Child of Fire: A Twenty Palaces Novel

by Harry Connolly

  It made sense for the reverend to be there. But I didn’t understand why Lemly was in the room.

  “We meet again,” Frank said. His voice was hoarse and weak.

  “Let’s do it without the ambulance next time,” I said. “Shouldn’t you be resting?”

  He gasped between breaths. “I wanted to thank you.”

  “Forget about it. Relax. You’re going to undo all my hard work.”

  Miriam had entered the room just in time to catch that last word. She narrowed her eyes at me. No one else seemed to care. Ah, well, I’m the bane of respectable women everywhere.

  “Anything I can do for you,” the mayor said.

  “When you’re stronger, I want to talk about Hammer Bay.”

  “He needs his rest,” Miriam said.

  “Of course.” I backed toward the door. I was trying to think of a way to compliment him, to tell him, in front of his wife and a reporter, that I thought he was a damn brave man, but he spoke before I could.

  “Hammer Bay,” he said. His voice was low and a little angry. “My town. So rotten and corrupt. It’s time I did something about it.”

  Miriam glared at me. Peter Lemly lunged forward, his tape recorder in hand. “Would you repeat that, Uncle Frank?”

  Miriam snatched up a clipboard and thumped Peter on the top of his head. He wasn’t deterred. The mayor began to say something else, but the reverend grabbed Peter’s elbow and steered him out of the room after me. Within a couple of seconds, we were both out in the hall.

  Cynthia was not sitting on the couch. She wasn’t anywhere in the hall that I could see. Had she stepped out for a second, or had Miriam shooed her away while I was in Frank’s room?

  “Did you hear what the mayor just said?” Peter asked me. The door closed behind us. “Did you hear?”

  “I heard that the mayor is your uncle,” I said.

  “Never mind that.” He paced the hall. “The mayor is going to fight corruption in this town.” He sounded excited, as though he was in a thirties gangster movie.

  “Tell me about the town.”

  “It’s pretty straightforward,” he said. He was a guy who loved an audience. “The Hammers control the jobs. They’re the first family around here, and they’ve always had a nose for the next thing. The next move to make. Until Cabot, that is.

  “The Dubois brothers keep the peace, maybe a little too much. And lately they run a protection racket. I’ve been trying to get someone in town to go on the record about this, but no one will.”

  “Not since Stan, the bartender.”

  “How did you know about Stan Koch? He was supposed to bring me a bunch of records showing how much he’d been paying to Wiley Dubois over the years, but he was killed.”

  “Attacked by wild dogs.”

  “There really aren’t a lot of dogs in town. Never have been. Someone gets a dog, it barks all night and all day, and within a couple of weeks it vanishes. That was a dull story to track down, let me tell you.”

  “The Hammers and the Dubois brothers. Is that it?”

  “There’s the reverend in there. Thomas Wilson. His church is the largest in town. There is a small Catholic church behind the Bartells Pharmacy, and there are some folks who speak the language of the angels in living room ser vices, but Wilson’s is the biggest. He doesn’t do much, though. He cares about souls, not works.”

  “Who else?”

  “I guess Phyllis Henstrick. She runs the vice, and some of the jobs, too. When business is good, her boys build and fix. When it’s bad they get a little something from the whore house. A whore house is pretty recession-proof. That’s pretty much everyone.”

  “What about drugs? There are always drugs.”

  “Sure, there’s a little weed to be had here and there. No one much cares about that. Everything else, the Dubois brothers have some trick where they hunt them down.”

  “They take them over?”

  “Actually, no. Their mama had a little trouble with pills back in the day. Mama’s little helper, if you know what I mean. She cracked up their car, killing herself and their little sister. They don’t much like drugs. When someone goes into the woods with a trailer to start up a meth lab, they don’t come back. They just disappear, and Emmett drops by to give their friends little warnings. You know what I mean?”

  “Subtle things, under the guise of investigating the disappearance, right?”

  “You do know what I mean. So, is Hammer Bay Toys moving its manufacturing overseas?”

  “If I wanted to talk to Charles Hammer the Third after business hours, where would I find him?”

  “Probably at his home.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “Oh, no. We’re protective of our patrons around here, Mr. Lilly. You’re going to have a hard time with those sorts of questions.”

  “What if I ask about his seizures?”

  “The Hammer family, er, condition is a private affair, which means the whole town knows about it. Not that there’s anything to tell. Now, is Hammer Bay Toys moving its manufacturing overseas?”

  “No comment.”

  “Oh, come on! I just laid out the whole town for you, and you don’t pay me back?

  “I have something for you. How much do you know about the shooting at the Hammer place?”

  “Cabot took a shot at his niece after they argued about the family business. He hit Frank instead. You coldcocked him and saved them both.”

  “Not quite true,” I said. “The truth is, the mayor saw the gun and stepped in front of Cynthia, protecting her. He stepped in the path of the bullet without even thinking about his own safety. Sure, I slugged Cabot, but I was standing right next to him when he came in. I don’t think he even realized I was there. And I didn’t really save anyone; Cabot’s gun came apart after one shot. Frank is the real hero.”

  “Is this true?”

  “Ask Cynthia.”

  “Don’t think I won’t. What else?”

  “First, don’t put anything in the paper about the mayor and Emmett Dubois. Not yet. Give Frank a chance to recover and prepare for the fight.”

  “He’s had three terms to prepare for a fight.”

  “If you publish too soon-”

  “I hear you. Anything else?”

  “Leave town. Go to Seattle and sign on with a big daily. Or a weekly. But go. This town is dead already.”

  “So it’s true, then? The jobs are going to China?”

  “I’m not kidding. It’s time to leave Hammer Bay while you still can.”

  “Pft.” He waved me off. “I’m not giving up on my town.”

  The door to Frank’s room opened and Rev. Wilson stepped out. He managed to look down at us without actually looking at us. “I wonder if it would be possible,” he said, his tone stuffy and superior, “for you to converse elsewhere. These rooms are not soundproof, you know.”

  Peter wedged his bulk between the reverend and me. “Are you going to support the mayor in his fight against corruption?”

  “The mayor is in a terribly weakened condition. He won’t be fighting anything or anyone for quite a while. It would be irresponsible for you to claim otherwise.” He turned to me, glancing at me briefly before turning his eyes to the side. “And why are you still here?”

  That was a good question. I walked away while Peter tried to get a statement from the reverend about what he was already calling the mayor’s “new initiative.”

  I walked to the elevator. Beside it was a hospital directory, which told me that the morgue was in the basement. I entered the elevator and pressed the button. Cynthia hadn’t returned, so I decided to stick close to my boss.

  Why was Annalise in the morgue? I hoped it had something to do with Karoly Lem. I didn’t want to go down there and see the corpse of someone I knew.

  The basement was practically a ghost town. I wandered through the halls, looking for a sign that would point the way. Eventually, I found one. I followed the arrows.

  I expected gra
y paint on the walls and rows of metal tables with bodies lying on them. I was glad to be wrong. What I found was a small reception desk in a little waiting room. Annalise stood beside the desk, filling in a form on a clipboard with her sharp, jagged writing. Her face was pale and her thin lips were white. She had a sheen of sweat on her forehead. Opposite her was a morose-looking woman with nothing to do but watch.

  “Someone will contact you about the body,” Annalise said as she handed over the clipboard. The woman accepted it and slunk through the door behind the desk. She was gone.

  Annalise hefted a blue canvas bag from the edge of the counter. She winced. Then she turned to me.

  “What’s in there?” I asked.

  “Karoly’s things. What are you doing here? I gave you a job to do.”

  “While I was looking for a club to hit her over the head with, she slipped away. I’ll have to drag her back to my cave some other time.”

  She scowled at me. I saw something in her expression I hadn’t seen before. She looked vulnerable.

  “Hey,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” I said, amazed that I was genuinely worried. “How bad are your hands?”

  She walked around me toward the doors, stuck her hands into the handles, and sucked air through her teeth. She was hurting. Bad.

  I pulled the doors open for her. She didn’t like receiving my help, but she didn’t have a choice.

  We walked up the hall together, turned a few corners, and pushed through a couple of doors. I had no idea where we were going. I decided to change the subject. “Did you find out what Karoly’s message was?”

  “I have his laptop in here,” she said. “I’ll read through it when we get back to the room.”

  “They let you have his laptop?”

  “They searched it and didn’t find anything. Who picked you up in the van?”

  “Saw that, did you? Thanks for getting me out of trouble, boss. They worked for a player I haven’t met yet: Henstrick, the woman who runs a construction firm and a brothel.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, stick with the job I already gave you.”

  “I didn’t say I… forget it.” She stared at the floor as we walked. I wondered how well she knew Karoly, and how hard she was going to grieve for him, if at all. “While I was in the Hammers’ house, I saw a picture-”

  “I have an idea,” she interrupted. “Go to the parking garage and get the van. I’ll wait out front for you.”

  The look she gave me was angry and dangerous. Her face was paler and more sunken than before. I backed off. She held out the blue canvas bag, and I took it, being careful not to brush it up against her injured hands. She stalked away.

  My life would become a lot easier if she were killed here in Hammer Bay. At least, I assumed it would. Maybe, when a peer in the society died, her wooden man was killed, too, like a pharaoh’s slaves. Maybe the wooden man was reassigned to another peer, or traded around like a punk.

  Or maybe they were cut loose. Maybe they were told to go away and not come back.

  It sounded thin, but even so I didn’t want anything to happen to Annalise. She hated me and would probably engineer my death, but the power she had was fascinating.

  And I liked her.

  Christ, I needed to get laid.

  She hit a metal panel on the wall with her elbow, and the double doors in front of her opened. She stepped through, and the doors closed behind her.

  I hustled back up the hall and reentered the morgue. I wanted a look at that clipboard Annalise had filled out. I wanted to see if it had an address on it, or a phone number. I wanted anything that I could use to track down some information on her or the Twenty Palace Society.

  The reception area was empty. I rang the little bell on the counter. No one came. I rang again. I was all alone with the cracked plastic chairs and the slowly ticking clock.

  I set the canvas bag on the floor. I’d seen the woman carry Annalise’s clipboard into the back, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t brought it out again. I leaned over the counter and searched. There was an outdated computer, a steaming cup of coffee, a small collection of Pez dispensers, and a big framed picture of some sort of picnic. There was no form clipboard.

  I vaulted over the counter and shoved the chair under the desk. There were file drawers below, but I didn’t go for them yet. I figured that I’d have better odds in the back, and I had to do this quickly, before Annalise noticed the delay.

  I laid my hand against the door. If there were metal tables and corpses on the other side of this door, I hoped they’d be covered with a nice, big cloth.

  I pushed the door open.

  The first thing I thought was: That body should be on a table, not the floor. Then I noticed a pool of blood slowly creeping toward me.

  It was the morgue attendant, of course. Her throat was a raw, red mess, but her face looked utterly peaceful.

  There were, indeed, tables in here. Two of them had sheet-covered bodies on top. I saw a phone on the wall and decided not to use it.

  I couldn’t see the clipboard anywhere.

  On a table in the corner of the room I saw a pile of dark blue clothes set beside a pair of shiny black shoes.

  There was a holster and pistol on top of the pile. Cop clothes.

  The blood had almost touched my shoe. I stepped back.

  From somewhere in the room I heard a low growl.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I jumped backward, pulling the door behind me. I caught a glimpse of something large and low rushing at me. It struck the door hard, slamming it shut.

  The door banged open again, and I fell backward onto the desk. The swinging door revealed a wolf, its hackles raised, teeth bared, red eyes glaring at me. This one was black, tinged with gray, and bigger than the reddish one I’d seen on the street. Or maybe it seemed that way because it was looking at me like I was lunch.

  I snatched the steaming cup of coffee off the counter. The wolf moved toward me, and I threw the coffee, splashing some onto my hand. Damn, it was hot. The black liquid struck the creature across the face. It let out a high-pitched whine and drew back.

  I rolled the chair forward, ramming the wolf while it was off balance and knocking it back into the morgue.

  I grabbed the door handle. There was no lock on this side. I reached around and slammed my palm on the handle on the other side. Something clicked. I hoped it was a lock.

  The wolf found its feet and twisted in my direction. I leaped backward, pulling the door behind me. I saw long white teeth straining toward me, and then the door was shut.

  I vaulted back over the counter and landed on the canvas bag. I slipped and fell on my backside. Hard. Damn. I was going to be eaten alive because I was a clumsy idiot.

  I grabbed the cloth bag, rolled to my feet, and rushed into the hall. I didn’t expect the locked door to hold for long, and I was pretty damn sure that was not an ordinary animal. In fact, I was pretty damn sure it was Emmett Dubois.

  I could have run after Annalise, but the wolf might have followed me through a hospital filled with patients and staff. I wasn’t that ruthless yet. I wasn’t Annalise. I ran in the other direction, toward what I hoped was the parking lot behind the hospital.

  I pushed through the double doors and sprinted down an empty hallway. There were no doors on either side, but there was a turn up ahead. I saw an exit sign and bluish light shining there. I ran faster.

  I was halfway down the hall when I heard the double doors open behind me. Over my shoulder I saw the wolf padding toward me. Its teeth were bared and its tongue hung out. Its eyes glowed, for God’s sake, even in the harsh fluorescent lights.

  The wolf paused about a third of the way down the hall. It seemed to be showing me more of its teeth. Was that a smile? What ever his doubts about me during my interview, I was running from him now. He’d called my bluff and he knew it.

  I turned the corner, headed for the exit. The fire doors leading to t
he parking lot were right in front of me. They were chained shut.

  I was trapped. Or, I was supposed to be trapped.

  I took out my ghost knife and cut the chain. Its weight pulled it to the floor with a loud rattle. I pushed open one of the doors and slid the ghost knife through the other one, just beside the latch.

  I heard the clatter of sharp nails on linoleum. The wolf was losing me, and he knew it. I slipped through the door and slammed it behind me, then slid the ghost knife through it right next to the latch.

  The wolf rammed the push bar on the other side of the door. The latch mechanism I had just cut made a grinding noise but didn’t open. Thank God.

  I backed away. The doors would hold for a little while, until Emmett finally hit them hard enough to bust the latch or decided to go back for his uniform and gun.

  Emmett Dubois was a werewolf.

  I ran to the far end of the lot where the van was parked, then drove to the front of the building. Annalise was waiting at the curb, scowling at me as I approached. Had I just said that I liked her? I decided it was time to stop being stupid and start hating her again.

  I opened the door for her. She climbed in. She didn’t put on her seat belt. “What took you so long?”

  I was not in the mood to share information. If she wanted something from me, she was going to have to give something. “Tell me about the last time you were in Hammer Bay. Tell me about the last time you met with the Hammer family, and about the tall man with the walking stick.”

  She didn’t answer. She looked at me closely for nearly a minute. I realized that I was still breathing hard, and my hands were shaking. The adrenaline had not left my system yet.

  I began to get uncomfortable.

  Finally she said in a low voice: “The tall man with the walking stick was named Eli Warren. He was a peer in the society.”

  “Were you his wooden, um…”

  “No,” she said. “I was his apprentice. And his toy.”

  Saying that cost her something. I could hear it in her voice. But I pushed. “Where is he now?”

  “I killed him,” she said. “He betrayed the society. He sold spells, then used the society to hunt down his customers. I figured out his game and told the society. They told me to kill him. I did. As a reward, they gave me his spell book.”