Chapter Two: Avoidance
Goliath straightened from reading the note and peered through the large windows of Elisa's loft. Her home was dark, the only illumination came from the hall beyond her front door, casting long and pale shadows across her floor. He grunted as in one swift motion he jiggled the window, causing the lock to fall away, opened it and slid inside. He slid the window shut again as his eyes searched the darkened room for any kind of clues as to his partners where a bouts.
He padded away from the window, frowning as he noticed nothing amiss in the living room. It was neat and Spartan, as it always was whenever he had visited her, the dishes were cleaned and neatly arranged in the dishrack to dry. He headed back toward the bedroom, which was in a not wholly unexpected state of disrepair. Her bed was a disheveled mess, the sheets rumpled and the covers cascading off one side onto the floor. Next to the bedside was a plastic lined wastebasket, and on the nightstand was a still damp washcloth.
Goliath could still remember just how sick Elisa had been the night previous and it explained a lot of what he was seeing here in her bedroom. So she had not recovered as they had both hoped. Her illness had continued into her day. But where exactly was she? And why had she left him such a cryptic note?
Something furry ran along Goliath's leg causing him to start and look down. He smiled as Elisa's cat Cagney made a return run across his leg in an effort to gain his attention.
"Hello, Cagney," Goliath rumbled in his deep voice, crouching to pet the gray animal, "I do not suppose that you could tell me just where Elisa has disappeared to?"
The cat just looked up at him with slowly closing eyes, and purred louder in his content. Goliath smiled affectionately at the cat affording him several more scratches under the chin before he sighed and rose. He stepped back out of the bedroom. He pursed his lips as he looked about again, thinking that this little mystery was just going to have to wait until Elisa contacted him. He started back toward the window as his eyes continued to rove restlessly over the apartment. He froze, his eyes locked on something that sent a chill through his body. Near the front door on the coat rack that she always hung it on when off duty was her gun and the shoulder holster.
His breath was in his throat as he slowly stepped over to the familiar piece of furniture laying one hand onto the device still snapped safely into its holster. A growl of fear built up in his throat. She never went anywhere without it he knew.
His mind brimmed with worse case scenarios…of Elisa deathly ill in some hospital bed somewhere and he with no way to contact her. Another thought, one almost as dark and foreboding came up in his mind. She had enemies, indeed, one such, Demona, the Quarrymen, or any of the mobsters that she tried to wash off the street, may have abducted her in her weakened state, for some inscrutable purpose that he did not want to think of. His heart was beating fast at that thought. He looked down shaking his large head, trying to dislodge the images from his mind, tried to dismiss them as anxiety. They refused to yield his mind however, growing more insistent in him until his stomach was one large knot.
He practically ran back through the apartment, hastily shutting the window behind him. He launched himself into the air letting the currents lift his mass high over the city.
Goliath spent long hours scouring the city for some sign of Elisa. He perched on eaves listening for some word of her health at many of the hospitals he could think of. He peered into windows of emergency rooms looking for some sign that she was there, his stomach sinking in the hopes that she was not. He was unable to glean any information at all and with a heavy heart he moved on, gliding through the city thinking.
It occurred to him that Bluestone might have some answers for him and he winged toward the police station hoping to intercept him. He was disappointed to find that the investigator's car was not in its usual spot and overheard that the detective had been put on an undercover assignment across the city. Goliath sighed as he unobtrusively climbed the building to perch outside the Chief's office hoping to hear some news there.
There he sat listening absently, deep in thought, worst case scenarios swirling in his head, and he had to force himself to breath. He reminded himself that there was no sign of forced entry at her home. Both the front door and the window had been firmly locked. No windows had been broken. She had to have left of her own free will.
"Has anyone seen Maza?" he heard come muffled from the Police Chief's office. He shifted sideways coming closer to the half-open window. Peering around the window frame he could see the Police Chief hanging halfway out her door inquiring to the officers passing in the hallway. Goliath heard several muffled replies in the negative to her inquiries. The older woman sighed heavily as she slowly turned away from the door shutting it behind her. She leaned on the door heavily, and only then did he see the worry lining her face, "What am I going to do with her?" He heard her mutter under her breath.
Goliath eased back a little as she looked up and seemingly right out the window at him and then to her desk. He heard her footsteps coming closer and he held his breath hoping that she did not lean out the window and expose his precarious position just outside. A moment later her chair squeaked loudly as it accepted her weight. He sighed audibly and again leaned in to watch the woman.
About that time the phone rang on her desk, and he watched as she practically snatched the receiver off the phone, "Hello?" She said in a professional tone and went silent a moment as she listened to the caller. When she spoke again she sounded angry, "Where have you been all night Maza?"
Goliath raised a hand to the glass in his excitement to hear her name. His claws made a loud clinking sound against the pane as he did and grimacing he threw himself back from the window, plastering himself against the brick at his back. He heard the tell tale squeak of her chair as she turned to face the window. He drew several shallow breaths and let them out before he heard the second squeak that told him that she had returned to gazing at her desk while she spoke with Elisa on the phone.
Letting out the last breath he cautiously leaned back in to peer through the window. She was doodling on a pad of paper as she listened to what it was that Elisa was saying to her. She nodded and replied, "All right, keep me up to date," She said slowly, "And Maza?" Another short pause followed, "Next time give me some heads up before you do something like this."
The woman hung up the phone and went back to her work at the desk. Goliath sighed as he leaned back out of view, closing his eyes as the butterflies finally subsided in his stomach. She was all right! Or at the very least she was not a hostage to some hoodlum. A whole new round of questions then surfaced in his mind to replace the anxious questions from before. What was she doing? And why was it so secretive that she had to keep it from even him?
He straightened slowly and then launched himself into the early morning sky. He wheeled about heading in the general direction of the castle. It was a slow flight, and was supposed to be a patrol but he found that only half his attention was on the streets below him. He was surprised when he finally focused his eyes and found that the sky was beginning to stain with color as night waned into day. He had been so troubled in thought that he had lost all track of what was normally a very sharp internal clock.
Goliath wheeled around gathering speed in the strengthening predawn wind. The draft started to lift him into the sky, higher until he could glide easily back to the castle before the sun broke over the horizon trapping him in stone. He glanced down one last time seeing a familiar figure walking slowly down the sidewalk below him. He changed the angle of his leathers again heading back down toward the street below, his heart gladdening not only to see her but in relatively good health.
His cheer turned to dismay not a moment later. Elisa seemed to have heard his approach and looked accurately his direction despite the unnatural glow of the streetlights. Her eyes became wide as she registered what she was seeing and her mouth fell open in…was it fears? He backwinged, barely keeping himself aloft as the emotion on her face penetrated his thoughts. Suddenly she turned from him, moving swiftly down the street and before he could intercept her she had ducked into a local deli and disappeared from sight.
Goliath landed just across the way from the deli one hand firmly sunk into the stone of the building as he leaned out over the street. His wings hung loosely, flapping and shuddering in the breeze. His hair whipped into his face stinging his skin, but he hardly felt it as his emotions roiled. Had he really seen that? Had he seen Elisa look upon him in fear? Was she…was she avoiding him? He glanced back at the sky blinking heavily against tears he had not even known were there. The previous wash of color was now a glorious orange heavy in the sky and he knew he did not have much time to make it back to the castle before the sun rose. But there was a stubborn part of him that wanted to wait, that wanted to see why Elisa would react so strangely to his presence when she had always treated him warmly before.
He knew the folly of that thought, if she was trying to avoid him all she would have to do was wait until he was a statue upon this ledge and then take her leave of him. Grimacing, he allowed logic to win out, his heart growing heavier each moment he considered her reaction to him. He pulled himself closer to the building, released his grip, and once more launched into the stiffening breeze. He rose higher and higher not looking back to the place where his heart had found so much trouble.
He rose very high into the sky rocketing down from the heavens trying to race the sun to the castle. His thoughts finally had cleared from his head as a higher priority now filled his mind. If he returned to stone at this height there would be nothing to save him from smashing into a million bits on the pavement so far below him.
He reached the castle mere moments before the sun broke the horizon, winging strongly to his lofty perch at the high point of the castle. Goliath greeted no one even though he saw Hudson's look of concern at his late arrival below him. He landed heavily on his parapet, feeling the jar in his legs all the way up to his jaw. He whirled around to face out toward the city just as the sun broke the horizon.
If any could look on that height to see Goliath's face as sleep overtook him would have quivered in fear. Never before had Goliath looked so frightening, all his worries had turned to anger and his anger followed him into sleep.