Farewell to Dreams: A Novel of Fatal Insomnia

by CJ Lyons

  He grabbed Tyree’s shirt by the collar, wadding it into a knot so tight it rocked the bigger man onto his heels. “We’re going in there together. We’re going to find Esme and bring her out again. You will behave yourself and not give me any problems. Do you understand me?”

  He didn’t need to voice any threat—Tyree knew what the consequences were. Any problems from the gang leader and only one of them would be leaving the black alive.

  “Told you, she’s my niece. I just want her back.”

  “Should have thought of that before you booby-trapped the tunnels.”

  “No one’s supposed to go down there except me and mine. Everyone knows that.”

  “Wait out here,” Ryder ordered his men. No way in hell was he risking anyone else’s life on Tyree’s cooperation. Besides, if it was just him and the gang leader alone in the dark, Ryder had more room to maneuver beyond rules and protocol. Without witnesses.

  Ryder grabbed two flashlights from the firefighters, handed them both to Tyree. Best to keep the gangbanger’s hands full. He had his own SureFire light as well as his Glock.

  They crossed the threshold into the tunnels. He hadn’t realized how loud the rain had been until the sound was snuffed out, along with the noise of men working, engines running, people shouting.

  Ryder’s senses pinged at full alert, his adrenaline peaking to battle-ready. His hormones thought he was back in Paktika, clearing yet another Taliban cave. His weight moved to the balls of his feet, hushing his footsteps and keeping him balanced against any attack.

  He used his light sparingly, leaving Tyree front and center, an easy target. Kept his gun aimed, trusting his other senses more than his vision, as Tyree’s light sliced the blackness into sharp-edged slivers.

  “There’s no traps here,” Tyree said, as close to an apology as he’d give. “As long as she stayed near the door, she’s okay. Esme! Come out, girl!” His voice crescendoed and died.

  “She thought the men who killed Sister Patrice were after her. Probably kept running.”

  “Shit. Patrice is dead, too? Who the hell would want to kill her and Jess? I mean, a nun and a blind girl—that’s cold.”

  Ryder didn’t have any answer. Still wasn’t sure Tyree and his boys weren’t the answer. He wasn’t going to think about it until he got Esme out of here.

  They came to a side tunnel. “Where’s that go?”

  “Leads below the Tower to the elevators. But I got them all locked off, ’cept the one I use myself.”

  “What about the stairs?”

  “Locked up as well.”

  Making their search upstairs a complete waste of manpower. Shit. Ryder continued on, deeper into the dark. If he didn’t find anything else to arrest Tyree for, he could always use vandalism and destruction of private property—if Daniel Kingston agreed to prosecute. Which he might not, since that would make the real estate tycoon liable for fire-code violations. Seemed that Tyree and Kingston both knew how to work the system to get the most bang for their buck, with the occupants of the Tower paying the price.

  Tyree pulled up to a halt. “Hang on.” He knelt, examining a transparent line sagging loosely across the passageway at shin level. “Goddammit. Someone’s been coming through here.” He yanked the line, revealing a magnet securing it to the metal shelving that lined both sides of the hallway. Then he bent behind the stack of plastic water containers and reached his arm between the wall and the shelf. He emerged holding a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun.

  “Drop it,” Ryder ordered, leveling his .40-caliber Glock at the gangbanger.

  Tyree broke open the shotgun and handed it to Ryder. “They removed the shells. Left the line intact so I wouldn’t know to look. Sons of bitches.”

  “Probably saved Esme’s life,” Ryder reminded him.

  Tyree grunted at that and continued down the passage. Ryder left the shotgun—didn’t want his hands full—but mentally marked its location. Double barrel at close range could take the legs off a man. At least cripple him, which was the point.

  During the next twenty minutes, they found three more dismantled booby traps and had cleared two side passages before Ryder spotted light coming from ahead. The reverb of a voice shouting filled the blackness.

  He pushed Tyree faster. They arrived at the junction of two wide corridors. Tyree’s light caught another black man in its glare. Standing in front of the man was Angela Rossi. Holding a shotgun. A dog stood beside her, pulling hard against his leash.

  What the hell? Ryder didn’t have time to finish his thought before a gunshot cracked through the dark. Coming from behind him.

  A girl screamed. Rossi dropped her shotgun and rushed forward, arms outstretched, as a young girl fell from the darkness above them.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Everything happened in a blazing blitzkrieg of action. First, seeing Esme. Alive, climbing out from her hiding place on the top shelf to my right. Then a shot coming from behind us.

  Ozzie’s howl, the gunshot reverberating as if the sound was ricocheting off the concrete surrounding us, and Devon’s shout of anger and dismay collided.

  Esme fell forward, her body caught in a crossfire of flashlight beams.

  Before she could tumble off the shelf and into space, someone reached down from the darkness above Esme and grabbed her. Esme hung there for a moment, one foot caught on the top of the shelving unit, the rest of her body dangling by an unseen person above her, gloved hand gripping her arm. Another shot splintered her cry of panic.

  Then she was gone. Vanished into the shadows above the pipes.

  It wasn’t until I was halfway up the nearest set of shelves, scrambling from one handhold to the next, that I registered the third gunshot. Or heard the shouting. Adrenaline must have blocked my hearing for a few moments because then, all the sudden below me, there were men yelling at each other, their voices a shockwave hitting me, punctuated by Ozzie’s barking.

  “Lower your weapon,” a man shouted. Ryder. I glanced down for a split moment. His gun was aimed at Devon. Had Ryder fired the shots aimed at Esme? No. That made no sense. But the shots had come from that direction. Another man, tall, bulky, carrying two lights, stood to one side. “Now!”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Devon protested, crouching to set his gun on the floor and stepping away from it. “You’re the one who shot her.”

  “Wasn’t me.” Ryder’s tone was tight with adrenaline. He kept his gun aimed at Devon but had shifted position so that he could cover both Devon and the corridor behind us—where the shots had come from. “On your knees. Hands behind your head.”

  I was almost to the top of the shelving unit. Close enough to see, in the scattered light of the flashlight clutched between my teeth, that Esme wasn’t anywhere to be found on the shelves.

  “Where is she, Angela?” Devon shouted from where he lay facedown on the floor.

  “Shut up.” Ryder cuffed his hands behind his back.

  I clawed my way onto the top of the shelving unit, tumbling a few boxes to the ground, glad this unit was securely anchored to the wall. I wasn’t at all sure that the freestanding shelves Esme had hidden on could have taken my weight climbing them. “She isn’t here. But there’s a catwalk above the pipes.”

  “Rossi, get down here,” Ryder called. He had Devon and the other man both on their stomachs, in cuffs, and was standing with his back to me, pointing his gun into the darkness.

  I couldn’t see any blood on the shelves where Esme had been. That was the good news. The bad news was that I also couldn’t see which way whoever had taken her had gone. Between the creaks and clanks of the pipes and the noise of the men below, I couldn’t hear any footsteps or any sounds of Esme crying. Had she known the person who had taken her? Saved her, really. Risked their life to rescue Esme. That gave me hope.

  Still, I was half-tempted to try to follow. Holding on to a pipe for balance, I stood. The catwalk was at my waist. I could have easily climbed onto it. I touched it, felt faint vibration
s but couldn’t tell which direction they came from. Ryder shouted my name again. I aimed my light down the catwalk in both directions and saw only shadows. With a shooter out there in the dark and no idea which way Esme had gone, it was foolish to try to follow, so I reluctantly climbed back down.

  Ryder stood like a soldier, his face closed down, gaze searching for unseen enemies in the shadows. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  Ozzie came to my defense, aiming a snarl in Ryder’s direction.

  “We need to get out of here, now,” Ryder said.

  “No, we can’t leave her,” Devon argued.

  “Shut up.” Ryder’s voice lashed out at Devon even as his light whipped through the darkness where the shots had come from. “We have two targets now. Esme and the shooter. We need to get more manpower, coordinate a search, get the lights turned on, do this thing right.”

  I didn’t want to leave Esme behind, but I knew he was right. My one glimmer of hope came from the fact that whoever had taken Esme had been protecting her from the shooter.

  “We’re too exposed here. We need to move.” Ryder motioned to Devon and the other man to get back on their feet. “Tyree, on your feet. You, too—what’s your name?”

  “Price. Devon Price.”

  “Let’s go.” Ryder ushered the two men to march in front of him, his gun still trained on them. I retrieved Ozzie’s leash and joined him. Ozzie tugged, didn’t want to come at first, but then, with a whimper, he obeyed.

  Ryder frowned and gestured for us to move faster. “I’ve no cell coverage here, and the radio doesn’t work either. It’s a good twenty minutes back the way we came. We need to hurry, get the perimeter shut down before they can escape.”

  “We’re closer to Good Sam than the Tower,” Devon said.

  “He’s right,” the man named Tyree said. “That tunnel,” he jerked his chin to indicate the junction we’d passed a few yards back, “goes down to Good Sam’s basement, near the heating plant. It’s the fastest way out.”

  I finally put two and two together and realized Tyree was the drug dealer Father Vance had warned us about. Up close he was even bigger. Bulky. My first thought was steroids, which made me wonder what other drugs he was doing. I was glad he was in front of me. I didn’t like the idea of having him in the shadows behind me.

  Ryder’s mouth twisted, and I knew he was worried about the drug dealer leading us into a possible ambush. But he nodded. “Show us.” Then he turned to me, seemed to sense that something was wrong. “You okay?” he asked, his voice a low whisper.

  “Of course.” I appreciated his concern, but I wasn’t about to lower my guard enough to admit that, no, I was very much not okay. Didn’t want to admit that even to myself. My nerves jangled with adrenaline, and I kept stumbling in the dark. Thankfully, no one noticed. “I’m fine. Who’s the big guy?”

  “Tyree Willard, leader of the Royales, the gang that runs the Tower. Esme’s uncle. Who’s your new buddy?”

  “Your friend the priest introduced us. Devon knows Esme and her family. Ozzie is her mom’s guide dog, and Devon thought he could lead us to her.”

  “You came down here alone with a perfect stranger?”

  I ignored the rebuke coloring his words. After all, he had a point. It hadn’t actually been a well-thought-out plan. Wouldn’t even really call it a plan at all. “I couldn’t just sit around praying like Father Vance. Any idea who was shooting at us?”

  He grimaced and shook his head, falling silent once more. Intensity radiated off him as we traveled through the dark corridors.

  Ozzie galloped ahead of me, straining at the full length of his lead, barking twice at each intersection we crossed as if warning anyone to leave us alone. I couldn’t hear any more footsteps or the creepy heavy breathing, but still couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched.

  Ozzie’s lead went slack as he suddenly circled back to me, ears at full alert. He twisted his body lengthwise against my legs, blocking my path. I was getting ready to admonish him and tug him aside when a barrage of music, discordant brass and percussion, blinded me.

  This time I knew what was coming. The music tugged and pulled at me as if it had a physical presence. Demanding my attention. I could see the men as they walked away, moving so slowly they looked like astronauts on the moon. Ozzie was caught lowering his head to nuzzle my knee, an old-fashioned movie flicking one frame at a time in infinite slow motion. Above the clang of the music, I heard everything: the creak of his leather collar, the jingle of the ring that held his leash, the whoosh of atoms displaced by his movement.

  I stood frozen, able to hear and see it all. As if I was everywhere at once, absorbing every molecule surrounding us.

  In my mind’s eye, I could plot the course through the maze of dark tunnels all the way back through the twists and turns to the church. I heard footsteps and voices in the far distance, could smell the familiar scent of disinfectant coming from not too far away. Smelled something else. Closer.

  Candle wax, blood, burnt flesh… and something sickly, sweet, too sweet. I’d smelled it before… with a rush, my vision exploded into a whirl of images as my mind sped back through memories, searching.

  That smell… we’d seen an uptick in assault victims coming into the ER and Advocacy Center over the past few months, the most recent just four days ago. All women, drugged, kept several days, raped, and tortured.

  In my mind’s eye, the me from three months ago raised the first victim’s ragged T-shirt, ready to place it in an evidence bag, when the sickly sweet stench of the liquid saturating it overwhelmed me.

  We’d tested her and the shirt for drugs and had found traces of paramethoxamine. PXA, a street drug known as Death Head because dying was preferable than overdosing on it. It’s in the same chemical family as ketamine but longer lasting with much worse side effects. Instead of pain relief, PXA actually increases pain sensation and, instead of a euphoric high, produces a dysphoric dissociative state, like the worst LSD trip imaginable, only the victim is unable to move her body.

  That first woman and three more who followed all ended up in the psych ward, catatonic, their minds so clouded they couldn’t care for themselves or distinguish reality from the imaginary hell the perpetrator had created.

  It was that smell that filled my mind now. I wanted to gag, to hold my breath, but my body was frozen and beyond my control. All I could do was endure, fight past the stench.

  The others were still doing their slow-motion walk. Ozzie’s head had barely made it all the way around, mouth open but no sound coming yet, his whimper frozen midair. And my mind kept soaring, freewheeling through time and space, all of my senses exploding, on overload.

  As I was buffeted by all the sensory information, I fought to find something to anchor me as this psychic tornado ripped through my reality. I clung to the stench of the PXA, focused my entire being on it, ignoring the maelstrom of other sights and sounds hurling themselves at me. Where had it come from?

  A dark corridor we’d just passed. It had no shelves, only blackness at the end. Lined with large metal doors, unlike the others. Wide, thick, fitted with airtight gaskets—walk-in refrigerators and freezers? I could hear air circulating through a fan above the last door at the end of the row.

  And a whimper. A child’s whimper. Forlorn, despairing, it broke my heart.

  With a fever rush so dizzying I thought I would vomit, I was back again. Muscles cramped, eyes dry, drool hanging from my mouth.

  I staggered forward and wiped my mouth. Ozzie finished his spin around, coming full circle. The men were only a few feet ahead of us, oblivious. The entire time I was trapped in my fugue state—which had seemed like hours, though my burning muscles screamed weeks—only a few seconds had passed in the real world.

  Disorientation hit me with a wave of red spots swimming before my eyes. I blinked and cleared them. “This way.” My flashlight shook as I pointed away from the tunnel leading toward Good Sam and down one to our left, leading deepe
r into the maze.

  Tyree and Devon halted, looked to Ryder, who stared at me like I was crazy. If he only knew.

  “Can’t you hear it?” I asked. “Listen.”

  Ozzie heard it. He dashed down the tunnel, his leash slipping from my trembling grip, and vanished in the darkness.

  “I don’t hear nothing,” Tyree said.

  “I don’t eith—wait, what was that?” Devon said.

  Ryder was silent, moving backward, keeping the two men in range of his gun, heading toward where I heard the child’s whimpering. He frowned, glanced at me, then looked at his two prisoners. It was obvious he was torn between securing them, getting me out of there, and the faint sounds coming from the end of the tunnel.

  For me it was an easy decision. I started down the tunnel, following Ozzie and my instincts, leaving the men behind.

  Ozzie waited for me at the end of the corridor, scratching at a heavy door. It was a walk-in refrigerator—large, like the kind they held sides of beef in. Or bodies.

  The door was ajar and surrounded by a thick rubber gasket that was torn and frayed, crumbling between my fingers. This was how I could hear the child’s crying despite the thick walls.

  There was a heavy padlock hanging from the door latch. Why leave it unlocked? To invite us in or let the child trapped inside out? The men reached me just as I hauled the door open. A wave of odors poured out: a pungent combination of candle wax, burnt flesh, urine, feces, unwashed bodies, that sickly sweet scent of PXA, blood, and terror.

  Ryder shone his light inside, alongside mine. The flashlight beams skipped around the room. It hadn’t been only one child sobbing.

  Young children huddled together in a ball so tight I couldn’t tell if they were boys or girls, the oldest maybe eight, the youngest three or four, all races: Hispanic, black, white, Asian. The noise they made wasn’t a cry. It was the keening of wild animals caught in a trap.

  The light caught them, and they screamed, skittering away from us into the depths of the refrigerator, clinging to the shadows for protection. They all wore dingy white T-shirts that came down past their knees, clinging to their moving bodies like foam on ocean waves.