Cold Hearted: A Yancy Lazarus Novel (Episode Two)

by James Hunter

  These ten weren’t all of ‘em—not by a fair margin—but still, Ferraro must’ve been thorough as an airport cavity search to find this many. A bunch of powerful folks had gone to a lot of trouble to bury those cases and to keep them buried. Color me impressed. Oh, and scared. Very scared. Absolutely nothing more terrifying than a strong, razor-sharp, determined, and competent person with you square in their crosshairs. Well, maybe centipedes, but you get the point.

  She pursed her lips into a tight line, tapping each photo in its turn. “Now, I can’t prove you killed all of these people, but I’ve got a pretty good hunch that you were involved somehow. Funny thing, though … I think all of these people may have been serial killers. All of them. Probably not enough evidence to go to court—some awfully bizarre circumstances in a lot of these cases—but I think you somehow found these people before the cops could put it together and took them out. Hell, you should probably get a medal for all your years of service.”

  Damn right I should. Someone out there ought to appreciate the river of crapola I’ve waded through in my days. But I knew Ferraro didn’t actually feel that way. She was trying to play me, trying to appeal to my ego, trying to play nice, so maybe I’d open up and brag just a little. If she didn’t have much evidence—and it was doubtful she did—then a confession was her golden ticket.

  “Can’t tell you the number of times I’ve thought about doing it.” She sat down on the edge of the metal table, looking at me over her shoulder as though confiding in me. “Bunch of scumbags, getting their kicks by torturing and killing innocent people. Sick. And a lot of them get off scot-free, escape the law, escape justice. So I get it, really. Tell me how you did it. How’d you identify them? How’d you know what they were doing? You know, maybe if you work with me, give me some details about these cases …” She smiled a secretive just-between-us grin. “Who knows, the D.A. might be willing to play ball. Show some significant lenience, even. After all, you were only mopping up the filth.”

  I snorted. Lenience. Yeah, right. Probably the most lenience I’d get was a needle to the arm instead of the electric chair. “Listen lady, I get that you’re just trying to do your job, I get that you think I’m the bad guy, and you’re just doing your part to get me off the streets. Working hard to close some cases. Bring some closure to families. Whatever. I get it, I do. But this isn’t my first rodeo, I’ve been on this ride before.” I could feel her tense up, shoulders knotting, muscles going tight.

  “You think you can schmooze me a little,” I said after a second, “play the sympathy card, bat your eyes at me, and tell me how you understand. Think if you play it right, I’ll fold like a bad hand of poker. Well, you obviously don’t know me as well as you think. I won’t give you a thing, because I didn’t do anything wrong. And I want a lawyer before I say another word.” I made a curt shooing gesture with one hand, the handcuffs rattling against the tabletop.

  I didn’t really want a lawyer—what could a lawyer do for me anyway? Even if Ferraro couldn’t pin all those homicides on me, she surely had enough to put me away for a couple of lifetimes. Which would suck a pile of cow patties, because hypothetically I could actually live long enough to serve two or three life sentences.

  But hopefully a lawyer could gum up the works a little, maybe buy me some time. Right now, they were holding me in some little podunk police station, with, I dunno, ten or fifteen cops tops. Probably fewer. My power had to come back eventually. I could still feel the Vis out there, waiting for me, and it’d be a damn bit easier to slip outta here than some big, maximum-security prison. Time was definitely my friend, and it would take a fair amount of time to wrangle up an attorney at this hour—an hour or two at least. Maybe even longer. It had to be late, and it’d been snowing when they brought me in. More time.

  Ferraro stood up, nodded, and then slammed her fist down on the table with a loud clang. “Yeah, okay.” No smile now, no sweet, alluring, understanding woman. “I’ll get you a lawyer, but don’t think it’ll help. I’m going to nail your ass to the wall. Do yourself a favor and confess. Tell me about the victims. Tell me how you escaped in Memphis and maybe the D.A. will take the death penalty off the table.”

  I snorted again, and waved her on.

  Ferraro reached for the door, but before she could grasp the handle, it swung in and another woman strutted into the room like an overconfident peacock. Damn if my jaw didn’t just about hit the table. She was kind of a plain-Jane, thin and petite, with shoulder-length brown hair hanging down in a loose sheet. Her face was thin and sharp, too harsh to be beautiful exactly, though she was handsome in her way. She wore casual business attire: a charcoal-gray skirt, a navy blouse, a pair of moderate heels, and black rectangular glasses. I didn’t know her name, but I’d met her once before at a bar called The Lonely Mountain in the nightmare city of the Hub.

  I didn’t know much about her, save that she’d helped me run down a lead in exchange for goodwill between us at some future, unspecified time. My guess was that now was that time. I also knew she wasn’t human.

  TEN:

  Lawyer Up

  “Who the hell are you?” Ferraro asked, placing her hands on her hips—one suspiciously close to her holstered weapon.

  “I’m his lawyer, of course,” the woman said. She smiled, awkwardly maneuvered her briefcase, and extended a welcoming hand. Ferraro looked at the proffered limb the way I might look at a coiled rattlesnake. I couldn’t blame her.

  My … well, my lawyer, I guess, just shrugged and brushed passed the surly agent, setting her things on the table. “I’m Jessica Fortuna, it’s a pleasure to meet you Special Agent Ferraro. I’m afraid I’ll need some time alone with my client, please.” She turned back to her briefcase, leafing through papers, the agent clearly dismissed and forgotten. I watched it all, not quite sure whether I should be cheering or cowering in the fetal position.

  At last, Ferraro rolled her eyes and stormed out of the interrogation room, the door slamming shut with a bang.

  The lawyer, who was certainly something much more, pulled out the metal chair across from me and sat, crossing her legs and smoothing her skirt.

  “Mr. Lazarus,” she said, “it’s good to see you again.”

  “Hey, ixnay on the whole real name thing, lady.”

  “We can speak freely and frankly without any worries for the time being, Mr. Lazarus.”

  “Okay, Ms. Whoever-you-are, so I’m guessing that you’re here to offer me some kinda deal in exchange for me doing something generally awful and probably life threatening. Am I on the right track?”

  “Of course you are. As you said to Agent Ferraro, this isn’t your first rodeo. But remember, you did promise to hear me out, to show me a little goodwill if ever the time came that I should require your assistance. And really, I’ll likely be of greater assistance to you than you will be to me—you’re really in a pickle here.” She stared at my cuffs, a small grin turning up the corner of her mouth. “And you can’t even use your power. Tsk, tsk,” she said, which got my full attention. “Quite a pickle.”

  “Yeah, it’s a real shitpickle alright,” I said. “Let’s not beat around the awkward conversation bush here. What in the hell do you know about my powers? What happened to them and how do I get ‘em back?”

  “All in due time, Mr. Lazarus, please be patient.”

  I grunted, annoyed to my toes and feeling about as far from patient as the sun is from the moon.

  “As I said to Agent Ferraro, my name is Jessica Fortuna.” She paused as though expecting some kind of recognition to dawn on my face.

  I just sat there starring on like a moron. What can I say, sometimes my devastatingly keen insight and wit surprises even me.

  “F-O-R-T-U-N-A,” she said again, slow and loud as though speaking to someone especially hard of hearing.

  Nothing. Bunch of crickets chirping in-between my ears—I’d just have to chalk it up to the fact that I was over-tired, over-hungry, and in a state of near shock. Totally justifia
ble idiocy.

  She rubbed at her temple. “You,” she said. “I can’t believe she chose you to be the Hand. My name is Fortuna … the root of the English word fortune.”

  “Fortuna …” Things started turning in the ol’ hamster wheel I call a brain. “Wait, are you Lady Luck?”

  “No, I’m For-tuna, the overseer of the great sea-tuna. Yes, of course I’m Lady Luck. Dolt.”

  I took another inventory: plain-Jane, a little mousy, dull brown hair, business wear. “You’re different than I’d imagined.”

  She rolled her eyes and quirked an eyebrow. “Oh? Did you expect me to look like some trampy dancer from the Vegas strip? Maybe a red-headed pinup girl with a pair of double-D’s, bouncing around in a cocktail dress?”

  “Well, yeah, actually. That’s how Lady Luck is always pictured.”

  She rolled her eyes again and sighed. “Men. I swear,” she said, but didn’t imbue her words with the scorn of the truly offended. “Luck is important. Modern man has lost sight of this essential truth, I think. Here on your continent I’ve been relegated to the casinos and backroom gambling dens. Ridiculous.

  “Now the Romans,” she said, then paused for a moment as though reminiscing fondly. “They had a proper perspective on things. By my hand battles are won or lost. Vast treasures come or go. A lucky harvest can mean plenty or starvation. Why, with just a little fortune—or misfortune—whole nations can rise or fall. Men and women might live or die by my interference or lack thereof. A bullet which lands in your shoulder instead of your heart? Luck. A car zooms through a red light and narrowly misses a child crossing the intersection? Luck. Just a little of my aid can go quite a long way. Serious business, fortune.”

  “Got it—not the good-natured stripper with a heart of gold.”

  “Indeed not,” she said with a voice as dry as the savanna in summer. But still, a little grin flashed across her lips.

  “So you’re here to spring me?” I asked.

  “Ummm.” She pressed her lips into a grimace. “No, not quite that simple, I’m afraid. My patron has sent me to lend you aid, provided that you agree to finish the task you have already undertaken.” She pulled a glossy photo out and set it on top of all the other, carefully arrayed pictures of dead monsters wearing human faces. The picture was of fat-faced Randy.

  “This is Randy Shelton, the man behind the murder of Maxim Kozlov, which, of course, you already know. Randy is currently setting in motion forces beyond his control which may well unbalance the destiny which the Three-Faced-Hag, Lady Fate—my Patron—has been entrusted to preserve. Now, he is but a pawn in some larger scheme, which yet remains unknown to me and my lady, but Shelton must be stopped. And you … you, have become something of a lynchpin in the whole bloody affair, it would seem. So my Lady has dispatched me to be your patron and guide until your role in this little drama is played out.”

  “Sounds like all upside to me—I get to knock Randy down a peg, and you help me get my powers back and break outta the hoscow. So what’s the catch? In my experience, if it looks too good to be true, something is probably about to try to turn your insides into your outsides.”

  “Quite apropos, actually.” She pulled out another photo, this one of a crude silver ring, old, worn, etched with runes and glyphs inside and out, a giant ruby affixed to the top.

  “What’s with the gaudy costume jewelry?”

  “The gaudy costume jewelry,” she said without missing a step, “is the first catch. A thousand years ago or more there lived an evil mage called Koschei the Deathless. As his name implies, he’s deathless—a Lich, actually. Except someone did kill him … well, imprisoned his immortal soul in the ring at any rate. The details are hazy at best. The ring itself has been locked away, guarded by the Guild of the Staff. Yet Randy has it, thus Koschei has him.”

  That had some serious implications. If the ring had gone missing from the Guild’s vault, it meant someone on the Guild was one dirty little birdy—though I couldn’t even begin to fathom why someone would want to release a nasty old Lich into the world.

  “You said that Koschei was the first catch. What’s the second?”

  “The second—yes, the second. Since I work for the Three-Faced-Hag, I am granted a somewhat limited knowledge of the future. I have foreseen that shortly, this station will go on lock-down due to a terrible winter storm stirred up by Old Man Winter. Koschei will then use the atmospheric disturbance to unleash something horrific to hunt you down and murder anything that gets in the way—like a building full of police officers.”

  I let out a low whistle. “Wow. That’s a hell of a catch. But if you break me out, then it stands to reasons that the monster won’t hang around, right?”

  “Yes, that assumption is quite astute. Unfortunately, I will not be breaking you out at all. Fate’s a bit of a tricky thing, you see. The White King”—she pointed to the ceiling—“has decreed that the freewill of human beings not be unduly infringed upon. So our involvement is necessarily limited. Hence the reason for your involvement. You will be Lady Fate’s Hand, her mortal agent, in this matter. Quite literally, the Hand of Fate. Now, as your Patron, I can nudge things this way or that, providing a lucky break at just the right moment, but major intervention? No. Not my thing. Couldn’t do it even if it was my thing.”

  “You’re not gonna get me out? There’s a friggin’ blizzard about to descend, plus a face-eating monster on the way, and you’re just, what … bailing on me? What the hell is the upside to having you in my corner?”

  “Well, as the saying goes, forewarned is forearmed. Aren’t you better off now than when I first entered?”

  I thought about it for a moment, and I guess she had a point—a very small point, which, pragmatically, was almost useless. Better than nothing, though. “And what about my power?” I asked again. If I had my power it would be a completely different ball game.

  “Oh, right, your power,” she said while tapping a finger thoughtfully on her chin. “No, I’m afraid you will not have access to your power. Hopefully that shouldn’t prove too problematic.”

  I felt like smashing my head into a wall or maybe jumping off a bridge. Hell, if there was a shark tank in the room, I’d probably throw myself in to save myself the headache—getting torn to bits by a shark was probably the less painful option. At least the shark would be quick.

  “My power will come back, right?” I asked, and my voice broke a little. There had been plenty of times in my life where I’d wished I was just a normal guy, without all the supernatural bullshit to contend with. But, in truth, my power was a part of who I was—what the hell would I be without it?

  “That depends.” She withdrew a third photo, this one some kind of funky-looking drinking flask: beaten bronze set with seven rubies that formed a cross on its front. Sticking out of the bottom was a strange key-like protrusion a couple of inches long. Looked like something you might find in one of those old-timey antique shops. Fortuna was quiet a long while, her eyes slightly unfocused, seemingly lost in thought, or maybe catching some vision I wasn’t privy to.

  I snapped my fingers a couple of times. “Hey, Earth to Lady Luck. You gonna tell me about Antiques Roadshow there or what?”

  “Sorry.” She shook her head, her eyes refocused. “Yes, right, that. The Holy Grail, actually. You have been poisoned with an ancient toxin, the making of which has been lost for ages. But Koschei the Deathless is ages old and is one of the few creatures living that knows how to brew it. He used the poison to incapacitate Kozlov, and you, unfortunately were poisoned by touching Kozlov’s blood. You will remain powerless indefinitely. This artifact, however, can cure you. And I know where it is. If you survive the night and find a way to escape, I’ll help you get it.”

  “You’re the worst,” I said. Dammit! Screw the shark tank—a wood chipper would be more merciful than this. “So just to recap—you’re going to abandon me to the hands of a FBI agent who wants to see me fry, while expecting me to fight off some living nightmare in the mid
dle of a blizzard, and then orchestrate a jail break … without the Vis.”

  She nodded vigorously. “Yes, I think that’s a good summation. Glad you’ve been paying attention.”

  “Just the absolute worst.”

  A shrill ring emanated from her purse. She fished out one of those fancy, newfangled iPhones, thumbed the screen, and lifted the phone to her ear.

  Someone jabbered on the other end of the line, just a faint hum of noise on the outside range of my hearing. Fortuna nodded a couple of times. “Yes, I’ve given him the brief.” More senseless jabbering. “I’m not sure … No, he seems compliant, but you know how these mortals can be—fickle and ungrateful.” She shot me a playful look over the top of her glasses. “Yes … Okay … I’ll be on the way shortly—and tell her not to start without me.” She hung up the call and slid the phone back into her briefcase.

  “Mr. Lazarus,” she smiled, “it’s really been quite the pleasure to see you again.” She reached across the table and took my chained hands in hers. She smiled gently, almost sadly. The lights flickered overhead, while the wind howled against the station. “That’s my cue, I’m afraid. The best of luck.” She giggled at her own pun and stood up. “I kill myself.”

  “I wish,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Oh, play nice … One last thing, get friendly with Agent Ferraro. Be open with her, honest. Tell her everything if you must. You’re going to need her help if you plan to live through the night.” She packed up her briefcase, stood, turned heel, and banged on the two-way mirror, thump, thump, thump. A few moments later the door swung open and Ferraro strode back into the interrogation room.

  “All done?” the grumpy agent said, folding arms across her chest and staring daggers at Fortuna then me in turns.

  “Oh yes. My client has waived the right to counsel and has decided he will cooperate with you to the fullest extent of his ability—which, I’ll readily admit, is limited. Not the brightest crayon in the box, this one.” She turned back to me for just a second. “Again, good luck Mr. Yancy Lazarus.” She giggled again and shot me a wink.