by B. V. Larson
“Come on,” he said, waving me toward his car. “Get in. I’m taking you downtown.”
“Let’s see your badge first,” I said. I took out my sunglasses and slipped them on. I figured I might need them. Then I reached into my pocket and touched my gun. That was a mistake.
“Here’s my badge,” he said, flashing a shield in his wallet. “Detective Jay McKesson, Las Vegas Metro. And here’s my gun.”
McKesson hit me in the face with his pistol. I went down to one knee. I’d been suckered, and a burst of anger boiled up inside me.
“I should leave you here,” the man said, standing over me. “That thing will come close eventually and burn you. One more freaky death for one more freak.”
“What was that for?” I asked, rubbing my cheekbone. It didn’t feel cracked, but it did feel numb.
“Making me wait. And because you’re armed and dangerous. Everyone says so. Just like that thing you summoned up to burn down your own house for the insurance money. You’re not going to collect, you know. Not on my watch.”
While he talked, I put my sunglasses back on and climbed slowly back up to my feet. I was surprised the sunglasses didn’t seem damaged.
“Turn around and put your hands behind your back,” he said.
McKesson kept his gun on me. He clicked on the cuffs, then spun me around to face him. “Not so tough in bracelets, are you, Draith? They never are.”
I didn’t answer. He holstered his gun and gave me a tight smile.
“Shades? You’re wearing shades at night? Are you trying to be cool?”
I still didn’t answer. Inside I was boiling, but I bided my time.
The creature made a sound then. This was something new. We both glanced toward it. The slug had crossed the border of what had once been the concrete slab foundation of my house. It had squirmed its way into the flowerbeds and then out onto the open lawn. At that point it had made a squeaking, bubbling hiss, a sound that was both unpleasant and alien. Like hot coals dropped into a bucket of water, the hissing continued as it approached us with painful slowness. I thought perhaps the grasses it crawled over stung it. The greenery twisted and blackened at the creature’s approach and it left behind a trail of scorched earth.
When McKesson turned his attention back to me, he realized I’d freed myself. It had been easy. I just twisted my wrists and the cuffs fell apart. I was sure he was willing to go for me, but then he felt my .32 automatic under his chin and froze at the cold touch.
“Surprise,” I said.
McKesson eyed the cuffs that dangled from my wrists. The right bracelet hung open. With the sunglasses on, there had only been a rippling sensation of resistance that quickly gave way. It was as if the lock had turned to rubber. I’d hoped it would work that way, and it had.
“You don’t want to do this, Draith,” he said quietly.
“Do you always arrest people by pistol-whipping them?”
“Only murdering scum like you.”
I stared at him for a second. This was the first I’d heard I was a murderer. The scary part was, for all I knew he was right. I decided to bluff it through.
“Am I a suspect, then? In what murder?”
“You’re a perp in one case and a suspect in a dozen more,” he said. His eyes strayed toward the thing that still approached us with agonizing slowness. A crawling slug of hot, molten stone.
I pressed the short barrel of my .32 automatic into the flesh of his throat and took his gun out of his hand. I turned him around, but kept the two of us face-to-face. The stone slug was now behind him, still crawling across my lawn, leaving a blackened trail as it came. McKesson’s eyes widened, showing the glistening whites. He flicked his gaze this way and that, breathing harder, but he couldn’t see the thing that crawled closer with infinite slowness behind him.
“You know what it’s going to do when it gets to you, don’t you?” I asked. “I have a feeling a man’s legs will broil nicely, from its point of view.”
“You won’t be able to control it if it gets to a source of fuel,” the detective said. “It’ll get you too.”
“What source of fuel?”
“My body fat.”
I peered at him, suspecting bullshit, but there was no hint of a lie there. I felt vaguely disgusted. I dared a glance over his shoulder. The thing had passed over its first plastic-headed sprinkler. A wisp of steam rose up. The slug made an unhappy, mewling sound. It slowed down a fraction more, probably from contacting a source of cold water. McKesson didn’t know that, though.
“What the hell is it doing?” he demanded.
“It’s eyeing your haunches and speeding up.”
“You’ve got my gun, just run for it. I’ll catch up to you later.”
“If I’m a killer, why shouldn’t I knock off one more?”
“You haven’t killed any cops yet. If you had, there would have been five of us waiting for you to show up out here.”
I glanced back behind him, faking a startled look. I pulled him forward by the shirt collar, keeping the gun under his chin. He stumbled forward.
“What?” he asked.
“It was just getting a little close. But I’m not done with you yet.”
McKesson was breathing harder and sweating now. “Ask me something then, asshole.”
“Ah, ah—I prefer Mr. Draith.”
“Yeah, OK,” he said, glaring. “Mr. Draith.”
My cheekbone was throbbing and I thought about making him call me sir. But I decided not to waste any more time.
“Hard, fast questions; hard, fast answers. Any bullshit and I push you a step back.”
“Ask then, dammit.”
“What the hell is that thing that’s about to crawl up your calf?” I asked. “How can a rock move?”
“Do I look like a frigging scientist? It’s just a living piece of flaming rock. Some call it a lava slug.”
“Are they always this slow?”
“Only when firemen accidentally spray them with hoses.”
“How do you know so much?” I asked. “Do you keep them for pets?”
“Not me.”
“You just burn down houses by planting them?”
“Not me either,” he said, his teeth clenched.
“Who, then?”
Detective McKesson shrugged. “People. The Community.”
I recalled Dr. Meng using that term. The Community. “Give me a name, a place.”
“You know a couple of names already.”
I pulled him suddenly toward me again, forcing him to take two stumbling steps toward the sidewalk. He came with me, alarmed.
“Oops,” I said.
“What?” he asked quickly.
“It almost got you,” I lied. The creature was still a good distance away. It was definitely going slower now that it traveled over cool grass and earth rather than the ashes of my house. “How about you and me getting into your car and getting out of here?”
“You’re letting me take you in? Good choice, Draith. You might get a plea out of this.”
“No, Jay,” I said, “I’m going to let you keep answering questions in a different environment. I’m keeping both the guns.”
McKesson tried again to look through the back of his head. I had to give him credit: if it had been physically possible, he would have managed it right then.
“Kidnapping?” he asked. “Maybe you were innocent, but you are stacking up real felonies right now.”
“You burned my house down by putting some kind of alien rock in it and then waited until I got home, at which point you smashed me in the face,” I said. “Can you understand why I’m not in a trusting mood?”
McKesson stared at me and read my eyes. I stared back flatly.
“OK,” he said. “I’ll drive. I can’t stand another second with that thing behind me.”
We climbed into his car and drove off together. He didn’t snap on the lights until we’d reached the corner.
“Where are you driving?” I aske
d. I still had the pistol out, but it was resting in my lap now. I kept my hand on the grip and my finger on the trigger. Occasionally, I caught his eyes flashing down to look at it, then away again.
“There’s a place I know where we can talk,” McKesson said.
“Your station or a coffee shop?”
“A twenty-four-hour place with good pie.”
“All right.”
The detective relaxed a fraction. Maybe he thought we had some kind of bond going.
“You going to put that thing away?” he asked me.
“No,” I said. “Not yet. I’ve got plenty of questions. Such as what murder you suspect me of having committed.”
“Good idea,” he said brightly. His mood and demeanor shifted. “Let’s assume for the moment you are innocent. We can help each other out.”
I glanced at him. “How?”
“Let’s pool what we know. How did Tony’s murder go down?”
I shook my head. “I really only know what I heard from an eyewitness. I was in the passenger seat, we crashed, and he apparently choked to death in a freak accident.”
“Ha!” McKesson exclaimed. “Come on. You were there. You know what happened to him.”
I eyed him. “I can’t remember the accident. I was hauled off to the hospital too, remember?”
“Useless.” McKesson sighed, shaking his head and rubbing his chin. “Totally useless. I got more out of the whore who found you on the sidewalk.”
I looked at McKesson suddenly, deciding I didn’t like him much. Clearly he was talking about Holly. Was he the one she was afraid of now? I frowned, increasingly annoyed. “What about this exchange of info? What happened to my house? What happened to Tony? What do you know?”
McKesson shrugged disinterestedly. “Not enough. Tony Montoro was a small-time thief who ran a strip joint to launder his money. He died mysteriously on the night of the twenty-seventh with a gut full of sand.”
“Sand? You mean like actual sand?”
“Yeah, sand. We live in a desert, you know. His gut was full of sand. His lungs too. He suffocated, exploding with the stuff.”
I nodded. That matched with Holly’s story. It was freakish indeed. What a way to go. I wondered how long you would remain conscious. A minute? Longer? I wasn’t sure.
We pulled into a parking lot.
“This is the place,” McKesson said. “You want to give me back my gun?”
I eyed him. “We’re not best friends yet,” I said. “You never even told me what I was accused of.”
“We going in, or what?” he asked.
I eyed the place. It looked like a dump, but sometimes these cheap little hole-in-the-wall places had the best food. Cops always seemed to find places like that.
“Are you still planning to arrest me?” I asked.
“Eventually,” he said.
“How about tonight?”
“Are you buying?”
I thought about it. “Yeah,” I said.
McKesson sighed. “All right. You’ve got the gun, and you’re not my biggest problem tonight. We can call a truce. You forget about the slap and don’t talk about the loose cuffs. I’ll pretend you got by me. We’ll sort it out later. But I can’t promise I won’t be coming after you tomorrow.”
I thought about the offer. Even as far as it went, I wasn’t sure it was genuine. But I needed some kind of ally. I figured I could always slip his cuffs again, or get out of his car, as long as I had the sunglasses. He didn’t seem to understand their power yet. I decided to risk it.
“You’ve got a deal,” I said, and I put the gun away.
McKesson got out of the car and walked into the place as if we were old friends. Had he read me so well that he knew I wouldn’t take off running? Was he just swaggering and overconfident? Was all of this some kind of elaborate con job? I really wasn’t sure. He left me wondering what to do next.
The place looked like a dump inside. Ugly old wallpaper with small images of banana splits, hamburgers, and frying pans was everywhere. The seats had rips in them showing yellowed foam rubber.
We sat across from one another in a booth and ordered pie. His was lemon meringue. Mine was coconut cream. He was right—the pie was excellent. Unsurprisingly, it was also cheap.
The waitress recognized McKesson and knew he was a cop. The coffee was free and she refilled it whenever it was halfway down. I smiled at the arrangement. This was a cop hangout, a business with an inexpensive security plan in place.
“You still haven’t told me what I’m suspected of doing,” I said when my pie had been reduced to crumbs.
“All of it,” he said. “You’ve been in or around a dozen strange murders. With this last case you were in the guy’s car at the time. When the showgirl fell from a hundred feet into her own dressing room, you were in the hallway outside. When the bum exploded into flames and burned happily to ashes, you were there, snapping pictures for your blog. The list goes on.”
I thought about his list. I hadn’t realized I’d been present at these crime scenes. I didn’t doubt McKesson, however. Strange events seemed to occur in my vicinity. I couldn’t deny that.
“I’m not a killer,” I said.
“I don’t believe you.”
I frowned. Was I a killer? I supposed I might have pulled a trigger or two in my lifetime. The gun had felt natural in my hand. I knew how to use it, where to place it. The thought was disturbing. Was I one of those guys who woke up happy and forgetful after every psychotic killing?
“Maybe ignorance truly is bliss,” I said, frowning into my coffee. “But I’m more determined than ever to figure out what the hell is going on in this town. No one seems to know everything, but everyone I meet seems to know more than I do. And we all have one thing in common: we are all paranoid.”
McKesson laughed. “You’ve got that right, Draith.”
“You have a family, Detective?”
“No. You?”
“I don’t think so.”
McKesson nodded. “Let me clue you in there: you’re right. You don’t. I would have been sitting at your momma’s place, if you had one. I mean, what kind of perp comes back to their burned-down house a week later? It was a long shot.”
“Why didn’t you look for me at the sanatorium?”
He shook his head and snorted. “No one goes into that place—not if they want to come back out.”
I didn’t reply to that. I was too busy thinking about Dr. Meng and her odd staff. The halls were quiet, and the rooms were windowless. It was a weird, dangerous place. I didn’t want to go back there, although I knew I might have to.
“So what else have you got for me?” McKesson asked.
“You give me more first,” I said, bluffing.
McKesson shook his head. “No way. I’ve told you too much as it is.” He leaned forward and gave me an intense stare. “But this isn’t over between us. We have a truce right now, tonight, but don’t think that makes us tight. When the time comes, I’ll do what I’ve got to do. Just so we understand each other.”
I nodded and sipped my coffee calmly.
“Right,” I said. “I hear you. And just so you know, I’m not your typical, terrified perp on the run. I’m in this to find out what the hell happened to me—what the hell is happening to my hometown. And I’ll go right through anyone who gets in my way.”
McKesson studied me for a second, then leaned back, smiling and checking out the waitresses. He nodded. “The funny thing is, you and I want the same thing.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “Does that mean you are going to let me dig into this? Without harassment? Like you said, we are on the same mission.”
McKesson stared at me. “Maybe. For a day or two. That’s all I can do. We all have our masters, you know.”
I thought about Dr. Meng, and I wondered if he had someone like that behind him—some member of the “Community,” as they liked to call themselves, who pulled his strings.
I nodded finally. “I understand.�
�
“You know what you are, Draith?” he said, looking me in the eye. “You’re what they call a hound. A bloodhound who finds things. The Community uses your type, because most of them are stuck in one place in order to hold onto their power. Do you understand any of that?”
“Yeah,” I said. And I thought that I truly had begun to understand. These people who called themselves a Community had domains. Dr. Meng had explained that. She had also indicated I was a fringe member, a minor personage barely worthy of note in this community of important people. I suspected I was looked upon the way celebrities might look upon a lifelong member of the paparazzi. I was a face they’d grown to recognize among what they otherwise considered to be a crowd of gawking vermin.
“I get it, all right,” I said. “You and I are both hired hands. Meng called me a rogue.”
“Exactly,” he said.
“Do rogues work together?”
“Sometimes—or sometimes we kill each other.”
“We came close to doing both tonight,” I said. “Who are you working for then?”
“Myself.”
I snorted. “Liar.”
“Do you work for Meng?” he demanded.
I shook my head. “She gave me a hand—sort of. But I’m not her servant.”
“So, you understand my position then.”
I looked at him. “OK. You aren’t a power player, but you are a player. Is that what you are saying?”
“Yeah.”
“So just give me the name, then. Who else wanted Tony murdered? Who is on the top of your suspect list?”
McKesson looked around as if the walls themselves were listening. Maybe they were.
“No names,” he whispered. “But I’ll give you a place: The Lucky Seven. You might just find somebody interesting there—dressed in white.”
“OK,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Now you give me something,” he said, putting out a hand and making tickling motions in the air. “My gun.”
