Embers (34 page)

“I try,”
the ghost said modestly.

“It says here that the mines cover more than one thousand five hundred acres under the city. . . that’s a lot of ground to cover,” Katie said.

“I’ll pull the maps from the archive.”
Felicity popped out of sight.

Anya’s cell phone chirped, and her right hand reached for the phone. She slapped it back with her left, snatching the phone and pressing it to her ear.

“Kalinczyk.”

“This is Marsh. Merry early Christmas, Lieutenant. You were right. . . Drake Ferrer returned to the scene of the apartment fire. DFD caught him last night carving a number one in the pavement. He surrendered without a fight. He just finished intake in the county lockup.”

Anya sat in the visitation area of the Wayne County Jail, waiting on her side of a Plexiglas partition for Drake to be brought to her. The room was painted a sickly yellow, illuminated by buzzing fluorescent light. Even this far away from the cellblocks, it smelled like sweat and stale piss. Anya wished she’d brought a bottle of disinfectant with her; she wondered whether or not pressing the visitation phone to her ear would give her head lice.

She’d been lucky to get in at all. Mimi had thought it would be funny to sign her in on the visitor log as Captain Kangaroo. Anya had caught it in time to scratch it out with her left hand and scribble her real name on the next line. The visitation officer glared skeptically, as her signature didn’t match the one on her driver’s license, but Anya had convinced him that she was suffering from a bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Jails were not among Anya’s favorite places. Like hospitals, they tended to be haunted, only with a less pleasant clientele of ghosts. At the moment, she was trying very hard to ignore the ghost of the orange jumpsuited man sitting on the plastic chair beside her. The inmate’s ghost sat with his feet drawn up on the chair and his hands wrapped around his knees. Around his neck, he bore a ligature mark. Hanging, definitely. The question was whether or not it was his own idea. Sparky sat in Anya’s lap and growled at the ghost, daring him to come within reach of his teeth.

The ghost stared at her, unblinking, with a look of thirsty malice that gave her the willies. Mimi kept twitching toward him. Anya considered devouring him, but was reluctant—if Ferrer was right, she didn’t want to keep feeding the monster.

But if that piece of ectoplasmic shit touched her, all bets were off.

The deputy supervising visitation finally brought Ferrer back to the other side of the Plexiglas. Anya drew in her breath. He looked like hell. Dressed in an ill-fitting orange jumpsuit, his hands were folded in front of him, wrists braceleted in handcuffs. His good eye was blackened with a shiner, and small cuts covered his left arm. She had a visceral sense of him not belonging here, not in the harsh brutality of this place that smelled like sweat.

Anya picked up the phone. “What happened to you?”

Drake shrugged. “The other inmates don’t like me much.” His focus slid from her to the ghost of the inmate. He lifted his hand, threatening the ghost.

Anya tried to distract him, speaking quickly. “I hear you got caught at the apartment scene. Is that true?”

“That’s what the police say.” His smile was enigmatic, serene. His hand fell back down on the desk.

Anya’s eyes narrowed. She knew there was nothing that could hold him; she’d seen him walk in fire, knew he could cut through concrete with his bare hands. Those handcuffs would be like butter to him.

“Why are you here, Drake?” She leaned forward, pressed her fingers to the Plexiglas.

“Where’s your lawyer? You could have bonded out before you even hit a holding cell.”

“Isn’t this what you wanted?”

Her gaze flickered to the ugly bruise on his face. “Yes. . . no. Not like this.” She watched him watching her through the plastic. “You wouldn’t take Mimi from me, because it would interfere with your plans. Will you take it now?” Hope flared within her at the thought of getting rid of the demon.

He shook his head. “Not yet, regretfully.”

Mimi giggled.
“I think he’s afraid that I’m a better lover than you are. He’s right.”

Anya ignored the demon’s voice in the back of her head, and concentrated on Drake.

“You’re not here because I want you to be here.” She leaned back in her creaky plastic chair. It wasn’t over. “You’re here because you want to be.”

He smiled enigmatically. “Architects are planners. Wait and see.”

The ghost leaned forward, so close to Anya that she could feel the chill radiating from him. He didn’t speak, couldn’t harm her, but that sense of intimidation still hung in the air. Anya stared through him. Sparky growled deep in his throat, but Anya kept her fingers tightly wound in the loose skin of his neck. She could feel Sparky’s muscles tensing to leap.

Drake tapped on the glass, and both the ghost and Anya turned to face him.

“Hey, buddy,” Ferrer said. “I have something to tell you.”

The ghost leaned toward the plastic.

“Come closer. I have something I want to give you.”

“No, don’t,” Anya said.

The ghost took a step, then two, toward the desk. Anya let Sparky go, in hopes that the salamander would tear him down and away from Drake’s grip, but too late.

As soon as the spirit of the inmate passed through the Plexiglas, Drake had him. The ghost disappeared in a wisp of smoke that blew away. Sparky landed on the floor, shaking his head in disorientation.

Drake leaned toward the Plexiglas. “Don’t worry. I’ve got everything under control.”

“He’s in jail for a reason.” Anya drummed her fingers on the surface of Ciro’s bar. The chalk sigils had all been washed away. Jules and Max were busy installing new mirror tiles above the bar. The bar was closed to patrons and Ciro liked it that way on Devil’s Night. Too many crowds had gotten out of hand over the years. At least this gave him an excuse not to open his doors in the first place. Every once in a while, a group of drunken revelers would thump on the plywood boards as they walked by, giving the Devil’s Bathtub denizens a jolt.

In the background, the television droned. The Lions were losing to the Steelers at home on Ford Field and it seemed like that bit of normal noise drove out some of the thick atmosphere still clinging to the bar from the exorcism. Sparky sat on the bar top, his head craned to watch the images on the screen over the bar. Every so often, he would reach up and lick the screen, eliciting an instant of static. Max and Jules would yell for him to sit down and the picture would resolve itself.

“Well, yeah. He’s a felon. He got caught.” Katie looked up from the cake she was demolishing in a booth with Ciro. To celebrate Brian getting sprung from the hospital, she’d baked a cake in the shape of a Detroit Lions football helmet. DAGR had also pitched in to buy Brian a real Detroit Lions helmet, as safety equipment for his next encounter with the paranormal. Given the Lions’ dismal record, it was an appropriate gift for a guy unlucky enough to give himself a brain injury falling off a toilet.

“No. His bond’s been set, and he hasn’t made any effort whatsoever to make it. According to Marsh, he pretty much handed himself over on a silver platter at the scene.”

Anya pushed her cake around her paper plate with a fork. Food didn’t have much taste anymore. Drake’s behavior stymied her. Her conversation with him suggested that his plans were still in motion, but how? He had no accomplices and Devil’s Night was tonight. He was cooling his heels in the lockup, probably getting his ass kicked. It made no sense. “There are plenty of ghosts there for him to devour, but that can’t be the only appeal. He could find as many walking around a graveyard or a nursing home.”

Beside her, Brian was busily scarfing down his third serving of cake. He paused to thumb the keys on his web-enabled cell phone. “According to the sheriff’s online inmate database, Ferrer’s been there for nearly a day now. I’m sure he’s enjoying his time locked up with all the other inmates.” He shrugged. “The food’s probably pretty on par with hospital food, anyway.”

Max turned around. “That’s pretty cool. You can tell who’s in jail just by checking the Web site?”

“Yeah. It’s all public record info. I imagine that it’s great fun for people who wonder where their spouses are at three in the morning.”

“With all the other inmates. . .” Anya echoed, stuck on Brian’s earlier statement. The glimmer of an idea lit in her thoughts. “Brian, can you check the database to see if Martin Carr is in jail?”

Brian’s thumbs flew across the text keypad of his phone. “Nope.”

“How about Joseph Lindsey?”

“No. Got a John and a James, but no Joseph.”

“Anthony Sellers?”

Brian’s thumbs skittered across the keyboard. “Yup. DOB is November 29, 1987. He’s been locked up for three days for a domestic violence charge. Hasn’t made bail. He’s at Correction Center 1, downtown.” Brian glanced at Anya. “You know that guy?”

Anya’s mouth pressed into a grim slash. “Those are the guys who attacked Drake Ferrer years ago. Felicity and I were able to connect some of the arsons to them and the members of their families. If this guy was arrested and taken to jail before Ferrer, it’s no coincidence.” Dread prickled over her. “Can I use your phone?”

“Sure.”

Anya punched in Marsh’s number, careful to use her left hand, lest Mimi choose a random 1-900 number. She slid off her barstool and snatched her jacket. “Captain Marsh, this is Kalinczyk.”

“Shouldn’t you be taking it easy on a beach somewhere?”

“I need you to get Drake Ferrer transferred out of CC1 to CC2 or CC3. One of his assailants from his 1998 attack is in jail with him.”

“So?”

“I think that Ferrer is going to try to get back at him. I’ve been able to trace some of Ferrer’s previous fires to his attackers: the beauty shop was run by one of his assailants’

mothers and one of his assailants stored property at the warehouse. It’s circumstantial, but. . .”

She could hear the gears whirring in Marsh’s head. “I’ll ask them for a keep-separate order, but they may not transfer him to another facility. The best we may be able to accomplish might be to keep them in separate cell blocks.”

Anya bit her lip. “Marsh, if this guy’s as crazy as I think he is, that might not be good enough.”

She heard Marsh’s pager go off on the other end of his line. A chorus of other pagers chirped in the background. It sounded like an aviary of electronic birds.

“Gotta go,” he said curtly, and hung up.

Anya headed toward the door, sidestepping the sad remains of the cracked bathtub in the center of the floor. Maybe if she went down to the jail in person, she could convince the duty sergeant to move Ferrer if she brought a pizza. . . .

“Anya,” Jules said. “Come see this.” He turned up the volume on the television set.

The Lions game had been preempted by an image of a reporter clutching a microphone.

“This is Paul Phillips, reporting from downtown Detroit. The Wayne County Jail Corrections Center 1 is on fire. Police and sheriff’s deputies are on the scene, while the Detroit Fire Department is trying to contain the blaze. . .”

The camera swung behind the reporter to the gray concrete jail, sandwiched between Ford Field and Greektown. The structure was nearly entirely engulfed in flames. Glass had broken out of the slitted windows, but there wasn’t enough room for inmates to escape through the bars. Hands and feet reached through the slits, clawing for fresh air. On the ground, fire trucks surrounded the building, and riot police had formed an armed perimeter, aiming their guns at the windows.

Anya pressed her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God. There are a thousand people in there. Drake’s going to sacrifice them all to Sirrush.”

It was even worse in person than on the television hanging above Ciro’s bar.

The Lions game had been evacuated, and the outflow of traffic pouring from Detroit Field hampered the efforts to get fire trucks and emergency vehicles to the scene. News helicopters hovering over the scene reported on the radio that the chaos downtown had inspired other smaller fires in outlying areas. The state police and National Guard were reportedly on the way, but Anya bet that they wouldn’t make an appearance until tomorrow morning.

Traffic going downtown had been rerouted, causing Anya to double back with the Dart several times. She was finally successful in skipping past a barricade in Greektown by waving to a distracted officer while she was wearing her firefighter’s coat. She pulled into an alley beside a restaurant. A man with a moustache in a white apron patrolled the bistro, carrying a shotgun.

“No parking,” the swarthy man in the apron announced, brandishing his weapon.

“I’m a fire investigator,” she said, raising her hands and lifting her hat. She gestured to the shotgun with her chin. “Will you watch my car for me?”

The man with the moustache grinned. “Lady, I’ll watch your car for the price of ammo. You just make sure those thieves and rapists don’t get out and screw with my restaurant.”

“I’ll do my best.” She handed him a fifty and sprinted through the alley toward the orange blaze in the sky. Ash from the fire charred her throat and she had to struggle to breathe. It seemed that both Mimi and the smoke pooled low in her chest, giving her the lung capacity of a child. Coughing, she sprinted into view of the burning jail.