Gray Night

by Gregory Colt

  I unclipped the papers and flipped through them when I heard a girl scream. I looked around until I noticed where everyone else was looking. A man in a white van from the rental place was stopped outside the perimeter talking to several officers. The screaming girl was Ruby Jordan, who was being escorted by a couple of officers to an ambulance.

  I couldn’t tell what she had screamed at until she started again when someone opened the sliding side door on the van. Ruby stared at it, horrified and screaming bloody murder, trying to rip her way out of the officer’s grip. A van. A white van. Wasn’t that what someone had seen on the street the night Ruby disappeared? Could it have been one of those same vans? There was something else familiar about them, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

  I looked down at the pages in my hand. They were contract lists for the business’s that had regular use of the vehicles.

  Son of a bitch. The highest concentration of Gray Night activity was in and around the Bronx. That’s where all the women had disappeared from and Ruby was confirmation that at least several of them were drugged and sold. In order to do that you would need to find people no one would ever miss. Would have to be a part of the community. Someone they trusted.

  I flipped through the pages one more time to make absolutely certain there were no other possibilities. No, there was just the one I recognized. Just the one from the Bronx. Why take the time to destroy the computer unless there was something on it you didn’t want found? Then a memory tore out of the demons grip and rose to the surface. I remembered where I’d seen those vans before—parked at the loading dock outside Roman Sawyer’s shelter.

  I ran through everything from the last few days. I didn’t know why they attacked the museum, but Gray Night thugs had done the killing. Everything around the Jordan’s neighborhood fit. It felt right. The only thing bothering me was the night Claire and I were attacked at Roarke’s office. I’d thought at the time it was related to the museum investigation, and maybe it was, but I’d also just come from the shelter—and was suffering debilitating hallucinations. I couldn’t remember a thing about my meeting with Roman, other than knowing I went there, then left with a sudden and unprovoked episode. That’s right, we spoke and I didn’t think anything of it. I’d gotten a terrible headache after—that son of a bitch. He’d brought me a drink. He drugged me! The gaps in my memory. He could have had me followed and I wouldn’t have noticed. Not in that condition. Damn it! I led them straight to Nick’s office the other night. And I even introduced Claire to him the next day.

  I took a moment to assess my overall tactical situation, acutely aware every second made it worse, which is why I wanted to avoid a future mistake that could cost valuable time.

  This wasn’t a patrol car, but it still had a cage separating the front and back seats where a shotgun and baton hung on it. Glove box was empty except for the usual paperwork. A jacket with NYPD on it sat on the passenger seat with a handheld radio on top. There was a big flashlight in the door pocket, and I reached under the driver’s seat finding a backup piece. H&K .45 modified with a longer barrel. Nice. On the dash was a push button ignition switch.

  Time to go. My hand trembled reaching for the dash. I held it and tried to calm down when a sharp pain shot through my skull like a brain freeze on steroids. I grabbed my head and tried to control my breathing. The pressure redlined and needed an outlet before it fed on the only thing available—me. But trying to calm down made it worse, so I did the only thing I could. I gave it what it wanted.

  I indulged in the dark thoughts of my wrath raining down on Roman and his men until it threw me back into a frenzied rage. I gave all the dark energy inside me a purpose, a direction. And it could wait. For that, it could wait.

  The pain and trembling receded and I didn’t wait a moment longer. I pushed the button. Nothing happened. I pushed it again and nothing.

  I growled in rage and head butted the center of the steering wheel, honking the horn because it totally deserved it.

  “Hey, what the hell!” I heard someone yell. I saw two officers fall to the ground, hollering after a man who had shoved them out of the way as he ran toward me. Oh, shit.

  “Knight!” Detective Harris screamed. “Get the fuck out of my car!”

  You know, on a day full of things I had no desire to remember, there was one thing I wouldn’t mind keeping with me. Harris ran to the door. I locked it. A tiny blue light illuminated the cab as he looked up at me. It was coming from the push start button whose RFID security activated in the presence of the man with the matching transmitter.

  He realized it the same moment I did. I swear to god the look on his face when the car started almost made the whole day worthwhile.

  Chapter Thirty

  I kept checking behind me until I was out of Jersey. I knew they’d follow me, at least Harris would, and that was a good thing. I could use all the help I could get. However, I couldn’t have them stop me before I got to where I was going either. I wasn’t leaving Claire’s fate in the hands of a fucking insane plan that basically consisted of me knocking down the front door and kicking ass until I crashed, and maybe, just maybe, the police showing up and getting involved in time. I needed a plan B. The same plan B I had for the Auction.

  That meant I needed a phone, but didn’t have time to stop. Every second was one closer to collapsing—and one closer to Harris catching me. Damn it!

  I buried the needle as I raced through the Lincoln Tunnel and into the city. I stuck to the highways, blew through the toll, and flew north on Highway 9A. I shot through the intersections where the traffic was light. I didn’t have to stop until I reached the Upper West Side.

  I slammed the brakes when I didn’t see a way around the cars stopped in front of me and noticed several young women in a convertible beside me. One reached out to take a picture with her cell phone as if me screeching to a smoky halt beside her was the funniest thing she had ever seen. Perfect.

  I rolled the window down.

  “Yes, officer,” two of them said giggling.

  Officer? Oh, right. The car.

  “Excuse me, ladies,” I said, smiling and leaning out the window. “May I borrow your phone please?”

  They stopped grinning after a good look at me.

  I did a double take of myself in the rear view mirror. Well, I admit that was more gore than I usually preferred. Whatever, I didn’t have time for this. I grabbed the .45 I’d thrown into the passenger seat with my right hand, held it up for them to see, and stuck my left out the window.

  “The phone,” I said, getting their attention again and making a dramatic show of pulling the hammer back on the pistol. “Now.”

  The girls screamed, and the one with the phone dropped it as the car took off with the light change.

  I threw the door open and jumped in front of the oncoming traffic, raising the pistol at a brand new Lexus. It slammed on its breaks while I grabbed the phone. Once secured, I dove back in the detective’s sedan and sped away.

  The girls had given me an idea though. Unmarked as it was, the sedan still screamed, I’m a cop, all over it, so when in Rome…I switched the siren on.

  Police have a hard job, especially city cops, but when the traffic in front of me parted like the Red Sea, more or less, I have to admit it was pretty cool. I wish I’d thought of the sirens sooner to help clear traffic and make speeding through the city a whole hell of a lot less suspicious.

  I made my phone call and cut east between Harlem and Washington Heights, over the river, and into the South Bronx.

  I killed the sirens and a couple of minutes later drove past the shelter without stopping. Two white vans were parked at the loading docks under the awning with two armed men standing on the roof.

  I drove around the block. I’d like to say I took the time to think things through, to plan better, something profound about how I would die if I did not find Claire in time, crashing and being eaten alive in the dark and knowing she would soon follow, or how the joy of being me
was that even in the remote possibility of complete and total victory I would still face prison, or worse.

  Instead, I released the demon and the car lurched forward, passing fifty miles an hour around the last corner. A few hundred feet in front of me was the shelter lined in two layers of chain link fencing, chained gates, and the older portion in brick near the back. I’ve seen a thousand cars smash through chain link gates on television, and I’ve seen one try to do it for real. That choice against an old, single layer of bricks? I slammed the pedal to the floor in a molten fury and decided that between me and the brick wall, today was not a good day to be brick.

  * * * *

  The nausea hit again and I had learned that meant Roman had returned. A reflex my body developed to the constant feelings of disgust and violation. Hours had passed spent trying to find a way free. I found none.

  He moved me deeper into the basement to a much smaller room with only a large metal table in the center surrounded by stainless steel cabinets after discovering I had cut the straps on the bed again. In fact, the entire room was stainless steel and reminded me of Dr. Page’s lab at the examiner’s office. An autopsy room. A room where you could cut up a human body, or do absolutely anything else to it, and the clean-up was quick and easy.

  They chained me to the table, nude. No leather this time, but steel chains cuffed my wrists over my head and wound around a steel pipe running floor to ceiling. They shackled my feet the same at the other end, with my legs crossed together. I considered it no small blessing under the circumstances. The table froze everything from my calves to the back of my neck and was unforgiving on my shoulder blades and tailbone. I spent the first fifteen or twenty minutes fighting off the insanity of a strand of hair itching my face having no way to stop it. It was maddening.

  There was nowhere to move to. Nothing useful was within reach even if I could.

  The drugs seemed to wax and wane with the hours in their effect on my mind. Sometimes I was calm, could think, and dedicated that time to looking for a way out. Other times I panicked and screamed. More than once, I just cried.

  No one would ever find me. I thought for a long time Adrian might. If anyone could it would be him. But he had no reason to look for Roman. No reason at all to come back here. John would look, but probably go after Adrian. I cried picturing it all; John gloating over having Adrian imprisoned, waiting to sweat him out and tell him where I was, never knowing he was killing me.

  The worst part was I failed my job. I was tired, confused and fuzzy, my mind was not my own, but in the rare lucid moments I had not asked any questions or tricked him into revealing his master plan like a good little villain. I still didn’t know how George and Henry figured into all this. I didn’t know where the missing artifacts were.

  Worrying about that during a time like this may sound ludicrous, but it kept my mind focused, together, and made me lucid more often than not. Besides, the hero never had come riding in on a white horse for me before. I needed to find a way out on my own. Alone with a near zero chance of success was far more useful than despair.

  The chains outside the door unlocked. This was it then. The door opened and Roman came in, shutting it behind him.

  “Ready little flower?” he asked, grinning without ever making eye contact.

  He leaned over me and drew slow, tight circles around the tips of my breasts until they hardened.

  “Yes, I can see that you are,” he said.

  Despair had stopped knocking on the door and opted for kicking it in. I couldn’t let that happen. I needed to act.

  “Ssso the Auction wwent well?” I stammered.

  “Oh quite,” he said, leaning back upright. “This will be a night to remember, Dr. Spurling.”

  “Vvitale?” I asked.

  “You should have been there. Right when he gave the order to set upon Jack’s men, I ordered them to attack his own,” he laughed. “I wrapped a chain around his throat and pushed him off a thirty foot high railing. I think he was still more confused than scared when he went over.”

  “What…what happened to all the girls?” I asked, knowing the answer already.

  “Sold. For quite a price too. I’m sure they are enjoying life on the open sea right about now,” he said, kicking off his shoes and unbuttoning his cuffs.

  “Was Adrian there?”

  “Ha, I wondered when you’d get to it,” he said, looking at me for the first time. “Oh, yes. He was there. He arrived with Diamond Jack. My men out front recognized him immediately. It was a joke how easy it was to draw him out. All we did was send poor Lewis out to get noticed and lead him downstairs. Mathews caught him, and I don’t have to tell you how much he hated Adrian for what he did to his face.”

  I closed my eyes trying to fight off what my imagination showed me.

  “What happened to him?” I asked, blinking and trying to focus on something in the room.

  “I let Mathews indulge,” he said.

  Goosebumps covered my skin in a shiver.

  Roman watched, running the tip of his tongue across his upper teeth.

  I couldn’t stand it and yet had no choice in the matter. I’d always wondered how it was people went mad. You know, what caused them to snap. I don’t know if I could have held myself together for much longer. I couldn’t imagine every poor soul who had gone days, weeks, years.

  He was more talkative now, but that would stop when he was ready. He picked up speed with every article of clothing that came off. I had time for maybe one more question, so I asked the only one that mattered to me.

  “Why Henry?”

  “What?” he asked, sliding off his belt.

  “Why did you kill Henry Wagner?”

  “Who?”

  The moment it left his lips, I changed. I was terrified. I’d spent most of the entire weekend terrified. But knowing Henry meant nothing to Roman, that he knew nothing about Henry, or that he hadn’t been important enough to take note of, it made me furious.

  “Henry Wagner was one of the curator’s at the museum. The other man was George Wilkins, chief of security,” I spat out.

  “Still got some fight in you. That’s nice,” he said, ignoring me.

  “You killed them. Why?”

  He finished taking his top shirt off, leaving him in his slacks and an old wife beater.

  “You mean…” he cocked his head. “But how did you find the Auction?”

  “We didn’t,” I said.

  He thought for a second, then laughed out loud. “You really never did figure it out did you? Neither did Knight. Not until it was already too late. Oh, that is precious. Is this where I’m supposed to reveal my master plan now that it’s too late to stop me?” He laughed and laughed.

  “Oh, I swore the incident at the museum would be the catalyst for any interference, but it wasn’t, it was Ruby Jordan of all things that brought you to me. How absolutely remarkable fate is.”

  “Fate?” I asked in disgust.

  “Yes, fate. Ruby brought you to me completely separate from the museum, even though that is how I should have found you. You were already a tremendous help before I even knew you.”

  “What are you talking about? I never—”

  “But you did, doctor. Apparently, you and I have similar tastes in the ships we use to transfer cargo to New York. The museum crates were perfect containers for the drug. Or would have been perfect if Diamond Jack’s man hadn’t interfered. It took over three hours to finally find and kill him. Several crates had already been unloaded without a chance to remove our product. So, we had to make a second stop,” he shrugged. “Fate.”

  That meant Henry and George were dead because I chose a ship. It meant Roman Sawyer had taken three of his addicts to the museum that night because of Reenan Keller. It hurt to think, to feel. I needed to process it. I needed to focus, but I was angry, angrier than I could ever remember being. HE killed my friends. HE tortured and killed all those people. HE was responsible for everything!

  “Are you re
ady to learn more about fate?” he leaned down to ask.

  I spit in his face. “There is nothing you can teach me! Nothing you can do to me that will give you the satisfaction you’re looking for! Adrian is going to find you. And when he does, then you will understand fate.”

  He snarled and walked to the foot of the table I was on. For a minute, I thought he was going to take off the chains around my ankles. Oh god.

  He didn’t. The pipe my feet were chained to came apart with a metallic clank. He slipped an end off some fitting below that I could not see and twisted the now free pipe between the chains, wrenching my entire body over onto my stomach and putting my wrists in a bind above my head.

  It hurt as my bare torso slapped down onto the freezing table and I screamed as one of my ankles sprained. I felt the pipe turn one hundred-eighty degrees and slip back into the fittings.

  It didn’t take long for my imagination to race off in a thousand directions, each one worse than the next. For some reason none of that compared to the terror of his hand running up the back of my leg and sliding just inside my knee. He yanked hard, sliding them apart a few inches. It hurt. I couldn’t twist or move enough to pull them back together, being chained so tight with all my weight resting in weird places.

  His fingers crept up the back of my inner thigh.

  “You think there is nothing I can do,” he said, climbing onto the table and placing his knees on either side of my hips.

  He leaned over my back and spoke into my ear, torturing me with the scent of mint.

  “Let me tell you about your friend, Knight. I bet he learned a thing or two before Mathews was done. You should have seen him. He had so much Gray Night pumped into him we were shocked to find him an hour later still hanging in his chains alive. We beat him. Over and over again to drive his animal instinct. To let the hunger come out. To drive his volition screaming into the hills,” he said.

  Oh, Adrian what have they done to you.