Darkness of the Soul (8 page)

Really?
Some other part of her mind wasn’t buying that one.
Then
how
come
he
won’t
identify
himself
and
knew
to
call
just
when
Parker
was
trying
to
get
Mike
back
in
here?

Deciding she was going to listen to that jumpy part, Sheila took the phone away from her mouth for a second and glanced around the nearly empty front office. Stan was in the corner, despite it being his day off. The usual guy, Karim or some such, was out sick. He was mopping studiously at a coffee stain—at least, she hoped it was coffee, though you were never sure when new stains popped up over night shift. Other than Stan, she was the ranking officer. The remaining dispatchers had been there for less than a year. That only made her nervousness worse, but she figured the best thing to do was the simplest: let someone else handle it. Her hand moved quickly. The caller was still laughing. She scribbled on a scrap of paper and then held it up and waved it to get Stan’s attention.

Stan, whose eyes were always wandering, saw quickly enough. He nodded at the instructions:

Get
the
captain
to
pick
up
line
six.
Be
quiet.
Nutjob,
maybe.
Record?

Without complaint, he headed into the bullpen, and his thick New York accent bellowed out after, asking for Captain Morrigan.

It was several seconds later that the caller finally stopped laughing, though he was still snorting through his words.

“That’s fine, Officer Brokov. Fine, indeed. May I speak to Detective Parker then? I’m sure he can relay my message, if he happens to be present. His voice mail will do me fine, as well. I’m sure he’s a busy man.”

“Hold a moment, please.”

Sheila put the call on hold, and then her finger hovered over the transfer button. Had the captain picked it up yet? She couldn’t tell. Unlike in all the crime fiction she read—another source of departmental jabs—there hadn’t been any telltale clicks or anything to announce another listener, but there never seemed to be in this place anyway.

Quit
being
a
goose
and
do
something
,
for
God’s
sake.
You
think
you’re
ever
going
to
get
away
from
this
desk
if
you
keep
pulling
shit
like
this?

Once again, the internal voice was 100 percent correct, and Sheila hated it for it. But she had an idea at least. Smiling with a bit of timidity, she pressed the button to transfer the call to the captain’s phone. Let the caller think it was a mistake. Let the captain sort it out. If it was nothing, no harm, no foul. If it was something, she could reap a bit of a reward for handling it carefully. Excellent.

Captain Morrigan, for his part,
had
been listening to the last part of the conversation, having come in just as Parker’s name was mentioned; when his own line lit up a second later, he nodded to himself.

“Good girl,” he said, as he reached for the switch to pass it through his answering machine, to get a record, before picking up.

“Parker speaking.” Morrigan wasn’t happy about impersonating another officer, but he was getting the same sense of wrongness from the voice that Sheila had. If this turned out to be a mistake, he’d just relay the damn message and apologize. His thoughts were promptly derailed, and his expression shifted from one of terse expectation to shocked surprise when the caller spoke again.

“Come now, Captain Morrigan. May I call you Ashley, instead? Never mind. You surely didn’t think such a simple trick would get past me, did you? No wonder your boys haven’t managed to get anything right lately, with someone like you as their supervisor. Such a pity. I was hoping for better, really.”

Stan was standing in the doorway, gaping at the captain. He’d never seen the man so much as break wind, let alone allow himself a totally unguarded expression like the one he was wearing now. For his part, Morrigan was sputtering like a fish out of water, trying to figure out just what the hell had happened, but the voice was continuing on without him, holding up his end of the conversation without needing the captain to speak.

“I know, yes, certainly. Tell the janitor I said hello, by the by, and never worry about
how
I know these things. Satisfy yourself with simply knowing that I
do
. Now, if you will be so kind, please pass my message on to Detectives Parker and Drakanis—and none of the hogwash about him no longer being with you. You and I both know darling Vincent has drug him back in, just as we both know he’s hoping to get him back permanently. A simple courier service, I know, but in this era of trouble, it is
so
difficult to get people to drop off notes, wouldn’t you agree?”

There was more of that self-satisfied laughter, and Morrigan slumped into his chair. He was feeling a sudden tightness in his chest, which was making it difficult to breathe, and pain seemed to be radiating from every nerve ending in his body, working its way inward.

“Doesn’t that feel better, Captain? Just let it go. It will make things easier, but do remember to tell my esteemed friends that I rang. And be sure to tell them that they’d best enjoy the holiday. I don’t imagine they’ll be seeing another, and what with the anniversary to celebrate and all… well. Merry Christmas, Captain. Pass it along.”

A click, and the line went dead. The captain was falling, all sensory information shorting out; there was just enough left in him to keep his eyes open as Sheila burst in, her mouth a shocked “O” of surprise. Stan darted for the phone. He had just enough time to see the other officers and detectives clustering around the door.

Then he went into the black, accompanied by a final burst of pain that started just under his left shoulder and raced down his arm like dark lightning.

*      *      *

The killer whispered his good-bye into the handset and then racked the phone. All around him, the bustle of the casino continued, the happy idiots inside completely unaware of what walked the halls with them, blissfully ignorant of the power he’d pushed through the phone lines and likewise unaware of the energy he’d been siphoning from them as they milled about. They might notice it later, as headaches or aches and pains, and a few of the older ones might die in their sleep tonight, but this didn’t concern him. They wouldn’t be able to pick him from a lineup, point at him and exclaim, “This is the one,” and that was all that mattered for the moment.

Smiling to himself, he walked toward the balcony, pushed through a gaggle of laughing college kids—
Probably
someone
turned
twenty-one
last
night,
he thought—who
did
feel something when he passed, but they were deep in drunkenness already or still and so put it off on that rather than his presence.

When he reached the large window—tamper proof and shatter resistant, of course, the better to dissuade suicides—he laid one hand on the glass and glared down at the pawnshop across the street and the two figures standing by the ancient-looking cruiser.

“Hello, my friends. Not having much fun, are we? So sorry.”

A few of the patrons, stopping to admire the view or simply standing about with a zombie-like look of “what happened?” on their faces, glanced at him oddly and then continued on with their business. People talking to themselves in casinos were generally better left alone, the consensus stated, and something about this man made most consider this very sage advice indeed.

Parker and Drakanis, in the lot below, continued their discussion without noticing the man staring down at them. Parker didn’t notice at all, while Drakanis felt a brief tingle. It was there and then gone.

“You okay?”

Drakanis shook his head. “Goose over the grave. Let’s go.”

The killer smiled down at them still, wishing they were closer, so that he could have a taste—just a taste, mind, else the thing that lived beyond the
talu`shar
would have his head—but knowing to do so now would be to risk their attention, and he was not yet ready for it.

All
in
good
time,
though.
Drakanis
especially.
He’ll
be
such
fun
to
play
with.

He cracked his neck, the sounds as loud as gunshots, heard even over the constant ringing of the machines and the pants of those desperate and yet somehow certain that their luck would change any minute now. Then he started back the way he had come, following the labyrinthine trail back to the front doors. On a whim, he reached out and touched the shoulder of one particularly grim-looking player. A moment later, she was dealt a sequential royal flush, though by the time her own bell went off, she was too far gone to notice it, a stroke having taken her as soon as she’d seen the layout.

“People really should take better care of themselves.” The killer laughed again, shaking his head and making “tsk-tsk” sounds, before stepping into the sunshine once more. He donned a pair of glasses he’d bought at the casino’s gift shop before making his calls and headed home. He had a lot of work to do and only so much time to do it in, after all.

As he walked, he whistled to himself. The few people on the streets steered clear of him; it seemed the wisest choice.

Chapter
6
 

11:30 am, December 8, 1999

“Well, that was a waste of a perfectly good morning.” Drakanis’s voice was sullen and despondent, nearly as bad as it had been in the morning when Parker first woke him up or before his “retirement.”

Parker shrugged. “They’re not all winners, Mikey. At least we’ve got a signature, can compare it to whoever we pick up.”

“Sigs ain’t worth jack, and you know it. Besides, our guy has been smart so far; no reason to think he actually walked into a pawnshop, sold the thing, then went and hunted down the new owner. And even if he did, I really doubt he signed for the sale with his own name or even with anything resembling his real signature.”

Parker didn’t have an answer to that, so he just shrugged again and glanced up the street. The usual crowd was filing in and out of the casino, but other than that, traffic was at the wonderful point in the day where all commuting ceased for a brief window. Parker was glad for that; trying to get back to the office during rush hour would have been even more of a nightmare than the drive there had been, and being spared that was worth nearly anything. He pulled open his door and dropped himself into the cruiser, ignoring the wheezing of the brakes and the disturbing way it creaked as he did so. Drakanis followed a moment later, after casting a last glance up at the casino across the way.

For a second, he’d been sure he’d seen something up there, some gleam, and the feeling of being watched returned. Then it faded, and he shook his head.

“Waiting for the second coming, Mikey? Haul your freight.”

“Yeah, yeah, shut up, asshole. Where to? Scene of the cr—”

He was interrupted by a sudden chirping from Parker’s pocket. It bleeped out the
Twilight
Zone
theme. Drakanis arched his brow. Parker shrugged, looking a trifle embarrassed. “Hey, it’s recognizable. No patting down to see who’s ringing.” He flipped the phone out of his pocket—quite a trick, given his girth and the narrow seating—and jabbed a button.

“Parker.”

Drakanis couldn’t hear what was being said on the other end, but the noise coming out of the phone was loud enough that he could detect some panic in the voice. He drew a question mark in the air, and Parker turned to him, shaking his head. The look on the other man’s face was enough to convince Drakanis that it might be best not to bother him just yet; he looked like death warmed over all of a sudden, or as if someone had just sucker punched him in the gut.

Parker was nodding and tracing his finger in the air as if writing something. It was a habit Drakanis had watched often and always found fascinating. It wasn’t as if the person on the phone could see the gestures he was making, if he was really writing anything at all, but for Parker, it seemed to help.

“Right. I got it. We’ll be there quick as we can. Uh-huh. Right.”

Parker slammed the phone shut, tossed it to the floor, and then slammed his door and started the engine. He was pulling out into traffic even before Drakanis had a chance to register what was happening.

“What’s up? Slow down, there, bucky.”

“Morrigan just had a heart attack. Sheila thinks he was talking to our boy when it happened. Says the guy wanted to leave you a message.”

Drakanis blanched. “Oh. Fuck.”

“Right. Fuck.”

Drakanis reached over to the dash and flicked the switch. The car came alive in pulses of blue and red, the siren blaring. Not that either was necessary, given the light traffic, but it made him feel a little better at least, and from Parker’s look, it did him some good, too.

They sat in silence for a minute, and then Drakanis broke it by asking, in a tone of pleading desperation, “What the fuck is going on?”

Parker didn’t have an answer for that. Yesterday, things had been nice, mundane, and orderly. Even working homicide got routine, after a while. Now it felt like everything had been turned on edge and given a little bit of surreal movie focus, and there wasn’t shit he could do about it.