by Dias, Jason
“You okay?” Burt said, pausing.
“No. I’ve had a very fucked-up week. Just anxious for this to all be over.”
She nodded, resumed walking toward the half-open side door. No lights inside. She slipped into the deeper dark of the building and I followed.
“Burt?” Crossing the threshold meant entering an empty universe. I knew the floor only by its feel against my feet. The rubber grip of the pistol felt cool and reassuring. Solid. A real thing in a world gone mad. “Burt, I could use some light right now.”
Nothing. Not a footfall, not a breath. No echo. I imagined my voice spinning off across the void, dissipating slowly into nothing as it spread thin across a vast expanse of space.
“Burt?”
I slid slowly to my right, trying to make no sound at all. Beatrice could be just as blind as me.
She spoke then, from somewhere above me. “I’ve known you forever,” she said. “I know when you’re lying, Dom.” My own thoughts, echoed back at me. “You knew this would be a set-up. Why did you come?”
Something in her voice. Regret, maybe. “No other choices, Burt. Got to see it through. All the way. Burt, where’s Enrique? He isn’t safe after all, is he?”
“Nothing can touch him now.”
Dead, then. If she wasn’t still lying, he was dead. I couldn’t see her, though, to know for sure. “What are you going to do? Kill me?”
“Worse.”
“Make me like her?”
“Worse yet.”
“What, then?”
“This.”
Lights came on. Weak yellow bulbs in lines overhead. Dim, inadequate to the darkness, but still blindingly brilliant after so long in the night. I blinked, shielded my eyes with one arm, and glanced around. Up. Looking for her.
She stood at a transformer panel, big lever in hand. The other held a cattle prod. Pointed my way. A crude walkway in steel ran the length of the room with branches here and there. A maze of rotten boards and rusted nails made up the floor itself: the fences cows must have shuttled through fifty years ago. Burt gestured with the prod. Rather than discover if it was charged, I moved as directed.
The light hurt less as we went along. I rounded a corner and then another, the stink of damp-rot slowly escalating. Up a ramp made of particle board that must have been new. Ahead, a steel cage waited. The cow would be ushered into it, steel keeping her body still, head sticking out the front. Then the slaughterer would come along with his killing tool. Smash her skull, right between the eyes. A good slaughterer would do it in one.
“I’m not going in there.”
“You don’t have to stick your head through the hole.”
“Not going.”
“Nobody is going to kill you tonight, Dom. Don’t make me use the prod.”
“You don’t have to do what she wants.” I didn’t know that.
“You’re right. I want to.”
I turned to face her, above and behind me. “Why?”
“Getting older. Both of us are. What she has… In the end, I’d give anything to be like her. Invisible, powerful, eternal. I was as pissed as you were when the Captain said to stop investigations. To let the Church go, and therefore all the pedophiles She harbored. Ysabeau doesn’t have to stop. When she gives me her gift, I won’t have to stop, either.”
I was right. Burt was dead already. This wasn’t her. Burt wouldn’t say any of those things. She’d laugh in Ysabeau’s face and shoot herself in the head before giving way to this madness.
“I’m sorry, Beatrice.”
She looked down at me, eyes vacant, mouth half smiling. “You will be.”
I reached. I could have my gun out in half a second and a bullet in her right eye in three-quarters.
She jabbed with the prod.
It was charged.
Electricity exploded through my chest. The world went white for a second. I fell. Pissed my pants on the way down. My hand clenched around the gun, around the trigger. The shot went off. I couldn’t tell if I’d shot first or last. Time became as meaningless as light in that instant of electrified blindness.
The ground stank. Not of cow, not after so long; it reeked of damp rot. Pure corruption. And the ammonia smell of my own piss and fear.
The gun still pressed against my hand. My heart hammered, loud, unnerving. My eyes refocused, taking in the empty catwalk above me.
It took a minute to recover the ability to move. When it came, it brought pain with it, a huge ache like all the teeth in the world gone bad at once and plugged into my nerve endings. Groaning, I rose from the concrete floor.
Burt lay there, between the wooden panels. I couldn’t see the prod from here. Her face, either. But the back of her head had blown out. Dark hair covered the worst of the wound, sparing me the sight of the inside of my friend’s skull, her brain. Just her body there, twisted up junk.
Just her body. Her soul had gone on ahead of her. I hadn’t shot my friend, only her corpse.
Somewhere in the world, Ysabeau laughed. She’d won. Would have won either way.
Time to go. Just step over her corpse, take her car, drive away. Find another lead. Ysabeau wasn’t invisible after all; I could find a way to trace her.
A drip from behind me. Fluid into a pool. Deep sound.
I turned.
Up the new ramp into the old chute. In there, where workers had once bashed heads with hammers, I found a blood trough. They’d hoist dead animals by a back foot and then cut their throats, let gravity pull blood from bodies. Someone hung up there, above the full trough. Another drop spattered into it. Drain must be clogged. I thought about trying to clear it so I wouldn’t have to think about looking up there.
Chainfall. I let the corpse down slowly, hand-over-hand, until it rested in the trough. Not many people it could be. I loved so few.
Dreamscapes
I still didn’t know her name. Ay’s girlfriend. She’d been bled out. Wasted. It looked like she’d died up there, hanging upside down, life rushing over her own face after the initial high-pressure spurts. Her hands, tied behind her back with a twist of half-rotten rope, showed evidence she had struggled to escape her bonds. Ankles, too.
Messages.
Front and center: contempt. Ysabeau hadn’t even bothered to feed on her. Like a hungry person stealing my dinner and throwing it in the trash; someone thirsty spilling my water.
Two: Watanabe remained in danger. My lie on that topic had been worth less than nothing. I wondered if I’d have to kill her, too.
Ay’s dead girlfriend had on jeans and a sweater, both ruined with blood. Her back pocket bulged with a wallet. ID inside. Samantha Swift, forty-two, five feet eight, a hundred forty pounds. Date of birth, social security number, address. I took it. Cash, too. That amounted to eighty-four dollars. Took the whole wallet, on reflection: fingerprints would complicate my future.
You don’t have a future.
True, and yet habit persisted: clean up after yourself, think ahead, defend yourself.
No more leads. I’d been out-thought. Walked intentionally into a trap searching for more information, found nothing.
If she wants you, she’ll find you.
I’d never driven a car as nice at Burt’s. It started like it had been waiting for me. The engine barely made a sound inside the cockpit. The lightest touch on the gas set it racing. It had cost as much as my house. Now it was dirty. Bloody. Blood on the gear lever. Blood on the gas pedal. On the door handles, on the seat. Piss from my wet pants was the least offense.
I slipped through the dark town and onto the highway, whisper-quiet, sunk down in luxury. And for every mile that racked up on the odometer, an angry, helpless tear squeezed out of my eyes.
Every angry, helpless tear built up my rage and hate.
In Burt’s car, it took no time at all to return to Stanton Springs. I resisted the urge to go the station. No telling what havoc waited there, what emotional traps or literal traps. With nowhere else to go, I went to Samantha’
s house on the east side. New suburbs surrounding the airport. Relatively low-cost, high-quality housing for new families. Good shopping, nice restaurants. And, right now, the best chance of finding more corpses. Her place had a three-car garage and a semi-circular driveway full of a black SUV and a squad car. The doors of the latter stood open, the interior light on, red and blue lights sweeping the house, trees, neighborhood.
I saw curtains twitch across the road. Witnesses. Nothing to be done for it.
I parked on the grass. Never mind Burt’s suspension. She didn’t need it any more. The damp grass spoke of money spent on water, a little oasis in the desert. The SUV turned out to be a Navigator. Crimson paint on the custom front door didn’t conceal the footprint: the door had been kicked in, splintering the wood around the latch. Ajar, it swung inwards to reveal walls washed in blood. A foot in the hallway connected to a leg that trailed away into another room. Lights blazed through the house.
A clear story here. Ayame, unable and unwilling to discard my advice and wait for morning, sent a couple of uniforms out to collect her lover. They met whoever had taken Samantha – almost certainly Burt rather than Ysabeau. Burt had dealt with them, maybe using their trust for her to surprise them.
I went inside. All but tripped over the first body. Eads. She lay mostly on her back. Her black shirt concealed most of the chest wounds but they weren’t quite dry. Two holes glistened: sternum and left pectoral. My mind conjured up the incident report form and drew two circles on the gender-neutral mannequin. One above the left nipple, one right in the middle of the chest. Her hands were clean: she hadn’t laid hands on anyone.
Kitchen. More blood. Another dead officer. Donaldson, off the front desk tonight. She’d probably volunteered to go with Eads because I’d said go in pairs if you have to. Unlucky choice. She’d taken one in the neck, left side, blowing out her arteries. Burt’s nine-millimeter had been brutal. A second shot, unnecessary, had taken Donaldson in the solar plexus. She lay on her face but the exit wound gaped. Hollow-points are not gentle.
More evidence that Beatrice had been dead long before I’d shot her. This wasn’t reluctant killing. It wasn’t done through blurred tears. Hollow-points were not permitted in department firearms. We didn’t shoot to kill; we shot to stop if necessary, but never to kill. These were two people she knew, who she had loved as I had loved them: sisters on the force, nieces to bring up with our wisdom, warriors to trust with our lives. And she’d double-tapped each with smooth efficiency. No grief, no rancor.
I checked upstairs, trotting now, knowing time ticked by. Ay wasn’t here. Her car wasn’t. I needed a clue.
Upstairs appeared undisturbed. Undisturbed by intruders, anyway. The bed in the master bedroom was a mess. For all the fancy manicuring outside, the unmade bed, the towels on the bathroom floor, the make-up palettes left uncovered, the ring around the bathtub – they all spoke of someone keeping up appearances out of self-defense but internally disorganized.
Clearly, the drama had all taken place downstairs. Burt – the remains of her – had likely come in the back door. I checked it, taking the stairs two at a time. The sliding glass door stood open, dead leaves blowing into the living room, curtain waving. White carpets: bad for homeowners, good for investigators. Black footprints clear as the moon in a dark sky. Probably acting mindlessly already. She could have rung the doorbell, pulled a badge, tricked Samantha into her car. Instead she had come with violence in her mind. Attempted by force what a thinking woman would have done with guile.
The officers had arrived at nearly the same time. Maybe they’d rung the bell and Samantha had screamed. They’d burst in. Print on the door, just below the handle, said so. They’d fanned out to clear rooms. Davidson died first. Eads had gone cautious, stalking to the corner and peeking around, and bled out on the rug for her trouble. Then Burt had left with her prize. Maybe unconscious, more likely screaming and thrashing in handcuffs.
Nobody had called the police because the car in front declared we were already here.
I thought Ysabeau wanted me to find her. She’d wanted me to encounter Beatrice and thrown her into my path. Now she wanted me to find Enrique or Watanabe, and eventually herself. There would be something.
I strode out the ruined custom front door. Sat in a squad car newer than my Caprice and newer than the Crown Vic. Chevy Impala. Not as roomy, but plenty of pick-up. The best thing about the Vic had been the maintenance contracts and cheap parts. Second best had been its size; the Impala didn’t stack up on those criteria but did the job.
I switched off the spinners. Everything resumes its normal proportions without strobing red and blue lights dramatizing the scene. Death is more mundane. Houses seem normal. Thinking is possible without those lights.
Why were they on? This time of night, Eads wouldn’t need to clear traffic. And no need to hurry. She’d known of no emergency.
A message. A clue, even. She wanted me to sit in this car.
I started the engine, and the electronics all came on. Most importantly, the GPS system lit up. I didn’t use GPS. Been in Stanton Springs forever, pride myself on knowing the way from anywhere to anywhere else. It took me a second to even recognize it. There was an address loaded.
The abattoir.
This car had been sitting here a long time.
I checked the dash clock. Zero five twenty. Sunup pretty soon. Running out of night to operate in. Maybe that was best.
Back to Burt’s BMW. I wished for a phone to call the station but I had nothing. It was in the camper, thirty miles away. Could use police-band radio: the squad car had it, the bodies inside the house had portable versions. I debated, rejected sending messages into the potentially public sphere. I was shut down for the moment. Best I could do: wait someplace close to the station, watch for Ay’s car, and follow her if I saw it. Stop her from going home and seeing the mess.
I drove. The night aged. I arrived in the neighborhood of the station with a half hour still to sunup. Basic physical needs intruded; I took the time to go to the gas station. Burt’s tank read half full. My stomach cramped with stress and hunger and my bladder ached for release. I borrowed the bathroom key and spent so long in there that a line had formed by the time I came out, hair wet from the sink-bath I’d squeezed in.
Gas station food. Microwaved egg sandwiches, egg taquitos, coffee by the quart. Back in Burt’s car, I staked out the most likely route Ay would take, in a terrible hurry to see her lady. Desperate and terrified, all with good reason. I sipped hot coffee, struggling to feel human, and let the sandwich cool on the passenger seat. Despite starving, the thought of food stirred up nausea.
I wanted something else.
Sunlight. Something heavy and unseen eased off my shoulders. Oxygen poured into lungs that had not noticed their own constriction. The day dawned full of color: black streets limned with ice; sky pink with dawn, white clouds painted against a blue almost white to the east and almost black to the west; a jeep done in yellow like a bumblebee; an evergreen bush loaded with red berries, defying winter.
Loaded with emotions, choking them back, I also felt alive in a way that had been missing all through the hours of darkness.
No sense waiting for Ay if I died or passed out from hunger. Time to eat the sandwich.
Revolting. Fatty. Cold in the middle. The English muffin tasted like cardboard. Everything between my ribs and my pelvis lurched with the flavor of it, all salt and grease. But I swallowed it, a bite at a time, until gone. Then I bunched up the paper wrapper and threw it to the floor: a two dollar gas-station snack littering up an eighty-thousand dollar car.
I spotted Ay’s ride: a thirty-year old version of Burt’s. Racing towards me. I started the motor and flashed the lights. She slowed down. Pulled over. She ran at me as I clambered out.
“I can’t reach Sammie. I’ve been trying all night. State Patrol didn’t want to let me go so I resigned on the spot. We have to save her. Right now.”
I held up my hands, tried to ca
lm her. She didn’t need calm; she didn’t know her lover hung from a chain in an abandoned abattoir. “You can’t go there. Ayame, you can’t.”
“I’m going.”
“It’s a trap, Ay. She… She’s dead already.”
Her face blanched. All the life drained out of her stance. “You said… I didn’t hear what you said.”
“Yes you did. She’s dead, Watanabe. Taken, to get to you.” The clue in the car hadn’t been meant for me after all. Burt had meant me to be dead by now, too. Or worse. “They killed her.”
She just stood there. She hadn’t bothered with a coat. She had on her black uniform and a flak jacket. She stood there and shivered, hands at her sides.
I gathered her up in a hug, to warm and to comfort and to spark some kind of real reaction. “I’m sorry. Ay, I’m sorry. So sorry. I couldn’t… I was too slow. She’s too clever, and…”
She sank into me, face in the hollow of my shoulder, and cried. We stood there for at least twenty minutes. Cars went by, dusting us with road grime. One driver honked and we both ignored it. When she seemed ready, we slid into Burt’s car without discussion.
“Who?” she said.
“I can tell you who. It’s going to seem like the craziest story you ever heard, and it isn’t going to make me seem very good. When this is all over, I’m going to be confined to a mental institution until I die. And it will be worth it if She is dead.”
“Shut up and tell it.”
I did.
Search
“I can’t believe it.”
She’d dried her face on her shirt and now it hung untucked, sloppy, like her feelings.
“I know it’s unbelievable. Worse: I can’t keep you safe. I couldn’t keep Jo safe. I didn’t even think of the Lieutenant. I killed Daniels myself. I can’t promise you anything.”
“This woman, this vampire, you said. Ysabeau. The one we brought in and released. Didn’t look like much.”
“That’s her.”
“You said she’s the killer.”
I signaled left because that light turned green. It seemed good to move around and never mind the realities: Ysabeau was safe from me because she didn’t exist in daylight, and I was safe from her so long as I didn’t challenge her. “She’s the killer we were chasing, and she’s made killers of me and Burt and who knows who else. Burt killed Sammie but Ysabeau is behind it.”
