Karen shifted in her seat, looking straight out ahead. We hadn’t spoken since the hospital, but she clearly knew we’d arrived at our destination.
A small parking lot on the street side of the building stood empty, save for two large, rusted dumpsters by the front door. I pulled the Mustang into one of the spots furthest from the entrance and killed the engine. I’m not exactly sure why I chose to park so far away.
Whatever the reason, I’d be grateful later.
My companion opened her door in silence.
I reached out to grab an arm, holding her back. “Karen, I don’t know what’s in there.”
Transfixed, she didn’t take her eyes from the warehouse—but neither did she pull away. “Answers.”
Shaking my head, I shrugged. “Maybe…and maybe not. At least let me take the lead.”
Karen glanced over. Tears still threatened at the corners of her eyes, but did not fall. She nodded hesitantly.
I didn’t give her a chance to reconsider the decision. In one swift motion, I released her, pushed open my door, and slipped out of the car. Doing my best to pretend the spooky warehouse of death looming ominously above did not bother me, I strode confidently forward.
Well, I did my best to at least look confident. In truth, I was scared as hell. I had no idea what waited for us inside.
A car door closed behind me. Footsteps hurried to keep up.
As I approached the dumpsters, I slowed, examining them carefully. Their placement bothered me, as if they’d been left there deliberately—sentinels guarding the fortress. I couldn’t help but feel they were important, or would be.
Of course, I’ve been wrong before.
With a shrug, I continued on.
The front door was metal, rusted but still intact. Deep craters marred the surface, as if from heavy hammer blows. A thick mat of cobwebs covered the door, frame, and even the craters.
Locks squealed and groaned in protest, straining to heed my summons. A section of the frame broke away with a loud crack, allowing the door to swing freely inward. The whine of its hinges echoed into the dark beyond the threshold.
Doors typically relock themselves after I’ve passed; that seemed unlikely this time.
Karen gasped behind me. If she asked, I’d just say I forced the lock.
Hopefully that would be convincing enough.
I turned back to Karen, only two steps behind. She didn’t even mention the door. “Give me a couple…” The words caught in my throat.
Movement across the street had stolen my attention—a flash in an abandoned second-story window. Three figures, dressed all in white, watched over us ominously.
They were too far off to make out details, but it didn’t matter. I was reasonably certain of who it was.
A part of me wanted Karen to look, to confirm I wasn’t going crazy. I knew, though, what she’d see.
The same thing as Elliott.
Nothing.
My spine tingled; it’s not like I wasn’t already nervous enough.
I’d just have to ignore my strange spectators until there was a good reason to do otherwise. I only wished I knew what they meant.
I put a hand on Karen’s shoulder, refocusing my attention. “Give me a couple minutes to check things out.”
She nodded, staring into the dark, oblivious to my distractions.
I had no idea what awaited inside but, while Karen was defenseless, my new job afforded certain skills and protections. I might not be invisible, but I could certainly be sneaky, and the scythe would make for one hell of a weapon should the need arise.
A wave of cold washed over me as I slipped inside the dark entry, which almost masked my tingling apprehension. I stumbled slightly. The nausea of assuming the Reaper’s visage seemed to grow stronger with each transition, as did the tainted lure of attraction. It felt as if two halves of me warred for control. Eventually, one would win, and the other would be lost.
If I didn’t move quickly, my building anxiety would root my feet in place. It seemed the beating of my heart might just echo off the walls.
The hallway ran for perhaps twenty yards before opening into the main body of the warehouse. A single, massive, two-story room filled the majority of the building. Beside the hall, a rusted metal staircase led to the second floor.
At the top of the stairs, a crumbling catwalk ran the perimeter of the building, directly below the ring of windows. Above the hallway sat an office, approximately thirty feet wide, which the catwalk met on both ends.
The windows, dingy from age, provided a muted gray illumination—enough to see by. Three large rolling doors sat in the back of the building, mirroring those in the front. The middle door sat open a few feet, under which a sliver of the Sound glittered in the sun.
A few discarded crates littered the warehouse floor, some intact but most shattered. More likely than not, they served as occasional beds for those with no better place to go.
I shuddered. The scene seemed subtly off, a vague impression I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Stepping forward, I once again asked to see how Karen’s husband had died.
A plastic sheet suddenly covered a large section at the center of the warehouse’s floor, surrounded by a ring of black smoke. Beneath the sheet, two of the smaller crates served as a makeshift chair. On this chair, a man sat slumped backward.
Even though the man’s wrists were bound together, as well as his ankles, he was not secured to the crates. He sat just right of center, hanging slightly off to one side.
Beneath a burlap hood, his breath was slow and steady—the breath of unconsciousness.
A shock of frustration shot through me as I sank to one knee. This was an afterimage, really nothing more than a movie. And I’d already seen the ending. Still, I desperately wanted to untie his bonds and set the man free.
He began to stir slightly, trying to speak words I couldn’t hear from beneath his hood, struggling weakly at his bonds.
Jerking upright, he cried out as the first red bloom appeared on his chest, above the heart. His hands shot up instinctively—a protective reflex. It did not stop the second red bloom, only an inch from the first.
The ghostly image lurched up off the crates, his breath ragged. Without warning, his head jerked backward violently. The rear of the burlap hood billowed outward, stained dark red.
For a collection of heartbeats, the man stood shockingly still and straight, as if only a marionette suspended by its strings.
And then those strings were cut.
Robert Winston tumbled to the ground.
Anger boiled within me. I choked back an outcry as the black smoke faded. I was growing accustomed to the sight of death. It was, after all, the nature of my business. What I’d just witnessed, though, wasn’t simply a death; it was a brutal, premeditated slaughter.
Absent from my vision once again was the fate of Robert’s secretary, who had vanished with him. It was always possible she’d left on vacation, or was playing hooky, or even that she was somehow involved in Robert’s murder.
None of that seemed likely.
I asked about her fate repeatedly, in every way I could think to phrase it. Without her name, the questions probably weren’t specific enough. Karen might know it, but she hadn’t come in and I didn’t feel like going out to retrieve her just yet.
So I cast a wider net: I asked to see all the deaths that had ever happened here.
The warehouse filled with rings of black smoke.
There were a few irrelevant images. A workman fell from a tall stack of crates, plummeting to the concrete floor. By the open rolling door, a tall Native American man faced a giant black bear wielding only his stone knife. In the opposite corner, a short, thick, naked woman with heavily furred body and broad, flat forehead stood screaming at the back wall of the warehouse; a massive, yellowed phantom of tusk swept through the wall to impale and carry her away.
Those periphery scenes barely registered. Men and women surrounded me, hooded and bound…at lea
st fifty, maybe more. Of them all, my eyes settled on the only child, a boy not more than ten. Some of the adults struggled, others slumped unconscious, but the boy sat upright and still; tears soaked the front of his hood.
Red stains blossomed on people throughout the crowd. Every person soon displayed the same angry red wounds, two on the chest and another on the head. One by one, they all collapsed lifeless.
The boy was the last left standing. The final impact had torn away his burlap hood. He stared straight ahead, undisguised confusion in his eyes as a line of red rolled down between them. Even after all the other images had vanished, he continued to stand.
I watched, filled with an icy dread.
Only a movie.
And I knew the ending.
With a final long, soft breath, this man that would never be crumpled slowly down.
“My goodness, Michael, is that you? Are you all right?”
Not until Karen spoke did I realize I was on my knees, screaming.
She stood not four feet away, searching but unable to see me.
I wiped my tears in private. Once composed, I let all drop away, revealing myself. Any hope of stealth had already been shattered.
Karen jumped at my sudden appearance. “Oh my, don’t sneak up on me like that!”
Ignoring her protests, I pointed to the spot where the image of her husband had fallen. “Right there, Karen. That’s where Robert was shot.”
The color drained from my companion’s face. “How… how do you know?”
I shook my head, ignoring her question. I needed to be more careful with what I shared, but right then I was too busy working on my own strained composure. “Twice in the chest, and once in the head; he was executed.”
“But…” Karen struggled to understand. I’d told her he was shot, but not the brutality of it. “Robert’s middle management. He just…my goodness…his company sells office supplies.”
Her body trembled, but I couldn’t comfort her. I wrestled with my own demons.
Just a boy…
“Why, Michael? Who would murder him like that?”
“I don’t know.”
I scanned the warehouse, remembering the slaughter. So many lives cut short.
Some far too short.
“Though I promise you this, Karen. Whatever it takes, no matter how long,” I curled both hands in tight, angry fists, “I will find them.”
XV
With a Bang
The Sound glittered dazzlingly in the late afternoon sun. A seagull floated above on a warm updraft. In the far distance, a few boats bobbed gently on the waves.
The scene was calm and beautiful.
I growled low in frustration.
Karen and I had spent twenty minutes searching the warehouse floor. There was nothing unusual, or out of place. No signs remained of what my Sight had revealed. The crates were no more than they seemed: discarded shipments of canned goods, long outdated.
I’m admittedly not a detective, but no clues revealed themselves to my untrained eye.
We’d considered investigating the warehouse’s offices above, but the single metal staircase proved badly rusted, much like the surrounding catwalk. The bottom step crumbled under Karen’s weight. It seemed unlikely we’d find any leads where we couldn’t reach ourselves.
I had slipped out back through the raised rolling door, leaving Karen to continue her fruitless inspection of the crates. The remains of two docks lay in the lapping waves behind the building, while a third dock still stood intact.
I don’t do much work with wood. I can swing a hammer and miss my thumb two out of three times, but I primarily leave that sort of thing to professionals. Still, it was obvious even to me that the remaining dock had been shored up underneath with boards from its fallen neighbors. New, dry wood would have probably been sturdier, but this repair would not be noticed from a distance.
Knowing what I did of the warehouse’s business, it wasn’t hard to imagine the dock’s purpose.
My blood continued to boil.
Someone needed to pay.
Karen’s calm voice floated out to me from inside the building. “Oh, Michael, a little help please.”
I slipped under the rolling door, back into the relative darkness of the warehouse. I looked around the crates, but Karen was nowhere to be seen.
And then I looked up.
Mrs. Karen Winston had managed to make her way to the second floor. She stood at the door to the offices, clearly perturbed.
She wiggled the door handle by way of demonstration. “It’s locked.”
An absurd image flashed through my mind of this frail, aging woman free climbing a sheer concrete wall. I looked around for something, anything, which made more sense.
“How the hell…”
Karen shook her head with a chuckle. “The stairs—every third one’s safe.”
I peered under the rusted staircase. Shiny new metal rods reinforced every third step. Exactly like the dock outside, the ascent was functional without appearing obviously repaired. It had fooled me.
But not Karen.
I might be filled with righteous rage, but she was a woman on a mission.
Carefully counting steps, I ascended to stand beside her at the office door, where I spent a few seconds pretending to pick the lock. In contrast to the warehouse’s front entry, this door swung open quietly, and quickly, at my request.
People didn’t use the front door…but someone did use this one.
Beyond was a simple, undecorated office with two desks, a three-drawer filing cabinet, and windows which overlooked the warehouse floor. At the room’s far end stood another door, partly open.
Karen began rifling through the desks; I ignored her, examining the scene below.
Something still bothered me—a tickling of my instincts. I couldn’t put my finger on anything in particular. The warehouse was one large, empty room, save for a few crates. There was one door in front, which I’d busted through…unintentionally. Dirty windows allowed in a filtered sunlight. Three garage bay doors faced the parking lot and street. Three similar rolling doors faced the Sound.
There was nothing else.
Behind me, I heard a filing cabinet drawer open. Karen had quickly abandoned her search of the desks.
With a shrug, I decided to investigate beyond the next door.
I found a small, windowless room; it was probably meant as a storage closet. Now it contained a cot, stand lamp and white plastic side table. A paperback novel lay open and upside down on the table, beside an unplugged electric pot of old coffee and a white ceramic mug.
Back in the office, Karen gave a disgusted grunt. A filing cabinet drawer slammed closed and another slid open.
I tossed back the covers, hoping to find something interesting or illuminating.
No such luck.
I dropped to all fours to search under the cot.
Karen grumbled again, slamming the second drawer to open the third.
I understood her frustration. This office was our last hope, our last lead, and the last place to look for clues. With a small sigh, I reached under the dark cot.
Karen’s shrill tone of excitement split the silence. “Michael!”
Startled, I jumped, bumping into the lightweight plastic table. It bucked sideways, tumbling both the book and mug to the floor. As it struck the concrete, the ceramic mug shattered, spraying coffee in all directions.
On instinct, I raised my arm protectively.
Drops of coffee struck my bare flesh, burning.
The fresh, hot coffee burned.
My eyes widened, again finding the pot. I finally noticed a detail I’d somehow missed before.
The pot was unplugged, but steam rose from within.
Everything clicked.
I ran back into the main office, staring down at the rolling metal doors. In particular, I stared at the middle door—the one that stood open.
Our assassin had gone to great lengths to keep this warehouse cl
ean and functional, while maintaining its abandoned appearance. The front door was unusable. The docks were crumbling, the stairs rusted.
Why, then, would he just leave the back door open?
He had been here, in this very office, drinking his coffee.
I must have spooked him by crashing through the front door. He ran, not wasting the time to close the exit in his wake.
I’d missed the bastard by seconds.
“Michael, I found something!”
Spinning on one foot, I grudgingly prepared to explain how close we’d come.
How I’d lost our quarry.
My voice caught in my throat.
Karen stood by the filing cabinet, the bottom drawer open. In her outstretched left hand, she clutched a stapled stack of paper. Her expression was giddy, triumphant.
Her aura had shrunk to a hair’s width, and if it wasn’t black it was so deep a red that the difference was trivial.
I asked carefully, “How are you feeling, Karen?”
“Oh, goodness, Michael! It’s Robert, he’s on the list!”
If I understood what the Sight was showing me, the woman would be dead in minutes, maybe less. Yet she practically floated—jubilant, triumphant. There was no sign that her heart was about to give out and kill her.
What had changed so quickly?
Karen took a step forward, pressing the stapled sheets toward me.
With a start, I realized her aura was moving. It undulated, swayed, almost danced.
Like flames.
Blood turned to ice in my veins.
We stood in the den of a killer, rifling through his things, untangling his secrets.
And he knew we were here.
“Time to leave!”
Karen tried to argue, but I didn’t give her the opportunity.
If I was right, we had at most one chance.
Quite possibly less.
I threw my companion unceremoniously over one shoulder like a sack of laundry. With my free hand, I swung at the exterior office wall. The scythe materialized mid-swing, cutting a long line through the concrete façade of the building. After two more quick swipes, a large chunk of the wall fell away, allowing a bright triangle of sunlight to spill into the enclosed space.
Far below us sat the dumpsters we’d passed on the way in.
His Name Was Death (Dead Man's Tale Book 1) Page 12
