Game of Cages

by Harry Connolly

  He wasn’t even close to right, except about the killing spree. I felt a flush of shame at the memory, though. Not only had Jon killed people, he’d eaten them, too. I was grateful Cardinal hadn’t mentioned that, because if he’d read news reports on the story, he knew about it.

  Still, “drug-induced psychosis” was the official explanation for the events of the previous fall when I tried to save my oldest friend from the Twenty Palace Society—and from himself—and ended up killing him instead. But that official explanation could be useful.

  “That’s pretty much it,” I said.

  “Well, what’s happened here doesn’t have anything to do with that, does it?” A siren grew louder.

  I hesitated before I answered. “I don’t know.”

  He sighed and drew a small revolver from his pocket. “If you won’t talk to me honestly, son, I’m going to have to do things neither one of us likes.” He took a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket. “I’m going to make a citizen’s arrest. I’m not going to have trouble with you, am I?” The siren was close.

  “Me? I’m Mr. Cooperation. You don’t have to cuff me.”

  “I’m afraid I do. I have to look around now. I’ll be back in a few to let you loose, but I can’t rightly take any chances. Not with what’s been going on today. Hold your wrist next to the handle there.”

  He pointed at the oven door. It was an old-fashioned black iron handle and attached pretty solidly. I put my wrist beside it so he could cuff me easily.

  If Cardinal was nervous about me, he didn’t show it. I didn’t let my nervousness show, either. I doubted he’d be convicted if he “accidentally” shot me. Hell, he probably wouldn’t even be arrested. I was an ex-con from L.A. Who cared about me?

  And he hadn’t said a word about the things I did in Hammer Bay.

  The siren fell silent. Cardinal went outside and waved to someone, then returned to the house and walked through the other rooms.

  The first paramedic was a black woman about my age with unruly hair pulled into a ponytail. She was squat like a fireplug and had broad, strong hands. The man who followed her through the door was a six-foot-four white guy with a wool-lined hunter’s cap and a bushy gray beard. They carried a gurney.

  “Holy …” The woman let her voice trail off.

  “That’s Isabelle, all right,” Bushy Beard said. “What a fucking day.”

  Ponytail stepped up to the body. I could hear her shoe splash in the blood. “Damn.”

  Bushy Beard had a clipboard in his hands, but he wasn’t writing anything down. Instead, he was looking at me. “I knew her.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. That made his eye twitch. “I’m the one who found her.”

  “Yeah, right,” Ponytail said. “That’s why you’re in cuffs. This woman went to grade school with my mother. She drove our whole family to my grandfather’s funeral.”

  They were angry and trying to talk themselves into letting it go. It wasn’t a sudden anger, though. They seemed more tired than shocked. I wondered what else had happened that day. Had they been to the Wilbur estate? Had someone been hurt at the burning barn?

  “You shouldn’t have done this,” Bushy Beard said.

  “Shouldn’t have done what? Find a body?” I was getting annoyed. Everyone was so sure I was guilty just because they didn’t recognize my face.

  “Yeah,” Ponytail said. “Right.”

  “What did you want?” Bushy asked. “Money?”

  I took a deep calming breath and tried to shrug it off. These people had just lost a friend, I told myself. There was nothing to be gained by losing my temper.

  But he wasn’t done. “How did it feel? Did you get off on it?”

  That was my limit. “Go fuck yourself,” I said. “You think I’d come to fucking Washaway if I wanted money? Or to get off?”

  That was what he wanted. He moved toward me. “It must have been something else, then.”

  “Kick his ass, Bill,” Ponytail said.

  I had the ghost knife in my pocket but no way to use it without both of them seeing. I was glad that I’d offered my left to Cardinal. If I was going to fight one-handed, I wanted to use my right.

  He lumbered toward me. I threw a right jab at his chin. He was expecting it and caught my arm. Grappling, we fell against the stovetop, his massive weight bearing down on me. I wriggled my right arm, trying to get it in a position to gouge at his face, but he was too heavy and too close. His breath smelled of cheap teriyaki and expensive mints.

  He hit the side of my face with a huge, heavy left. It hurt, but I’d been hit harder in the previous twenty-four hours.

  The punch loosened things up between us. Before Bushy Bill could close in again, I drove my knee into his crotch. He hissed, doubled over, and staggered back a couple of steps. I threw a right elbow toward his face, but he felt it coming and leaned away from it. He threw a wide, swinging right at me. I couldn’t block it with my left, so I ducked and caught it on the crown of my head. It hurt, but I knew it hurt him more.

  “For goodness sakes!” a thin voice yelled. “What’s going on here?”

  Cardinal stood in the kitchen doorway with a swaddled baby in his arms. He had a diaper bag over his shoulder and an unhappy look on his face.

  Bill shuffled to the opposite counter and stared at the floor, looking as if he would back all the way through the wall and out of town if he could.

  Cardinal marched up to him and laid the baby in his arms. I caught a glimpse of its tiny, perfect little face. Cardinal folded the blanket over its eyes to block the light. “Don’t wake that baby, Bill. Take him out to the ambulance and check him over, you hear me? Check him over good. Now.”

  Bill waddled to the door. Cardinal turned to Ponytail. “For goodness sakes, Sue! Don’t you know any better?”

  “We saw him handcuffed next to Isabelle’s body, and we thought—”

  “No, you didn’t think! Gosh darn it!” Cardinal’s voice was high and thin, more of a whine than a shout. Sue looked ashamed. “You’ll be lucky to just be suspended. This man could press charges against you.”

  “Him?” She sounded startled and outraged. She glanced back at the cuffs. “But Isabelle and the Breakleys—”

  “He’s an innocent man, Sue. Innocent. Can I tell you how I know that? Because no one has proved him guilty yet. Even that befuddled old Lutheran from the public defender’s office could get him sprung now. When the sheriff comes, he may have to arrest you. Do you understand why we can’t have this sort of malarkey?”

  “I’m sorry, Steve.”

  “Have you pronounced yet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Go out to the ambulance and try to figure out where we’re going to find two paramedics to replace you.”

  Sue went outside. Cardinal took a deep breath and took out his handcuff keys. “Mr. Lilly, I’d like to apologize for myself as a man and as a citizen of the town of Washaway. I expect better from our people, and I certainly don’t want you to think I put handcuffs on you so Bill could … do what he did. I’m truly sorry.” He opened the cuffs and put them away.

  “I know you didn’t,” I said.

  “Will you press charges?” he asked reluctantly, as though he would have to do the paperwork.

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. I didn’t have any interest in suing the town, but the threat was leverage I wasn’t prepared to give up. “What did she say about the Breakleys? Did the fire spread to their house?”

  “No.” I was tremendously relieved. “The whole family is dead, though. A seven- and a nine-year-old girl, both parents, and the girls’ grandmother. Sue and Stookie just came from the scene,” he added, trying to get a little sympathy for them.

  “What happened?”

  “I can’t really talk about that. Did you or your lady friend know them?”

  “No, not at all.” I shut my mouth, hoping Cardinal would fill the silence.

  He didn’t oblige. “What did you see on their farm, M
r. Lilly? Why did you rush toward the sound of gunshots? Does it have something to do with what happened to your friend?”

  “Can I call you Steve? Because my name is Ray.”

  “Sure, Ray.”

  “Shouldn’t the cops be asking these questions, Steve?”

  He took a deep, weary breath. “They should, if they would answer our calls for help. The fire truck came for the Breakley fire, but the sheriff hasn’t showed up yet. Maybe he had a car accident or something. But yes, it should be the police asking these questions. We’re going to have to make do. Does this have anything to do with what happened to your friend?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Did the Breakleys look like they’d been eaten?”

  Steve looked back at Isabelle and the untouched porterhouse on the floor. “No, they didn’t. Now tell me why you ask.”

  I knew I should keep my mouth shut, but I talked anyway. “Last night, while those guys were carjacking us, I got a weird vibe off them. Something about them reminded me of that friend of mine who died last year.”

  “What was it, specifically?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Something about the way they talked and acted. Something about the look in their eyes. Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but I thought they were high in the same way that Jon—that my friend was.”

  Steve took that in with a thoughtful nod. I could see that he still didn’t like my story, but he believed it. His cell rang. He answered, listened for a moment, and said, “I’ll get out there right away.”

  He turned to me. “Ray, we seem to be having quite a busy day today. I think you and your lady friend should stay in town for a while. When he does finally get here, the sheriff will want to talk to you. I’ll contact you later at the Sunrise.”

  Obviously, he was used to throwing his weight around town. I nodded and he rushed outside. I followed.

  Bill and Sue gave me a sullen glare as I passed their ambulance, but Preston was gone. Good riddance to him and his shotgun, I thought. Steve climbed into his car, an old Crown Vic, and started the engine. I lagged behind, acting as if I was in no rush.

  He pulled into the road. I followed him as he drove into a less populated area. Traffic was sparse, so I let him pull way ahead. Eventually, he stopped by the side of the road behind a charcoal-colored Honda Element. By the time I pulled in behind him, Steve was standing by the Honda’s driver door, talking into his cell. There was an Escort parked on the other side of the road.

  Steve didn’t look pleased to see me. A woman came toward me as I climbed out of the rental. She was about thirty-five, with a pixie cut and a runner’s physique. She wore wool pants and a pink jacket, and she looked pissed. “Keep your distance,” she said as I approached. “This is a crime scene.”

  “You’re not a cop,” I said as I walked by her. “I think I know what I’m going to see here, but I have to see it for myself.”

  I stepped up to the window. A woman of about Isabelle’s age was slumped in the driver’s seat. She had dyed red-gold curls that looked like they cost a lot of money. A long white mark ran up her cheek and across her nose. Her lap was drenched in blood. She had been gut shot. A bloody butcher knife was in her hand, and there was an off-color circle on the passenger door.

  It was feeding, I suddenly realized. Whatever the sapphire dog was doing to these people to make them kill one another was how it fed itself.

  And it had just spent more than two decades in a plastic cage. I bet it was starving.

  “I can’t understand it,” Steve said, ending his call. “The hospital is back the other way.”

  “This is Clara, isn’t it?” I asked as I went around the front of the car. The engine was still running.

  “Yes,” Steve said. “Why did she leave her grandson? Why didn’t she call 911?”

  “What’s out on that road?” I asked.

  The runner stepped into my field of vision. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Ray Lilly. Who are you?”

  “Justy Pivens. I’m part of the neighborhood watch. What do you know about this?”

  “I know people in your town are starting to kill one another. What’s out at the end of this road?”

  Steve was too shaken to play cop for a moment. “Nothing. The camp and fairgrounds, and a feeder road that connects to I-5, eventually, but there’s nothing out there for a woman with a bullet in her. Not for miles.”

  I went around the car. There was another discolored circle on the outside of the passenger door. Steve and Justy hadn’t noticed it, so I didn’t point it out. There was another line of soup-can footprints in the mud leading away from the car.

  “What are you looking at?” Steve asked. He came around the car. “What the heavens could those be?”

  Justy frowned at the prints. “They aren’t animal tracks,” she said. “They look like stilts. Four-legged stilts?”

  The tracks went up a bare hillside toward a lonely farmhouse.

  “Is your gun loaded?” I asked.

  Steve hesitated before he answered. “Yes, it is. I loaded it this morning.”

  “What about you, Justy?”

  “In the car.”

  “Get it and follow us, if you want.”

  We went up the hill, following the footprints in the mud.

  “Ray, I need you to tell me what’s going on. I can’t just go on this way without knowing what to expect. And we’ve had more deaths in town today than we’ve had in the last three years. Gosh darn it, don’t keep me in the dad-blamed dark!”

  He was whining again. I wondered what it would take to drag a little profanity out of him. “I’ll be honest with you,” I said. Justy had followed us, and I made sure to address her as well. “I don’t know. Let’s go up to the house and see if anyone is still alive.”

  It was only about twenty yards to the front porch, but Steve was an old guy. I tamped down a tangle of scraggly bushes and steadied him over an old log. He was slowing me down, but he and Justy were locals. I wanted them with me.

  The porch was made of unpainted cedar, weathered until it was as gray as Steve’s hair. A small stack of fertilizer in plastic bags gave off an unpleasant farm stink. The strings of lights around the porch were dark. The boards creaked loudly under our weight.

  Steve walked up to the front door and slammed the knocker three times. I was a bit surprised at that; I’d been peeking in windows and breaking into houses since last night. Actually knocking on a door seemed quaint.

  Heavy boots clumped toward us, then the door was yanked inward and a woman leaned out. She was in her mid-thirties, plain-faced, and had what looked to be permanent bedhead. She was dressed head to toe in fleece sweats. A set of keys jangled in her hand.

  A long white streak ran from her jawline over her ear and up into her hair.

  “Penny, have … are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, Steve,” she answered. “What do you want?”

  “There’s been some trouble in town.” Steve’s tone was cautious. “It led us out front.”

  Justy said: “What’s that on your face?”

  Penny shifted from one foot to the other, obviously anxious to get back to whatever she was doing. “Nothing’s on my face. And there’s no trouble here. Okay? Gotta go.”

  She glanced at me without interest and started to close the door. Steve blocked it with his foot. “I’m sorry, Penny, but you do have a white something on the side of your face. Where did you get it?”

  “I was baking earlier,” she said, her voice flat and unpleasant. “It’s flour.”

  “Is Little Mark here? I’d like to come in to talk some more. To both of you.”

  “It’s a bad time, Steve.”

  “Please, Penny?” he persisted. “Folks have died.”

  That didn’t interest her at all. “It’s a bad time for me. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Now, Penny, I’m afraid I have to insist.”

  She sighed again. “Fine. Give me a moment.” She glared at his foot until Steve drew it back, t
hen she closed the door.

  Damn. This wasn’t right. She wasn’t curious about me, the trouble in front of her property, or the deaths in town. Something was very wrong.

  “It’s okay,” Steve said, maybe sensing my unease. “Penny’s my cousin and we get along very well.” He wrung his hands nervously, looking from me to Justy and back again. Justy looked pinched and skittish. She stayed close to the top of the stairs.

  In the window behind the fertilizer, I saw a curtain move. It was a boy, maybe fifteen years old, with brown hair in a ragged bowl cut. His eyes were big and brown and empty. He had a white mark on his face, too.

  The door swung open suddenly. I heard a low growl and lunged forward.

  Penny heaved herself through the doorway, swinging something over her shoulder at Steve. I caught hold of it even as I realized it was an axe and pushed. The blade passed over Steve’s skull and thunked against the doorframe.

  Steve cried out in a high voice. Footsteps thumped on the wooden stairs, leading away.

  Penny jabbed the butt end of the axe at me. I ducked. The handle whiffed by my jaw. I put my shoulder against her hip, wrapped my arms around her knees, and upended her onto the floor.

  The axe flew out of her hands and bounced across a dingy throw rug. She reached for me, hands curled like claws, but I caught her wrist and pulled her onto her stomach, then planted a knee in her back.

  Steve was still standing in the doorway, his mouth hanging open. Justy was nowhere in sight.

  “Bring your cuffs in here before someone gets killed!”

  That jolted him into action. He fumbled at his back pocket.

  I took my ghost knife from my pocket and slipped it through the back of her head. It passed through without leaving a mark the way it always does with living people. It didn’t even cut her hair.

  But it didn’t stop her thrashing. It didn’t cut away her anger and hostility the way it had for Horace. Damn. She was immune, just like Ursula. Was it something to do with the stain on her face, which Ursula didn’t have? I didn’t know, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t my spell.

  I glanced around, worried that the boy would come at me with a kitchen knife, but I couldn’t see him.