Deadworld

by J N Duncan

  He turned and looked at Jackie, nodding once. The look on his face pained her. “Yes, my daughter will be the last, an eight-year-old girl, probably strawberry-blond hair, brown eyes, thin as a cornstalk.”

  Gamble pulled out a pad of paper and scrawled down some notes. “Shit, Nick. I’m sorry, man. I can’t even imagine. We need to get moving. I really want to nail this fucker.”

  “Okay,” Nick said. “What leads do you have on this?”

  “Nothing yet. Nobody saw anything. Parking-lot video shows nothing, so he carried her up here from somewhere. I’ve got some guys checking the grounds-”

  Nick shook his head. “They won’t find anything. He didn’t walk here.”

  “So he just popped in out of thin air?” Gamble took a step back in disbelief when he realized Nick was being serious. “Christ. This is so fucked up. Jack? You can take over anytime now.”

  Take over what? She had no idea where to go with what they had any more than he did. How did you deal with a guy who ignored the usual laws of being human? “I’ll guess this scene is clean. The doll is the clue, but what we do with it, I have no idea right now. Nick? You think of any connections at all the doll might have?”

  The frustration on his face was apparent. “Not off the top of my head, no. It might not have any connection at all.”

  Shelby stepped into the room then, looking a little windblown. Jackie realized the speed with which she had arrived defied reason. “Something to do with doll making, perhaps?”

  Gamble snorted. “That would narrow it down to every craft store in the Chicago area, not to mention any community groups that do any of that stuff.”

  They would never cover those kinds of possibilities within the day or so they likely had. There had to be something though. Standing around waiting for a killer to kidnap a little girl so he could drain her blood was unthinkable. “We have nothing else right now, so at least it’s a start. The guys in the Geekroom might be able to make some kind of connection for us.” She needed to contact them ASAP to find out if there had been anything new in the past day.

  “And,” Gamble added, “you need to get downtown and get clearance to be doing this. I went out on a limb getting you over here, Jack. So go sign whatever papers you have to before you put my ass in a sling.”

  Shit. That meant talking to Tillie. “I will, don’t worry. I’m going to want updates every hour, and if we don’t have anything definite by five, I’m taking this to the six-o’clock news.”

  Gamble winced. Shelby smiled in agreement, and Nick looked resigned to the obvious publicity it would make. They had no choice. A public warning just might give whatever little girl Drake had picked out a chance.

  “Boss may not like that one too much,” Gamble said.

  Jackie shrugged. “He’ll deal.”

  The annoying chirp of a cell phone interrupted them, and Nick pulled his out of his pocket, cocking an eyebrow as he looked at the screen. Even before it reached his ear, Jackie heard what sounded a lot like someone throwing up.

  “Cynthia?” Nick said, looking worried. “Cyn, you okay?” The sound of shattering glass had him pulling the phone away from his ear. “Shit. We need to leave. Now.”

  Shelby stepped up to him and grabbed his arm. “What’s going on?”

  Nick shoved the phone into his pocket and was already moving toward the door. “No idea. Cyn’s in trouble.”

  “Need our help?” Gamble said.

  “Maybe,” Nick called out over his shoulder. He was already running for the door.

  By the time Jackie caught up to them, Shelby was on her BMW. Nick was getting into the driver’s side of the Durango. He motioned to her to hurry up. “Give me your keys.”

  For a second, Jackie hesitated. She’d never handed the keys over to anyone other than Laurel. She didn’t trust anyone else to drive her around, but the look of panic on Nick’s face pushed the trepidation aside, and she tossed her keys to him before getting into the passenger side.

  “Where we going?”

  “Not far. Buckle up.”

  He gunned the engine and didn’t even bother backing out. The Durango spun its wheels for a moment and then churned up grass and mud as it sped across the lawn toward the street.

  Not far was a twenty-minute ride through hell. They followed Shelby, catching up to and losing her several times as she dodged around traffic, jumped several sidewalks, and occasionally defied the laws of physics. Jackie braced her feet on the floorboard and held on to the handle over the door for dear life. The flashing light on top did little good, as Nick was going far too fast for anyone to notice in time to pull over to the side of the road. For the first time, she realized how Laurel must have felt during the few chases they had been on together. She swore never to take being a passenger for granted again.

  Sliding around a corner into a quiet neighborhood of mostly 1930s bungalows, Nick finally eased off the gas as they approached the end of the street. “Call nine-one-one.”

  Jackie then realized the source of his order, a black plume of smoke rising over the treetops up on their left. She barely got the call through before Nick bounded over the curb and slid to a halt in the front yard of a house in chaos.

  “This is FBI Agent Rutledge. We have a house fire at… Nick, where are we?”

  “Thirteen-fifty Applewood!” he yelled at her. He was already out the door.

  Jackie repeated the address and left the phone in the seat of the truck before leaping after him.

  Shards of glass were scattered across the front lawn, the remnants of the living room window having been blown out. Flames licked at the sides while a curtain of black smoke whipped upward into the sky. Shelby’s motorcycle lay on its side in the grass, and Jackie ran around it, heading for the front door, where Nick shoved Shelby aside and kicked it in off its hinges. He started to move in but immediately turned and ducked when a piece of furniture, an end table by the look of it, bounced off his back and went tumbling into the yard.

  Jackie drew her Glock and crouched as she approached the blown-out window, but the haze of smoke made it difficult to see what was going on inside.

  “Stay back!” Shelby yelled. “The little fucker is on a rampage.”

  “Is Cynthia in there?” she wondered.

  Nick turned and pointed a finger at her. “Stay here. Don’t come in unless I say so.” His finger shifted to Shelby. “You, too!” With that, he assumed a defensive crouch and darted inside.

  What the fuck? Since when did the law remain outside while the civilian entered a potentially lethal situation? Shelby looked at Jackie and rolled her eyes in Nick’s direction. She didn’t need to say anything for Jackie to know what Shelby intended. Jackie returned the nod and ran up next to the door, gun held at the ready. With Shelby’s second nod indicating her readiness, they rolled around the edge of the doorway and entered the house.

  Smoke clouded the initial view looking from the entry into the living room, but Jackie didn’t even have time to react to the box of CDs that came zipping out of the gloom and caught her solidly in the thigh.

  “Son of a bitch!” She leaped across the hardwood floor to take cover against the edge of the archway leading into the room. Able to see inside more clearly, the scene froze her in her tracks before she could follow behind the hunched-over form of Nick.

  A tornado had spawned in the middle of Cynthia’s living room. Every loose item in the room, from vases to books and every possible form of decorative knickknack, whirled about the room with deadly speed. Fire was beginning to take over the ceiling above the front window, and an overstuffed chair beside it was spewing forth dark, acrid smoke.

  In the middle of the floor between the window and the fireplace on the far wall, two figures, pale and translucent, were engaged in a fight. It looked like a poorly functioning hologram was playing out the fight scene from a movie. One figure wore a derby hat with a long trench coat and had the smaller, far slighter figure in a choke hold. Jackie watched the smaller one stom
p on the arch of the derby man, and he made a silent yelp of pain before letting go. The figure turned, and Jackie’s breath froze in her lungs.

  It was Laurel. Jackie fired a shot at the man, only to see a cloud of plaster explode from the wall behind him.

  “Use that table, Jackie!” Shelby said before diving into a roll across the floor to reach Nick, who knelt on the floor beside the far end of the couch on the other end of the room.

  A small table stood behind Jackie in the entry, a pair of flowering plants perched on top. She was not quite sure what Shelby meant until a candlestick whistled by her head and dented the plaster in the wall on the far side of the entry. She quickly holstered the gun and grabbed the table, hoisting it up before her as a shield.

  She followed them in, one eye on Laurel, who struggled against the far more powerful man. She blocked his roundhouse punches, flashing her fist in with quick jabs to the man’s face. Where had she learned to fight like that? Something heavy and wooden slammed into the table, nearly wrenching it from her hands, and Jackie was forced to refocus her attention on Nick, who was struggling to his feet with Cynthia’s limp body cradled against his chest. A six-inch metal figurine bounced off his shoulder, and Nick dropped back to a knee, swearing up a storm.

  “Get out of here!” he ordered. “Run!”

  Shelby grabbed the couch, picking it up from one end, and spun it around at the flying objects, knocking a good many of them to the ground. Nick, hunched over the unconscious body of Cynthia, made a lunging run for the front door. Jackie turned and caught a six-inch-diameter candle, spinning like a Frisbee, in the side of her left knee, dropping her to the floor before she even got the cry of pain out of her mouth. The table shield went tumbling to the floor as her hands went straight to the explosion of agony in her knee.

  “Fuck! Shelby-” Her call for help got cut off when a two-inch-thick book jammed itself into her ribs just under her right breast. Another candle, the size of a softball, caught her in the left side just beneath the ribs, and the last of her burning breath escaped her lungs in a whoosh. She blinked back tears, partly from pain, the rest from the smoke, and began to crawl for the door.

  “Take her, Shel!” Nick’s voice yelled ahead of her. A moment later, he was beside Jackie, his hand digging into her arm.

  Jackie felt herself pulled half up off the floor as he dragged her back to the entry. She finally struggled to her feet, shaking loose of his grip. I can take care of myself, goddamnit.

  Something bounced off Nick’s back, and he winced. “Go, damn you.”

  “I can handle-”

  Jackie never completed the sentence, as yet another of Cynthia’s candles found its way out of the living room and struck her in the side of the head, sending the world into darkness.

  Chapter 39

  The firemen were rolling their hoses back up, satisfied that Cynthia’s house was safe from smoldering back into flames. Water dripped from the eaves like tears over the gaping wound of the front window, exposing the now hollowed, gutted living room inside, strewn with soggy, smashed debris. At least it was repairable. Cynthia had been wheeled away, still unconscious, but stable. Nick had hoped she would wake enough to offer some explanation, but all he could do now was hypothesize.

  Something had come for her. Likely a goon of Drake’s. The question was, why? Laurel had come to stop him. How had she known? What was happening on the other side? How? He wondered about Reg. He generally had the beat on anything ghostly going on. It worried Nick that nothing had been heard from Reg for a while now, and his call to him earlier had gone unanswered. Deadworld was becoming the great unknown factor in all this. Drake’s trump card. It was all a matter of blood. Nick turned away from the ruins of Cynthia’s bungalow, hands thrust in his pockets, and made his way toward the street.

  Shelby’s motorcycle was gone. She had left almost immediately to check on Cynthia and then head out to look for Drake. Jackie sat in the front seat of Belgerman’s car, parked behind the paramedic’s truck. She had refused to go to the hospital, even though the knot on the side of her head likely indicated a mild concussion. She should have been in the damn hospital. Against his better judgment, he approached and squatted down next to her, holding on to the open door for support.

  “Not going to the hospital, are you, Agent Rutledge?”

  She opened her eyes and lifted the cold pack from the side of her head. “Would you?”

  Nick grimaced. “No, but that’s beside the point. You might have a concussion.”

  “And a little eight-year-old girl might be dead by tomorrow if we don’t figure out what the fuck to do.”

  The better part of him knew to just get up and walk away. There was no point arguing with her-stubborn to the bone, which likely accounted for her appeal in a frustrating-beyond-reason kind of way. She would keep going until she collapsed, and in her current condition would likely serve the case little good.

  “You aren’t going to catch anyone at the moment, Jackie. You need rest. I’m surprised Belgerman hasn’t ordered you home.”

  She stared at him for a moment, mouth working in furious silence. “You done being good samaritan now? Do you feel better that you’ve checked up on me? If you hadn’t been playing the fucking hero, I might have gotten out of there without getting waxed.”

  “Hero?” He bit back the rest of his retort. No point fanning flames. She was hurt and pissed. “It was a bad situation in there, Jackie. It could have been a lot worse.”

  “I’m not blind! Christ, I saw what was going on,” she snapped back but then sagged into the seat with a groan, putting the pack to her head. “What the fuck was going on in there?”

  Nothing like a concussion to batter the bravado down. He just wanted to make sure she was going to take care of herself. She looked so small and fragile now, battered, bruised, and emotionally wrung out. If he had been Belgerman, there was no way he would have let her continue. Beyond the fact that the case was too dangerous, she had lost her partner. He had figured there was mandatory leave when events like that happened, unless of course Belgerman was letting it slide until the case was over. Nick would have to ask him about that. If she could be forced to sit the rest of this out, all the better.

  “My guess is Drake sent someone to get Cynthia, and Laurel came to stop him.”

  Jackie was quiet for so long, Nick thought she had fallen asleep. Finally, she said, “How? Why? I don’t get it.”

  “Neither do I,” he said. “I’m going to the hospital after this to check on Cyn. Hopefully, she’ll be conscious and be able to shed some light on things.”

  Jackie nodded. After a moment, a single tear trickled out of a closed, puffy eye, and Nick resisted the urge to reach out and wipe it away. “Laurel’s dead, and she’s still working the case.”

  He had not even considered that line. So much for sending Jackie home. She would probably kill the person who tried. “It seems Laurel is trying to help us. I am, too, Jackie. I’ve been dealing with this kind of thing for a long time. If I tell you to keep back, it’s not to play hero-”

  She sat up, eyes suddenly alive with indignation. “Are you running the FBI now, Nick? Did Belgerman die and make you boss?”

  “Look, Jackie-”

  “No! You look.” She threw the pack at him, and Nick stumbled back, catching the pack against his shoulder. “You’re just a fucking civilian PI. This is my case! You don’t give the orders around here, Sheriff.” The last came out with a nasty sneer in her voice. “You want to play hero, go… just go! Leave me the fuck alone.”

  Nick stood up. It was time to bail before things got even uglier. “All right. When you’ve got things situated again, call me. I’ll be out looking for Drake.”

  “Everything okay over here?” Belgerman walked up and stopped behind Nick, his face heavy with worry.

  “It’s fine,” Nick said. “I was just leaving.”

  Jackie reached out and yanked the car door closed. “Can we get the hell out of here?”


  Belgerman cocked an eyebrow at Nick. “Sure. Things appear to be under control here. We need to get that head of yours looked at.”

  Jackie looked incensed. “The paramedics already-”

  “Looked at it and said you should go in to make sure you don’t have a concussion or cracked ribs or anything else. So just sit back and relax, Jack. I’m ordering you to have it looked at. Better?”

  “Fucking-A. Fine!” She fumed in silence as the window went up.

  Belgerman gave her a sarcastic little smile and laid a hand on Nick’s shoulder. “Call Gamble and check in with him to see what’s going on, if he needs your help with anything. You got his number?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “Was this Drake’s handiwork, Mr. Anderson?” he wondered, waving his arm at the house.

  “Looks that way.”

  “Okay, I think we need to have a little more informative briefing from you on things. Like this afternoon.”

  Nick agreed. “Tell me when. I’ll be there.”

  “Good. I’ll let you know by noon.”

  Belgerman walked around and opened up the car’s door. “Hey, you got a ride back?”

  “I can bring Agent Rutledge’s vehicle in.” He hoped that was all right. He had no other transportation available.

  “Just take it to your place and lock it up. We’ll send someone out later to pick it up.”

  “Will do. Thanks.”

  Jackie was shaking her head, muttering something under her breath, and Nick was glad the window was up so he didn’t have to hear. He felt bad for her, and the guilt ate at his insides. He had tried to keep them out of this, tried to keep her away, but there was no denying a woman like Jackie Rutledge. She was like the hunting dog who had found itself in a losing battle with a bear, but once latched on to it, she was not going to let go until either she or the bear was dead.