Dancing on the Wind (50 page)

of whoever lay beyond the doorway.

“Sick,” the Supervisor’s assistant commented.

Dr. Papadopoulos had not taken her eyes from Fallon. “Are you all right, Misha?”

Despite being Matty’s on-again, off-again love interest, the medical examiner had

never called Fallon by that nickname, and for her to do so at that moment seemed

totally out of character. He stared at her as though seeing her for the first time,

searching her eyes.

“It’s her, Misha,” Dr. Papadopoulos said softly. “Do you really want to go in

there?”

A cold wash of bitter agony flowed through Fallon and all he could manage to do

was nod. Every ounce of moisture in his mouth had dried up and his knees felt weak.

He could hear the blood pounding ruthlessly in his ears as he swung his crutches

toward the bedroom door.

“Stay close to him,” he heard her say.

Though he had killed many times over the years—often savagely—and was no

stranger to brutal slayings, nothing he’d ever seen could have prepared Fallon for what

was inside that room.

Lying on her belly in the center of the bed with her right cheek on the blood-soaked

pillow was the naked, spread-eagled body of the woman he loved. Her eyes were open

and glazed over with death. Her wrists and ankles were shackled to the bed frame and

there were vicious bruises and discolorations over her back, buttocks and upper thighs.

Shot in the back of the head, there was a large black hole at the base of her brain

with the radiating exit wound having blown away the top of her head. Congealed brain

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matter was sprayed across the bright tropical print of the padded headboard.

Surrounding the grayish glob was a dark rust-colored halo of sprayed blood that arched

beyond the top of the headboard.

“No,” Fallon said. He shook his head. “It’s not her. It can’t be her.” He moved a few

steps closer to the bed until he could see her face clearly.

“Keenan?” he whispered. His face creased with hideous grief. “Baby?” He dropped

one of the crutches and reached out to her but Dr. Papadopoulos took hold of his hand.

“You can’t touch her, Misha,” she said.

He looked away from the carnage on the bed and into the sympathetic eyes of the

medical examiner. “That’s not her,” he said. “That’s not my Keenan.”

She held on to his hand. “I’m sorry, Misha, but it is. Don’t you recognize the

tattoo?”

He shifted his gaze to the dead woman’s back, and the moment he saw the dark

blue Celtic knot butterfly at the small of her back, an eerie keening sound came from

somewhere deep within him.

“
No
!” he denied, and had not the Supervisor and his assistant made a frantic grab

for him, he would have dropped to the floor like a rock, his knees finally buckling

beneath him.

“Was she raped?” the Supervisor asked gently.

Hearing the question voiced that was screaming in his head, Fallon groaned. The

men holding him eased him down until he was on all fours, head hanging, the brutal

pain having returned full force. Fallon shuddered hard then convulsed as hot bile

spewed out of him.

“I knew he shouldn’t see this,” the medical examiner said.

“Get him a towel, Cobb,” the Supervisor ordered. He hunkered down beside Fallon

and put a cool hand to his operative’s forehead. He repeated his question to the medical

examiner.

“Yes, it looks as though she might have been violated, but I won’t know until I

examine her. I…”

“You’re not going to cut her!”
Fallon shouted. His eyes were wild as he struggled to

get to his feet.
“You’re not!”

“Fallon…” the Supervisor began, keeping him down.

“She’s not going to cut Keenan open
!” Fallon bellowed.

“There’s no need for me to do that, Misha,” Dr. Papadopoulos assured him. “We

know the cause of death.”

“You’re not going to cut her,” Fallon said, his voice breaking.

“No,” the medical examiner said. “We’re not.”

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Cobb, the Supervisor’s assistant, returned with a cold, wet cloth and a towel. He

tossed the towel over the vomitous and handed the cloth to his boss, who began to wipe

Fallon’s face with it.

Fallon was shivering violently and the Supervisor looked up at Dr. Papadopoulos.

“I need something for him.”

“Of course,” she said, and walked out of the room.

“Why didn’t I know?” Fallon whispered hoarsely. Tears were streaming down his

face. “Why didn’t I feel it?”

“I don’t know, son,” the Supervisor said. He glanced up as the medical examiner

returned with a vac-syringe in hand.

“I should have felt it,” Fallon said.

He barely noticed the burning sting as the needle went into the side of his neck—all

he did was blink against the pain. As the pairilis took almost instant effect, he mumbled

a few words, his eyes rolled back in his head and collapsed into the Supervisor’s arms.

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The next two days passed in a blur for Fallon. He was kept sedated for fear he’d re-

injure his leg or—worse yet—try to harm himself in a more lethal way. He was also

watched closely for that reason, and even though the Supervisor had at first denied his

request, he had been allowed to sit beside Keenan’s casket on the flight back to the

Exchange. During all those hours of flight, he sat with one hand on the flag-draped

coffin and the other shielding his face, numb to everything that went on around him.

When they landed in Iowa during a light rain, he hobbled beside the casket as it

was rolled into the terminal. He refused to allow Keenan to make her last journey

without him at her side. He rode in the hearse with her to the mortuary in Grinnell and

had he not been forcibly removed from the premises, would have stayed with her while

her body was prepared for burial. As it was, he managed to escape his escort and

wound up in a downtown bar with a bottle of tequila and a shot glass never far from his

fist. When the men sent to babysit him discovered his whereabouts, he threatened to kill

them if they didn’t leave him alone. It was decided he meant what he said so the two

agents took a booth behind him to wait him out.

At closing time, the bartender came over to speak quietly to the two men everyone

in there knew worked at the Exchange. “I’ve got to close up, guys,” he told them. “Can

you get him out of here without too much damage being done?”

Fallon was so drunk by then the agents didn’t think they’d have too much trouble

with him and they were partially right. He merely grinned nastily at them when they

informed him it was time to leave.

“Fuck off,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Agent Fallon, one way or the other, you
are
going to leave with us even if we have

to carry you out,” the senior of the two agents insisted. “Don’t make this any harder

than it has to be, okay?”

“Fuck. Off,” was Fallon’s stony reply then he threw his empty bottle at one of them.

“You want to rush him?” the younger of the two asked.

“Leave him to me.”

The agents turned to see the Supervisor. How long their boss had been in the bar,

they didn’t know. Their main concern, their entire focus had been on Fallon all evening.

“Are you sure, sir?”

“I’ll bring him home. Go on. Call it a night,” the Supervisor ordered. He slid into

the booth across from Fallon.

“You can fuck off too,” Fallon growled, and twisted his head around. “Barkeep! I

need another bottle.”

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“You need to sober up,” the Supervisor said.

“Fuck I do,” Fallon said with a snort.

“Did you forget what’s happening tomorrow?”

Fallon’s forehead crinkled with pain. “No. I want to but I can’t.”

“Then are you planning on showing up drunk for her funeral?”

More pain flashed over the Reaper’s face and he slumped in the booth, putting up a

hand to scour his unshaved face. His hand shook. “No,” he repeated, the word so soft it

was barely audible.

“Then you need to go home and sleep it off, Misha.”

“I need her,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. He gave the Supervisor a

pitiful look. “Why am I still alive?”

The Supervisor reached across the table to lay a hand on Fallon’s arm. “I don’t

know. Maybe it’s different with your kind.”

“I should be dead. The bond…” He shook his head. “I should be dead. I wish to

God I was.”

“Let’s go, son. We’ll talk about this at home.”

Fallon nodded and scooted out of the booth. His crutches were propped against the

end of the table and he reached for them, so inebriated, he almost missed and staggered

against the booth.

“I’m fucking wasted,” he said.

“Yes, you are,” the Supervisor agreed, and stepped over to slip an arm around

Fallon’s waist. “Lean on me.”

“Sure thing, Dad,” Fallon mumbled. “Just don’t tell Mom.”

The Supervisor smiled as he took Fallon’s left crutch and helped his operative from

the bar. He nodded at the bartender who was holding the door open for them. “Does he

owe you anything?”

“No,” the barkeep replied.

Outside in the cool Iowa night with a mist of rain still falling, Fallon turned his face

up to the sky. “You think it will rain tomorrow?” he asked.

“I believe it’s supposed to.” The Supervisor half walked, half carried Fallon to the

car where a uniformed driver got out to open the rear door for them.

“You know what they say about why it rains when a good person is buried?”

“No,” the Supervisor said as they reached the car. “What is it they say?”

Fallon looked across the top of the car at the dark street. He had one hand on the

top of the door, the other on the roof. “They say the angels are weeping,” he said softly.

Gingerly maneuvering Fallon into the car, the Supervisor watched his operative lie

his head back on the seat. He straightened and stepped back so his driver could shut the

door.

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“Take your time getting us home, Wend,” the Supervisor asked.

The driver nodded and the Supervisor went around to the other side of the car to

climb into the backseat with Fallon.

As the car turned off Fourth onto West Street and headed north toward Highway 6,

Fallon rolled his head toward his boss.

“I should have been there,” he said.

“If you’d been there, you would have died with her, Misha.”

“I wish I had.”

The Supervisor looked at him. “Then there would have been no one to go after her

killers.” He gave his operative a steady look. “You are going after her killers, aren’t

you?”

Fallon swiveled his head to the side to stare out the window. “That last day, I told

her I was going to have the Extension disconnected and she told me…” He had to clear

his throat before he could continue. “She told me she loved me and asked me if that

mattered.”

Fallon put a crooked knuckle against the glass, tracing the spirals of water falling

slowly down the window. “You know what the last thing I said to her was?”

“What?” It was asked gently, fatherly.

He tapped against the glass. “I told her I had to get away from her before she got

me killed.”

The Supervisor frowned. “Why would you say something like that?”

“It’s in me,” Fallon said. “That evil the creature left behind. It’s inside me and it’s

getting darker and meaner with every breath I take. I was afraid I would hurt her.” He

laughed bitterly. “Isn’t that a fucking riot? I was afraid
I
would hurt her!” His voice

broke. “I was afraid I would hurt her.”

In the rearview mirror, the Supervisor’s eyes met the driver’s and the driver shook

his head. No one blamed Fallon for the deaths on the Island, but everyone knew he was

responsible for the carnage that had taken place there—whether at the hands of an old

enemy or a new one. The message had been loud and clear.

Fallon had heard it too.

“We’ll find them,” the Supervisor said. “Whoever they are, wherever they are, we

will find them and they will pay for what they did.”

“Yeah,” was all Fallon said, the word slurred. His head was against the window—

the flickering streetlights overhead giving his face a deathly pale tint.

By the time the Supervisor’s driver turned onto the road that led to the Exchange,

Mikhail Fallon had passed out from too much booze and unbearable grief.

* * * * *

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It wasn’t the same suit he’d worn to Keenan’s aunt’s funeral but it might as well

have been. The two suits were identical in cut and material. Bleary-eyed and nauseous

with the headache from hell, he was fumbling with his tie, the knot refusing to look the

way he wanted it to. He stripped it from around his neck and dropped it to the floor to

lie beside the four others he’d mauled. Finally deciding he was neither capable of

making his fingers work properly nor wanting the restriction around his neck to begin

with, he gave up, crushing the tie in his fist and pitching it across the room.

“Goddamned fucking tie!” he snarled. “Who the fuck needs you anyway?”

He stared into the mirror and almost smiled. He’d nicked himself time and again