Authors: Dani Alexander
What’d she tell you?”
“I’m supposed to trust you two?”
“Who else you got?” Luis asked.
He stared out the window. Luis and I waited while he decided. “Goth Nation. On 14th Street.”
Cai is Going To Military School When This is Done We drove to Capitol Hill and illegally parked in front of the shop. Goth Nation was squashed in the middle of the street between empty buildings and a corner beauty salon. A rent-a-bike kiosk stood on one corner. An Indie record shop on another. And on the last corner, a coin laundry/convenience store. Most of the people milling about were twenty-somethings with band tshirts, wide studded belts and jeans tight enough to outline tattoos. We followed two of them into the shop.
Tiny, dusty, dark and moody was how I would describe the place. The shelves were black. The small square counter was
black. So were the carpet, the clothes; the walls; the shoes; the door to the backroom—all black. The only spots of color were the “Legalize It” stickers haphazardly posted everywhere and the gold knob on the door behind the counter. Oh, and the pink-haired girl and blue—haired guy standing in front of us. The shop was also empty of salespeople.
“Beat it,” Luis said, then flashed his badge at the teens. They shrugged and walked out. A tinkling bell signaled their exit. We all looked at the door behind the counter.
“Stay here,” I whispered to Darryl while Luis and I pulled our guns and leaned against the door frame. He motioned me to turn the knob, signaling that he would follow me in. I nodded and signed a countdown from three. I twisted the knob, and we filed through the door as quickly and quietly as possible.
Moving silently, we stopped at each row to check down the narrow walkways. We crouched and peered through shoeboxes and stacks of tshirts in each before moving on to the next. Over a pair of four-inch platform boots, I spotted a figure. Luis motioned me forward. I darted across the row to the last shelving unit and pressed my back against the wall. Peeking briefly around the corner, I signed that I saw one person. I pressed my hand flat, then took a longer look from a crouched position.
The girl, or rather her breathing, talking skeletal remains, was splayed on the ground, her neck propped by a metal shelf and the far wall. She was babbling incoherently. A puddle formed between the v of her legs. The stench of urine filtered through my adrenalin. I didn’t see a weapon.
I heard Luis calling for an ambulance as I approached her.
She wore black holey tights and a micro plaid skirt. Her mesh, long-sleeved shirt was pulled up on one side, revealing a piece of black rubber loosely ribboned around her forearm. A syringe was pushed into a large angry red and bruised lump at the inside corner of her elbow. The t-shirt over the black mesh read ‘Daddy’z Gurl’ in neon pink.
“Hey.” I squatted next to her and checked her eyes. Her pupils were pinhead small in the midst of brown. “She’s wasted.
Darryl, come here!” I took off my jacket and folded it behind her head. I didn’t smell or see vomit, and her airway remained clear.
I checked her pulse and breathing. Shallow.
She dribbled spit as she slurred, “Cai, dun.” “Rachel?” Darryl rushed over. He bumped my hand out of the way and attempted to take out the needle himself.
“Don’t,” I cautioned. “You might poke through skin.” “I know how to take out a needle.” He gently removed it and checked the plunger. “Rachel?” He tapped her face a few times and blew out a breath. “She’s no fucking use.“ Luis checked his watch. “Forty minutes since the BOLO was called in. How long since you talked to her?” “Right after I parked the car. Maybe five minutes before you picked me up.”
“Fuck.” I stood up and kicked the nearest object. Several boxes flew off the bottom shelf on the other side of us. My phone vibrated, bringing my tantrum to a halt. I looked at the screen. Text message from an unrecognized number.
—Still in surgery. Waiting 4 updates. Will txt when no more.
—
Thank you officer Hutcherson.“You didn’t talk to Cai?” I
asked Darryl.
“She said Cai was in back, trying to get the anklet off.” It took one minute to locate the anklet resting on the shelf by Rachel’s legs. “Call his cell.”
“We need—”
“Quiet,” Darryl waved his hand rapidly at Luis as he pressed his phone to his ear and looked at the floor.
Nearby, a cell phone began to play. We all began the mad scramble for the phone. It was Luis who thought to check under Rachel’s back.
“That’s Cai’s phone.” Darryl grabbed it. “Weird. That’s not his ringtone.” He pressed some buttons on the cell and frowned, mumbling, “Thought he’d leave a text or something.” Luis held up something when Darryl turned around to concentrate on the phone.
Shit. I started to adjust my thinking to the significance of the other syringe my partner found. “So he changed his ringtone?” I asked.
“Yeah, but…it’s weird. Cai wouldn’t ever have that ringtone.
He has this thing about how classical music expands the brain blah blah blah. And the only way Rabbit and I will listen to it is if he plays it on our phones.”
“I’m going to wait by the door for the bus. You two can argue the semantics of fairy music.” Luis walked off.
The ringtone. A thread of thought pulled. I tugged at it. Cai was smart. Too smart. His message would be obscure but seem perfectly reasonable in his mind. I walked to the end of the row and did what always worked when threads of thought were stuck. I worked it out aloud. “The ringtone. What’s that song?”
“You got that look, Glass. You think it means something?” “Of course it means something. Idiots,” Darryl muttered.
“Ambulance is here.” Luis walked out to meet them. My thread went with him. It was hard to concentrate with so much going on an so much weighing on me.
We all moved out of the way while the EMTs worked on Rachel. I tried tugging my thread from new angles while they all tried getting some sense from her.
I almost had something, but I lost it as they wheeled out the girl and I caught Darryl’s expression. His face was white, his eyes watering. “What?” I asked.
“She— Lying bitch.”
Whoa. “You got some sense out of her?” “No. She’s a liar. Just babbling.”
“Darryl, if she said something about the—” “She lied. I told you. It’s bullshit. And it—” “She said the kid shot her up,” Luis provided.
“What?” I repeated. That idea was more ridiculous than…
Than what? Darryl admitted Cai did drugs. The kid obviously wasn’t the marshmallow I thought he was. And he was smart.
Logical. And fucked up without effective meds.
Luis and Darryl began arguing. I tuned it out. Think like Cai.
You’re on the run. He’s smart enough to know the anklet was going to be traced. Maybe even he expected to be caught at any second. How fast was he? I remembered Peter dodging me when I ran after him. That was fast. Not just fast. Efficient. He ran efficiently. He’d be ahead of the cops, but not by much. And Peter ran just like him. He’d wait, expecting Peter, but as time ticked by… “Darryl—” The bickering continued.
“You asshole cops always think the worst. He’s a kid.” “Who self-medicates and shot up his junkie friend with a heavy dose of—.”
“She’s lying. I told you.” Darryl cracked his knuckles into a fist.
“Shut up. Both of you. Shut the fuck up! This isn’t helping.” Their mouths clamped shut. “I need to concentrate.” My fingers tapped. “He expected Peter to get here eventually. He doesn’t know he’s hurt. He’d leave a message.” “Cai didn’t leave a text message,” Darryl said.
I nodded my agreement. “Which leaves the ringtone. What is that fucking song?” I hummed a few bars. “Call it again.” Darryl picked up the phone and shook his head. “Or I could just look it up. Idiot,” he said quietly. He flipped through the phone, finger sliding across the screen until he looked up at me with his nose scrunched. “Last ringtone he added was Come Home.”
I didn’t have to hear Darryl say where he was going to understand he was off to Joe’s. His eyes blew wide as he tried to run past me. I grabbed his hood again. He made a choking sound and twisted sideways, his foot arcing to connect with my stomach.
I coughed, jerked the hood and pushed him into a shelving unit. It took Luis’s gun to get him under control while I doubled over and tried to get my breath back.
“Calm down,” my partner growled.
“I need to get to—”
“You need to calm the fuck down.”
“Wait” I tried to breathe, speaking between huffs. “Just think
a moment.”
“You’re going to get him killed. He’s there and waiting for us.
Why are you still here? Call the damn cavalry!” “He’s not there!” I finally had a voice, even with the after effects of what felt like a baseball bat to the belly by a major leaguer.
“You don’t know that.”
“Think.” Luis thumped him in the back of the head. He almost got a punch to the face in response. Darryl pulled his fist back at the last second and hit a nearby box with enough force to send it and several others flying off the shelf. They landed on my earlier pile.
“He didn’t leave his phone so Peter could find him,” I said.
“He did it so Peter would find some
thing
.” “How do you know that?”
“Because he’s too high to make it to Joe’s.” I lifted a hand at Luis. “Show him.”
Luis held up the second syringe. “Kid gave her one shot, took the other one.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. You two are idiots. Cai would never tell her to shoot up. And he’d never touch the stuff.”
“Darryl, he saved her life by giving her that,” I explained.
“He waited here for Peter too long. He needed to be incoherent when they got to him. He needed to make sure they couldn’t question him even if they wanted to. And he made sure Rachel was a useless witness so it would be pointless to kill her.”
Maybe I Should Remove the Cummerbund We left Goth Nation arguing, and we continued doing so while we waited to hit Joe’s place. It was Luis who suggested we avoid Joe’s townhome until we had everything in place. I had a procedural suggestion of my own: throw Darryl out of the still-moving car. It had been five minutes since we exited the shop, and he hadn’t stopped complaining and ordering us around.
“You don’t even know for sure they have him. I told you like twelve places we could look.”
I grabbed the home-monitoring anklet we had found and twisted in the seat to show him it. “Do you see this cut here?” “So?”
“See how he didn’t cut all the way through?” “He could have scooted his foot out after he got partway,”
Darryl rationalized.
I knew he was upset. He wasn’t thinking right. I was familiar with denial. But that didn’t stop me from getting irritated. “And then he took the time to unlock the anklet properly? After it was removed?”
“Maybe it unlocked after his foot was out. Or maybe he cut a wire and—”
“They don’t work like that,” I tried to explain.
“You want the kid to live?” Luis asked.
“Just when I thought cops couldn’t get more stupid.” Luis and I simultaneously leaned our heads back on our seats and exhaled. If we didn’t need Darryl, I might have flipped Luis for who got to shoot him. Luis must have read my thoughts.
“You’re a lousy shot,” he said. “You’d miss, and we’d have to listen to his whining.” He pulled over and flipped off the air-conditioning.
“Find him first! Not the stupid evidence! You’re more concerned with that than my brother.” “We are concerned about the kid,” Luis said. “And we’ll find him. But we’re doing it in a way that doesn’t endanger him.
What do you think they’ll do to him if they know we’re close?
Listen, kid—”
“I’m twenty-two,” Darryl sneered.
“Act like it,” I said. “And think! Where would Cai have hidden something?”
“I already said that I don’t know!”
“How long do we have?” I asked Luis.
“Maybe an hour until he’s lucid enough to answer questions.” My phone rang. I answered it immediately in order to avoid
popping Darryl in the face. “Glass.” “Canada is cold, but this lady says she’s his mother,” Officer Hutcherson said.
I covered the mouthpiece. “Did you tell Rosa about Peter?” “Of course I did. While you were getting spiffy for your job as a waiter—”
“It was the only suit he had hemmed!”
Maybe I should remove the cummerbund?
“—I was calling hospitals and Rosa! And you look idiotic.” I shrugged off the insult and moved my hand off the mouthpiece. “Describe her.”
“Which one?”
“There’s more than one?”
“Yup. One says she’s Rosafa Strakosha. No ID.” Of course Rosa had a WitSec name that she was not going to flash to random cops. I didn’t interrupt with that information though.
“5’9 or 5’10. Black hair, brown eyes. Early forties. 115 lbs. The other has I.D. Zhavra Dyachenko…” He paused. “Sir, the FBI is with them. I may have to let them through when he’s out of surgery.”
My head was spinning. Peter’s mother? ”Go ahead and—” “Mister Glass,” a heavily accented, stern voice said into the phone.
I hung up in horror. The phone rang again a moment later. I turned it off. “So…we were…the drugs…” I cleared my throat.
“An hour until they find a way to get the info out of him. Will we be ready?”
Luis nodded and gave me a sideways squint. “We’ll be ready.