Ariel frowned.
“It’s okay,” Juke told her. “Bill and I go way back. I’ll take him the thing.”
Ariel gave the idea some thought. She knew these guys looked out for her. She’d thought it was just because she was young and living alone in a bad neighborhood. But Juke had taken out two gargoyles without batting an eye and he and his guys were prepared to dispose of them as if they did something like it every day. Maybe that thought shouldn’t bear too much scrutiny.
She pulled the glove she’d stuffed with bloody bandages out of her purse. “I should probably put this in another bag.”
Juke took the glove without comment, dropped it into a zip lock bag from a roll he had on the work bench and stuck it in the pocket of his jacket.
“It needs to get to the third guy,” Ariel said.
“No problem.”
Ham and Dingo, the third and youngest Dog, picked up the drum to heave it into the back of the pickup. Juke moved Dingo aside and took his end
“See she gets upstairs okay,” he told Dingo. “Lock up first.” He jumped into the cab with Ham.
“I don’t . . . “Ariel started.
Dingo swung the garage door shut and threw the bolt. “You want to get me in trouble?” He asked.
“Nope.”
Ariel pulled off her remaining shoe and looked at it. It was red, it was sexy-hot, and its mate had given its life to save hers. It was time to say good bye. She threw both shoes into the trash barrel and followed Dingo up the steps to her apartment.
- 27 -
Pounding.
At first Bishop thought the noise was in his head. Then someone started ringing the doorbell. He opened one eye and looked at the clock Seven-thirty in the morning. Visitors. Ah, joy!
He rolled out of bed and dragged an old sweatshirt that was lying on the floor over his t-shirt and pajama bottoms. He wasn’t psychic, but people pounding on his door at the crack of dawn were always a bad thing. Last time it had been homicide about the body in the trunk of his loaner. Maybe he was about to be under arrest.
As he passed through the kitchen he pushed the start button on his coffee maker. He’d set it up, ready to go the night before. Must have been a premonition. Maybe he was psychic after all.
Bishop pushed the intercom button. “What?” He said.
“Frank Bishop?” A male voice asked.
“If I said no would you go away?”
“Police, sir, we need you to open the door.”
Bishop pushed the door button. “I hope you brought donuts,”
Official looking men in suits followed by uniforms swarmed into the apartment.
“Missing Minors Task Force,” one of the suits said, flashing paper. “We have a warrant to search the premises”
Bishop poured himself a cup of coffee, opened the frig and added milk. “Now what?”
“We understand that you have been illegally investigating alleged abductions of minors that have not been reported to the police. This warrant allows us to search your premises and seize your files and computer records.”
Bishop threw out his free hand and yawned. “Seize away,” he said. “But you’re a little late. Most of my files were at my office and that’s already been hit by thief or thieves unknown. They also took my computer. I filed a police report.”
“Why do you think they did that, sir?” The suit asked.
“Coffee?” Bishop asked.
“No sir, I’m on duty.”
“Jesus,” Bishop muttered. “Do you belong to one of those religions that think caffeine will give you a boner?”
“Sir?”
“Never mind.” Bishop topped off his cup. “I’m going to be right over here sitting in my comfy chair, drinking coffee until I achieve consciousness. Feel free to search your decaffeinated butts off. Just remember, I have a lawyer from hell. You break it you’ve bought it.”
That was a total lie of course, but maybe he could hire Nicolai Tesslovich to sue the city for harassment and violation of his civil rights.
An hour and a half later most of Bishop’s possessions were on the floor.
One of the suits came back to his chair. “We’d like the keys to your office. Mr. Bishop.”
Bishop yawned and slapped himself on both cheeks trying to wake up from his doze.
“It’s open”
“You leave your office unlocked?”
“Nothing left worth taking, although I am rather fond of the desk.”
“You seem to have a rather casual attitude toward this warrant Mr. Bishop.”
“Harassment only works if you can actually do something to me, dude. The fact that you had to form a task force means the Chief is clueless about these kidnappings. You guys are two minutes from the FBI taking it all away from you. Then heads are gonna roll. Good luck with that.”
“Do you know a family by the name of Corbin, Mr. Bishop? Their eleven year old daughter Jennifer was missing for a while.”
“I was never hired by the Corbins,” Bishop said. “But I know their daughter came back, seemingly unharmed. They decided to home school her, she seemed to be having some problems adjusting back to her old life.”
“Sometime last night, Mr. Bishop, neighbors heard screams coming from the Corbin house and called the police. What they found wasn’t a murder. It was a massacre. Jennifer Corbin was the only one still alive when they arrived. They had to chase her down and put her in restraints. She put one of the officers in the hospital with a broken jaw.”
“So I wonder, can you tell me Mr. Bishop, why an eleven year old girl would murder her entire family? How someone that age could have actually, physically accomplished that?”
“Oh, my God,” Bishop said, remembering Jennifer’s five year old sister and her flip flops. “Millie. She killed her sister Millie too?”
“She doesn’t deny it. In fact it’s hard to get a word out of her longer than four letters. If I were you Mr. Bishop, I’d strongly consider whether you might have information that could be helpful to us in solving this crime.”
The suit handed Bishop a card. Lt. Ronald Martin, it said, Missing Minors Task Force. Bishop had never heard of him.
Bishop put his head back and closed his eyes until the door of his apartment shut with the predictable more force than necessary. He should be used to this stuff by now. But this was way too close to home.
He thought about poor little Millie and the still-missing Susan Elizabeth Morgan, he thought about the kids in the photographs, he thought about Sister Catherine and how the police had totally ignored her when she’d tried to get something done about it. But most of all, he thought about Mouser.
He’d seen kids last night, only slightly older than the young hacker, beating each other’s brains out for other people’s entertainment. And Lena, ‘Queen of the Cage’, ramming that broken stick into her opponent’s gut with almost no emotion whatsoever--unconcerned whether he lived or died--bored by the win.
What would make kids do something like that? What would make Jennifer, damaged as she might have been by her kidnapping, suddenly kill her parents and her younger sister?
He pried himself out of the chair. His house was trashed, drawers hanging open, clothes and paperwork everywhere. Chairs over turned, the mattress half off the bed.
He kicked his way through the mess and started to pick up the things he usually kept on top of his dresser; keys, wallet, cell phone, the junk from his pockets. The dresser had been swept almost bare by the searchers whose goal was not just to find something, but to intimidate and annoy the person whose home was being searched by creating a maximum mess.
The only object they’d left on his dresser top was that stupid charm on a string Madame Zebella had given him. She said it got warm when there was a demon nearby. He’d dumped it on the dresser that night along with the loose change in his pocket and never picked it up again.
He tried to move it aside, but it seemed to be stuck to the wood. He used the side of one of his keys to pry it
loose. As it popped up and turned over, a whiff of charred wood came with it.
Bishop stared at the dresser. The coin had burned a perfect twin image of itself into the oak like a brand. It was a head sprouting two curling horns.
Bishop touched it. It was still warm.
He grabbed his cell phone and called El.
* * *
“Mmpfh?”
“This is Frank. Meet me at The Caf’ in twenty minutes. This is serious.”
Bishop hung up and threw on his clothes. Just before he left the apartment he reached under the seat cushion of the comfy chair and pulled out the two files he’d been sitting on all through the search.
That’s what happened when cops didn’t drink coffee, he thought smugly. It made them miss the important details.
Forty minutes later Ariel opened the door to The Caf’. She looked annoyed.
Bishop pushed a latte he’d ordered across the table toward her. It was probably cold by now. Served her right.
“I have things to do today you know.”
“Remember Jennifer Corbin?”
“Of course,” Ariel said. “The creepy child.”
“Well, she apparently slaughtered her whole family last night in a blind rage. I made a couple of calls. Sedation isn’t really improving her mood. They have her in a straight jacket and a padded cell. Just like some old fifties horror movie.”
Ariel sank into a chair. “Mouser.”
“Yeah. We have to get him out of there, but I can’t think of how. Zaki has too much clout to call a raid. Even if we convinced the task force he was selling minors to the kiddie porn industry, the Mayor and the Chief would never go for it. There’s also the possibility he’s ruthless enough to kill any kidnapees who haven’t been turned into total psycho-bots, then pretend he’s just running a school for disadvantaged youth or something.”
“I didn’t get a chance to tell you last night,” Ariel said. “I took some bloody bandages from the room that kid was in and sent them to Cassius. I thought he could analyze the blood and find out what’s in it that makes people able to take that much punishment and recover like nothing happened.”
“Good thinking.”
“Also, I’m afraid I was followed home last night. I didn’t dump my bracelet like you and Rain did. I took the tape off to break the connection but I thought Cassius might be able to replicate it or something. I guess there was a tracking chip embedded in it. They sent gargoyles.”
“But you’re okay?” Bishop asked.
“I wouldn’t have been, but my neighbors helped me out.”
“Is that a good thing? I mean except for the you-not-getting-hurt part. Didn’t they freak about the gargoyles?”
“Luckily, not so much. They’re bikers. I don’t mean like Hells Angels or anything. They, um, have a motorcycle repair shop next to my apartment building.”
“Oh. Well, I guess if you’re a biker you tend to be more flexible about the occasional attack by strange looking creatures.”
“You seem to have adjusted.”
“Actually, I’m convinced this is all just a bad dream. I’ll wake up soon and my mom will be there ready to feed me chocolate ice cream and Fig Newtons and tell me happy stories about Christmas and puppies.”
Ariel made a face.
“My dream, my food, my holiday choice,” Bishop told her. “Now what?”
“I think we should go see Cassius. Do you have your car?”
“I have two. One in the shop and one in the police impound lot. We’ll have to walk. I think there’s a liquor store on the way.”
- 28 -
The Bad Dogs had been a little more generous with Old Bill than his usual customers. He was snoring like a buzz saw under his tarp. Bishop couldn’t get any more out of him than “Wazzat?” and, “Go’way.”
“Jesus,” Bishop said. “I hope nobody throws a match into this alley.”
“Excuse me,”
The voice made Bishop jump. He heard the snick of a blade falling into place at the end of Ariel’s coat sleeve.
A kid of about thirteen, with dirt on his face, wearing a ratty sweater and a long scarf wrapped a couple of times around his neck slid out from behind a nearby dumpster. “You the ones with the Beam?”
Ariel fumbled in her coat pocket and showed him the pint they’d bought Old Bill.
“Don’t have the liver he used to,” the boy said, lifting the tarp and tucking the pint of Beam into the sleeping bag next to Old Bill. “He’ll wake up and think the Tooth Fairy left him a present.”
“I heard that, boy,” a voice said from deep inside the bag. “Get yourself outta here and let an old man sleep!”
“Grouchy too.” The kid made sure the tarp covered Old Bill’s nest. “Follow me please. Mr. Kale is expecting you.”
* * *
Cassius Kale looked the same as Bishop remembered. Maybe a little more tired, his shirt a little more rumpled. His face was definitely grimmer, and his lab was hopping.
Bishop hadn’t the first idea what all the equipment did, but serious, scientist-looking people and younger Deepers--whose enthusiasm just screamed ‘tech support’--seemed to be intently involved in several projects at once.
“Juke said this blood came from one of Zaki’s Foo Fighters,” Cassius indicated a wall screen containing a crowd of moving circles of various sizes interspersed with the occasional unidentifiable squiggle.
“Fresh from being badly beaten up, unfortunately.” Ariel said
“What’s that?” Bishop asked.
“Your fighter’s blood cells on a microscope slide,” Cassius told him. “Cells, which I might add, should be inert by now.”
“You mean dead?’
“Exactly. As soon as blood leaves the body it loses oxygen and starts to degenerate. Normal blood carries a large amount of red blood cells,” Cassius moved to point to the bigger circles on the screen. “White blood cells, platelets and a few other stray cells like monocytes and eosinophils can be found in any blood sample. The healthier an individual is, the slower his blood degenerates outside the body. However, no matter how healthy this kid is, by now the cells in his blood should be totally dead.”
“But they’re still moving,” Ariel said. “The boy told me that as badly as he was hurt, he’d heal enough within a few hours and be capable of fighting again another day. How can that be possible? Is this because of some drug they gave him? Or some kind of virus?”
“Nope.” Cassius tapped the key board. Another huge flat screen on the wall lit up. “Something a whole lot scarier than that, I’m afraid.”
Bishop and Ariel looked at the screen and then at each other. The picture Cassius had put up looked like a huge alien landscape, or possibly a giant assortment of hard candy. Raft size, spongy red disks with dimpled centers bumped up against spiky white puff balls. Smaller, colored disks and lozenges were scattered in among the larger pieces. Over, around and in between them were tiny, luminescent creatures that seemed to have tiny propellers or fins and sometimes even tentacles attached to their minuscule bodies.
“What are we looking at?” Bishop asked.
“Nanites” Cassius said. His tone grim. “Better known as nanobots. Minuscule, man-made machines inside this boy’s body that are obviously capable of producing enough oxygen to keep a small drop of blood alive even though it’s been separated from its host for almost . . .” he turned to Ariel.
“Fourteen hours,” she said. “Oh, my God.”
“The cells are dying,” Cassius pointed to the first screen. “They’ve begun to slow down, and some have already stopped moving.”
“What about the bugs, I mean bots?” Bishop asked. “Can they get out and infect other people?”
“I don’t think so. It’s a symbiotic relationship. When their ability to manufacture oxygen stops, they should also die. Or at least they become inert. I’ll have to run more tests.”
“And there’s something else that’s interesting here.” Cassius picked a couple of pages
out of a printer.
“I can hardly wait,” Bishop said.
“When I tested it, the pH of this blood was 8.2, well over the average of 7.3, which means it’s abnormally high in alkaline. That indicates lowered carbon dioxide and elevated oxygen production, oxygen being the factor that causes hemoglobin to turn red. Demons . . .”
“. . . have acid blood,” Ariel finished. “If you could make their blood more alkaline it would not only raise their pH but make their blood red instead of blue or green. If they were injured they could still pass for human.”
“As long as no one ran a blood analysis, or took a closer look at it under an electron microscope. In addition to alkalosis, the bots in the boy’s blood seem to be of mixed type. Each type may have been built to perform a different task inside the body.”
“So,” Ariel asked. “If a demon were to have his head cut off, both parts of the body could live long enough to be put back together. Could that demon heal up, good as new?”
“Theoretically it is possible. One set of bots might keep his brain going, and another set his body alive long enough to allow some kind of surgical repair. Other bots might be tasked with reattaching nerves, muscles and ligaments, restoring vessels, reattaching bones and skin, then promote rapid healing until the body could function on its own. Demon physiology is different from ours to begin with. They live much longer than we do, heal faster and their limbs, even heads have been known to stay alive for an hour or more after being separated from their bodies. That and healing bots might be the perfect combination.”
“I’ll try to remember that the next time one attacks me,” Bishop said, thinking about the constant reappearance of the ugly little man.
“Total spontaneous regeneration is very rare.”
“Not anymore,” Ariel said.
“So why experiment on homeless kids?”
Cassius shrugged. “Zaki Industries has a lot of defense contracts. Maybe it’s not all about demons. Maybe this is about building the perfect human soldier and selling him to the highest bidder. Or maybe he’s already sold this technology to the highest bidder. Maybe he’s sold it to the demons so they’ll be able to pass for human or regenerate if attacked.”
Raptor: Urban Fantasy Noir Page 22
