The Rook pbf-2

by Steven James

Tossed it into the blinking darkness.

  That would have intimidated me, but not this guy. Unfazed, he leapt at Ralph and unleashed a vicious packet of swift karate chops to Ralph’s neck and chest that stunned him for a moment, but Ralph landed an uppercut to the guy’s jaw that sent him toppling backward, and then Ralph was on him, crushing him to the concrete. A moment later Ralph had rolled him over and cuffed the guy’s hands behind his back.

  Law enforcement and medical personnel were streaming past me.

  Ralph heaved the suspect to his feet, and the SDPD officers swarmed around him. “Nice timing,” Ralph said sarcastically, handing the guy off to them. Then he rubbed his neck where the guy had karate chopped him. “He’s a frisky little fellow.”

  As Ralph brushed himself off, I shook my head. “Ralph, why didn’t you just pull your weapon on him?”

  Ralph held up a huge meaty fist. “I did.”

  As he held up his hand, I noticed that his little finger was angled sideways, dislocated either from punching the suspect, or perhaps from tackling him. I pointed toward the finger, and Ralph stared at it for a moment. Then he wrapped his other hand around it and, with a slight grimace, yanked the finger forward and then sideways, popping the joint back into place. “Just the way I like it,” he said.

  “Fast and clean.”

  I think Ralph needs to get a hobby. Yoga maybe. Or one of those little Japanese rock garden deals. That, or a good therapist.

  Then he jogged toward Cassandra and the shattered tank, and I noticed Detective Dunn coming my way. “What do we have?” he asked.

  “There’s at least one more,” I said. “Could be anywhere in the building.”

  “Flare out,” Dunn ordered his men. “Cover the space. Bring him in.” Immediately, the officers spread out across the warehouse to secure the premises.

  I took advantage of the moment to settle my breathing. To calm down, to begin processing what had just happened. Austin Hunter was dead. Cassandra Lillo was alive. We had a suspect in custody.

  Yes, breathe, breathe.

  Breathe.

  Tessa slipped into her hotel room with her secret, fresh raven perched on her arm. Her skin was so sore that it really did feel like the bird’s claws were clenching her. She winced as she closed the door.

  Before she’d left the studio, Riker had given her a half-used bottle of antibacterial soap to wash her raven. “You can put a little hand lotion on it too,” he said. “But not too much or it’ll draw out the color.” Then Lachlan had wrapped her arm with gauze and told her to wait an hour before removing it.

  But now that she was in her room, she was anxious to see her tattoo, so she gingerly shed her shirt and peeled off the soft gauze covering.

  Her skin was red and swollen. And tender. Very tender. But the raven really was beautiful.

  Lachlan was as good as Riker had said.

  Tessa gently washed her tattoo, and then curled up on a pile of pillows on the bed, pulled out her notebook, and began to write about the deep blue depths of Riker’s eyes.

  As two officers began reading the suspect his rights, someone found the main set of lights and snapped them on. A flood of fluorescents woke up, the warehouse came into view, and for the first time I was able to get a good look at the suspect. Late twenties, early thirties, five-ten, one-hundred-seventy-five pounds. Light brown hair. Sable eyes that reminded me of the dark stones you might find at the bottom of a northern lake. Jeans, sweatshirt, leather boots.

  A number of discolorations and scars on his neck and face. No jewelry or visible body art or piercings. And bobcat tough, even against Ralph.

  Then I noticed that near the wall of the warehouse, beside the shattered remains of the tank, pools of water were sloshing lazily across the concrete, feeling out the grooves of the uneven floor. The water had probably helped remove any trace evidence from the area, but breaking the glass had been the only way to save Cassandra.

  Years ago I’d learned to pick locks, so I decided to help free Cassandra from the shackle on her ankle, but when I looked up I saw that the paramedics were already wheeling her toward me on a gurney. Maybe Ralph had helped pry the chain loose to free her.

  One of the EMTs walking beside Cassandra placed an oxygen mask over her mouth and began adjusting the dials. The doctors would need to check Cassandra out, of course, but it looked like we’d made it just in time. She appeared to be conscious and responsive. Lien-hua was walking beside her, holding her hand. Thankfully, Cassandra was lying down and didn’t see the suspect standing ten meters away. I could only imagine what her reaction would have been if she would have looked up at that moment.

  As the paramedics neared the door, the suspect called something to Lien-hua that I couldn’t hear. She stopped. Turned. “What did you say?” She let go of Cassandra’s hand and approached him. “I couldn’t quite make that out.” I thought he might be taunting her so I started walking in his direction to put an end to it.

  But before I could get there, he spoke again and I heard him this time. “That sure is a nice dress she has on,” he said. “I hope the water didn’t ruin it.” Without hesitation, Lien-hua stepped over the discarded clawed hammer, whipped around, and gave him a lead leg punch to the abdomen, driving him out of the clutches of the two SDPD officers beside him and sending him careening to the ground. Then she rushed him, and it took both Ralph and me to hold her back. She fought against us with a fierce strength that startled me. It was the first time I’d ever seen her lose her cool. The guy might sue or press charges, but I don’t even think she cared.

  Her reaction was so much like mine when Basque mocked Sylvia Padilla’s death thirteen years ago that it gave me chills.

  “Easy,” I whispered to her as she pulled against my grip. I felt the ropes of tension in her muscles. “Easy,” I said again. Finally, she began to relax, and Ralph and I let go of her, but we stayed close beside her, just in case.

  Dunn motioned for the officers to lift the suspect to his feet, and then stared at him toe-to-toe. “I can’t wait to get you downtown.”

  But the man just eyed Dunn coolly, as if the detective were the prey and he were the predator. “Sorry, detective.” He threw a glance toward Lien-hua. “But I’d rather dance with the lady. She’s going to be my next girlfriend.”

  Dunn got right in the guy’s face, and I thought we might have to restrain him too, but thankfully he held back. “Get this slimebag out of here.” Then, in a moment of uncharacteristic gentleness he walked over to Cassandra, brushed some of the wet hair from her forehead, and said, “It’s all over now. Everything’s going to be OK.”

  I took it all in. Took everything in.

  One of Dunn’s officers returned. “The warehouse is empty.”

  “Search it again,” I said. “We believe there were at least two abductors.”

  Dunn watched the paramedics wheel Cassandra away. “All right,” he said. “Scour it. Set up a perimeter. We’ll grill this guy about his partner once we get him to the station.” The officers all began their duties of searching and investigating and securing the scene.

  “Did we get anything from Drake?” I asked Detective Dunn.

  He shook his head. “He doesn’t know anything. We’ll follow up tomorrow.”

  I wanted to talk more with the suspect, find out Shade’s identity, learn what the device really was and why part of their demands involved burning down Building B-14. So many questions. And I wanted to talk to Cassandra too. Listen to her story of what happened at the Sherrod Aquarium, ask her about her research, and find out how much she knew about the fires Austin Hunter had set.

  But now wasn’t the time for any of that. The police needed to process the suspect, the doctors needed to treat Cassandra, and the criminalists needed to set up their crime scene perimeter, no doubt using the parking meters and stop signs on the streets surrounding the warehouse to string up their caution tape. As I was thinking about all these things, I heard Ralph mention offhandedly to Lien-hua that Executive Ass
istant Director Margaret Wellington had arrived in town and wanted to swing by the scene. Great.

  I realized that all in all, there wasn’t much else for Ralph, Lien-hua, or me to do here tonight, so we gave our statements, filled out the prerequisite paperwork. I turned in Austin’s cell phone as evidence, and then, as we were leaving, Ralph said to Lien-hua, “I bet that felt good. Kicking him like that.”

  “No,” she said. “It didn’t feel good. None of this feels good.

  None of it at all.”

  Her words sent my thoughts flying back to Basque yet again.

  That unforgettable night in the slaughterhouse. How it felt to hit him, to step over the line. And then, in light of Lien-hua’s words, I felt a dark surge of shame, because, unlike her, part of me had enjoyed the descent into the darkness. Part of me had wondered what it would be like to live on the other side of the line. And part of me still wondered, even after all these years.

  Only after Lien-hua and I had stepped outside the warehouse and were climbing into the car did I notice that some of her blood was still on my hand from when I’d tried to stop the bleeding of the gunshot wound on her neck.

  I laid my palm flat against my leg and held it there all the way back to the hotel.

  60

  10:02 p.m.

  Tessa finished her poem about Riker, the guy who’d told Lachlan to give her whatever she wanted. Then she closed up her notebook and pulled out a book of nineteenth-century French short stories that she’d been wanting to read.

  But after only a few minutes, her eyes weighed themselves down, and Tessa found sweet sleep coming to her in a tumble of dreams of ravens and sharks and dark waves kissing the shore.

  10:14 p.m.

  General Biscayne’s military escort plane leveled off for its final approach to the North Shore Naval Base on Coronado Island.

  He figured he would have just enough time to drive to his sister’s house in Carmel Valley, and still manage seven hours of sleep before returning for the Project Rukh Oversight Committee meeting at 0800 hours-the meeting during which he would terminate the DARPA contract with Drake Enterprises.

  10:26 p.m.

  Back in her hotel room, Lien-hua Jiang checked beneath the bandage on her neck. Thankfully, the wound didn’t look serious, and overall she felt remarkably good, despite how unnerving the night had been. Her leg was bothering her, however. She’d felt a stiff achiness stretching across her right thigh ever since the water from the shattered tank had knocked her down, but it wasn’t until she pulled off her jeans to change into sweatpants that she discovered the deep and wicked bruise on her thigh. One of the metal bars must have speared her as it fell to the ground, and with all of the adrenaline in her system she hadn’t noticed how serious the contusion was until now.

  Ice. That’s what she needed. Ice down the leg before going to bed. She grabbed the ice bucket, opened the door, and almost ran over Pat Bowers, who was standing in her path, his hand poised in mid-knock.

  “Hi,” he said, his hand still in the air.

  “Hi,” she said with a smile. “Are you practicing tai chi?”

  “Hm?”

  “Your hand.”

  “Oh. Right.” He dropped his hand. “Sorry, I um… I just wanted to check on you. Just wanted to make sure you’re OK.”

  “Well, thank you. I’m on my way to get some ice for a bruise on my leg.” She stepped past him, expecting him to ask if he could walk with her.

  “Hey, can I walk with you?”

  Absolutely. “Sure.”

  They walked side by side.

  Her hair was draped across the gunshot wound on her neck, and it surprised her when he gently slid her hair to the side. “Is your neck going to be all right?” Then his hand fell away.

  “I think so. The bullet just grazed me.” They reached the ice machine, and she placed the bucket onto the tray beneath the ice chute.

  “Here, I’ll help you.” He punched the button.

  “Wow. Thanks, Pat. I don’t think I could have managed that on my own.” “No problem.” He stood awkwardly beside her as the ice rattled and tumbled into the bucket.

  It seemed to take forever.

  Then, when the machine was cycling back to sleep and the bucket was finally full, Pat reached for it. “I can get that for you.”

  She’d already reached for it, however, and his hand barely missed glancing across hers as she picked it up. “I know it looks heavy, Pat, but I think I can manage.” For a moment she thought that if this night were being made into a movie, their hands would have touched. Guaranteed. And in a way she wished they had, even though it was a cliche, cliche, cliche.

  As she led the way back to the room, she found herself walking slower than she needed to.

  “You were good out there tonight,” Pat said. “Really good. Talking with Hunter. Helping Cassandra. Keeping us focused on finding her…” She could tell he was fishing for the right words, and it was kind of cute. “And this afternoon too,” he continued. “At the briefing… Very thorough. Very… professional.”

  “Well, thank you, Dr. Bowers. You were very professional today too.” They reached her door. “I could see you piecing things together, almost thinking like a profiler.”

  He let a smile drift to the corner of his mouth. “Lien-hua, here I come to check on you, and you insult me.” His five-o’clock shadow lent a deep masculinity to his face. “What possible motive could you have for that?”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in motives?”

  “Oh, I believe in them. I just think sometimes we have more than one influencing us at a time.”

  The question begged to be asked, and so, trying not to anticipate the answer, she threw it out there. “So, what ulterior motives did you have stopping by here tonight, Pat?”

  In reply, he lifted his hand as if he were going to knock on the door. “You guessed it before. Tai chi.” He began to move slowly through a series of tai chi moves. “Health benefits. Gotta stay fit.”

  “Well, I hope that works out for you,” she said. “And once again

  …” She flattened her right hand, lifted her fingers to her chin, then lowered them slowly.

  “That’s sign language, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it means ‘thank you.’”

  He repeated the sign. “You’ll have to teach me more sometime.

  I’d like to learn.”

  “OK. Sometime.” She slid the key into the lock and pressed the door open. She wanted this conversation to go on. She wanted to invite him into her room, but instead, she simply said what she was supposed to say to a co-worker who’d showed appropriate concern for her well-being. “Good night, Pat. I’ll see you in the morning.

  Really, I’m glad you stopped by to see how I was doing.”

  He gave her a slight nod, tapped the door with his finger, and said, “OK, see you in the morning. Take care of that leg. Your neck too.”

  She stepped into her room, eased the door shut, stood beside it for a moment, counted to five, then cracked it open to see if he’d left. When she saw that he had, she closed it again and went over to tend to her vase of dying flowers.

  Nearly ten minutes had passed before she noticed that the ice was melting in the bucket and the bruise was still throbbing on her leg.

  I’m an idiot.

  That’s all there is to it.

  A complete idiot.

  Oh, you were very professional today, Lien-hua. I stopped by at this time of night to tell you how professional you were. Here, let me stand in the hallway with my fist stuck in the air like a bad mime for a few more minutes. Did I actually say, “Health benefits. Gotta stay fit”? Did I actually say that?

  Just shoot me now.

  Well, at least I didn’t say what I was really thinking when she mentioned that she needed to ice down her leg. At least I didn’t say,

  “I could do that for you.” At least I didn’t say that.

  I’d kinda been hoping she might invite me into her room just to
debrief the day.

  Yeah, right-debrief the day.

  Just chill, Pat. Get some sleep.

  I tapped on Tessa’s door, but she didn’t answer. I figured she was either asleep or listening to her iPod. Probably both. I pulled out my phone to see if she’d left me another text message and instead found a voice mail: “I’ll see you in the morning, Patrick. Just don’t be all, ‘Let’s get an early start on the day!’ or anything. It’s annoying.”

  All right then, tomorrow we would catch up, and she could fill me in on how she’d spent the rest of her day.

  Although, based on a couple of the phone calls I’d made earlier in the afternoon, I thought I already knew. And she hadn’t spent much of her time at that Internet cafe that served imported coffee, or walking around Balboa Park. Instead, she’d spent nearly five hours at one of the seedy tattoo studios over on Market Street.

  Well, I could talk to her about that in the morning. For now, I needed some sleep.

  61

  Creighton Melice lay on the cot in his cell and let himself relax into the deep unknown. He dreamt of spiders, as he often did, but tonight, with the end so close at hand, the images seemed as real to him as moonlight and blood.

  And so. Now, his dream.

  A spider the size of a baby’s fist wriggles up his neck and across his face, brushing her feet against his lips, his cheeks, his eyelids, the soft indentation beneath his nose. In his dream he’s paralyzed, so he can see her dark body pause on his cheek, but he can’t move, can’t brush her away. It repels him and excites him at the same time, sending shivers of secret pleasure running all through his body.

  The spider rears back and lands with a prick in the middle of his cheek. He wants to scream but can’t make a sound; can’t brush her away. He feels the pressure, the widening wound, the gentle ripping sensation as she burrows into his cheek and the skin kisses open to receive her eggs.

  She deposits her skinned offspring, then, in one moist plop. And he can feel the small wet sacks soak onto his tongue.

  In the cocooned heat of his mouth it won’t take the eggs long to hatch.