Grimm - The Icy Touch

by Shirley, John

  “You too, Monroe,” Nick said, standing up. “You’ve been a big help. I’ll see what I can find out about the abduction—”

  His phone chimed. He took it from his coat, saw Renard’s name on the display.

  “Captain?”

  “They definitely have more Seele Dichtungsmittel,” Renard told him. “Forensics found traces of scopolamine at the site of that abduction on Shady Court. We also got a partial on the license plate used—neighborhood watch saw it peeling out. The partial and vehicle description led to a stolen van, abandoned in North precinct.”

  “What neighborhood?”

  Renard snorted. “Guess.”

  “Oh. Northeast Salem?”

  Northeast Salem Boulevard, along with its side streets, was the worst neighborhood in NE Portland. A series of raids had cleaned it up somewhat, a year earlier, but that just left a power vacuum, long as no one invested in a better quality of life for people there. And no one did.

  “Northeast Salem Boulevard it is. Pick Griffin up on the way, and check it out ASAP.”

  “You got it, Captain.”

  Nick put the phone away.

  “Got something, Monroe. Seele Dichtungsmittel found at the Perkins place. And maybe a lead in the North precinct—we might have the van that was used over there. Could be they took her to the area, dumped the van...” He didn’t go on speculating aloud. But panderers in the area were known to use young girls. “I’m going to pick up Hank, see what we can find out...”

  “I’m going with you,” Monroe said, jumping to his feet. He started for the door.

  Nick caught him by the shoulder.

  “Uh—no. You’re not.”

  Monroe turned to him, mouth open, eyes wild.

  “I have to, Nick. If she’s over there I can find her. Hey dude, I can sniff the guy out who took her—literally. I have to go.”

  “And I said no. Not this time. You two need to keep a low profile. And we don’t know what we have here, for sure. If I need you, I’ll call. Find another place to stay. Motel, friend’s house. Somewhere out of town. Call me if you think anyone’s on your tail.”

  “Nick—!”

  “I said no, Monroe.”

  “Monroe, he’s right!” Rosalee put in.

  “No—he doesn’t understand!”

  Nick hurried out of the shop, leaving Monroe and Rosalee behind him heatedly discussing what they should do—and what Monroe shouldn’t do.

  * * *

  Sergeant Wu was already there, on the side street off NE Salem Boulevard, keeping an eye on the van as the forensics team swept it. The yellow tape was up, the rain was drifting by in thin veils, and Wu had his police cap on with the plastic rain cover over it.

  At the corner of the street was a bar called The Flyover, the name written in red neon, with a blue neon airplane flying at the top of the sign. The rain-slick streets reflected the neon with the distorted vividness of an expressionist painting.

  “Detectives Griffin and Burkhardt in person, so early in all this?” Wu said, as they walked up to him.

  “Could be related to another case we’re working on,” Hank said. “What you got here?”

  “Not a lot,” Wu said. “Not a goose egg but not a grown goose either.” He hooked a thumb toward the van. “Vehicle stolen from a J. Baldwin, over in Southeast. Seems like a random theft. Likely the vehicle used in the abduction. We found strands of hair matching the mother’s description of the girl’s in the back—the strand was tipped with hot pink, like teenagers do. Found some powder too, we don’t know what it is—we got a good guess, though. Looking for prints now.”

  “Blood?” Nick asked.

  “Not so far. ’Course, in this ’hood, you might find blood anywhere, including the bottom of your shoes if you take a short walk. You guys want some coffee? I brought along a couple extra cups.”

  “Did it come from that machine at the department?” Hank asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then no. Call us if you come up with anything interesting.”

  Wu nodded toward the bar.

  “The watering hole over there might have some beasties at it.”

  Nick and Hank looked at one another, then at Wu.

  “‘Beasties?’” Nick asked.

  “Get it? Waterhole, beasties? Local thugs hang out there. Neighborhood’s once more chockablock with ’em. Like the raids happened a century back instead of a year ago.”

  Nick nodded, relieved.

  “Thanks, Wu.”

  * * *

  “How do they look?” Denswoz asked. “Not like a bunch of zombies, I hope.”

  “Nope. Nice and fresh and fully alive, boss,” Malo said. The young man smoothed back his mane of long black curly hair as they walked past the rooms where the girls awaited a call. There were four such rooms, in this particular “massage parlor.” Two girls waited listlessly in each of the first three.

  “I don’t mean that kind of zombie, Federico,” Denswoz said impatiently. “I mean are they, you know... like somebody gave them a roofie or something?”

  “Nah, the Seele’s not that heavy. Have a look...”

  They stopped at the fourth room. Inside four lingerie-clad girls waited seated on bunk beds, all gazing benignly into space. One of them hummed to the old Rick James song that piped through the brothel.

  “What’s up with the bunk beds?” Denswoz asked.

  “These are the teens. It’s part of the whole, you know, thing the clients go for, like they’re teens at a slumber party or something.”

  “One of these is that new girl Hergden brought in?”

  “The Perkins kid. Top right, there.”

  Denswoz and Malo stood in the open door, just steps from the girls, but none of the young women looked their way. They’d been told not to, and the Seele Dichtungsmittel was in full effect. The girl on the top bunk to the right trembled in her translucent purple lingerie, her face twitched like she was fighting the drug.

  “Looks like she’s coming out of it,” Malo muttered. “I’ll have them give her a booster.”

  Denswoz felt a momentary twinge of something like conscience, looking at the girl, but he pushed it away, dismissed it with ease. They were, after all, just ordinary Homo sapiens, these girls. They were not Duo homo as he and his followers thought of the Wesen. Homo sapiens— ordinary humans— had only a partial nature. They were only half there. The deeper, more vital form was absent. Non-Wesen were merely human.

  And of course the irony was that their limited and feeble human type had persecuted Duo Man for thousands of years, using the Grimms as their assassins. Deny your true selves! the humans seemed to say. Do you feel the need to prey on human beings, to eat their flesh? Deny your true nature! Destroy yourselves, monsters!

  And yet humanity butchered, murdered one another— they feasted on animal flesh and some of them ate human flesh...

  No. He would feel no guilt for enslaving humanity. When The Icy Touch moved on to its final phase, many centuries of oppression would be repaid. And every Grimm in the world would be hunted down... and put to death, the way human beings slaughtered pigs.

  Or the way some human beings killed dogs. As a Hundjager, he hated the human practice of forcing dogs to fight one another; of exterminating them in kill shelters. They even ate them, in Korea, and China. One day Icy Touch would take over Asia. Then there’d be payback for that, too.

  And payback is a bitch...

  They turned away from the girls, headed down the hall toward the store front of the supposed massage parlor. A Blutbad sentry walked down the hall, nodding respectfully to Denswoz as he passed.

  “All right, Malo,” Denswoz said, when they reached the entrance. “Give them their boosters. We want this place open tomorrow night. Grogan’ll probably come by with a few guys to try them out tonight. To check out the full service. But keep an eye out. This neighborhood was raided last year, it could happen again.”

  “We’re aware. We’ve got a couple of Geiers up on the
roofs, here and across the street. They’re watching the whole block real close. Not much gets past the vulture brothers. And we won’t be in this building more than a month. This place is a dump anyway—wait’ll you see how we’re fixing up the new place. Nice!” Malo clapped his hands together once in his enthusiasm. “Red velvet, porn on big screen TV, full bar, the works. It’s in an old warehouse out by the airport, right across the street from the runways. No housing there, no neighbors to complain, not much city police patrolling at all. And Homeland Security won’t be interested in us.”

  “Yeah—about those HSA guys. You set up our Wesen in airport security?”

  Malo grinned proudly. “Two in every major airport on the West Coast.”

  “I need somebody they know. We’ve got some new captains coming over from Europe. They’re going to have clean passports, beautiful IDs, can’t tell them from the real thing. But even so—anybody gets suspicious, detains them, it could get ugly. We’ll give you the flight numbers, you talk to our Wesen in HSA.”

  “Just email me the itineraries, boss, I’m all over it.”

  Denswoz nodded and walked out to where his driver awaited him on NE Salem Boulevard.

  * * *

  Monroe hadn’t followed Nick and Hank this time. But he’d bought a Bearcat police scanner a while back, and he was listening to it while he was packing a bag. Right away he heard chatter about “Burkhardt and Griffin” requesting Sergeant Wu remain on site for them out at the abandoned stolen vehicle. Must be what Nick had gone to look into. And he figured Nick would following up on the Perkins abduction.

  Of course, Monroe thought, as he stowed his bag in the truck, I’m just supposed to be home packing up a few things so I can drive back to meet Rosalee at the hotel. But she was doing some errands too, so what’s a little delay— it was no more than a mere, minor, infinitesimal teensy-weensy little side trip...

  Monroe sighed. She was going to be mad when she found out.

  But he felt a connection to the Perkins. He felt a responsibility toward the ranger’s family and Lily was... He sort of thought of her as a daughter. Silly, he supposed, as he climbed behind the wheel, since they’d never even met.

  He was worried about the Perkins boy, too, and Mrs. Perkins. Would they be abducted next?

  He had to do something...

  “Guilt, Monroe,” he muttered aloud as he started the car. “Maybe that’s all it is.”

  Guilt? It wasn’t that simple...

  A few minutes later he was switching off his windshield wipers as he drove up NE Halsey toward Salem Boulevard. The rain had stopped and the wet cars parked along Halsey gleamed colorfully in the neon light of taverns and a late-night grocery.

  He had a bad feeling about this little side trip. But he didn’t have to do anything. He could just have a look around. Wouldn’t have to get in Nick’s way. Wouldn’t have to actually confront anyone... probably

  He turned left onto NE Salem and drove along till he got to a block where the streetlamps had been shot out, and the only light came from a storefront with blanked out front windows and no sign, and the feeble yellow moon occasionally looking through the clouds, like a sick old man peeking through curtains.

  He drove on, up to the corner and around it, half expecting to see police cars, maybe Nick and Hank standing around. But he saw nothing like that. Just a burned out abandoned car, a vacant lot, trash, and a wino asleep in the doorway of a boarded-over building.

  He parked, switched the lights off, licked his lips, and thought, What if Rosalee calls? I’d have to lie to her or get in an argument on a street where I don’t want to draw attention to myself.

  He took out his cell phone, and switched it off.

  “Come on, do it or don’t,” he told his worried reflection in the rearview.

  He climbed out of the truck, locked it, stuck his hands in his pockets and headed down the street.

  A ways down, a couple blocks, was what looked like a neon sign at some tavern. Were there police lights blinking, down there? Maybe so.

  Those guys were doing their job. Trained police personnel. What did he hope to find, here, by himself?

  A short walk couldn’t hurt.

  He strode quickly along the cracked, weedy sidewalk, approaching the storefront. It was one story, sticking out from a three-story building. The taller building behind was dark. There were lights behind the brown-paper that covered the windows of the storefront. He could see the stretched out silhouettes of people, shadows from the other side of the brown paper. What went on in there? One of those “private social clubs” that were fronts for local gangs? Or just somebody’s low-rent crash pad?

  A big dude emerged from the building; he had bushy black hair and a beard, and was clothed in worn blue jeans, steel-toe boots and a sleeveless Levi jacket. His arms were blue with old prison tattoos. He paused to look up at the roof. The man was still about a hundred feet away but it seemed like he was talking to someone up there; to a dark shape on the roof.

  Don’t stare, Monroe. Just keep walking and stay alert.

  Monroe continued on, noticing the bushy-bearded guy crossing the sidewalk to a dented, heavy Ford pickup. It was the kind of truck used by wildcat contractors, guys who fixed roofs and fences, or claimed to, without having a contractor’s license. The bed was lined with locked metal toolboxes; the rear piled with odds and ends of plasterboard and paint-splashed two-by-fours.

  Bushy beard climbed up in back, opened a tool kit— then straightened to glower down at Monroe.

  Monroe hastily lowered his eyes and tried to look casual as he walked by, not meeting bushy-beard’s eyes.

  Monroe could smell the guy, though. He didn’t bathe too often. And there was a particular tang he recognized...

  It was the scent left by the Blutbaden at Lily Perkins’ house.

  Monroe slowed, almost turned, was close to going full-on woge; was ready to jump the guy.

  Don’t do it. Be smart. Get Nick.

  He felt someone else to his left, on that roof. Someone up there was watching him. He caught an acrid smell from that direction, too. Was that the reek of... carrion?

  Monroe walked a little faster.

  He heard someone talking behind him, but they didn’t follow him. He hurried on, down toward that neon sign and the police lights. A drunk staggered past him, asked him for something. He ignored the guy and kept going.

  What if he had to take a couple of these Blutbaden down himself? Could he do it?

  He found himself remembering something Rosalee had said, right before they’d gone to do their separate errands. “Monroe—I’m kind of worried about how far you’ve gotten involved in police work. I like to help Nick too but... I mean, you were wrestling a man for a gun and the man got his head shot off. Now you’re talking about tracking down gangsters. I mean—where are you going with this, Monroe?”

  Good question. Where in fact was he going with this?

  He just kept walking.

  Monroe came to the bar, saw it was called The Flyover. Someone slammed a car door to his right and he turned, saw a tow truck starting up, pulling a van away. Was that Sergeant Wu, just down the side street, waving to a couple of guys in a cruiser?

  Yeah. It was Wu.

  He couldn’t see Nick, or Hank. Monroe decided not to ask Wu where the detectives were.

  He’d go into The Flyover, think things over. Find a quiet spot to call Nick...

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Nick and Hank stood at The Flyover’s dingy bar talking to a couple of droopy mouthed plug-uglies in stained football jerseys. Nick had already made sure: definitely not Wesen.

  It was a well-worn drinking establishment, a lot of dark wood and designs stamped on the old, brown-painted sheet metal ceiling. The inevitable big screen TV was tuned to ESPN and the usual electric beer signs and posters showed winking, leggy girls offering brimming shot glasses of Jack Daniels and Maker’s Mark. A leather-clad biker at a green-felt table broke a delta of pool balls with a resoundi
ng clack and a bark of, “Ha!”

  “Look, fellas,” Hank said, “We’re just curious about anybody new operating out here on the street. Whatever it might be. Just any kind of sense of it at all. Especially... where. We don’t need names.”

  “Don’t know of anything going on except what’s alla time here,” said the larger of the two men. “Which is nothin’.”

  “Yeah!” the other guy said, laughing and hiccupping at the same time. “Nothin’!”

  The plug-uglies bumped fists.

  Nick did sense a Wesen in the room, then. Somewhere behind him. He looked around—and saw Monroe, coming in the door. He nudged his partner with an elbow.

  “Hank, look who’s here.”

  Hank glanced over. “Monroe. He better have a damned good reason for showing up here.”

  “Our idea of a good reason and his aren’t likely to be the same.”

  Monroe had spotted them, was pointing, across his stomach, in a way he thought was sly, to a corner booth. He raised an eyebrow as he looked directly at Nick and Hank. Everyone in the room, of course, knew that he was signaling the two cops to meet him there.

  “The man is just not a good candidate for undercover work,” Hank murmured, as they crossed over to the booth.

  “You got that right.”

  They sat down across from Monroe.

  “What’s up, Monroe?” Hank asked.

  Monroe licked his lips. “Maybe I should order a beer to look normal and casual, and, you know, for cover.”

  “I wouldn’t bother with cover at this point,” Nick said. “What’re you doing out here?”

  Monroe shrugged expansively as if to say, No big deal.

  “Hey, I just... I heard a reference to you doing something out here, uh, heard it on my scanner and, um, just thought I’d swing by and see if there was anything I could, you know, sniff out, and there was, actually...”

  Just then, someone played the internet jukebox, a Metallica song, “Wherever I May Roam,” came on and they had to lean closer to one another to be heard.

  “Someone sniff you out, in the process, Monroe?” Nick asked.

  “Me? No! No, I’m sure... well, I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure... mostly... that he didn’t sniff me out as a Blutbad...”