Warnings: Not beta-read and I mean SERIOUSLY not beta-read (not even by yours truly). Adult language and adult situations. Violence. OOC behavior.
The story so far:
During a record-breaking hot summer in the city of July, Detectives Vash Saverem and Nicholas D. Wolfwood are hot on the trail of the serial killer known only as Picasso. In their search, they've deduced that they're looking for more than one culprit. Unfortunately, like the killer Leatherman three years ago, one of their killers has developed an unhealthy obsession with Wolfwood who has secrets of his own. The killer's newest scheme is one devised to protect a mysterious man from his imminent capture by the police—a man who appears to have a strange hold over him. The plan has the extra bonus of allowing him to see how Wolfwood works, what made him a respected detective in the first place. The investigation has put the detectives at loggerheads with the department's chief, a stubborn man named Bennigan. Now, Wolfwood and Vash have less than 12 hours to find a girl Picasso has marked for death. And if Wolfwood refuses to play along, Vash's life is in danger.
The story continues...
Part XXXVIII:
The Gauntlet, Part II
You could turn it upside down, look at it backwards, blow it up to extreme sizes and study it all day. No matter what you did, the picture wouldn't tell you anything.
Young—early twenties.
Redheaded—natural, as far as he could see.
White, female. Wearing a generic polo shirt and with clutter behind her that could have been from a store, a storage room, or even a dirty college dorm. No tips from the processing on the photo itself except for the fact that it had been processed several months ago and had been developed by a shop downtown where none of the employees knew or remembered anything about the guy who'd paid for the roll.
There was nothing obvious here to give them the answer to the big question: who is this girl? But when he looked in her eyes, he saw what he had seen in the photos of Picasso's other victims: a sort of loneliness she had resolved herself to long ago. Maybe she was just those other girls: alone without any solid connections, someone easy to destroy, someone hard for the police to find. Maybe like Milly she'd moved here from far away and left everyone important behind. A perfectionist? A girlfriend to someone who didn't really understand her?
Time ticked away, precious hours fading. The day rushed on. Nothing got any better.
It was going to be a long one.
He wanted a cigarette and didn't have the time to smoke it. Tips came in, some seemed to pan out, most of them were duds. He had to hear them all, anyway.
"Play the call back," he said for the fiftieth time that day. Not for the first time this hour, he wondered how his partner was doing, hoped he was having better luck.
Vash sighed. He got the feeling the Chief and his partner spent more time arguing lately than actually working together. He feared it was going to endanger the investigation if it went too far. Whatever happened with the investigation, he knew—in a deep, saddened part of him that he didn't want to listen to—that his time with the police in July would soon be over.
At least, he consoled himself, they were back on the street and the difficult explanations were over. Strangely, revealing to the Chief that the killer—and potentially killers—made it a habit of harassing the detectives assigned to the case had only been the second most difficult topic of conversation. By a landslide, telling Bennigan about Wolfwood's connection to the massacre had been the hardest part. Vash winced thinking about all the time they had wasted—over half an hour—barking back and forth at each other when a girl's life was in danger. The conversation terrified the part of him who didn't want to lose his job. The rest of him knew it was too late to save it. Bennigan was not pleased. And with the whole city on alert for Ray Hawthorne—even if their efforts weren't focused on that hunt at the moment—and his arrest an imminent thing once he ran out of places to hide, the truth was that the Chief wouldn't need them anymore.
He wanted to do some good before that time came. He wanted to finish the job he'd come to do.
They had been brought out here to July to take care of Picasso. Vash realized he had never thought about the repercussions of what might happen if they failed or if things went sour in the last stretch. And even if they did eventually catch the madmen behind all this, there was no way to call this a perfect ending. Putting it behind him, he focused on the work at hand.
A small team of uniforms—half of who he suspected were there to make sure he didn't get pegged in the head with a bat again—were questioning everyone in the vicinity of a sighting. Wolfwood had never stopped sending extra muscle around with Vash and probably never would. Vash took in the area, trying to get a feel for something. Anything to lead him to the girl.
Office buildings shot up around him like mountains of glass and steel and the uncaring heat of the summer afternoon beat down on the world, oppressive and relentless. Their redhead had been here not three hours ago, but now the place felt cold. The suits and ties that passed by him didn't have the time or inclination to stop and look at a picture of a girl. What did it matter to them if she died? She was just another face in the crowd, another stranger. The thought that people lived their lives without concern for others irritated him, frustrated him.
"Please, look at the picture." He grabbed the arm of a passing suit and whirled him around. "Actually look at it."
"Hey, buddy, let go. I know my rights."
"You're about to know police brutality," Vash said through clenched teeth. "Look."
And there most have been something terrible in Vash's expression, something a little wicked, a little vicious, because the guy's eyes bugged out and then drifted to the picture obediently. "Uh, no. I haven't seen her."
"And you're sure?"
"Yeah, yeah. I'm sure!" There was a remaining tremor of terror in his voice, but he didn't struggle to get away.
"Thank you. Not so hard, was it?" Vash shoved the flier into his hand and then set him away almost gently. "Please take this and show it around. I'd appreciate it."
Vash watched the guy go at a half-run, glancing back over his shoulder as if afraid Vash would pursue. He shook his head and then turned back to his team, all of who were starting at him. "Now that's how I want you to do it, okay?"
They all nodded. "Uh, yes Detective."
"Yes, sir."
There were a few scattered nods when the uniforms found they had lost the ability to speak without sounding like idiots.
"Good."
Vash shook his head, but not at the justifiably confused cops. Sometimes, he wasn't quite...himself. Days like this...
"I'm making the rounds. Keep it up and contact me if you get anything," he declared and set off. He fell into an easy stroll that would take him down to where the rest of his team was working and picked up his cell phone and dialed. There were four rings—more than usual—and he felt a tiny glimmer of hope that at least some things were going well. It eased the part of him that felt out of place and cruel.
"Heya, Vash. How's it hanging?" Wolfwood answered, voice rough, accented, and a little scratchy over the air.
"Hey, partner," Vash said as he hurried across the street to beat the light. "Knew it was me? I see Kaite didn't let us down." It was amazing that his voice actually sounded like he was smiling.
"Yeah, Kaite, Joey, and half the IT team." Wolfwood sounded a little tired, but sharp.
"Joey?"
"He's an electrician. Nice guy. Helpful."
Back at South, Wolfwood listened with half an ear to the conversation happening around him. Kaite, dragged upstairs forcefully from his dungeon lair, was attaching headsets to a complicated looking box with a complicated looking screen. Everything was set up on a long, wide table littered with technology and Kaite looked right at home.
"No, no. You can patch into those signals through these," the department's pet hacker said and waggled a pair of wires in a poor tech's face. "And don't waste time doing checks on people we already know. What, that number now? That's just his loser partner. Run checks on the bastards we don't know since Detective Wolfwood said that psycho's bound to call again."
On the other end of the line, Vash listened to this and then sighed. "He called me a loser and implied that I'm a bastard all in one sentence."
"Only because he cares," Wolfwood said. He fished a cigarette out of his pocket and held it up at Kaite's crew like it was the excuse to go that it was. Kaite waved at him vaguely and went back to trying to perfect the trace on his cell. Wolfwood shrugged. It was permission enough.
Outside the station, evening wasn't so young anymore. They had less than seven hours and the girl was nowhere to be found. They didn't even have a name. He lit up, took a long drag and then coughed. He shifted the cell phone against his ear, the better to smoke and talk at the same time. "We got a few more sightings in your area. But they were five blocks east of where you are."
"I've got a team up that way already. I'm going that way now," Vash said with shrug in his voice. "You coming out?"
Wolfwood squinted at the sun, willing it to stay where it was. "Thinking about it. I don't think there's anything else I can do here."
He meant it in more ways than one.
Another hour and a half of running around, chasing leads. He found himself in a tiny diner having a quick coffee and a snack with Vash. His partner was a genius and a miracle worker, he decided, when he produced pain relievers and handed them over without reprimand.
"Thanks," Wolfwood said and downed them.
Through the window by their booth they could see their team questioning the people that passed and stopping cars like the one Ray Hawthorne had been spotted in not so long ago. Between the two of them, Wolfwood and Vash had received six angry, threatening phone calls from Chief Bennigan since they had hit the street and they spent a solid two minutes grumbling about him while Wolfwood waited for the coffee and the drugs to work their magic. Vash picked at a pastry absentmindedly, his attention focuses on the officers outside.
"Where do you think they're hiding out while we run around like idiots?" Wolfwood asked.
"Probably half-way to Mexico by now," Vash said. "It's where I'd be if the whole city had their back turned looking for a girl instead of me. Did the feds call you?"
"No. You?"
"Half an hour ago. Funny thing is, I think this is one Bennigan wouldn't mind losing. If they show up, he'll hand the case to them with a smile and a song and dance routine. He'll probably buy them all dinner."
Wolfwood shrugged and settled back on the seat as the pain started to ebb. "Hell, I'm with him. They can have it. I'm old and tired."
Vash laughed and it was a mocking sound. "You'd fight them tooth and nail for it."
Wolfwood smiled a knowing smile back at him. "Yeah, you're right. This is personal now. Besides, even if they took it, it's not like we'd be off the hook. They'd keep us around for a few days, ask us a million questions about our files and take over my damn office while they were at it. They've done it before. It was before your time, but the feds out in May moved in to the damn station to work on the Brookside murders. Drank up all the coffee, used up every empty conference room. You know what they said to me when they showed up? They said, 'So, we hear you specialize in criminal psychology and catching crazy nuts. Mind if we use your files, your brain, and your office?'"
"Guess it's hard to say no to those FBI spooks."
Wolfwood was about to reply when his cell phone rang. He took the call and when he hung up it was with a sigh. "That was Midvalley. No luck from the hotels in Hale Beach. She's not someone anyone's seen out there before."
Vash didn't look surprised by the news that another possible lead had fallen flat. Instead he said, "Midvalley, eh?"
"Yeah. He's doing a good job."
"You'd think the guy wanted to make detective."
"I think maybe he does."
Vash shook his head. "Everybody thinks they can make the meal better until they get into the kitchen—"
"And then it's just too hot," Wolfwood finished.
They shared a weary smile about that and then Vash pulled out his notepad and flipped through it. "By the way, Milly didn't recognize her either." At Wolfwood's surprise he explained, "I stopped over to see her about an hour ago. She looks good. She says 'hi."
"Thanks," he said softly. He fiddled with his cell for a moment, seemingly to have something to do while he thought about Milly. After a moment, he was composed. "I had Pasina head over to the women's penitentiary. Dominique Kuklos is still being held there while the pre-trial arrangements are taken care of."
"I almost forgot about Santa's Little Helper from that hotel in Hale Beach," Vash said, scribbled a note, sat down the notepad, and then took a big bite of pastry as if he'd suddenly found his appetite. "What gives with her?"
"Pasina says she's still not talking about Ray Hawthorn and that her background check hasn't turned up anything useful. As for our redhead, Kuklos didn't know anything. Or said she didn't know anything. I can't stand cagey women." He sighed and shrugged. "And everything important from Hawthorn's house out in Hale Beach is still in the labs and what they do know hasn't told us anything about the girl."
Vash ticked off the bad points on his fingers. "Okay, so all our possible leads have turned up nothing. We've got multiple anonymous sightings from the same area but no actual witnesses to question. And we've got nothing to connect her to the other victims. We're not doing so hot here."
Wolfwood couldn't answer what wasn't a question or deny what was obviously true, so he just drained the last of his coffee and said nothing. A waitress came by, dolled out refills, smiled blandly and moved on. Wolfwood twirled his mug in his hands while he waited for it to cool.
"Okay," Vash said after the silence stretched. "Maybe we're thinking about this wrong."
"How so?" Wolfwood took a sip of the strong black coffee and hissed through his teeth at the heat and bitterness.
"Got a map?"
Wolfwood dug around in the stack of papers next to him and pulled up a well-used map. He handed it to Vash who opened it, studied it, and then jabbed his finger at it with a curious hum.
"See, all the sightings are in this area. What is she doing down here and why doesn't anybody know her?"
Wolfwood shrugged. "That photo's six months old. Maybe she dyed her hair. Cut her hair. I dunno."
"I don't know either, but maybe it's something to do with her job. Maybe she works at night. A dancer like Kelly was? There are clubs down here. Bars, too."
Wolfwood rubbed his face heavily, lingering on his chin where stubble was forming. "A possibility. You got those pictures?"
Vash produced a stack of enlarged and manipulated variations on the photo Picasso had left outside his door that morning. "It took an arm and a leg to get some of these. Try not to spill coffee on them," he said then talked Wolfwood through what he had managed to piece together. "See that green, rectangular shape in the reflection on her right?"
"Yeah, what is it?" Wolfwood asked, squinting at it.
"We think it's a road sign. But it's just the last little bit of one and it's backwards, blurry and could be just about anywhere. I think it looks like the letters 'E' and 'S'. See? There's nothing special about her shirt, no identifying tattoos or scars that we can see. That poster behind her caught my eye. Nobody's been able to track down who sells it. It's probably particular to where she is, but nobody recognizes it. I thought this was a residence for a hot minute, but now I think it's where she works. Or worked."
The pair hunched over the different versions of the photo for another minute, bouncing ideas back and forth. They looked up startled when a pudgy officer rushed in and stood by their table. "Detectives, I think you'd better come with me. We've got something," she said breathlessly, as if she'd ran the whole way.
Wolfwood and Vash stared at her disbelievingly, then shot up, Vash tossing a ten on the table, and headed out the door on the officer's heels.
He was fresh-faced and a little spacey. Wolfwood couldn't tell if it was because he was surrounded by armed detectives, or if the surprise of seeing his ex-girlfriend's face on a police flier was to blame. Maybe he was always this way. Lank, dark hair hung around his face, parted in the middle. He was a little too skinny, a little too twitchy, and Wolfwood had his suspicions about his recreational activities, but now wasn't the time to haul someone in for that. Leave it to the narcs.
David—the ex, had gawked at the flier when the officers working the street showed it to him. Fifteen minutes later and he found himself sitting on the hood of a squad car—flashing the red and blue as cars on the busy street swerved around it—and answering questions about a relationship that had gone sour. "Linda and me, well, we didn't part on good terms. She took her stuff and walked out on me."
Wolfwood noticed how he pointedly didn't mention what it was he had done.
"Did she tell you where she was going?" Vash asked, taking his usual role as the one who asked the questions. Some things never changed. Even with a suspicious bandage on his forehead and worry lines around his mouth, people still liked Vash. Wolfwood stood back a bit, keeping his eyes alternately on the notes Vash wrote and the nervous kid perched on the black and white.
"No. She said she got a new job at a coffee shop. She didn't tell me which one. Sometimes I heard from mutual friends that they'd seen her. Shopping, crossing the street. Stuff like that. She never called me after she left."
"How long ago was this?"
"Oh, man, that must have been," he started and pushed his hair off his face, something Wolfwood noticed he did when he was thinking, "eight months ago. It was still cold. She, um, took my leather coat." He smiled at the memory and then sobered suddenly. "Is she in some kind of trouble?"
The way he asked it made Wolfwood wonder if Linda had been into the same things her ex was probably into. He found himself wishing that the shirt David wore wasn't long sleeved.
"She's in danger," Vash admitted reluctantly. "Which is why we need your help. We have a few more questions, if that's okay. Do you know where she lives right now? Family?"
He shook his head emphatically. "Nah, she's never had family. I don't know where she went. She had an apartment close to here before we moved in together. Maybe she went back there? I don't know."
Vash asked a few more questions and with each one David's mood darkened. Once they had as much as they were going to get, they thanked him for his time, gave them their cards, told him to call if he remembered anything helpful, and then let him go.
As he stood to walk away, head down, Vash said softly, "I'm...sorry."
David looked at Vash sincerely, his eyes transparent windows to the pain he was feeling. "Me too," he said.
Dozens of hasty calls and radioed messages back and forth followed by long, frustrating minutes of no communication at all. At last the station was able to get them a list of every coffee shop in the area. The pulled out the map and the photos again, laid them out on the back of a squad car, and leaned over them with a flashlight as the light of day faded into evening.
"You said 'E' and 'S', right?"
"E and S," Vash confirmed and ran his finger down the list of coffee shops while Wolfwood scanned the map.
"Theo S. Leekes Avenue?" Wolfwood questioning, indicating a road five minutes south of where they were.
"No coffee shops on that road."
"Gates?"
"Three," Vash sighed, grabbed a passing officer and sent him on his way.
"Forbes?"
"One on the corner of Forbes and Booker."
After a minute of silence from Wolfwood, Vash looked up. "No more possibilities?"
Shaking his head, Wolfwood said, "No. No other streets near the sightings we have end in ES. Feel like taking a short drive to Forbes?"
Vash looked at his watch. "Let's go. I could use a donut, anyway."
Wolfwood rolled his eyes, darted to the driver's side of the squad car before Vash could, switched on the sirens and waited while Vash passed the news on to the sergeant he was leaving in charge. A minute later and they were on their way.
The minute they walked into the shop, they knew they had the right place. Windows facing both streets, the eggshell color of the walls. It was a small coffee shop, not franchise, and something about the mismatched chairs and cheap lamps spoke of it being a student's hangout. "They haven't changed the poster in six months," Vash said while Wolfwood noticed that all the employees wore generic polo shirts.
The questions went smoothly and Wolfwood started to feel a strange relief, as if things weren't impossible. A helpful manager produced employee records, gave them an address. She told them Linda Pitt wasn't working today but would be in tomorrow and looked politely concerned.
"She's a good employee," she said. "I hope she's not in any trouble..."
Wolfwood made the necessary calls to get a unit out to her apartment while Vash continued the questioning.
They tore out of the coffee shop at a run. "We can make it to her place in ten minutes if we run all the red lights," Vash said, reminding Wolfwood why he never let him drive. Vash got the passenger door to the car open and climbed in. Wolfwood was about to step off the curb to get in on his side when a small voice stopped him.
"Um..."
He turned and saw one of the coffee shop employees nervously standing on the sidewalk. She was short and mousy with caramel skin and a nose ring. Vash got out of the car again, a curious expression on his face. "Yes?" Wolfwood said.
"It's just," she said and looked back through the shop windows nervously. "See, Linda has another job, only the manager don't know about it. Nobody does. It's not such a good place."
"What does she do?" Vash was as polite as he always was, but he sounded anxious, as if he could sense that they were finally onto something.
Biting her lip, she answered, "She's a bartender at a club. It pays better. Overtime in the evening is better than working here." She gave another worried glance through the window. "She called off here to go work there. She does it all the time when money gets tight. She won't be at home."
Vash took a step closer to her. "Do you know where this club is?"
"Yes," she whispered.
The radio became their lifeline in the next crucial hour. Messages about location and distribution of their forces crammed the airwaves. Wolfwood took a unit to Linda's apartment and left a team there to investigate. As her co-worker had predicted, she wasn't there, but that didn't mean there weren't clues to be found. If Picasso had watched her there was a chance that she, like many of the other victims, had noticed it. He only hoped it wasn't too late for her like it had been for them.
"Read her diary, check her computer. I want to know where she went, who she talked to, who called."
His team set to work efficiently and Wolfwood wanted to stay to supervise, but other things called for his attention.
Then it was a rushed journey back to the station to take care of the ugly details there, while Vash arranged roadblocks, scouted the area near the club, and continued to hope that someone might get word to the girl that someone was looking for her. If they could get her to come to them, they wouldn't have to walk into something that no amount of careful planning could prepare them for.
A half-an-hour later and they regrouped. Vash had already moved his team to the street that ran in front of the club and brought several units to secure the area. Wolfwood parked behind the black and white Vash had borrowed when they separated after the coffee shop, hoped out and felt the urge to smile.
Vash looked—he searched for the right word and found 'good' was the only one that worked—in full gear. It had been a long time since he'd seen Vash in anything resembling a uniform. Something that was pretty much a toned-down version of the Riot Squad gear was on the list of things he'd never seen Vash in. He looked tall and competent in the blue and black and it gave him an air of authority he didn't usually try for when in his detective white shirts and ties. His hip holster hung a little too low for regulation and his vest wasn't completely fastened at the sides—as if he'd run out of time to finish the job—but everything else was neatly in place. All around, his team—suited-up the same way—hurried like mice, or mulled and whispered to each other, looking focused. An endless stream of officers seemed to run back and forth, consulting with Vash only to dart away a minute later.
Across the street, a crowd was gathering. Wolfwood didn't like spectators and knew Vash wasn't fond of them either. Today was definitely not the day these guys needed to take an interest in police activities. Vash looked like he had his hands full.
"Bradbury!" Wolfwood called to the nearest sergeant. The skinny guy hurried over, listened carefully, and then didn't waste any time in gathering other officers to handle crowd control. Wolfwood wondered why it was that officers who worked with Vash all day seemed a little friendlier than the ones he got stuck with. All his guys were tense and suspicious. He was sure there was a connection there somewhere, but didn't have the time to figure it out now.
Crowd control underway, he jogged up to his partner. The night was cooler than he'd thought it would be and he was glad for the jacket he wore. The weather in the city of July defied classification. Not for the first time, he missed May where things had made just a little more sense.
"You look like an episode of 'S.W.A.T'," Wolfwood said and gave Vash a playful punch on the arm.
Vash dusted imaginary lint off his arm where the punch had landed. "And you look like you could use a coffee. Did you know this getup is standard for anything termed a 'hostage situation' in this town?"
Wolfwood looked down at the uniform again. He took a long, considering puff on his cigarette. "No. That's something special, isn't it? In May they gave you a radio and a door to hide behind and told you 'Good luck.'"
"Exactly!" Vash sounded relieved, as if he was glad to have somebody around who got the idea. "Isn't this overkill?"
Wolfwood's eyes narrowed for a second. "No."
"Hmm...well then good, 'cause yours is over there."
Wolfwood held up his hands when a uniform drifted close with a folded bundle of clothes and armor. "I ain't putting that thing on." The uniform gave Vash a questioning expression and then looked back at the other detective. Wisely, he stepped away quietly.
"Oh, yes you are," Vash snapped. "You've got your watchdog patrol making me wear one of these so join the club."
Wolfwood took a step closer and lowered his voice. "Yeah, well he's not exactly going to hurt me, is he? That would ruin his fun. But he's got a hate-on for you something fierce and you know it. You're the one in danger here. You know I'm right about this."
Vash glanced up sharply and they shared a silent look, gazes locked. It lasted for a moment before Vash nodded, breaking the tension.
Wolfwood looked relieved. "Good. So you wear the vest, I don't. And I want you and your team to pack up in the next ten minutes and pull back."
"Are you insane? If we—"
"I said 'pull back' not 'get the hell out of here'. I want you out of sight, but I don't want you gone. He said no cops, so we give him no cops. Stay close, but only move in if you have to. You've got our team with you, they're smart. They're loyal. They answer to us and not that bonehead Bennigan. They won't mess this up. Yeah?"
"Yeah," Vash agreed but he sounded sulky. "But just so you know, I don't like it."
Wolfwood tried for a laugh. "Come on, he wants to see how I work, right? Well this is how I work." He stretched his arms wide and grinned hugely. "No vests. No teams or crews or bodyguards."
"And no partner?" Vash tried to say sardonically, but it came out like a spat curse.
Wolfwood didn't humor the remark with more than a raised eyebrow. "Are you kidding me?" he asked. He turned his back and walked away, heading to a cluster of officers to give them their new orders. Suddenly, he stopped. Over his shoulder he said, "You know already, don't you? Most of this is for you. Most of this is about you."
He didn't turn to see the expression on Vash's face and he didn't want to. A minute later he could hear his partner spreading the word to his crew and assigning a new base. Fifteen minutes later and the street would be clear. Then it would be just as Picasso wanted: just the two of them and the night as silent witness.
Somehow, he didn't have it in him to watch Vash walk away so he whispered his destination to a nearby officer and then headed down the alley leading to the club.
He had an hour and a half left.
It was a well-hidden place. He looked up at the doorway of the club and imagined that thousands of thousands of people passed it by every day, completely unaware it was there. The entrance wasn't off the street as it should have been, but a side door in a puddle-filled alley. The sign over the door was painted; it proclaimed the establishment to be "The Zone" and it was kind of pathetic for a place with a name like that to look as rundown and cheap as this. He walked down the shadowy, too-narrow space. No new customers were lined up outside thanks to Vash and that was something, at least.
Once he was far enough in, he could make out the broad, mountain-like shape of two men whose genetic coding had proclaimed them bouncers at conception. They were friendlier-looking than some of the ones Wolfwood had dealt with back in May, but not by much. He'd never met a bouncer who could intimidate him because he never met a bouncer that didn't prove the bigger-they-are-the-harder-they-fall rule. The pair eyed him suspiciously.
"ID?" one of them—the guy with the bigger fists decorated with knuckle rings—grunted.
He flashed his badge. "Detective Wolfwood, JCPD." There was no instantaneous "And I'm Detective Vash Saverem" from beside him added on the end and it was odd without it, but he had to do this without Vash. He couldn't keep him from coming to the scene—from doing his job—but he could at least keep him out of the line of fire.
"Warrant?" That was Knuckle Ring, again.
"I'm not arresting anyone." He chuckled dryly. "Yet. I'm just having a look around. And asking for your cooperation."
That got a mildly intelligent look out of the guy with the holster hidden badly beneath his light blazer. "With what?"
"Picasso."
At that, Bruiser Number Two in the jacket visibly retracted, as if trying to get far away from the Wolfwood as possible. Bruiser Number One with the knuckle ring looked confused. "The painter with the cubes and stuff?"
It was just the sort of reminder Wolfwood didn't want: no matter how hard they tried, how many times they issued statements or stood through rounds of questions during press conferences, there was always somebody they didn't reach. People who worked different hours or just plain strange hours. People who didn't own TVs or didn't watch them or tuned out when the news came on because, really, who wants to hear all that shit going on in the world? These were the ones that never knew a killer stalked the streets among them. The ones who went to bed at night and slept well, draped in the warm illusion of safety.
That was just the way things were, but it upset Wolfwood most at times like this. Times like this when the guy he was talking to happened to work at the same club as the girl whose picture they'd been showing since morning. And the guy didn't have a clue.
"He means the killer, idiot."
"That painter's a killer? I mean, I never liked his style, but I didn't think he was a killer." Knuckle Ring said, proving Wolfwood's first impression of the guy right.
Bruiser Number Two shook his head as if he couldn't believe he worked with this guy. "Different guy. They just call 'em that 'cause he does weird things to the bodies. Don't you read the papers?"
"No." He shook his head emphatically. "No way."
"Well, you should."
"Why? What the hell has this got to do with anything?"
Wolfwood decided to cut it. "We have reason to believe Picasso may be here tonight."
"Holy shit!" Knuckle Ring said. "We should call the cops."
"You blind? The cops is already here," the smart one chimed in and jabbed a thumb at the officers still visible at the end of the alley. "'sides, he is the cops."
Wolfwood resisted the urge to look at his watch. "Look, I need to get in there and I need you to keep people out. Customers, other cops. Nobody gets through."
The pair exchanged a dubious look and then stared back down the alley where what seemed to be an arm of guys in blue were waiting. "That's just bad business, mister. You get a bunch of uniforms coming over here—looking official and all—and I'm not gonna want to stop them."
"They have orders to stay back. This is just in case they don't know how to follow them. Politely remind them that I don't want them going in."
"Uh-uh. Like I said: It's bad business."
"It'll be even worse for business if you have a murder inside your club because you didn't follow my orders. And it could get even worse if you obstruct an investigation. People do time for that kind of thing."
The smart one threw in the towel first. "Okay, I get your point. Not a big deal. We give."
"We do?" Knuckle Ring asked, looking dumber than ever.
"We do. You goin' in alone? I mean, you've got all those blues with you. You sure you don't need, you know, backup?"
"Trust me: backup would be bad tonight," Wolfwood said and threw his cigarette on the ground.
"Hey, where they goin'?" Knuckle Ring asked and stared wide-eyed and mouth agape at the entrance to the alley.
Wolfwood followed his gaze and watched as the last unit slid silently away up the street. Then there was nothing left to show they had been there at all. Vash was with them, he thought half in relief and half in anxiety.
"They have orders to pull back."
"Uh...orders from who?" asked Bruiser Number One.
"Orders from me."
He glanced back at the street a few more times and finally had to force himself to stop. Expecting the boys in blue to be there, expecting his partner to be there and seeing nothing but the blur of lights and colors as cars passed—it didn't frighten him, it just reminded him to be cautious. Besides, they were out there, somewhere. Just because he couldn't see them, didn't mean they weren't out there. And he had time left, maybe wouldn't need them, but he had to do this right.
"I appreciate your cooperation, gentlemen," he said and stepped past them.
"Yeah," said Knuckle Ring. "You, uh, you know, take care."
"I'll do that."
He'd try, anyway. That's all anybody ever could do.
Inside was raucous and wild. It was bigger on the inside than it looked from the outside, wider with taller ceilings than he'd expected, the concrete of the floor he could see stained and grubby. The club was also crowded. He couldn't believe it was as lively as it was this early into the night. But like the girl at the coffee shop had said, this wasn't a good place. A quick search back at the station had revealed that they were already on probation for serving to minors. The patrons had a certain reckless, sleazy look. Young, stupid.
Visibility where the disorienting lights didn't reach was poor at best. The corners were swamped with inky shadows and it was impossible to take in the entirety of the room in one sweep. He felt exposed. Briefly he recalled Vash's description of his pursuit of their only suspect through that factory downtown; how he had rushed in to a situation just like this—no place that could serve as cover, no way to watch your own back and no backup at all. God he hoped things turned out better this time.
He entered the room and squinted when a painful flash of light shot into his eye. It was a relief when the rotating light moved away to strobe across the floor and illuminate the sweating bodies of the dancers as if they were covered in glitter.
Sudden. Undeniable. It was the shiver down his spine. It was the heavy weight of eyes on him.
He froze. Nothing here was what it seemed.
With slow, deliberate movements, he removed his jacket. Underneath was the business white he'd borrowed from Vash and his shoulder holster. He laid the jacket down gently on the nearest table and lifted his hands surrender-style. The people around him were too involved in their own worlds to think it strange that he was standing perfectly still at the entrance to a crowded dance hall with his arms raised. Maybe, he mused, to them he looked like he was dancing. And who knew what they thought of the gun in its holster.
When he turned in a circle, he did so slowly. I'm armed, he thought as if the other man could hear him, but no tricks, see?
He didn't know how he knew, but...
Picasso was here.
The tension in the air, the potential for damage and primal flashing of lights and color. This was a world made for a man like him. He was here. Somewhere, watching him flounder, anxiously waiting for him to fail. But he had time. Things weren't lost, yet. He pulled out the photo and approached the bar. He tried to thread his way through the crowd, walking the perimeter to assess the situation and maybe even locate the girl. It was a struggle with the bodies twisting in the blare, chopped to pieces by the alternating patterns of light and dark. It was a familiar feeling. How often had he worked this scene, pretending to be one of the crowd, until one day he hadn't been pretending anymore?
The bartenders weren't unhelpful, but they weren't exactly founts of information either.
"Yeah, she's here today. Working the floor," one of them said with a leer and Wolfwood wondered if there was more to Linda's job here than the girl at the coffee shop had said. "Ain't seen her in awhile. She's out there somewhere," the man continued and gestured at the jam-packed floor. "Good luck."
There was nothing to do but keep looking, keep asking, screaming questions over the loud music to people who only shook their heads no. It was stifling in here. Moving even an inch was a battle and everywhere he looked he saw something to remind him of the things he'd rather not think about right now.
A pair of young, healthy-looking boys, hair dyed outrageous colors, ground against each other desperately, out-of-time with the music. A pale hand slithered down, disappeared beneath too-tight denim and there was a surprised, pleased gasp as a head rolled back. It wasn't dancing anymore. His eyes lingered on them for a minute and then looked away.
He had an hour left. Where the hell was she? Where?
He'd made a complete circle, understood the layout of the room, and had even walked the cramped, dirty bathrooms with no luck. The club was violating about twelve different fire and safety codes. The worst of them was the fact that the only way out besides the way he'd come in was blocked by a heavy speaker. It was like a suicide kitchen on a train. One way in, one way out. If anything went wrong...
Even with time left, he started to feel the crush of panic. He wiggled through a pair of enthusiastic dancers, stumbled on a sticky patch on the ground, and saw a hand flying towards him—the out-flung arm of young woman too wrapped up in the music and motion to notice him—too late to do anything but flinch and draw back. It came at him—
And never hit. Wolfwood looked up in shock. The hand, adorned by a turquoise rock that would have hurt had it made contact, was hovering, motionless, two inches away from his face. He lowered his arms from where they were shielding his face jerkily and then gawked at the woman who was as still as a statue. Then he whirled to take in the entire scene. What he saw made his mouth drop open: a room full of silent dancers frozen in time. The music blared through the speakers with no cheers or gasps or moans to mar it and it thundered through his feet and up to where his heart outpaced it.
Nobody was moving and their faces were masks of excitement and lust and exhaustion. Here and there were the glassy-eyed looks of the users and the drunks, preserved in perfect stillness. And he knew, better than most, that Picasso was not normal, that he could do...things. But seeing it first hand was sobering and terrifying. How could he hope to fight a man who could do these things? He remembered Kelly Morgan with her head facing the wrong way and her heart a tattered mess in her chest from where it had exploded. He remembered the prostitute, Brett, from the club, torn to pieces with his blood on the walls and the ceiling. Picasso could do things no human should be able to do. And he was seeing it first hand.
"What the fuck?" he heard and whirled towards the voice, a shocking sound in all this nothingness. Towards the entrance there were about twenty people who hadn't been affected. They seemed terrified but otherwise unhurt. The boy who had spoken looked like the prototype for all Goth Boys; he was an album cover waiting to happen with all the chains and tattoos. He was also about to make a stupid mistake, edging closer to a motionless girl dressed similarly to him.
"Don't move," Wolfwood barked. "JCPD, everybody stay exactly where you are." He flashed his badge and was glad that they actually respected it. He had a couple scars from those times when the badge hadn't done shit.
While they stood there, Wolfwood studied them carefully. What was different? Why weren't they frozen like the others?
They were all standing nearby him. Could that be the answer? Had Picasso held back—sparing the people nearest him—not wanting to endanger the game by accidentally paralyzing him? Somehow, he got the feeling that he was wrong about that. He scanned the room again, trying to think faster than he was capable of when he was dealing with a madman like this. Only the people on this side of the room, near the entrance. Only the people...
It was almost like—
He heard crying as the song switched.
"Everybody who can move, get out of here! Run! Now!"
They didn't run immediately, as if the command took a moment to process. But once it caught up with them, they bolted from the room, shoving each other to be the first out. "Go, go! Don't turn around and don't come back! Find a police officer and wait with them!"
"But my girlfriend!" the Goth cried.
Wolfwood pulled his piece and sighted down the barrel, aim perfect. "Want to join her?"
The kid had probably never run so fast in his life. He was the last one out and then it was just the music from the speakers and the silence from the crowd. He'd only saved twenty-two people by his count and wishing he could get the others out was a waste of time, but still. He holstered his gun and turned back to the floor.
The crying was louder now and it had fits of whimpers in between. There wasn't enough time in the world to deal with all this. It should have been easier to dart through the crowd with everyone still like this, but their bodies were configured in impossible poses and he had to contort his own body to maneuver at all. He passed the boys again, frozen as they had been, almost making love on the dance floor.
Breathless, he came to a clearing. In the center of the open space was the redhead—Linda—dressed in a barely-there outfit, her arms flush to her sides and her feet pressed together as if she were tied that way. But there were no bonds on her body, nothing visibly keeping her there. Only her face seemed free of the constriction holding the rest of her body and tears streamed down her face and the muscles in her jaw twitched nervously.
He took a step forward. He'd made it. He'd found her in time. "It's okay," he said and held out his hands palm up and tried to remember how Vash handled people in distress, tried to be someone Linda felt like she could trust. "I'm with the police. My name is Nick. Are you hurt?"
"God, help me," she sobbed. "I can't move. He...he's still here." Terror joined the words and made them screech from her throat.
"Shhh, it's okay." One small step at a time, he edged towards her. "Are you hurt?" he repeated and took a slightly larger step.
"N-no...but...he's gonna kill me. God, you have to get me out of here! Help me!"
Just two more steps. "It's okay, you're gonna be okay." He lowered his hands onto her stiff, cold shoulders. "I've got you," he said and felt her body suddenly turn warm and pliable in his hands. He caught her as she stumbled forward and crashed against him.
"Thank you, thank you," she sobbed against his shirt—Vash's shirt. "Thank you, thank you. P-please get me out of here. I couldn't run, I couldn't move!"
He took her hands in both of his and his smile was genuine and not some trick he'd pulled from Vash. "It's okay, you're all right. Can you walk? Are you ready to go?"
"Yes, please!" she said and then looked into his eyes with such gratitude that Wolfwood felt a little undeserving.
Which is when an entire unit burst through the door, guns raised and badges out. "Police, freeze!" they screamed over the music. And Wolfwood could hear their confusion when they realized nobody was moving, could hear them take a step back in surprise and fear. There were no words to describe the heavy, disappointed, failed emotion that tumbled from his heart down to his stomach, like a demolished building coming down. Shit, he thought.
"Fall back!" he shouted at the bewildered cops. These weren't his guys.
"I said no one but me!" And Wolfwood decided that Bennigan was going to need much more than stitches by the time he got finished pounding his face into the floor for this. The uniforms couldn't see him, but they could hear him and why were they still standing there with their guns out when they—
"Wrong move, Detective," he heard a voice whisper as if it was standing right beside him. Somehow he knew that if he turned his head towards it, there would be nothing there. The voice seemed to resound inside his mind, as if that's where it originated.
"I told you no cops. I wanted to see you."
His first instinct was to scan the room for a flicker of movement, to try and catch the perp, but he knew better. They had to get out of here and they had to get out now.
"Run!" he screamed. Linda jumped first in surprise and then responded in a rush with her thin arms waving wildly in front of her, trying to push the bodies blocking her path out of the way. He struggled through the jungle of motionless bodies around him to catch up with her and soon outpaced her, grabbed her hand and tugged her with him.
But then something was happening, from one second to the next, a small fraction of time. His feet felt so heavy...
He took two, three, four dragging steps forward.
Linda had stopped running and was staring back at him with wild eyes. "No," she whispered. "No, no!"
He didn't understand why he couldn't move. And why was she staring at him with such fear? No, not at him; over his shoulder there was something...
"I warned you," he heard and it crashed through the space around them and sent his skin shivering.
Could he reason with this man? Could he explain? "It wasn't me! It wasn't—"
"Too late."
He felt his fingers slipping away from Linda's.
"Don't leave me!" she begged.
But his feet weren't on the floor anymore and he was looking down at her. He stretched forward, tried to keep her hands, tried not to let her go. "Linda! Run!"
He felt flung back like a pebble from a slingshot, curved around himself in the air like there was a cannonball in his gut. Over the heads of the silent crowd below. Arms flailing and legs kicking, he tried to fight it, but the force the speed...
He hit the wall—cracking intensity up his spine, light exploding through his vision—and slid down it, eyes wide open to see Linda's terrified face screaming and screaming endlessly, hands still reaching for him. The sound was wrenched from her throat, like the sound of someone trapped in burning car as the flames wrap around them. Wolfwood stood sluggishly, pain flaring across the scars on his back, and broke into a run, met resistance at every stride as the dancers and clubbers were suddenly reanimated, blocking his path as they stumbled in surprise at their numb fingers and toes.
"Oh my god!" someone screamed. And then the whole room was screaming at something he couldn't see.
There was a strange crunching sound loud enough to be heard over the sound of the crowd and the thundering beat of the music. Like a million brittle pieces of porcelain slamming into the floor.
"Move, move!" he shouted. "Police, out of my way!" But they weren't listening. They were panicking and trying to get away from something and he was afraid and certain all at once that he knew what it was. The cops at the door didn't know how to react to the chaos heading for them. Wolfwood managed to make good strides forward just as the crowd parted to grant him a glimpse of what had caused the stampede.
Something was in the middle of the confusion and waves of bodies were rushing away from it. Ah, hell, Wolfwood managed to think just as he was bulldozed backwards by a new wave of bodies. He didn't stand a chance: the only one heading towards the problem in a room full of people desperately trying to get away from it. One more push and he was right in front of the exit again, watching the unit of cops trying and failing to maintain order. Damn, damn, damn...
His next thought was ouch.
He had connected with wall, pain flaring along every cut and bruise, snapping along his battered spine. The bodies kept coming and he was being pushed hard into the wall. A shoulder wedged into his ribs and he threw his head back and screamed. Then the rush scooted him along the perimeter of the room, further and further into a corner. He figured this was going to hurt. A passerby clipped him with their elbow and yet another got him in the shin with a solid kick. He stumbled back gracelessly, expecting his shoulders to wedge into the alcove made by wall meeting wall and instead landed on something altogether softer than he had expected.
No, he thought. No.
Everything went quiet. The youth of the club in their bright, slutty clothes continued to scream as they passed, he just couldn't hear them. Everything before him seemed to merge and streak like he was on a merry-go-round and the world was a carnival. And then quite suddenly nothing moved at all again. Even the cops to his right were halted in mid-step, guns drawn and mouths wide open as they hollered at the room to freeze. Wolfwood shut his eyes against the sight as the reality of just how fucked he was sank in. He'd been here to see it all and now he was behind him.
It was just the two of them, trapped in a dead world together.
All the remaining sounds in the room—the music, the door swinging on its hinges, and the distant sound of the footsteps of those who had made it out—were muffled by the distinct, even sound of the heartbeat behind him. It was strong and steady and somehow reminded him of what the heart of a jungle cat might sound like just before it tore out the throat of a gazelle.
Dammit, dammit, dammit. And really, he couldn't even be mad at anyone else because, yeah, he'd let himself be herded against this wall like a calf to the slaughter. There were a dozen things he could have done—pull his piece, punch his way through—but he hadn't and here was his bitter reward.
Swallowing didn't make the sound return. He slowly reached for his gun.
"Move and they all die."
Wolfwood froze. Again, the voice seemed to come from all around and from inside his head where it echoed and then settled like concrete at the bottom of the sea.
"Okay," he said, halting. His fingers were itching to free the gun from its holster, no matter how little it would help. It was instinct.
"You made a mistake," the voice continued from behind him. "You disobeyed my instructions."
"It wasn't me. I did everything you said."
"No, you didn't, and now she's dead because of you. I'm going to enjoy making you realize your mistake. I'm going to rip him apart."
Just a flicker of an image in his mind, a goofy smile; a serious frown when he thought no one was looking. The image of a savior above him, seen through eyes made blurry by dripping blood and toxic drugs. The only bit of good from a dark time when he had been held prisoner by pain.
"Don't," he croaked and didn't recognize his own voice. It was feral and desperate and not too far from begging. He could feel Picasso's breath, hot and heavy, against his neck, as if he'd moved closer.
"This was fun. Didn't you have fun? I think you did." And Wolfwood couldn't tell from those words if he had won that round, if Picasso really would leave his partner alone or not. Could he interpret the subject change as a promise that Vash would be safe?
"Next time will be even better," Picasso said, his lips close enough to brush Wolfwood's skin.
Wolfwood almost choked on his anger. "Next time? You've seen me work now! You've seen enough! Let it go."
Picasso seemed to contemplate this. "No," he said after a moment. "You can't have both. I can change my mind again and then you'll be shy a partner. Do you want that?"
And he had his answer now and didn't know how to feel about it. "Damn you, no."
"Good. Besides, don't you want a chance to redeem yourself? After all, you were so close. You organized everything so well. The searches, the phones, the news stations. I thought you might actually pull it off. But you didn't, did you? Her death is nothing to feel bad about, really. She wasn't perfect. She was flawed and incomplete. She deserved to die."
"Yeah? We'll I'm no poster child. You know all about what I am, so why the hell am I still alive and kicking?"
And it was the wrong thing to say—or maybe just the right thing—because he was pushed away. He slammed into one the bodies suspended in mid-motion before him. When he was certain on his feet, he balanced himself against a bare shoulder and found himself looking into unblinking, terrified eyes. Just another punk kid out for a night on the town.
When Picasso spoke again, his voice had a manic, vicious edge to it that had been missing before. "You excel at pushing your luck."
"Well it seems like I can get away with it with you. Otherwise, I'd be dead by now, wouldn't I?"
"There are far worse things than just being dead, Detective. I can make you suffer."
He wanted to turn around—to see what face owned a beautiful, poison voice like that—but knew that was a sure-fire way to open a world of trouble. "Then make me suffer. Leave the girls alone. If it's me you want, leave them alone."
"You have no idea what I want," Picasso hissed.
"Yeah," Wolfwood said harshly, "and neither do you."
And then he could only cry out as he was thrown back against the wall once again. It wasn't as hard as it might have been, knowing now what Picasso could do. It was a reprimand, the ultimate display of Picasso's anger with him. He was lashing out like a child and trying to hurt him. But kill him? No. For whatever reason, that he wouldn't do.
He fell to his knees and was almost kicked while he was down as the crowd was suddenly re-animated. In the confusion, he knew Picasso could slip away easily and the knowledge boiled inside him, heated rage and anger at how unfair the world was.
He rolled away from the feet threatening to trample him. Now the noise was deafening: the music he could strangely hear again, the shrieks of fear and anxiety. They went like wild animals for the door and didn't care who they knocked down or crushed to get away. He could once again hear the ineffective cries of the cops around him trying to bring order. None of it did any good. As the insanity struggled past him, all he could do was crawl backwards, make himself small and wait.
After a small lifetime, the room was empty save for him and the uniforms who had only managed to detain a handful of witnesses. Clubbers and cops alike had all turned away from what Wolfwood could see clearly for the first time. He stood and staggered towards it.
There was nothing left of her to identify her by but vibrant hair. The rest was splatters and violent drops of red covering a pile of something that had been flesh and muscle and bone. Once. The puddle oozed and spread. A cop in the corner was being sick into a wastebasket. The rest of them were looking at him.
"D-detective?" one of them asked uneasily.
"Why are you standing here doing nothing? Sweep the goddamn building and perimeter," he snapped. "You with Bennigan?"
"Uh, yeah. Yes."
"Well get Detective Saverem's team back in position and have them round up everybody you just lost. We question everyone."
"Everyone?"
His eyes flashed with frustration and impatience before he was able to control it again. "Everyone. I want this place secured in ten minutes. Get forensics on the horn and call the meat wagon. Rope that off."
He turned quickly and followed the crowd from the room.
"Sir, where are you going?" the same officer asked, afraid because the detective looked like he was on a warpath and bad things tended to happen at times like that. Or maybe he didn't want to be left alone with the gore that had once been a girl.
"Is Bennigan out there?"
"Uh, yes, Detective."
"Then that's where I'm going."
"Um...Detective?"
"What?"
The cop hesitated at the edge to his voice and then said quietly, "You're bleeding." He pointed in the direction of Wolfwood's back.
Wolfwood frowned and then reached behind him. His hand, when he pulled it back, was covered in blood. Every scar he had must have opened up when he hit the wall. High on adrenaline, he hadn't even noticed. He could only imagine the pattern it made on his shirt—crimson lash marks like those a whip makes. It had been a hell of a day. Just brilliant.
He needed a cigarette.
But first he needed to find Bennigan, make him realize what a huge mistake he'd made, and then make him very, very sorry for it.
To Be Continued...
Thanks for reading to all and big hugs to reviewers. Big clues here. Big, big clues, hobbits. Yes, hobbits. Did you see 'em?
Favorite part:
"It was just the two of them, trapped in a dead world together.
All the remaining sounds in the room—the music, the door swinging on its hinges, and the distant sound of the footsteps of those who had made it out—were muffled by the distinct, even sound of the heartbeat behind him. It was strong and steady and somehow reminded him of what the heart of a jungle cat might sound like just before it tore out the throat of a gazelle."
I don't have a reason why, I just like it.
Up next?
"I want to talk to you about Detective Wolfwood. Is that okay?"
Bradley's wide face closed up. "I don't know anybody by that name. I've told you before."
"But you do, Bradley. It's important for you to realize that the man you call 'Chapel' never existed. Chapel was a codename for an undercover police detective. Don't you see?"
"Chapel's real," he snarled. "That cop isn't."
In the next chapter, The Gauntlet storyline comes to an end. See you then.