Iron Angels

by Eric Flint

  “I kind of had the same reaction,” Jasper said sympathetically, after Ravel was done and Black had brought herself under control. “Godawful-looking, isn’t it? Now, will someone tell me why you’re out here? Where did you come from and what are you trying to accomplish? It isn’t often we get headquarters people out here on such short notice.”

  “We…” Temple Black took a deep breath. “We need to speak somewhere else. I can’t be anywhere near that and think clearly.” She nodded stiffly toward the pile of meat, blood, and bone.

  “Fine,” Jasper said, “but I didn’t invite you over here to begin with. Did you see my partner, Pete Hernandez?”

  “Is he an East Chicago cop? If so, he’s up on the road talking with his buddies.”

  They moved away from the body and toward the driveway leading into the animal control center. Jasper helped Ravel by taking the case from him after a minor protest. The man was still obviously unsettled. “So, who are you guys?”

  “Scientific Anomalies Group,” Black said, staring straight ahead as if embarrassed by the name, or not wanting to go into detail.

  “SAG?” Jasper asked, pronouncing it as an acronym rather than a string of initials. He couldn’t help but laugh. “Really?”

  Black’s jaw tightened. “Look, I didn’t come up with that one.”

  There was no point in ribbing these two agents over it any further, though. So he just said, “Never heard of it” in as neutral a tone of voice as he could manage.

  “You wouldn’t have,” Ravel said, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief. “It’s new and…ah, we don’t publicize it.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “The cops over at the Euclid Hotel told us you responded to an abandoned vehicle over here,” Black said. “We need to go back over to the hotel.”

  “The little girl was rescued and the investigation is over,” Jasper said, but that was a lie. He just didn’t want headquarters pukes stomping around the crime scene. “By me and my partner over there.” They’d come within sight of Gary Avenue. He pointed toward Pete, who stood by two uniformed cops and was engaged in an animated discussion.

  Black opened her mouth but Jasper held up a cautioning finger.

  “Pete!” he said loudly. “You need to get over here and take a look at what I found down there. It has to be the driver.” Jasper paused a moment. “I warn you, the body isn’t pretty to look at.”

  Pete broke away from the uniformed police, and walked with purpose toward Jasper and the two headquarters people. “They said they were here looking for you,” Pete said, his eyes registering Jasper’s annoyance, and conveying sorry.

  “It’s okay,” Jasper said. “They were just leaving.”

  “SAC Weber already approved this,” Black said.

  Jasper shot her a look he hoped would shut her up, but she went right on. “And furthermore, the assistant director—my boss—”

  “Hold it right there,” Jasper said. He focused on Pete. “Take a peek over there at the body. Follow the sound of the flies, you can’t miss it.”

  Pete frowned, and walked off. Jasper turned back to the woman.

  “SSA Black, we do not squabble like that in front of locals, you got me? You may be a headquarters supervisor, but in the field that doesn’t mean squat. And you said Weber approved this? My Special Agent in Charge? That’s a joke. He’s been checked out for a year now; he’d approve anything. He’s pretty much retired-in-place ever since he got the job.”

  Black’s mouth opened again, but closed as if she’d reconsidered her choice of words.

  Ravel stepped forward. “Jasper,” he said, “may I call you that?”

  “It’s better than the alternative.”

  “That’d be what? Jerk?” Temple Black took another deep breath and turned her head. “I’m sorry, it’s already been a long morning—”

  “—and long night,” both Jasper and Vance said at once. Jasper grinned. “Yeah, you called me at oh dark thirty. I didn’t appreciate that.”

  “My apologies,” Vance said. “Listen, we need to discuss what happened last night. When is a good time? We’d also really like to get into that abandoned hotel. We think there is something else going on here. Based on your preliminary report we think it’s serious.” He lifted the case in his hand a few inches. “There’s some equipment in here… Well. We think we could be of use, let’s leave it at that.”

  Black nodded and faced Jasper again. “We should speak with your boss, your immediate boss. This needs to get worked out, but you should finish up here first. That,” she swallowed, “body was a mess and needs to be processed.”

  Heavy breaths came up behind them as they reached the side of the road and their line of vehicles. Pete jogged past them and signaled to the uniformed men who joined him. They then resumed their spirited conversation.

  “It’s about to get crowded around here,” Jasper said. “I’ll tell you what, if you can wait until mid-afternoon I’ll take you to the Euclid Hotel. I don’t think evidence recovery is going to happen until Monday at that scene, if at all, especially given this new incident.” He cocked his head toward the dirt road where the mangled corpse lay in a pile. “Afterward, I’ll see if we can meet with my boss. But I can’t promise anything, SSA Black. It is the weekend, you know. Exhausted supervisors need their rest.”

  The moment he made the wisecrack he wondered if he’d gone a little too far. But Black just grinned. The expression transformed her face, turning it from something that had seemed overbearing to something good-natured and quite a bit younger. He wasn’t sure, but he had a feeling that expression came more naturally to her than the one he thought of as Supervisory Special Agent Ramrod Up Her Ass.

  “Yeah, I know how that is with some of this new breed of management,” she said. “And call me Temple, would you?”

  Jasper nodded. “Sure. And I’m Jasper.” They’d come up onto Gary Avenue by then and he could see the entire line of vehicles parked there: a police cruiser, his bucar, Pete’s Crown Vic, and two other vehicles, one a rental and the other a little farther away clearly belonged to a local.

  He frowned. “You only rented one car, right?”

  Temple nodded.

  “Probably a reporter, then,” Jasper said. A person sat in the vehicle, an off-white compact pickup, but their face was obscured by the sun visor. The pickup lurched forward and then spun in a tight turn to head back toward East Chicago proper, kicking up a dust cloud in the process.

  “Damn! Too much dust to get a plate.” For a moment, he was tempted to go in pursuit. But by the time he got into his vehicle, the man would be out of sight beyond a bend in the road. And once he got to the junction of Gary and Parrish, a short distance beyond, there were just too many ways he could go.

  “That was a Toyota pickup with Indiana tags, I think,” Temple said. “Couldn’t make out a partial on the tags though, sorry.”

  “Well, there’s an outside chance that was the person responsible for the corpse back there,” Jasper said. “But that would have been pretty bold, even for a serial killer who wants to insert himself into an investigation. It was likely just a nosey citizen who got twitchy when he saw me looking at him.”

  “We could run a search based on the parameters of the make and model and color of the vehicle,” Vance said.

  “You’re right,” Jasper said. “I’ll have Pete run it through his folks, since this homicide is likely their investigation anyway. And it’s got to be a homicide, with the corpse looking like that. I can’t think of any kind of accident that would do that sort of damage. Maybe in the middle of a steel mill, but out here?”

  He reached out and shook their hands. “Okay, I’ll meet you two at the Euclid later on? Say seventeen hundred?”

  “That’ll work,” Temple said.

  “Go take a nap or something, and please don’t poke around anywhere. I don’t want to have to bail you guys out of trouble.”

  Temple smiled. Vance nodded, his head bobbing up and do
wn rapidly.

  Chapter 7

  Temple and Vance stayed at the animal control scene just long enough to see the coroner’s van arrive, followed by a black SUV. A grumpy looking man with round spectacles exited the van while two women wearing cargo pants and dark blue shirts emblazoned with FBI and ERT exited the SUV and marched purposefully over to Jasper and his cop friend, Pete.

  “Let’s go.” Temple motioned for Vance to get in their rental. She started the car but kept the air conditioning off and lowered the windows. Jasper was pointing and gesticulating like a madman as he appeared to lecture the two female Evidence Response Team members. The rental was far enough away that she couldn’t make out the words, but she imagined what the man was thinking and could probably guess what he was saying. Agent Jasper Wilde was probably thinking the women loved their “chick SWAT.” Bureau women didn’t typically join the tactically-minded and typically knuckle-dragging group known as SWAT—Special Weapons and Tactics—but preferred the more cerebral ERT, the Evidence Response Team.

  “Hey boss—”

  Temple’s grip on the steering wheel tightened and her head snapped toward Vance. “What?” she demanded. Then she took a deep breath and relaxed. “I’m sorry. It’s just that—”

  Temple nodded toward Jasper. “That annoying man out there is going to be trouble. He’s already gotten under my skin and we were with him for what, five minutes?”

  “I don’t know, he’s probably all right.” Vance stared through the windshield and not at Temple. “When you were in the field didn’t you resent having HQ show up?”

  “HQ never showed up in the field, except for maybe meetings at the office, but—”

  “Exactly.”

  “No, you’re right,” Temple conceded. “The field hates it when HQ butts in. But if he’s the agent we have to deal with out here, Lord do I hope it’s only for a day or two.”

  She swung the car around and headed for the Euclid Hotel.

  “So, Temple, what’s the plan? Where are we going, not our hotel, right?”

  “No. It’s too early, but we are going to drive by another hotel, the Euclid, and then we’ll head over to Merrillville and see if we can get an early check-in.”

  Vance yanked his neck to the right, then the left, cupped his chin in his right hand and shoved to the right and then to the left, filling the car with pops and snaps and cracks. Temple’s stomach grumbled—now she wanted some cereal, Rice Krispies.

  “You done? If so, how does that plan sound to you?” Temple asked.

  “I’m hungry, but yes, that sounds good.”

  As they drove by the Euclid, they spotted two police still watching over the abandoned hotel, so they didn’t bother stopping. Temple swung into the first greasy spoon she spotted, hoping to soak up some local color, or perhaps overhear some gossip about what happened the evening before. But the place was close to empty and the few people who were in there kept to themselves, so they just ate and left.

  They drove by the FBI office in Merrillville and farther down the road found their hotel. It was a decent-looking place, part of a major chain but certainly no Hilton or Marriott. She was glad Vance hadn’t chosen the Express, since he’d be cracking that silly joke about knowing how to do everything since they had stayed there. Temple smiled. Vance wasn’t perfect, but he was easy to work with and willing to put in crazy hours in the name of science, and that she liked.

  Chapter 8

  Jasper phoned his boss, Supervisory Special Agent Johnson, the senior agent of the Merrillville office, requesting a meeting for around seventeen hundred. Johnson met his request with a sigh. His excuses all sounded the same—something about his kids, but Jasper read between the lines. Johnson simply didn’t want to come in on a Saturday, especially when he discovered no crisis existed. After hearing about the headquarters people and the mangled body on Gary Avenue, he capitulated and promised he’d meet Jasper at the office, but that whatever this problem was better not take long.

  Pete had already arrived at the diner in Hessville where they’d directed the prospective source, Carlos Ochoa, to meet them. Pete’s Crown Vic was empty, and Jasper spied Pete through the window, seated alone at a booth.

  Jasper found meeting contacts such as this one in a public place safer, and the odds of a successful recruitment higher. The locations for gang sources mattered, since a bad one could result in the death of the source. But with this type of person, someone who’d simply reported the whereabouts of a missing girl, the diner was a decent place to break the ice. It was well-known in the area and had been in business for years.

  This particular diner was located outside of East Chicago. Hessville was one of the neighborhoods in nearby Hammond, but it was close enough that straying into another local department’s jurisdiction wouldn’t be an issue for Pete. They weren’t actively working a case, anyway; the meeting was for informational and recruitment purposes. And meeting in the middle of the afternoon meant the three men wouldn’t be hassled by the waitress to finish and get out.

  The diner’s exterior demanded a new paint job. The fake luster reminiscent of so many diners had tarnished, the railing was pocked with rust, and the concrete steps cracked. Often with diners like this, though, the food was a lot better than the rundown appearance. Jasper hadn’t eaten here in quite a while, but as he recalled the meal had been good if not outstanding.

  A middle-aged hostess greeted Jasper, but he nodded toward the dining room and she gestured for him to head on in. All neighborhood diners like this featured the same sort of smell—fried food laced with coffee followed by a tinge of sweetness.

  “Glad you could make it.” Pete grasped a mug with both hands, as if warming them.

  “I had to call my boss.”

  “About those headquarters people?”

  “Yep, and Mandy sent me the particulars on the man we’re meeting.”

  “Any derogatory?”

  “Minor infractions, nothing recent.”

  “You really need an informant, don’t you?” Pete grinned.

  “This is the bureau, Pete. We call them sources, or CHSs.”

  “Pfft. Whatever. It’s an informant.”

  Jasper grinned. “And I always need another source.”

  A waitress appeared, wearing black and white attire and holding a little pad in one finely manicured hand and a pencil in the other. She had a tattoo on her neck and a spike protruding from beneath her bottom lip.

  “Something to drink?”

  “I don’t suppose you’d be able to make a cappuccino?” Jasper asked.

  “Sorry, hon,” she splayed her hands, “don’t do those here. But the coffee is drinkable.”

  “A coffee then, cream only.”

  “Something to eat?”

  “We’re waiting on someone else,” Pete said, glancing past Jasper toward the entrance.

  She nodded and walked off.

  “Kids.”

  Pete grinned. “You’re probably not much older, my friend. You go for her type?”

  “What do you think?”

  “How should I know? You don’t date anyone. Just askin’,” Pete said. “Ah, there he is—has to be him.”

  Jasper turned in his seat for a glimpse and spun back around. A short Hispanic male, glancing about nervously, stood inside the door. He wore a short-sleeved, black and white checkered button-down shirt and faded but intact jeans. On his feet were work boots, steel-toed. A factory worker most likely, but Jasper had been wrong before on his attempts at profiling. He’d been wrong about his wife, Lucy, after all. He reminded himself that there was no point in allowing his personal life and divorce to take up residence once again in his head.

  “I’ll go get him,” Pete said.

  “He can sit next to me, you think that’ll work?”

  “That’d be better.”

  The waitress returned with Jasper’s coffee as Pete and the potential source, Carlos, arrived. After an awkward moment of jockeying for seats, Pete and Carlos sat acro
ss from Jasper, with Pete scooted all the way to the window.

  Jasper tilted his head and Pete flashed a quick grin in return. There were always plans, and they usually never worked out the way they were drawn. The seating arrangements were less than optimal, but acceptable. Jasper believed having Pete sit across from the source better because he figured they’d do most of the talking, leaving Jasper to his coffee.

  “Carlos Ochoa,” the short man offered.

  “Thank you for meeting us today.” Jasper dumped a few drops of cream into the pitch-like coffee, as thick and viscous as ninety weight oil, and probably as tasty.

  “I gave you what you needed, so why are we talking now? Am I in trouble?”

  The waitress interrupted. “A drink? Some food? What’ll you have?” For some reason she was frowning at Carlos.

  “Water.”

  “That it?” She placed a hand on her hip.

  “Si.”

  “Food for you two?” Her eyebrows rose, hopeful.

  “No food for me.” Pete shook his head. “But I’ll have a water—”

  She cocked her head. “Water.”

  “And,” Jasper said in a drawn out manner, trying to get across that he hadn’t finished his sentence, “I’ll have an order of wet fries, you know, fries with gravy?”

  She walked off, muttering something under her breath.

  “A friendly girl,” Pete said.

  “She isn’t too bad,” Carlos said.

  “You know her?”

  “Once a friend of mine, now more of an acquaintance. So, again, why are we here?”

  Pete coughed. His hands encircled the mug, still drawing warmth despite the heat outside now in full force in mid-afternoon. “Tell us more about the missing girl, and how you knew what you knew.”

  “My daughter saw Teresa’s kidnapping happen.” Carlos stared at the tabletop. It was a dark wood-grained veneer, like the wood paneling so prevalent in the seventies, and reminded Jasper of his childhood home. “She was really scared by it.”