Dark Heart (3 page)

He looked into the container. Nothing moved, not even one of those rats the size of German shepherds that infested the alleys near the river. He eased up slightly and stepped back, but the uneasiness twanging the knots of his spine wouldn’t go away.

Maybe the rain was carrying strange sounds. He’d read about shit like that. Could the noises have come from the kitchen where he’d left Chef Rabbit?

He pulled a small flashlight from his coat pocket and looked around. He picked up a stick and rummaged carefully through the flattened liquor boxes, broken bottles, day-old food, and coffee grounds. He leaned further in and pushed some of it aside.

“What the hell…?” Leaning down, bracing his waist against the sill of the Dumpster’s edge, he dug further, got a solid hold on the thing, and pulled it up from where it was wedged between two heavy black plastic sacks. It seemed to be an animal skin. The weight of the thing was incredible. He hauled the skin out of the Dumpster.

In his time he’d smelled it all, everything from dead dogs to water-logged corpses boiling with plump, pale maggots. But he choked at the stench of this thing, whatever the hell it was. He turned his head away for a moment and took a couple of deep breaths. What in the hell was this?

Almost like rotting fish, but not exactly. He took a step back and swallowed a wad of puke trying to crawl up into his throat. He put the skin down, wiped his hands off on his coat, and then wished he hadn’t.

Looking around, he spotted what he needed. He wrinkled his nose, holstered his weapon, picked the skin up, and carried it over to the faucet set into the building wall. He turned the valve and clear, clean water poured out. He knelt and washed his hands and the skin in the steady stream.

Standing again, he held the skin out and shook the water off it. It was heavy, maybe thirty, forty pounds. It looked like one of those suits dancers wore when they wanted to fool you into thinking they were naked. Except that this wasn’t Lycra or any kind of cloth he’d ever heard of. This was real skin. Scaly skin. But like some giant reptile. Some kind of animal.

So who was skinning weird animals in the alley behind a fancy nightclub? One of the chefs? Must be a hell of a menu in there…

He bent over the soggy thing, nose twitching. The Dumpster stench was mostly gone, leaving it smelling like what it actually was. The odor was strong and memorable, very strange, but with overtones that were also familiar. Underneath the rot, there was a scent of something he knew, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. Something like burnt oil…he arranged it on the sides and top of the closed Dumpster and leaned closer to get a good look at it.

Madrone heard the scraping sound again and whirled to face it, his back against the Dumpster. The bulky skin slid down and hit the blacktop with a wet smacking sound, like some monstrous kiss.

The noise had been right behind him this time. But there was nothing there! There wasn’t anything to hide behind. Madrone looked around, feeling like some over-hyped idiot, even checking the sky above him and everything he could see up and down the alley. Rain blurred his vision, but he caught a glimpse of movement near the edge of the building at the far end of the alley, just off Dearborn.

“Hey!” He pointed his gun in that direction with one hand, holding the flashlight out to his side with his other hand. “Don’t move!”

He felt even more like an idiot. Don’t move
what?
There was nothing
there
…

He walked to the end of the alley, found nothing. He swallowed. He could feel sweat dripping from the pores of his scalp to join the rain streaming down his face.

Again, he heard a scraping sound right behind him. He spun around, weapon ready. His eyes flicked back and forth, but he couldn’t see anything through the rain. That same strong scent that he almost recognized filled the air. It reminded him of the Chinese greasy spoon he always had to walk by to get to Mandy’s Grill.

Scumbags were scumbags. Mostly they knew not to stalk cops. Unless they were nutzo. But a handful of times, it had happened to him. Not often, and he was still around to talk about it. Still…

He had fired his gun seven times in the line of duty.

This was different. He couldn’t see anything, but he
knew
he wasn’t alone. Something else was here with him. He could sense its animosity, the hot stink of its concentrated regard.

Something was stalking him. And all his years of experience and training weren’t turning the tables. He stood frozen, basting in his own sweat, his nostrils filled with that bizarre stink.

And then he laughed. A short, ugly, mocking sound. “Yeah, right,” he muttered. Bad dreams. What the fuck? Acting like some five year old, wetting his Jockey shorts over the monster in the closet.

He took a deep breath. He holstered his gun and walked back to the skin. Except for the patter of rain, the alley was silent.

He stared at the waterlogged pile. So what did he have here? Something for the morgue? Or for a veterinarian?

Suddenly he wanted a tall glass of Jack Daniels, and to hell with the ice. Whatever this thing had been, it hadn’t been human. So it wasn’t a homicide. But he’d never seen or heard of an animal with a skin like this. He stared at it some more.

All cops are curious. He knew he was, though he would never admit it. No point in making an asshole of himself by calling in backup for a weird skin. But there were people he could call quietly. Bigdomes at the University of Chicago, maybe.

He thought some more, then squatted down, grunting softly as his knees cracked. He balled up the heavy skin and tucked it beneath his left arm, leaving his right free to draw his weapon. Not that he thought he would need to.

He was still jittery. The mouth of the alley seemed to be a block away. The distant lights of Dearborn were part of the normal world, a world where you didn’t hear noises that came from nowhere. That was where he needed to be. Not here, in an empty, rain-washed alley that stank like an open grave.

The back of his neck kept tingling as if somebody was watching him.

He looked over his shoulder again.

Still no one.

But the way the rain was pounding down, someone could be back there. Shit, they could be thirty feet away and he’d barely be able to see them in this mess.

His eyes flicked from one side of the alley to the other.

He was no hero. The heroes he knew were mostly dead ones. He preferred to be a live cop. And if a cop wasn’t kicking ass, he’d better be bugging out, oh yeah. But he’d bugged out before and never been this scared.

Something dragged across the ground just behind him. Madrone stumbled as he tried to turn around.

“What the fuck…?” He backed toward the lighted street only a few yards away now. Once again he drew his pistol. His hand was shaking, sweating on the grip of his weapon.

Two hands grabbed his shoulders from behind and Madrone spun, leading with his elbow. The blow whiffed empty air. The owner of the hands—a thin, well-dressed Chinese man wearing a dark suit and sporting gold Armani-framed glasses—ducked and came back up. Madrone grunted, off balance. His assailant jumped closer, grabbed the skin, and yanked, trying to jerk it away.

The skin was slick and heavy. Madrone almost lost control of it. But his fear boiled away, burned off by a rush of adrenaline. Here at last was something he could see, could strike at, could defeat. This was something he could understand.

He ducked away from the man’s attack. He wasn’t about to play tug-of-war with some Bruce Lee wannabe. He dropped his shoulder, spun to break the man’s grip on the skin, and used the momentum of his weight to drive his elbow into the guy’s solar plexus.

The man gasped, doubled over, and Madrone brought the butt of his pistol down hard on the guy’s neck. The man hit the pavement like a sack of wet cement. Madrone grabbed his collar, hauled him to his feet, and shoved him up against the wall.

“The position, asshole. You know the position. Assume the fucking position!”

He realized he was shouting. He forced himself to take a breath as he patted the guy down. No weapons. He stepped back, slipped his pistol back into its holster. Thank God he hadn’t had to shoot the fucker. The paperwork would have been enormous.

“ID,” Madrone growled. “Let’s see some ID.”

“Does it matter?” the thin Chinese man said. He met Madrone’s gaze calmly. Now that the dancing was over, he looked like an out-of-place accountant. “I meant you no harm.”

“Yeah, right,” Madrone said. “You got a fucked-up way of showing it. Listen, you stupid asshole, I’m a fucking cop, and you’re under fucking arrest! You gotta right to remain silent—”

“I want to help you, Officer Madrone,” the Chinese man said, his voice as calm as if he were reading numbers off a spreadsheet. His mouth thinned to a tight line as he looked at Madrone.

Madrone blinked. “You know my name? I don’t think I know you. Do I know you, asshole?”

“No, Mr. Madrone. You don’t know me. But that doesn’t matter.”

He raised one hand as Madrone glared at him. “Leave the skin, Mr. Madrone,” he said. Madrone stared at him in disbelief. Was that
pity
in his eyes? The hair on Madrone’s neck stood up. He felt a chill, as if chips of ice were slowly condensing in his veins.

“I asked you how you know my name, asshole,” Madrone said.

But the Asian ignored the question with that same frigid, infuriating accountant’s calm.

“You have no idea how much disaster you are calling down upon your head,” the Chinese man said. “That is why I am here. Leave the skin behind. Leave this place and forget Carlton Wheeler. You cannot change what happened to him. If you do as I say, you can save yourself.”

Madrone stepped back, confusion rippling his sunken features. “Carlton Wheeler? What the fuck does this have to do with Carlton Wheeler? Who
are
you, asshole?”

The Chinese man let out a slow breath and fixed Madrone with an intense stare. “That skin will be the death of you.”

Madrone made up his mind. “That’s it, Charlie Chan. Hands behind your back, cross your wrists. Come on,
do it!
”

A loud scrape echoed suddenly behind him. He turned for just one second. But it was enough. The Chinese man jerked away from him. He was ten feet away and pounding for the mouth of the alley before Madrone could even blink. Madrone lunged for him, slipped, and landed hard on his ass.

“Jesus!”

But the man was gone. The sound of his rapid footsteps lessened, then vanished entirely, leaving Madrone sitting flat on his butt, utterly confused.

Carlton fucking
Wheeler?

Madrone shook his head to clear it, levered himself to his feet, then picked up the skin again. Limping slightly, he walked out of the alley onto the sidewalk of Dearborn, turned right, trudged to the corner of Ontario, and made his way past the club entrance. The trendy yuppies still standing in line peered out from under their Versace umbrellas at him, their expressions saying they wouldn’t be inviting him in for a drink any time soon. Madrone felt them staring—though it was a different feeling than the
watchfulness
he’d felt in the alley—and supposed he couldn’t blame them. Then the wind turned and he got a good whiff of what he smelled like. It was a miracle the yuppies weren’t running screaming into the night.

He was already soaked, too wet to get any wetter without drowning, so that even though the incessant downpour pattered on his head and his clothes, it didn’t add new dimensions to his misery. It just made him feel more like an idiot. It was a pisser to lose Kung Fu Charlie, but what bothered him the most was that noise he’d heard behind him. What the hell was that? It was just noise, except for the sense of
danger
he’d felt.

Madrone, still lugging the skin, ignored the yups and turned slowly, looking back toward the alley. All at once, he saw the dark opening as the maw of a huge animal. He swallowed.

Watching every corner and shadowy niche, Madrone stuck to the streetlights all the way back to his car.

He wrestled the door open, tossed the scaly skin onto the floor of the backseat, jumped behind the wheel, and pulled out without even checking the traffic. Luck was with him. A few people sat on their horns, but nobody creamed him.

He blew past a stop sign on Ontario, turned right onto LaSalle, and headed north. He stomped the accelerator, ignoring the way the Mustang’s overworked engine whined, and followed Sheffield up toward the lake, almost ramming a taxi as he passed the huge, dark bulk of Wrigley Field. He raced through the city and didn’t let up on the gas until he turned onto Sheridan. He was getting close to home.

Madrone kept looking in the rearview mirror, knowing it had to be paranoia. There was no one following him. No one in the backseat. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone—no, some
thing
—was after him. The fear did not leave him, and he began to wonder if he’d snapped. He’d seen other cops lose it. Maybe he was next. Christ, he was hauling around a fucking
animal
skin…

At a stoplight he turned, hooked his right arm over the seat, and stared at the mound of scales on the floor-board in the rear of the car. He considered opening the door and tossing it out. But he couldn’t. The Fu Manchu accountant had mentioned Carlton Wheeler. And he’d tried to take the skin. What possible connection could there be between the two?

Madrone turned into the parking garage below his building, waited impatiently while the card reader swallowed his keycard, burped it back, and broadcast a signal that sent the wide chain door clanking upwards.

He should have felt safe here. It was a secured building, one of the older high-rises along Sheridan that Lake Michigan had nearly swallowed a couple of decades before. He’d been living there then, when they had piled sandbags along the first floor to keep storm waves out of the empty apartments.

The place had a doorman, cameras, and continuously monitored hallways and elevators. But he didn’t feel safe. He had to force himself not to run through the parking garage. He’d never noticed how dark it was in the garage before. Just a few old, flickering fluorescent tubes that cast everything into eerie blue shadows.