Desperate Souls (43 page)
Authors: Gregory Lamberson
“Damn you. Where is it?”
“I taped it to the bottom of the birdcage.”
Katrina set one foot on top of the birdcage and spun it around so that the jewel case taped to its bottom came into view. She looked up with disbelief spreading across her face. “That disc contains the most awesome secrets in the history of mankind and you hid it underneath
bird shit?”
Kneeling on the ground with one hand still gripping Edgar’s neck, she tore the tape from the jewel case, which landed on the cement, and removed the DVD. Opening the tray of her laptop, she inserted the disc and raised the screen. She watched the program boot up, the screen’s blue glow illuminating her anticipation. Her face transformed into a flesh-and-blood realization of rapture as she paged through Afterlife’s contents.
Folding his arms beneath Malachai’s, Jake reached inside his left sleeve and pulled out the dagger that he had hidden there. He drove AK’s weapon, which had skewered his eye, into Malachai’s thigh with no effect. Yanking the useless dagger free, he held on to it for comfort as congealed blood oozed out of Malachai’s leg like jelly.
Katrina rose, holding Edgar by his neck. The bird beat his wings to prevent being choked. “You’re unpredictable, but so am I.” She flung Edgar over her head, and he took to the air, soaring into the night and disappearing from view.
Jake screamed, a painful cry that petered out to a strangled gasp. He could never save Edgar now. All his actions over the last twenty hours had amounted to nothing, and Katrina possessed Afterlife. “Edgar …”
Katrina regarded him with cool eyes. “Kill him.”
Malachai resumed his crushing hold, and Jake thought his ribs would snap.
“You don’t mind if I stay and watch, do you, Jake? I like to watch.”
With the wind knocked out of him, Jake could not answer.
Malachai leaned back, lifting Jake’s legs off the ground. Unable to leverage himself, Jake struggled like a beached fish. Watching the fight, Katrina picked up her laptop. Jake flailed his arms, unable to make use of the dagger. He pitched his head forward, then threw it back into Malachai’s face as hard as he could. Malachai did not react, but Jake felt the zombie’s nose flatten out.
Jake rocked forward and slammed his head back again, sending pain through his skull and empty eye socket. He repeated this again and again. The pain of impact lessened, and he heard squishing sounds behind him. Lukewarm fluid ran down the back of his neck. Katrina’s face screwed up in surprise, and Malachai increased the intensity of his hold. Jake’s vision darkened, and he felt his consciousness slipping away.
One … more … time!
Throwing his head back once more, he heard a soggy sound and felt a skull caving in. He prayed it wasn’t his and felt reassured when Malachai tipped forward and released him. Jake fell on his hands and knees but dragged Malachai with him. Through the pain, he realized that his head and Malachai’s had merged together. Bracing his left hand against Malachai’s chest, he twisted his body sideways and stepped aside. After a great ripping sound, his head came free. Malachai staggered in a half circle, muscles dripping off his brittle skull.
Stunned, Jake shook his head. Wasting no time, he lunged forward and swung the dagger at the blinded zombie. The blade drove into Malachai’s temple with a deep crunch, and Jake realized his foe’s body was already in a state of decomposition.
Malachai reached up for the hilt protruding from the side of his head, his body jerking from side to side. His fingers closed around the handle, then slipped away, and he collapsed in a heap on the ground. A dark sphere rose from the shell and faded.
Jake grabbed the back of his head. His hand came away dripping flesh that resembled cooked fat.
Malachai’s face.
As Katrina backed away, Jake’s eyes settled on his gun. She sprinted in the opposite direction, running for the construction elevator. Jake scooped up the gun and ran after her, but the pain in his head slowed him down, and he even fell to one knee before resuming the foot chase.
Katrina threw herself into the elevator and slammed the cage door behind her. A moment later, as Jake caught up, the elevator’s motor coughed to life and the elevator rose. Jake slowed to a stop beneath the elevator and watched its ascent.
Following the sound of the motor, he aimed his Glock at the greasy metal and fired at it repeatedly. The muzzle fire flashing from the Glock’s barrel did little to soothe his headache. Rounds sparked against the motor, and shell casings collected on the ground. Black smoke spewed out of the motor, which sputtered to a stop. Looking up, Jake saw the elevator had stopped as well.
Seconds later, the cage door swung open, and Katrina stood at its edge. Measuring the distance to the ladder alongside the elevator, she jumped the four feet with one arm clutching the laptop. Jake watched in awe as her lead foot landed on one ladder rung and her free hand caught another with the grace of a dancer.
Holstering his smoking gun, Jake ran to the ladder and climbed after her. Twenty feet up, with his head throbbing, he saw her dress flapping around her. Then something dark obscured his view.
The laptop!
Flattening himself against the ladder, face turned down and left arm protecting his crown, he braced for the impact. A flat side of the laptop slammed into his forearm, fracturing it from wrist to elbow. Screaming, he wrapped his right arm around a rung so he would not release it. The laptop continued its descent, then shattered into pieces on the ground. He knew that if he investigated, he would find no sign of Afterlife and Katrina would evade him. Wincing, he looked up again.
She had vanished.
Without hesitation, he resumed climbing, every pull of his left arm reducing him to whimpers. He had to prevent Katrina from escaping. He needed to hear from her lips that she could not bring Edgar back, and then she needed to die. He scaled the ladder, feeling his injured arm swell up like Popeye’s. Fifty feet from the foundation at ground level, he stopped.
Why would she go any higher than this?
He looked down just in time to glimpse a flash of white disappearing onto the fourth floor of the construction site, ten feet below him.
Tricked me,
he thought as he climbed back down. Now he had to make the same leap she had, without the use of his left arm to grab the girder for support. Pushing off with his right hand and foot, he crossed the chasm, his left foot reaching the ledge. He pitched forward, rolled, and came up in a crouch.
Now what?
This floor of the unfinished building stretched into total darkness. If he turned on his flashlight, she’d know his location. He edged forward into the darkness, his arm aching even more now that he had stopped climbing. Hearing a slight scuffling sound, he pivoted to see Katrina’s silhouette darting from behind a girder. With great speed, she leapt off the edge and seized one rung in both hands and scrambled up the ladder. Jake mimicked her move, aware that he had only one good hand with which to grab the ladder. His hand passed between rungs in the darkness, and the impact of him crashing face-first into the ladder almost propelled him backwards into empty space.
Tilting his head back, he saw his quarry had almost reached the gantry that would lead her to the plywood fence and the sidewalk beyond it. Draping his left arm around the ladder, he reached for his Glock, doubting that a one-eyed man in extreme pain could hit a target, even at this close range and from his angle.
Katrina’s hands touched the gantry, and then she screamed, a sound that chilled and surprised Jake. Her hair billowed around her head. She pounded on the gantry and kicked at nothing. Then she fell.
Jake saw it in slow motion: her hands clawing at empty space. As she tipped backwards so that she plummeted headfirst, Jake noticed a black shape perched on the gantry’s edge.
Edgar!
But if the raven had not flown away, then the bokor must not die; she needed to return Edgar to normal. On reflex, as Katrina pirouetted to certain death, Jake seized the rung with his right hand and snared her wrist with his left.
This is going to hurt…
He hated being right at the worst times. Katrina’s body jerked Jake’s fractured arm, forcing him to scream again. Her legs swung past her head so that she became upright again, but the front of her body crashed into the ladder with a reverberating thud. The pain that traveled the length of Jake’s left arm and back was so intense that he thought the bones in his arm would split in two, and he screamed through clenched teeth.
Katrina swung her free arm up and clutched Jake’s wrist, which only intensified his pain, and he already clung to the ladder for dear life.
He made eye contact with Katrina, whose panic-stricken face bled from several deep gashes inflicted on her by Edgar. “Help me …”
Jake’s face heated with strain. “Promise me you’ll change Edgar back.”
“I … swear it…”
He believed her, but he didn’t know if he could save her. “Grab the ladder, so you can let go of my arm.”
She kicked in the air. “I can’t…”
And then Jake heard the flapping of wings as Edgar came in for the kill. The raven’s claws raked Katrina’s face, and he pecked at her eyes, wings still flapping.
Jake’s heart leapt in his chest. “Edgar, no!”
Katrina sacrificed herself to the great god of gravity, and as she plunged through the air, Jake saw that her gaping left eye socket lacked an eyeball. As the raven spread its wings and circled the space above her, Katrina continued to claw at empty air, a look of disbelief on her face. Then darkness swallowed her features, and she flattened out on the foundation below.
Edgar…
Holding tight to the ladder, Jake found he could no longer use his left hand at all. He had no choice but to step onto a rung and shoot his hand up to a higher rung. With tremendous effort, he reached the gantry and saw the shiny Afterlife disc lying near the edge, its surface smeared with red lipstick where Katrina had held it in her mouth. Too exhausted to pull himself onto the gantry, he rested for a moment, gathering his remaining strength, then threw one leg over the metal walkway and rolled onto it, chest heaving.
Edgar lighted onto the edge, his black beak open wide to accommodate the ruptured orb he had ripped from Katrina’s head. Bloody muscles dangled from the eyeball. With perfect balance, he spat the eye over the edge.
Jake closed his eye and swallowed, measuring the extent of his failure. Edgar would never be human again, but at least the zonbies had been destroyed. Opening his eye, he took in the clear night sky, then raised his throbbing left arm so he could see his watch. Midnight, the witching hour. Grimacing, he held back laughter and tears at the same time.
Edgar just blinked at him and cawed at the darkness.
Jake parked the battered Monte Carlo on a residential street in Jackson Heights. Surveying the row houses, brownstones, and two-family homes, he switched off the engine and gathered his thoughts. Sunlight glared off the car’s dirty windshield. He saw teenage boys loitering on stoops, glancing at corners where zonbies had probably dealt Black Magic only the night before.
This morning the TV news shows had devoted all their airtime to the sensational events rocking the city: twenty-four hours after thirty embalmed corpses were discovered at drug spots around the city with bullet holes in their heads, another sixty had been discovered without bullet holes but also without fingertips, toes, or teeth.
Mayor Madigan announced his intention to arrange for mass viewings of the bodies to help with identification, and Governor Santucci assigned emergency funds to the city, so NYPD could rehire the thousands of cops who had been laid off. Both politicians vowed to take the city back from the vicious drug lords who had committed such heinous acts. According to police commissioner Bryant, “massive amounts” of the deadly narcotic known as Black Magic had already been confiscated.
Jake smiled to himself, knowing that his former colleagues in blue had taken into custody only the small amounts of drugs carried on the persons of Malachai’s undead soldiers, now dead. He also knew that a certain amount of Black Magic would find its way back onto the streets and that in another day or two—hell, maybe even tonight—neighborhood hoppers would take to the corners, dispensing their customary contraband.
Getting out of the damaged car, he mounted the steps of a white house and rang the doorbell.
A black woman with hair tight to her scalp opened the door. She wore business casual slacks and a blouse, and her weary expression grew animated at the sight of him. “Jake …” Joyce embraced him, then pulled back. “What happened to your
eye
?”
“It’s a long story. I’m still getting used to the patch. Can I see Martin?”
“Yes, thanks for coming by.” Stepping back from the door, she allowed Jake to enter the hallway and then her living room. Martin sat slumped on the sofa, watching news.
“Hi, Martin.”
“Jake!” Martin ran into Jake’s arms, then looked up at him with hopeful eyes. “Do you know where my dad is?”
Jake offered a weak smile. “I wish I did. Let’s sit down.”
Joyce joined them on the sofa.
“Don’t ask me how, but I know that your father is alive. Call it a sixth sense that partners develop over time.”
“Is he hurt?”
Jake considered the question. “I don’t think so. But I don’t think he’s able to contact anyone, either.”
“All they’re talking about on the news is this drug war,” Joyce said. “It sounds like they’re devoting all their resources to fighting these animals behind Black Magic.”
“You’re right. I don’t think the police will find him. But
I
will. I promise you, I’ll do everything in my power to find him and bring him home.”
Joyce’s eyes teared up. “I believe you.”
“If either of you ever needs anything—and I mean
anything
—you call me first. Don’t hesitate to pick up the phone or come by my office.”
“Thank you, Jake.”
“If I get tied up on a case and you don’t hear from me, don’t think I’ve forgotten about you or Edgar. I’m making this the number one priority in my life.”
Martin bowed his head, hiding his tears, and Jake eased his hurt arm around the boy’s shoulders.
Maria and Bernie stood on the construction site’s foundation between two corpses, surrounded by uniformed officers and Crime Scene Unit members. The male corpse appeared bloated and discolored, the female broken and bloody.
“That’s Dawn Du Pre,” Maria said in a flat tone.
Bernie sipped his coffee. “What was she doing with Malachai?” They had identified the drug dealer through the driver’s license in his wallet.
“We know he was looking for her. Maybe she witnessed whatever happened to Edgar, and he wanted to make sure she wouldn’t talk.”
“Neither one of them is talking now.” Bernie gestured at the wire birdcage lying on its side. “What do you make of this?”
“I have no idea. It must be unrelated.”
“I’m sorry. I know they were your only leads.”
Maria looked at Dawn’s smashed remains. How strange that they had enjoyed dinner together less than a week ago, and now Dawn was dead and Edgar was missing. “No, I have one more.”
Laurel was feeding Edgar at the round table in her parlor when Jake entered with his arm in a sling.
“I bet no one ever lets me rent a car again.”
“He’s not eating much,” Laurel said.
“Maybe we should try steak. Edgar liked meat.”
“Ravens eat small mice. I’m sure he can handle some steak.”
“Stick him back in the cage for me, will you?”
“You should let me keep him here.” She eased Edgar into the cage. “At least you’ll know someone will always be here to watch him.”
Jake sat opposite her. “Maybe I’ll let you bird sit from time to time.”
“You know where to find me.”
Jake studied her oval-shaped face.
So much mystery behind those eyes.
“I did a little research on you.”
“You mean you’re investigating me?” She seemed amused.
“It’s what I do.”
“What did you discover?”
“Would you be surprised if I found anything?”
“Yes.”
“No birth date. No records of education, employment, or taxes. As far as the United States government is concerned, you don’t even exist. Whoever you are and whatever you’ve done, you’ve managed to cover your tracks completely.”
A trace of a smile appeared on her lips. “It’s what I do.”
Standing, he lifted Edgar’s cage from the table. “Maybe I’d like some references before I let you watch my bird.”
“I’m sure you’ll keep looking.”
“It’s what I do.”
Sitting at his desk, with Edgar hopping around getting his bearings, Jake turned the Afterlife disc, still smeared with Katrina’s lipstick, over in one hand. Laurel continued to press him to destroy it, but as long as there was a chance that information on the disc could lead to a solution to Edgar’s dilemma, he needed to hang on to it, regardless of the danger.
His intercom buzzed. “Detective Vasquez is here to see you.”
“Send her in, Carrie.”
He had been expecting this visit. Leaning back in his seat, he watched Maria enter. “Hi, Maria.”
Her eyes darted to the raven, which croaked at the sight of her and jumped onto the coffee table. “I didn’t know you had a pet.”
“Birds of a feather,” Jake said. Something about her expression told him that the raven had unnerved her.
“Prince Malachai is dead. So is Dawn. We found them together at a construction site near Dawn’s building.”
Jake controlled every muscle in his face, giving Maria nothing to read. “Did they kill each other?”
“It’s unlikely. His head was smashed in and her body broken into a hundred pieces.”
“Do you think whoever killed them is responsible for Edgar’s disappearance?”
“That’s a distinct possibility, isn’t it? The night Edgar disappeared, he and Dawn were both in her apartment. She came out; he didn’t. Then a Caucasian male in his early to midthirties ran out of the building and pulled a gun on the doorman. Where were you that night?”
Jake didn’t blink. “I checked into a hotel in New Jersey.”
“Only
after
the incident reported by the doorman. I checked your credit card activity.”
She’s good,
Jake thought. “Am I a suspect in Edgar’s disappearance?”
“Let’s just say that in my book, you’re definitely a person of interest. Edgar’s cell phone records show that you two were in frequent contact during the time leading to his disappearance. What I want to know is, did you suck him into an investigation of yours, or did he suck you into a rogue investigation he was running on Malachai?”
“I’m sorry, but you’re on the wrong track. I’m glad to help you look for Edgar, but I had nothing to do with his disappearance.”
Setting her palms down on his desk, she leaned forward. “Bullshit. You’re in this up to your eyeball, and I know it. I think we’re going to see a lot of each other from now on.”
Jake said nothing. She would have taken any flippant remark by him as a challenge.
Turning to leave, she glanced at the raven and said, “Oh, and by the way—we found an empty birdcage at the scene of this double homicide. Do you have a receipt for that bird?”
Jake shook his head. “No, he just flew in through the window one day, and I decided to keep him. You’re not going to report me to Animal Control, are you?”
“And lay down a paper trail establishing grounds for harassment? Not a chance. But I will be seeing you around, so keep breaking those rules.”
“It’s what I do.”
After she left, Edgar flew onto the desk. Jake raised his good arm level with his chest, and Edgar hopped onto it.
“When will my life ever get easier?”
The raven didn’t answer him.
Glancing out the window at the Tower, Jake thought,
Nevermore.