Darkness of the Soul (7 page)

“I
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
guess.
Not
bad,
anyway.
Where’d
you
get
it?”

“Oh,
the
market
up
the
street,
you
know,
the
one
with
all
the
junk
on
sale.
It
was
sitting
right
in
the
window.
Want
to
hear
the
weird
part,
hon?”

“Uh-huh
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
”
Drakanis
was
already
looking
away
then,
looking
for
something
else
to
do,
something
to
fixate
on,
before
he
could
get
dragged
into
art
appreciation.

“The
owner
didn’t
even
remember
putting
it
up!
Almost
like
it
was
just
there,
just
for
me,
when
I
came
by!
Isn’t
that
a
scream?”

Years later, standing in a different pawnshop hearing a variation of the same story, Drakanis thought that it was indeed a scream, but not a good one. It was the sort of scream in that Munch painting, one that comes when you crack and goes on… and on… and on.

Parker sensed something wrong and shifted his focus back to his partner. Scowling, he said, “You okay, man? You look like you’re about to hurl.”

Drakanis shook his head, biting down on his tongue and fighting with his gorge. It came close, but the fresh air—what little of it there was—blowing through the open door helped a bit, and after a pair of gasping lungfuls, he managed to fight back the panic that wanted to claim him. He rolled his hand at the clerk again, trying to get him to hurry up and finish the damn story before he died of old age.

Christ,
you
never
should
have
started
this.
Let
those
bodies
lie,
man,
and
just
give
it
up.
Great
advice,
he thought. Too bad it was also the wrong advice. If he let this go, just gave up and went back to his pretend life with his pretend entertainment and his pretend dreams, he’d be doing the worst thing he could to the memory of his wife and son; he might as well just dig them up and kill them again.

Marvin and Parker were both staring at him, he realized, the latter with genuine concern, maybe a little upset that it was his doing that was putting his friend through this; the former with a cold gaze that was trained only to look for profits and fat wallets, discarding the rest as the trash that accumulates on the floor of human existence.

Drakanis flapped his hand again and managed to grunt out a “Get on with it,” in between gulps of fresh air. Still trying to banish the psychic aroma of the failed hopes that customers of this place left behind, he slumped a bit further and focused on keeping his pen on the notebook in something resembling a straight line.

Marvin didn’t need much prompting. He was eager to get the cop and his weirded-out friend the fuck out of his store, hopefully before Pops came back, and he figured the sooner he could get this story finished, the sooner he could do just that.

“Right, so the old dudes come in and start dancing around like a pair of ballerinas, ranting about the color and the power and something this and something that… fuck if I know. I ain’t no art student, and the damn thing looked uglier than hell to me anyway. They want to argue about it, since it didn’t have a price on it, but I figured fair is fair, and they want it so bad, why not stick it to them?”

Parker grunted at this, his own general disdain for places like this bleeding into his voice. “Right, why not?”

Marvin went on as if he hadn’t heard, and both Parker and Drakanis figured it entirely likely that he hadn’t. Most people in these places were in a hurry and didn’t tend toward observing the niceties, so it was an understandable and common defense mechanism to just tune out anything that didn’t directly relate to the situation at hand. While Drakanis and Parker were used to it, it was one of the more annoying tics of the twentieth-century male in their opinion.

“So I tell ’em it’s a hundred bucks; they sit and chitter to each other, some fuckin’ foreign language or something, like a pair of squirrels or whatever, then turn back, try to give me fifty. I can read all over their faces that they’ll pay craploads more than that—shoulda asked ’em for half a K. Bet they’d have paid that too, they were so hopped up to have it—so I tell ’em that Pops sets the prices, and if they want to haggle on that one, they’ll have to ask him about it.

“We go back and forth a little more, then they finally cough up the hundred. I ask ’em if they want it wrapped up or anything. They say no, and out the door they go with the damned thing. I can tell you, for whatever reason, the place felt better once they were gone. My pops says it was just how weird they were about it, but my girl says it’s cause the painting was out of here; I don’t really care one way or the other. A hundred bucks goes in my pocket, a hundred bucks I didn’t have before they came in, and I’m just glad to take it.”

Parker shook his head, muttering to himself. He’d hoped that there’d be a bit more to it, some useful detail, but it was just more of the same old shit wrapped in a different package. He blew air out over his lower lip, making an exasperated sound that summed up his feelings on all things bad before he glanced at Drakanis.

“Anything worth a shit?”

Drakanis paused for a moment, going over his scribbled shorthand. He came to a mostly blank page with the word
buyers
at the top, double underlined. He nodded and then put his eyes back on Marvin, who seemed even more sallow and sickly than he had when they’d entered.

“You mentioned they sounded foreign, like foreign how? Any idea what language it was that they were speaking to each other?”

Though he hadn’t expected it—and wasn’t really expecting to get much else out of the little turd behind the counter—Parker gave the kid at least a little respect when Drakanis asked his question, primarily because the kid actually stopped long enough to think about it, which was a rarity these days. Most of the time, when a cop asked a question, the best answer he could hope for was a pair of birds stuck up his tailpipe.

As the silence spun out, Parker thought he could almost smell poor Marvin’s circuits frying upstairs, but the kid finally broke it.

“No, I don’t think so. When they were talking normal, they were all ‘bugger this’ and ‘cricket that’—figure they’re probably British—but there wasn’t much to whatever they were saying to each other, hard to figure out what it was. But I can tell you it wasn’t Spanish; it wasn’t French; and it wasn’t Latin. Just gibberish, so far as I could tell.”

Drakanis sighed, though he hadn’t really expected much. There wasn’t any reason to expect some low-rent pawnshop owner’s kid would speak in tongues, let alone know what the hell a couple of art collectors were gibbering in. At least he could eliminate the obvious suspects, but without a recording, it still didn’t help much.

“Fair enough. Got the receipt?”

The kid nodded, seeming grateful.
Probably
because
we’re
about
ready
to
leave,
and
he
knows
it,
Drakanis thought. He headed into the blocked-off back area, not bothering to turn on the light and give either detective much of a view inside. He came out a moment later holding a pile of thick papers stapled together.

“Not much to go on, I guess, but we don’t need ’em anymore.” He passed the papers over to Parker. He skimmed them briefly before passing them on to Drakanis, who folded and shoved them into the notebook.

Parker gave a last upraised set of brows to his partner, who just shrugged and gestured toward the doorway with his head before disappearing out the door and letting it swing shut. Parker nodded to the now-vacant space and then glanced back at the clerk.

“All right, your lucky day. We got what we wanted, and we’re gone before your pops shows up. You think of anything else, Marvin, you give me a call. We’ll see if it matters or not.”

While he was talking, Parker was advancing on the counter. He was satisfied when the kid backed up a step, looking a tad nervous. Parker let the moment string out and then flopped his card onto the countertop. “Have a pleasant day, Marvin. Stay out of trouble.”

Grinning like some kind of crazed baboon, Parker stalked out of the store to join Drakanis by the car.

Chapter
5
 

11:30 am, December 8, 1999

The main dispatch office of the Reno Police Department wasn’t much to look at. It was made up, for the most part, of a line of cubicles marked off with simple glass doors designed to block sound but affording little in the way of visual privacy. This had always annoyed the dispatchers, who seemed to be engaged in a secret crusade for offices of their own—though for what nefarious purpose they had never stated. They also lobbied for the occasional plant or two. The offices were always in a discussion phase; the plants were generally vetoed outright. This led to a rather stark decor, with only the occasional designer coffee mug or family photo to distinguish one cubby from the next. The phones sat mute this morning, a relative rarity in a city that ran on a twenty-four-hour schedule, and an event the dispatchers were more than willing to take advantage of by playing a game of gin rummy while they waited for something to do.

Like the scent of prey to a pack of predators, the ringing of the phone—the first call in over an hour—led to a flurry of activity. All heads jerked up. They glanced at the phone bank and then at each other. Five hands of rummy—one of which was apparently ready to be laid down for the win—were cast down. Five sets of feet took off for the phone banks and catapulted their owners into their chairs. The winner seized the telephone and spoke with no indication of the petty power struggle that had just occurred.

“Reno Police Department, Officer Brokov speaking. How may I assist you?”

Sheila Brokov’s voice was clear and accented with just the barest fragment of her one-time Valley Girl ways. When she spoke pleasantly and at the perfect pitch between high and low, she found that most people responded in kind. The individual on the phone, however, was apparently not most people. When his voice came through the lines, it carried with it more malice and a greater suggestion of violence than any she had known in her three years with the force, even though what he said, in itself, seemed perfectly innocent.

“Good afternoon… or is it still morning? I always forget little things like that. Good, regardless. I’m hoping you can assist me with something, Officer Brokov.”

She repressed a shudder—and scolded herself, for there wasn’t really anything in what he’d said to provoke it, let alone anything on the topside of his voice. That part was calm, even velvety, reminding her of old reels of Colt .45 commercials with Billy Dee. It was the undercurrent that was setting off her alarms, making her think of that movie, the one with Brad Pitt and the killer who seemed like a nice guy until you saw what he’d done. She cleared her throat, forcing herself to take a sip of the Jolt Cola in front of her before responding—she was never without the stuff and never mind the ribbing of the other officers.

“Well, I’d certainly like to, sir, but first I need to know how I can assist you. Do you need to report a crime, or do you have some other emergency?” Sheila couldn’t believe a man with a voice that calm could be undergoing
any
kind of emergency, but the department was careful to coach everyone on the proper script to follow, and Sheila had been a good listener.

“I’m hoping to get in touch with Michael Drakanis. This was the last number I had for him, though I understand he’s moved on now. It’s a very important matter; otherwise, I wouldn’t have troubled you.”

Sheila paused again. Drakanis was a sore subject for nearly everyone, given what had happened. She’d been new then, just finishing up her POST, but she remembered him well enough and had liked him for the brief time she’d known him. Nearly stuttering now and growing more disturbed with every word that came from the caller’s mouth, Sheila answered.

“I’m sorry, sir, but as you yourself just noted, Detective Drakanis is no longer with us. I am not authorized—so far as I know, nobody is—to give out any further information regarding him.”

The caller laughed then, and though it was a happy sound, full of self-satisfaction, it still rang alarms even more deeply in Sheila. It had that undertone, and what she heard in that laugh was one thing, pure and simple: death.

Oh,
stop
it.
You’re
freaking
yourself
out
for
no
reason.
Probably
some
old
buddy,
just
trying
to
dig
up
his
high
school
friends.