Empathy

by John Richmond

  After that it was just a matter of finding a relatively crowded restaurant near Charlie’s apartment (not difficult in the upper West Side just off the Park) and mixing his cocktail. He thought of including some sort of explosive device for dramatic effect, but procuring a cherry bomb on short notice required more energy than the matter warranted. It was, after all, just the smoke and mirror portion. The main part of trick—the disappearing act—would come later.

  Drum stepped into HOMEoPaTH, a vegan tea house just up the street from Charlie’s apartment building. Sweat and grime painted him with air-conditioned bliss and for a moment he slumped. This was the first time he stopped to realize how tired he was. The thrill, the power, the danger of his adventures had replaced his blood with electrical current, but he was still just a man. A man with the power of a god, but those powers were encased in the same delicate meat as the rest of humanity. He thought of Harlan and Sharon dehydrating in the warehouse, the withering body in the trunk of the stolen VW, and Emily—he just had so many irons in the fire right now. His eyes flashed the orange and green interior of HOMEoPaTH as the hostess approached him.

  “Just you, sir?” she asked, trying like everyone else not to be obvious about his eyes.

  “Yes.”

  She glanced at the big plastic bag, printed with a big red dart that Drum held in his left hand. “Don’t worry, our AC works great.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Just looks like your AC must’ve died.” She pointed at the big box fan dangling from its handle in Drum’s other hand. “I live right around the corner. I go to Dart Hardware’s all the time.”

  Drum diagnosed, “You’ve recently moved here from the Midwest.”

  “How’d you guess that? Do I have an accent or something?”

  “There are enough actresses here already.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “A table in the back.”

  “Of course,” she blinked, her smile a linoleum knife, and yanked a menu from a stack by the door. “Follow me, please.”

  Drum ordered a plate of basmati rice and a bottle of water the menu claimed to have come from rain clouds blessed by Tibetan monks. He held up the water and stared at the restaurant through its lens. The store front was deceptively small. HOMEoPaTH had a cavernous interior, a main floor ringed by a balcony of tables. Large, chrome ceiling fans beat the air into a pulsing breeze. At least fifty diners wavered and melted in Drum’s bottle. A woman was breaking up with her male lover in one of the upper-floor tables. That mixture of surprise, anger and sad shame was unmistakable. Most of them felt happy. Americans are almost always happy when they’re eating. Drum smirked. Moo.

  He waited until a pile of rice steamed in front of him before going to the restroom. He took his bag and fan with him; it was Manhattan, everything that wasn’t nailed down was stolen. A single toilet squatted next to a sink and mirror. A cast iron lamp threw a cozy glow from atop a quaint wicker table in the corner opposite the door. He couldn’t have asked for a better set-up. Drum locked the door and opened the big plastic bag.

  He snugged a large mop bucket into the corner behind the door and filled it 2/3 full with bleach. The industrial laundry burn flared his nostrils and watered his eyes. He pulled out a second, smaller bucket—this the size of a child’s sand castle constructor—and stared at it for a moment. Drum scanned the room. There, under the sink, a bottle of spray air freshener and some extra rolls of toilet paper. He made a little tower of the metal and paper cylinders next to the bleach bucket. He then filled the sand-bucket with ammonia, careful to keep his head turned to the side. Even so, the fumes threw a couple of hat pins up his nose. Drum exhaled hard through his nose and balanced the sand-bucket on the toilet paper/freshener tower. He stood up and placed the fan about two feet from the “bomb”. The cord was just long enough to reach the outlet by the wicker table. Drum urinated, flushed and looked over his shoulder in the mirror as he washed his hands. It was perfect.

  Ten minutes later, he was forking a bite of basmati past his lips when a young man walked purposefully toward the bathroom. Drum closed his eyes and counted. He imagined the man as he pushed the door open, knocking the ammonia bucket over into the bleach. He would turn and say something like, “What the?” as the dragon catalyzed and threw its first poisoned breath into the air. Drum was only up to four when the man surged out of the bathroom with his face buried in the crook of his arm, the other arm out in front of him like a football player charging down the field. The box fan blew the dragon’s breath out behind him in steady stream.

  The mixture was crude but potent, essentially the same chlorine gas the Kaiser used to dig the Dough Boys from their muddy trenches. Chlorine gas burns the lining of the throat and lungs and they respond by filling with fluid. Perfect if one’s goal is to convince the victim that he or she is in immediate and dire straits and that the best course of action is to remove him or herself from the vicinity as fast as is fucking feasible.

  Drum got a faint whiff of the gas as the man streaked past him, ricocheting off a table and spilling food in a glorious shower of stoneware and stainless steel chopsticks. It spiced his eyes and throat. Drum was on his feet moving toward the door in the next second, his chair clattering to the floor. The collective face of the diners and employees turned in the direction of the disturbance—the gagging man, the other one moving for the door. Drum didn’t see who it was as he reached the front of the restaurant, but he could feel her shock as she realized what was happening. She shouted one magic word and Drum stumbled as a wave of terror and ecstasy broke over him.

  “GAS!”

  * * *

  CHRIS KIMATA STOOD on the front stoop of the building across from Charlie’s as the mob gushed by, sluiced in by the curbstones. He yelled into his police radio.

  “Reeves! Reeves! What’s your 20? Over.”

  The radio squawked back at once, a roiling white noise, punctuated by screams and coughing. Reeves’s shout cut through the foam, “Say-again! Say-again! Jesus, it’s crazy down here. Chris—cough—that you, man? I can’t hear a damn thing with all this—. Hey, lady, put that down for chrissakes!”

  Kimata clipped the radio to his belt. Fucking thing was useless. Reeves was up to his chin in hysterical crowd. Kimata sniffed. There was something weird in the air. Bleach? Did someone blow up a fucking laundromat? He looked over the tearing eyes and gagging mouths of the crowd to the third floor of windows and sighed. Chris took a deep, bleach-tainted breath and plunged into the street.

  He surfaced on the other side with a ripped shirt collar, and a scratch on his face. His radio was gone, but his Glock was still snapped into its shoulder holster. Thank heaven for small favors. He drew it and pushed through into the lobby. Kimata didn’t remember climbing the stairs, but a blink later he was chambering a hollow-point outside of Charlie’s front door. Ever-so-fucking-gently, he toed the door with his shoe and it pushed open an inch. Fuck, he mouthed. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Kimata took a breath and kicked the door open the rest of the way. Drummond Fine’s eyes flashed their silver no-color as he turned his head. Charlie sprawled on the couch, his cheeks wan, his eyes closed, one limp hand on his chest. Fine pulled a long slow breath through his nose.

  “Why, you’re absolutely terrified, officer.”

  This was the part where, if Kimata was as cool as he always wished he was, he would say something like, “Do something stupid so I can shoot you, motherfucker.” Instead, all he could get out was, “Still! You should stay very still!” His heart was pounding so fast the words jiggled past his teeth. “I mean don’t move…motherfucker.” Jesus, he was the coolest, toughest cop ever. DC’s finest. Way to represent, Kimata. At least the victim was too out of it to have witnessed that verbal pants-wetting. Sometimes unconscious people could still hear, though. He could still get lucky. Maybe Charlie was dead. Chris stiffened his arms, the gun locked on Fine’s chest. “He dead?”

  “No, his heart slowed to the point where he lost consci
ousness. He’ll have a headache when he wakes, but that’ll be the least of his worries.” Fine faced Kimata. “Your heart, on the other hand, is beating very rapidly. I can feel it.”

  Aside from the history of grisly murders and those creepy mercury peepers, this guy was seriously worrying Kimata. He wasn’t acting like someone under the gun. He was acting like someone holding the gun, but his hands were empty. “Okay, shut up. Put your hands on your head and turn around. Get on your knees.” Fine did as he was told and Kimata’s heart began to slow, his training and experience kicking in. He was never going to get over his bust-into-the-room jitters, he’d always had those, but after a minute or two he was as collected as the next guy. Matter of fact, he was actually beginning to feel downright sluggish.

  “Now,” he said, “don’t move while I—”

  Drum stood up and turned around as he heard Chris thump to the floor. He could feel the cop’s heart struggle to thud inside the mental fist he’d clasped around it. He could just let go and the cop would sleep just as he’d done with the nursey-nurse. Or he could squeeze hard, just once, and the cop’s blood would pool in his face in lines to match the floor boards. He’d look like a zebra in his casket. Fine bent down over Chris and considered.

  Someone coughed.

  Fine’s head snapped up. A young man with flaming red hair and a huge pistol stood outside in the hall. Tears streamed from his bloody-rimmed eyes and ran down Reeves’s cheeks. Drum struck out with all his mental force. As the darkness rushed in, Reeves went down on one knee and fired, and fired, and fired.

  ~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 25

  DETECTIVE JOANNA BILKO was having a shit day. Five minutes ago, she’d received a call from one of the officers on the scene of that gas explosion, or leak or attack—no one yet knew what to make of a cloud of chlorine gas in the Upper West Side. Their trap had been sprung. Reeves, the rookie, her rookie, was dead. Her exchange detective from DC Homicide was in the back of a meat wagon heading to the ER. Kimata had reported Fine at the scene, but now of course he was gone too. And Charlie Dunbar, the supposed-to-be-citizen-hero, was missing.

  Bilko put the elbows of her best and oldest gray suit on the desk blotter and lowered her head into her hands. Through the blinds she could see Emily Burton, cute lil’ Barbie Doll from Wisconsin, kicking her legs off the edge of an empty desk. Her friend, Mr. Samuels, sat in the chair nodding as they chatted. Change their clothes just a bit and she would look like a working girl and him a vice cop. They seemed bored. Now, Joanna had to go out there and tell them that her brilliant plan had gotten a young officer killed, another injured and a civilian—Ms. Burton’s boyfriend—most likely kidnapped by a serial murderer. Bilko closed her eyes and tried to imagine a column of light emanating from the crown of her head. Instead, she saw a whirling black cloud behind her eyes. “Fuck it,” she said and got up.

  The roar of the precinct rushed in around her ears as she opened the door. “Miss Burton? Mr. Samuels?” Neither of them heard her. She pitched her voice a little higher, “Miss Burton?” Now, Emily looked over, her eyebrows arched. Samuels glanced over as well and Bilko motioned them into her office. Take it easy. It was bad, but she’d dealt with worse. Two years ago she’d had to tell a mother that her estranged husband had killed both of their children and then himself. He’d locked them all in the family SUV and drove it off a pier. This should be easy in comparison.

  Emily stood aside for Samuels. “Door open or shut?” she asked.

  “Close it, please.” Bilko sat behind the desk. She thought about taking her shoes off and figured Aged Panty Hosed Foot was probably not the best aroma therapy for the situation. “Sit down, please, Miss Burton, Mr. Samuels.”

  Emily sat and blanked for a moment as she reinforced her mental shields. There was a lot of residue in this room, and none of it happy. Samuels yawned. It had been a very long day for both of them.

  “So, Detective,” he said. “What can you tell us about the elusive Dr. Fine? Sounds positively Conan Doylian, doesn’t it?” He spread his hands, “Sherlock Holmes and The Elusive Doctor Fine.”

  Bilko let him be. Everyone acts differently when they know something bad’s coming and she could feel it all over her face. “Here it is: Charles Dunbar’s been kidnapped. We’re pretty sure it was Fine.” Emily’s face drained. Hard to believe a girl that fair could go whiter, but there it was. “The officers we had watching Mr. Dunbar were attacked. One of them has died.”

  Emily’s face was a slate. “How?”

  “Miss Burton, he just got past us. There was something of a riot uptown in the same neighborhood.”

  “We heard some of the hubbub out there,” Samuels jerked his head toward the bullpen. “Some kind of gas explosion? Terror alert or what have you?”

  “We’re not sure what it was just now, Mr. Samuels.”

  “No, I meant how were the officers attacked?” Emily said. “Did he use a gun or something?”

  Bilko sat back in her chair and rubbed her forehead. Her nails were purple today. “Again, we’re not entirely sure. Detective Kimata—the officer who survived—reported that he lost consciousness and when he came around, the other detective was dead and his weapon had been discharged. Both Fine and Charles Dunbar were gone.” She paused. “There was, ah, some blood.” She caught Emily’s expression. “But not enough to account for a serious injury. And we don’t think Fine would have had enough time to clean up anything major. I don’t think the detective actually did much damage before he died. Most of his shots seemed to have gone into the floor. It was damn lucky that everyone else in the building had gone outside to see what was going on with the riot. Those bullets went right into the apartment below.”

  “And you don’t know how he died?”

  “Why are you so interested in that, Miss Burton?”

  “I’m a morbid person.”

  Samuels snorted.

  “What are you not telling me, Emily? Anything you hold back—on top of possibly costing you a conspiracy charge—will only endanger Charles Dunbar. Do you know something about Drummond Fine? Do you know something about how he’s been hurting all of these people?”

  Emily stared at Bilko. You couldn’t lie to a good cop without them knowing it. Daddy had his gift, but he always said that even a regular cop who was worth her salt could tell a whopper from the truth, too. “I know he causes heart attacks somehow,” Emily said. Of course, they already had that from the coroner’s reports on all the other victims. “I was just wondering if he’d done the same thing to that poor officer.”

  “Reeves.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “His name was Reeves.”

  Samuels cleared his throat. “Detective, what’s our next course of action?”

  “Well, I think we should put the two of you into protective custody—a safe house. We have a rather nice loft—small, mind you—near Washington Square. Nicer than my place anyway. We’ll keep a couple of plainclothes on the door. I think you’ll be fine until we figure something out.”

  Emily felt a spike in the emotional electricity from the bullpen outside Bilko’s office even as she saw the detective’s eyes shift over her shoulder. She and Emily stood at the same time.

  “What is it?” Samuels asked looking up at Emily.

  “Stay here” Bilko said and charged into the rising noise, slamming the door behind her.

  Emily and Samuels stared through the blinds. Several officers were moving in a supportive knot, half carrying someone into the bullpen. They sat her down and cleared back. “It’s a cop,” Emily said. “A woman. She’s all messed up.” Emily squinted then winced away from the glass.

  Samuels stood up and put a hand on her shoulder. “What is it?”

  “Fine. It’s Fine. He’s all over her.” She shook her head and looked into Samuels bright eyes. “I think that’s the one who went missing earlier. I think she got away from him.”

  “How do you know it’s Fine?”

  “He stinks.” She
sneered, a strange expression in that sweet face. “That make any sense? The kind of emotional smear he leaves smells bad. You and I have it, actually, from when we dealt with him in the park? It’s worse on her. Way worse.”

  Bilko burst back into the room, the blinds clattering. “That’s the officer who went missing a couple of days ago when we first tried to take Fine into custody. She just stumbled through the front goddamn door. We’re taking her to the ER, but she’s not too bad off. I want the two of you there for the debriefing. You’ll come with me.” Emily didn’t need her powers to feel Bilko’s excitement. “At last,” she said. “A fucking break.”

  “How’d she get away?” Samuels asked.

  Bilko held up short at the door, blinked. “He let her go.”

  * * *

  SHARON DIMKE WAS lightly sedated and resting in a private suite at the very hospital Charlie had left earlier that long day. The drugs they gave her—sweet prick in the arm—weren’t much compared to her beloved Oxycontin, but it was something. The valium kicked her just a degree left of center. She could feel the throbbing from her missing finger and a tap dance of scrapes and bruises. Her throat was burnt paper. An IV drip hung in her peripheral vision, a blurred hot-air balloon. A black woman in plain clothes stood by the bedside. Must be a honcho, no one else could look that tight-assed and upset so effortlessly. An old man sat in a chair by the window, studying Sharon as if she were on the wrong side of the glass at a museum. There was a uniform standing outside the door. Sharon could see him through the venetian blinds. And there, standing in the corner, was the girl. Had to be.