phone on to the dresser with Abe’s and Francesca’s, apparently confiscated while Ben’s lights had been out. ‘Now that everyone’s present, allow me a brief moment to run down the program. Then we’ll be on our way.’
They were in the elevator, on their way back down to Ajeet’s floor, before Jeremy said, ‘And what was that bit with your phone, anyway?’
‘Wrong number,’ Devon told him. ‘Try to keep up.’
‘It wasn’t a wrong number,’ Gordon said.
‘But you told Curnow—’
‘It was the prepaid. I think Ben and Abe need help.’
Jeremy said, ‘How do you know that?’
‘Red Ball One.’ Gordon shook his head. ‘Middleton. I swear that guy’s sort of turning into my hero.’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘It’s a distress code. He knew I’d get it.’
‘How’d he know that?’
‘Season one, episode six.’
The elevator stopped. The bell dinged. The doors opened. Devon said, ‘Huh?’
Kill Monster Page 19
