Dark Heart

by Margaret Weis;David Baldwin

  She forced her gaze to remain steady on his. She knew he hated it when people stared at his disfigurement. He’d been a cute kid before the accident, the sort of gawky, computer geek kind of cute that was all the more endearing because he never seemed to know he was cute.

  The other scars on his face wouldn’t be so noticeable, if not for his nose. The surgeons had told them they could do more restorative work, but Benny had refused. He insisted he’d already spent as much time under the knife as he planned to in his life.

  And maybe he had a point. Who was she to judge? She wished she didn’t think about it so much. She could only imagine how much he must think about it.

  “I’m up early? What about you? Unless, of course, you haven’t gone to bed yet.” It wasn’t unusual to find Benny still tapping on his computer in the shank of the night, but she had never found him in the kitchen, making coffee at five A.M.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” he said. The coffee machine bubbled and gasped into silence. He swiveled back to it. “Want a cup?”

  “Yeah. Please.”

  He filled two mugs and put them on the kitchen table. She opened a cupboard, looking for the box of artificial creamer. After years of greasy spoon coffee, she liked the fake stuff better than real cream. Her spoon made small metallic chimes hitting the side of her cup as she stirred.

  “Why couldn’t you sleep?” she asked finally.

  Benny shrugged, “Well, you know how it is. Those stewardesses, Bambi and Candi—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She grinned. “It’s tough being you.”

  Benny chuckled, then turned abruptly serious. “Bad dreams,” he said.

  “You, too, huh?”

  “You had bad dreams?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Well, that’s kinda strange, both of us getting the night frights,” he said.

  “Yeah. What were yours like?”

  He shook his head, sipped his coffee. “Someone was chasing me. I can’t really remember, but I think they caught me. That was when I woke up. Hey, did you see what’s happening across the street?”

  “Fire or something.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I had the same kind of dream, you know.”

  “You did? Someone chasing you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Shit, that’s freaky.” He sipped thoughtfully, then went on. “Maybe we jumped into one another’s dreams. There’s this guy on-line who talks about stuff like that all the time. I should ask him what it means.” He paused again. “So…who was chasing you? I can’t remember anything about the one after me.”

  “I can’t remember much, either.”

  Benny shot an exaggerated glance left and right. “Oooweeeooo. Bugga bugga!” He wiggled his fingers and grinned. “You think someone’s fuckin’ with us?”

  “Yes.” She sighed. “You.”

  “No, seriously. Maybe it was some old Indian shaman you put behind bars years ago. He’s come back for his revenge, sneaking into our dreams and messing with our heads.”

  “Yeah, right. I never busted a shaman, pal.”

  “Sure you did. And right before you busted him, he came to the realization that he was never going to get past level 13 of Watcher’s Chosen, and in his insane but wise mind he decided to kill me for my insolence. I told you I designed that, didn’t I?”

  “Hmmmmm…” she said. “Your new game, right? Maybe you’re on to something.”

  They grinned at each other like idiots.

  She got up, wandered out of the kitchen and into the living room, and peered out a window. Rain had been falling all night, and it looked as if it wouldn’t stop any time soon. Gray, dull, and misty out there. Fog off the lake. Not exactly the best start to a morning.

  She stood silently, sipping and musing. It was always fun to chat with Benny. They hardly got to talk at all anymore.

  Five years ago, she and Benny had almost never left each others’ sides. Benny had been in the hospital recovering from his accident—and she’d been shaky herself, having finally broken free of Chuck.

  What an odd pair they’d made then. The cripple and the emotional wreck. But each of them strong in the ways the other was weak—they were like two broken pillars that had fallen onto each other and formed an arch that would endure forever.

  Sandra remembered Benny before his accident. She hated to admit it to herself, but she hadn’t really come to enjoy him until after the motorcycle crash. Even as brother and sister, they’d been different, lived in different worlds.

  But, even taking that into account, in the years right before the crack-up he’d been something of an intellectual bully. Quietly arrogant. She was sure he’d been picked on in high school for being an egghead, because he’d taken to stinging people in conversation as a sort of revenge on everyone who was more popular and less intelligent than he was. It had started as a defense mechanism, but later she’d seen him verbally vivisect half of their relatives during the course of an afternoon just to amuse himself.

  Then, after the accident, he changed dramatically. How could he not? It was one of the things she admired most about him—he’d made something positive out of the most damaging experience of his life. It was amazing how someone who so desperately needed care and tenderness himself could turn and make it his mission in life to give that care to others.

  She thought that in many ways, his new personality, too, was a defense mechanism, a reaction to the way people cringed at his appearance and his handicap. Perhaps he doubted that anyone would want to be around him after his accident. Or maybe he found out for himself how good it felt to help others. Or he’d just set out to prove to himself, and everyone else, that he could rise above what had happened to him. Whatever the reason, he’d changed his personality, and changed it for the better.

  Now he was fast, fascinating, and fun to be around. If you could get past the grisly scars on his face, Benny was fabulous company. His light-hearted jests were never at the expense of others. He was a wonderful raconteur. He never poked at people’s soft spots. He also seemed impervious to jibes aimed at him.

  She wondered how much of this new facade was real interest in the people around him and how much of it was a new, rock-solid defense mechanism against his own pain. The way he joked about his condition sometimes worried her. She sighed, drained her mug, and returned to the kitchen.

  “I’m going to take my coffee and go shut myself up in the dungeon again.” Benny said. “I’m almost done with the latest thing in computer games, if I do say so myself.”

  Sandra smiled at him. “Okay. When you put the final touches on it, tell me. We’ll celebrate.”

  “Are you kidding? I’ll be jumping up and down with glee—oops, cancel that, just a figure of speech. Rolling back and forth with glee!” He turned and trundled off down the hall.

  Just before he went through his bedroom door, Sandra called after him. “Hey, Benny?”

  “Yeah?” He performed a consummately graceful turn in the confined space of the hall. His feet on their rests came within half an inch of the wall as he whipped around.

  “Can I get you to play webmaster for me? I may need some pretty esoteric information on this case.”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “The murder scene had some pretty strange aspects. I’m thinking it might be some cult thing. So I wondered if there are modern cults responsible for similar killings. Like maybe if the Aztecs are taking hearts again, it should probably turn up on the Web somewhere, right? And there was something that looked like a footprint in the carpet, though not like anything I’ve ever seen. Anyway, I may need you to go digging.”

  “Easy. When?”

  “I’ll keep you posted.”

  “You give the word, Ace. I’m all over it.”

  Sandra nodded. “Thanks, Benny.”

  “Never mention it.” He turned and went into his room.

  Sandra watched until he’d vanished from her sight. She glanced at her empty coffee cup, then placed it carefull
y in the sink.

  “Okay,” she said to her rain-splattered reflection in the kitchen window, “another day, another dollar, girl.” She headed for the shower. Benny’s personality had helped. It really had.

  But it was still probably going to be a lousy day.

  By the time Sandra descended the stairs of her condo, the sun was rising, filling the world with a flat, gray light, and she was feeling pretty good despite the lack of sleep.

  Half a bowl of sugar-coated cereal and a second cup of coffee did wonders for the body. She wished her mind were in the same state. Pausing at the gate of the small yard in front of the building, she looked at the gray clouds above her, at the way the whole world was shrunken into a cage of mist. Chicago in the fall…chilly.

  Cab drivers were honking at the fire trucks still obstructing traffic in the street. In the building next door, a young mother was yelling at her wailing kid. The ordinary sounds of the city had her jumping today, had her adrenaline pumping.

  The dreams she could not remember still clutched at her with heavy, invisible tendrils. Each time she thought she had the threads in her grasp, they snapped, broke away. Yet every time she concentrated on something else, they reached for her again, making her gut clench. Irrational, but there it was.

  She shook her head in irritation and began walking to her car. The drive through the commuter-clogged Chicago streets was uneventful, as she listened to traffic bulletins about huge jams on the Eisenhower and the Dan Ryan Expressway.

  The tops of midtown skyscrapers that towered overhead were invisible now, enveloped by mist and rain, the Sears Tower off to the south completely vanished. Before she was ready for it, the Eighteenth District Station appeared, looming out of the gloom on West Chicago Avenue. She turned into the parking garage and grabbed the first available space.

  She got out, picked up her briefcase, and closed the door. The soft chunk echoed in the garage. It was almost too quiet. Sandra narrowed her eyes and looked around. To all appearances she was alone. So why did she feel like something was watching…?

  She looked around again.

  Nothing. She shook her head in irritation and marched purposefully toward the doors leading into the station. Inside, things were pretty much normal. Surly gangbangers, whores still in their evening drag, drug users, drug dealers, batterers, and all the people who’d had their ordinary lives interrupted by one or more of the above, surged and yammered at each other, the typical urban stew.

  The uniforms in charge of dealing with the chaos looked stolid, braced against the tide of human misery. The desk sergeant gave her a wink as she passed by.

  There wasn’t a news hound in sight, so the lid was still on the Madrone story. Breathing a sigh of relief, she headed upstairs to her own turf, the detective squad room. McKenzie was talking on the phone to someone.

  “Hey, Mac,” she murmured as she sat down. There were several odd-looking metal gadgets on his desk. Some of the gadgets looked almost lethal. There were also some lengths of nylon rope in various strengths and thicknesses, some nylon straps, and a funny pair of leather slippers with rubber on the bottom.

  The hair on McKenzie’s balding head was in disarray. His wide, flat nose was wrinkled in the unconscious sneer he always wore when he talked to someone he didn’t want to be talking to. Probably his wife. He and Linda had been together for twenty years, and from what Sandra could tell the last nineteen years had been one solid squabble. They seemed to enjoy it, though.

  “No,” McKenzie was saying, “I don’t touch that stuff! Why would I move it!? No. Look, Sandra’s here. I’ve got to go. Okay, I will. Good-bye, Linda. Okay, yes. Good-bye.”

  McKenzie hung up. “So, you made it in. Congratulations.”

  Sandra fingered the strange leather slippers on the desk. “What’s with the funny shoes?”

  “Climbers’ shoes.” McKenzie grunted. “You asked what kind of shoes climbers wear. That’s them.”

  She lifted them, looked at the soles closely, then dropped them. “So I guess the scratches on Madrone’s wall weren’t from climbers’ shoes.”

  “Madrone’s partner was on vacation. Guy named Lyle Whitney. He’s due back tomorrow.”

  “Okay, we’ll do him as soon as he gets back. Anything on Madrone’s case jackets?”

  McKenzie shrugged. “We’ll have to go up to Twenty-three for them.”

  She nodded, then picked up one of the metal gadgets, turned it over in her hand. It was a smooth, sturdy plastic rod with a mechanism of four hinged half-moons at the tip. A small bit of machinery on the stick connected tiny cables to the half-moons. When she pulled it, the moons swiveled back, narrowing the entire width of the mechanism at the end.

  “What the hell’s this, Mac?”

  “It’s called a camalot. Protection for climbers. Hey, you know how much this shit costs?”

  “No idea,” she said, looking it over.

  “A lot.”

  “It’s kind of like a work of art, though, isn’t it?” The shaft of the implement was flat black; the cables were shiny silver. The half-moons were a rich, metallic lavender, perforated with irregular holes that reminded her of an industrial art exhibit she’d once seen.

  “Yeah, sure, Bruce. Art.”

  “What does it do?”

  “You pull that plastic thing down and stick it in a crack in the rock. Then let go and you can hang on the rock all day if you want to. That’s what the lady at the rock-climbing gym told me.” McKenzie shook his head again. “It looks like a high-end sex toy to me. I sure as hell wouldn’t trust it with my life.”

  “It’s metal. It could make scratches in brick or concrete, right?”

  “I guess it could. But where are you gonna find cracks on the side of a building big enough to stick that in?”

  “Hmmm. Maybe they have smaller camalots? Maybe he used the smallest kind.”

  “Could be. I still think it’s too thin.”

  “So what else have we got?”

  “You’re going to love what the lab came up with.”

  “Yeah?” She raised her eyebrows.

  “Nothing.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing what?” Sandra asked.

  “They didn’t find anything. They had the preliminary report here about an hour ago. Just the essentials. Which weren’t much, ’cause there wasn’t anything for them to study. No hair other than Madrone’s. All the fibers appear to match clothing or textiles found at the site. No prints except for his. No skin under his fingernails except his own. Even the blood on the doorknob was his. So we got zip. Zero. Nada.”

  “Great.” She sighed and shook her head.

  “Except…” McKenzie said slowly.

  “Except what?”

  He pushed his chair back and stood up, his hard mound of belly brushing the edge of his desk.

  “We gotta go look,” he said. “C’mon.”

  The lab at the morgue was crowded with equipment. In the middle of the room, a tech in a white coat was leaning over a microscope. Sandra recognized her but couldn’t remember her name. The woman looked up and nodded.

  “The Madrone thing,” Mac said.

  “Sure, Detective. Hang on, I’ll be right back.”

  “You don’t know what it is?” Sandra asked while they waited.

  Mac shrugged. “Just what the report said, and it didn’t make any sense to me.”

  The tech returned with a small vial, uncorked it, and tipped its contents out onto the stainless steel working surface. She aimed one of the light armatures directly on the specimen.

  “What is it?” Sandra asked.

  “That’s a question, isn’t it?” McKenzie said.

  “It looks like a scale.” She squinted at it. The teardrop-shaped thing, deceptively heavy for its moderate size, gleamed in multiple shades of translucent green. It started out dark green, almost black, on the curved part and gradually became lighter, almost clear, near the point of the teardrop.


  “Where’d they find it?”

  “They found it stuck to the lining inside the sleeve of his army coat, caked in blood. Hard to see,” the tech replied.

  Sandra pursed her lips. “Madrone have some kind of pet lizard or something? I didn’t see anything like that.”

  Mac grinned. “Madrone? From what I hear, the closest thing he’d have to a pet would be a box of animal crackers.”

  Sandra turned to the expert. “Do you or your people know what sort of thing this scale is from?”

  The tech shook her head. “We’re working on it.”

  Sandra sighed. “You’re covering your butt, but you don’t have a clue, right?”

  The tech grinned, but didn’t reply.

  “So now what?” McKenzie leaned back against the counter and patted his top pocket for his pack of cigarettes. He paused, looked at the attendant who was pointing at the ANYONE CAUGHT SMOKING WILL BECOME A RESIDENT OF THE MORGUE sign, then let his hands fall slowly to his sides.

  Sandra shook her head. She turned to the tech. “I want to take this with me.” She gestured at the vial, into which the tech had returned the scale.

  “Sure. Do the paperwork, Detective.” She gestured toward a rack of official forms fastened to the far wall. Mac went over and brought a sheaf of paper back. It took them ten minutes to fill out all the releases and declarations that preserved the chain of evidence. When they were done, Sandra slipped the vial into her bag.

  “Later,” Mac said to the tech.

  “Not if I can help it,” the tech replied, bored.

  “Ouch. Touchy,” Mac muttered as they left.

  Sandra said, “I want to check out some S&M shops. You think?”

  “Yeah? For what?”

  “And maybe some specialty metal shops. See if they have any toys that might do the type of damage we saw on Baxter and Madrone.”

  “I can handle that,” Mac said. “You comin’ with me?”

  “Nah. I’m going to visit the zoo.”

  They were so still. It was the first thing Sandra noticed about the reptiles in the zoo. After strolling around the circular room in the center of the reptile house, she came to a stop before the huge Komodo dragon. Its curled claws, its lethal snout didn’t move at all. The only way she could tell the animal was alive was the slow in-and-out movement of its sides as it breathed and the way its pupils contracted as it watched her walk around the room. She wondered how quickly it would move if there wasn’t an inch-thick glass pane between them. Would she be able to outrun it? Or would it run from her?