by Peg Herring
“Amos knows that. As soon as we straightened things out, he was going to start training me to take over.” Abe grimaced. “I think he hoped against hope I’d find his suspicions were groundless.”
“Not likely now,” Carmon murmured. “Still, I’d hate to see what he’s worked all his life for ruined. I hope we catch them with their hands full of someone else’s money.”
“It would all be electronic, but if we can point the police in the right direction, they’ll trace the crimes back to Falk. PLK will get some bad publicity, but I think we’ll survive.”
The slam of a car door caught their attention, and they saw Falk and a second man who faced away from them. Falk handed some boxes to the other, who moved out of sight, returning shortly for another load.
“What do you think is in those boxes?”
Abe shrugged as Falk removed two suitcases from the car and carried them out of sight. A few seconds later, the car itself disappeared from view. Carmon and Abe both sat up, Abe watching forward as Carmon turned to see the street behind them. In a few seconds, she pointed.
“There’s the Lincoln, but that’s not Falk driving.” The car emerged from the alley and headed toward Division Street. “It’s Daryl Talbert!”
“Now what?” Abe asked.
“We call DeMestrie. He might not believe us about Falk, but he’s sure to be interested in Daryl.” Carmon reached for her phone as Abe opened the car door, setting the “key in ignition” buzzer off. “Describe the car and where it’s headed. I’m going to take a look.”
“Abe—”
“Tell DeMestrie where we are. I’ll come right back.”
As he shut the door and walked away, Tori made herself as small and light as possible. She didn’t want to weigh Abe down, not if he was determined to walk into danger.
Abe looked right and left before cutting down an alley that bisected the next block. Tori heard Carmon call after him once in an urgent whisper, but he didn’t answer. Maybe I should have stayed with her, made sure she got through to DeMestrie. Like Abe, she wanted to see what Falk was up to. She didn’t want to wait in the car.
As Abe moved cautiously closer to the building, Tori knew she had to let Seamus know what was happening. She had no idea where he was, but if he could, he’d help.
“Abe’s after Falk! The old gas station!”
Abe’s reaction was total confusion. He leaned against the brick wall of the alley, almost exactly where Jaime DeMestrie had steadied himself earlier. Once she was quiet, he went on, shaking his head as if to correct whatever neurons were misfiring to make that unsettling noise in his head.
Chapter Forty-Three
Run to Me
Tori’s frantic cry and the call DeMestrie got from Carmon Calley came just in time to save Seamus’ sanity. DeMestrie had gone to Abe Gougeon’s home and then tried PLK, where he found the building dark. Unsure what to do next, he sat in the parking lot, tapping the steering wheel impatiently with one hand while with the other he broke off chunks of a Payday and ate them. Tori’s shout caused a tremor in DeMestrie’s body, but he apparently understood none of what she said. The phone rang immediately, and he shook his head as if to clear it before answering the call.
Carmon’s information moved the young detective into action. To Seamus’ delight, he arranged for patrol cars to help in locating and capturing Daryl Talbert. Once that was under way, he sped down Division. “My partner might be dead, and I missed all the clues. Should have paid attention to my hunch.”
Seamus agreed. DeMestrie had apparently been to the old garage, and something, possibly Tori’s whispering, had told him to keep looking, but he had ignored it. DeMestrie pressed a little harder on the gas, both he and his invisible passenger hoping it was not too late for Madison.
For a while, Madison engaged in a desperate sort of game with the man above him. As Falk moved about, opening boxes and shifting items, Madison tore his shirt, timing the noise of each tear to coincide with a louder one above. It was a delicate process, and eventually, Falk’s face appeared above him. “What are you doing down there?”
“Leg hurts,” Madison replied dully.
Falk looked down critically. The detective’s forehead was beaded with sweat, even though the pit was clammy. His eyes were glassy, his movements lethargic. He had managed to take his suit jacket and shirt off. Now he wore the jacket again, but the torn shirt lay in strips beside him.
“Need to wrap it.”
“Have at it, Detective, for all the good it will do you.” Falk squatted on the tarp that still lay along the edge of the pit, almost at the same spot, Madison noted, where Daryl had. A natural tendency to move toward the person one spoke to, he supposed, even in an unusual situation.
“Your heart attack,” Madison asked. “Was it real?”
“Oh, yes, very real,” Falk replied. “You might say a life of crime is stressful, and you would be correct. However, my doctor tells me I should make a full recovery with proper care.”
“Good for you.”
“The opportunity it presented was not to be wasted, though. When I announced my early retirement, there was no question of why, no particular attention paid to my activities. All I needed was a month or so to finish up.”
“To clean out your clients’ accounts.”
“Yes. We had to speed up the process, and we ran into a snag this weekend, but overall, it worked out quite well.”
“Too bad Cartwright made that phone call. Inconvenient for you, catastrophic for him.”
“We all die, Detective. It might be a step up.”
“For someone like you, I sincerely hope not.”
“Then it’s lucky for me you’re not in charge.”
Falk rose and returned to his unpacking. Madison glared at the empty space above him for a while but eventually returned to making his shirt into rags.
Abe carefully made his way along the alley. Moisture still dripped lightly from the eaves in the shaded corridor, despite the sunlight that had dried things elsewhere. Tori concentrated with everything she had on making him do as she directed. “Door!” she said, and he scanned the area, picking out the door with the square of plywood over its broken window. “Door!”
Abe approached cautiously. The padlock was in place, but a repeated “Door!” called his attention to the fact it wasn’t snapped closed. At a muffled noise inside the building, he stepped back quickly. After a few seconds of quiet, he approached again, touching the plywood rectangle experimentally. It slid aside noiselessly, and Abe peered through the opening.
Appearing and disappearing at regular intervals, James Falk carried items from the room that was visible into another room out of sight. He made small trips, carrying very little weight at any one time. Probably orders from his cardiologist, thought Abe.
There were stacks of food, bottled water, and blankets in one corner. Just inside the door were the suitcases Falk had loaded into the car at his house, along with his briefcase. Another stack of items looked like camping gear. A label on one of the boxes said Sterno.
Falk and Talbert were roughing it, hiding out until the police concluded they had lost them. A box labeled “Sophie’s Beauty Supplies” was an indication they planned to change their appearance while they waited for the initial excitement to die down.
Falk stopped suddenly, a strange expression on his face. He stared at the floor in front of him, and his eyes flickered once toward the door. When he moved into the other room again, his movements seemed stiff and unnatural. Soon a metallic scrape, difficult to identify, came from the far room. Silence followed.
Tori wondered if Abe had somehow attracted Falk’s attention. Surely Falk hadn’t seen him through the tiny slit.
Then she noticed a beam of light on the dusty floor. When the panel slid open, the setting sun cast a bright triangle that must have shifted as Abe bent to peer through. When that light showed then disappeared, Falk would have realized someone was watching him.
“Run!” Obeying inst
inctively, Abe turned to go, but he was too late. Falk stood behind him, gun in hand and a grim smile on his face. Of course, Tori thought bitterly. They wouldn’t have chosen a place where they could be boxed in.
“Mr. Gougeon,” Falk said in his stilted manner. “It is good of you to work on the weekend, but I’d have preferred you didn’t.”
Tori felt the thump of Abe’s heartbeat. “Me too.”
Falk glanced around. There was no one else in sight. “Let’s go inside. This is a high crime area, and I’d hate for anything to happen to you.”
Abe glanced hopelessly in the direction of the car where Carmon sat. She couldn’t see the doorway, would not know he was in trouble. Separately and yet together, Tori and Abe said a little prayer that Carmon had reached DeMestrie and the detective would be quick to respond. Abe obediently removed the deceptive padlock and moved inside, where the sunlight didn’t penetrate the dirty windows. The door closed behind him with a daunting finality.
Falk had begun an evening meal. Opened cans of beef stew and beans warmed over Sterno containers, producing an odd, blended odor of food and petroleum. Now he extinguished the flame. “Due to your interruption, I suppose dinner will have to wait.”
Tori surveyed the building’s interior through Abe’s eyes: the bay doors welded closed, the abandoned equipment, and a rusty side door. The metallic sound she hadn’t recognized earlier had been the scrape of a seldom-used metal door against its frame.
Abe saw it too. “That’s how you sneaked up on me.”
Falk made the grimace that for him was a smile. “For exit only, but useful in this instance.”
Tori felt Abe file that away. Possible escape route. At least he wasn’t giving up hope.
Hope retreated a moment later, though, when a voice at the door called, “Falk, where are you?”
“Here.”
Turning, Abe saw Daryl Talbert enter, pulling Carmon along. He too had a gun, a small, nasty-looking one that pressed against Carmon’s side.
Falk smiled grimly. “I should have guessed he wasn’t alone.”
“She was waiting for him on the street.” Talbert indicated Abe. “I guess they’ve joined forces, the Ice Queen and the Office Pet.”
“This is becoming complicated,” Falk complained. “The cop’s death was supposed to be an accident, but what about these two?”
“Whatever we do, it has to be quick.”
Falk glared at Carmon and Abe. “I suppose you called the police.”
Abe eyed the gun warily. “On their way. I’d give up if I were you.”
“I’m not you.” Falk thought for a moment. “They came in a car, I presume?”
“Around the corner. A red Honda.”
“Good. We’ll take it and head south to Chicago. What do we do with them?”
“Into the pit with Madison. He’ll enjoy the company.”
Tori was relieved to hear Madison wasn’t dead. The dark slit in the lighter cement of the floor, a little longer than grave-size, was not a cheerful sight, however.
“Move. Over there,” Daryl ordered, and Carmon and Abe moved toward the yawning pit.
Tori considered the fate her friends might suffer. Would they push them in, and then shoot them like the proverbial ducks in a barrel? Would Carmon and Abe soon experience what she had experienced: the disbelief, the shock, the sense of loss, and regret of a life ended too soon?
With a jolt, she recalled if her host died, she’d be trapped between worlds, unable to act, unable to return to the ship. What should she do? If only Seamus were here!
Moving unwillingly in the direction Daryl indicated, Abe glanced down, allowing Tori to see what he saw. Madison sat with his back against the opposite wall of the pit. He had torn up his shirt and used the sleeves to splint two mismatched pieces of tie-rod to his broken leg.
He had also tried to make use of an old tarp that lay half in and half out of the pit, its length spread along the edge closest to them. It had apparently covered the opening at some point but now was drawn loosely back, its free end drooping into the hole. Probably Madison had hoped to climb out using the tarp, but it wasn’t anchored firmly enough to hold his weight, even if he could have managed the climb. He seemed dazed, unaware of events above him.
Tori was at a loss. She considered jumping to Falk to divert his attention, but he was some distance far away, and she feared she’d miss. Flailing wildly in empty space, she’d be no good to her friends, and Falk was likely to retreat from the chaos, not approach it.
Talbert moved to the pit. The greasy tarp hung over the edge as if spread to dry along the wall. He stepped on it experimentally, wrinkled his nose at the smell of rotting canvas, and leaned over to observe Madison, “Detective?” he called out. “We’re sending down some friends of yours.”
“Hurry up, we’ve got to go!” Falk growled, glancing at the metal side door.
“Step right up,” Daryl ordered. Reluctantly, Abe and Carmon moved to the edge.
Talbert stood with both feet on the battered tarp. Suddenly, his whole body tensed and his expression turned comic with surprise. There was a ripping sound as the tarp split, but the jerk Madison had given it from below was enough to upset Talbert’s balance. Arms wind-milling, he went down hard, face first, on the concrete. Madison gave another sharp pull on the tarp, bracing himself against the pit wall with his good leg. The tarp slid again, and Talbert, now prone and out of control, rolled over the edge and into the pit with a yelp of surprise and pain.
“Back!” Falk ordered. Abe and Carmon obeyed. As Falk moved toward the pit, Tori jumped to him, making her presence as big and disruptive as possible. She recalled Seamus saying she couldn’t make a person do something, or in this case, not do it. If Falk’s intention was to shoot her friends, all she could do was make it difficult for his actions to follow his thought.
Falk shook his head, confused. Tori shouted nonsense, inflated her presence, and thrashed wildly in an attempt to disconcert her host. For a few seconds it worked, but she felt him begin to struggle against her, regaining his will. He raised the gun again, despite her best efforts, and pointed it toward Abe.
“Get him out of there.”
As Abe moved to comply, Tori cast about frantically for her next move. Talbert was down, but Falk was in control, and he was no intellectual weakling. Her presence bothered but didn’t stop him. Falk was angry enough now to kill, and she could do no more to prevent it.
Suddenly Seamus’ words returned to her. “They see us briefly as we come and go.” He had described the strong physical jolt the host felt when a guest used his energy to leave the world completely. If she ended her cross-back now, it would distract Falk for a few seconds. He might be overcome, both from the weakness within and from a sight before his eyes he couldn’t easily dismiss.
She hesitated briefly, her thought so much quicker than the humans around her that it took no time at all. The only way to become visible was to return to the ship. Her existence here would be over, and she might never know how it ended. If her effort wasn’t successful, there’d be no further chance to help her friends.
Only days before, she had left life with no preparation, torn from existence without a chance to accept it, without time to become accustomed to it. Now it was happening again. In a split second she’d be gone, never to return. She thought of the sound of the river as it hurried along and the smell of the lilacs outside Carmon’s house, but only for the briefest moment. Her action was the only chance her friends had.
Collecting herself, Tori jumped free of Falk’s body. The sensation of lightness was familiar, and she felt consciousness fading almost immediately.
Pain! She remembered it all too well, and she cried out with the agony of it. Gritting her teeth, she pointed accusingly at Falk. He froze, his eyes widening as he took in the figure before him, the impossible sight of the woman he had ordered killed standing beside those he meant to send after her.
Falk made a choking sound and raised his hands before
his face as if to shield his sight. Crouched at the pit’s edge, Abe turned toward him as Carmon gave a small, anguished cry. Tori’s sight faded, and she became lost in the pain. Beyond that was only the hope those left behind would use the opportunity she had provided them.
Chapter Forty-Four
Are Ye Able?
Jaime DeMestrie had taken his time scouting the old garage, which Seamus understood but could hardly approve. He feared dire consequences for Tori and those she cared about, but DeMestrie was cautious, waiting for backup that was slow in coming. He did figure out that the padlock wasn’t closed and slid it off in preparation for an assault when the time was right.
Suddenly, a great commotion inside the building demanded a change of strategy. A strange moan, a woman’s scream, some cursing, and a man’s harsh command communicated urgency. DeMestrie flung open the door and stepped inside the building, gun drawn and ready. Crossing the room quickly, he set his back to the wall and peered through the inner doorway.
