His Name Was Death (Dead Man's Tale Book 1) (17 page)

Karen contemplated the house. “So what now?”

I studied her aura before answering. Outwardly, she looked healthy; it was a lie.

Karen didn’t have three or four days.

“Keep going down the list. Maybe we’ll find a better lead. We can always check on Mr. Kim in a couple of days.”

At least,
I
could.

The next address was only a few blocks away. It was the one I’d been anticipating.

The question mark.

As we drove, Karen gave directions from a map she’d printed the night before.

You’ve just gotta love the internet.

Maybe Elliott could get me a laptop, or something.

“Hey—how many other question marks are on the list?”

“Oh my, I think…” Trailing off, Karen dug quickly through her purse. She sat back, holding the stack of folded sheets. She searched through them carefully before responding. “Just the one, Michael.”

Satisfied, I nodded. Anomalies are almost always clues; at least, that’s true in cop shows.

Unless you’re only ten minutes into an hour-long episode; then they’re just dead ends.

“Turn here! This is it!”

I swung the Mustang’s wheel hard to the right, and the muscle car responded like a true American champion. The back tires squealed at the sudden shift in acceleration, but Ford’s finest cornered like it was on rails. We swung dizzyingly into the apartment complex parking lot, trailing a cloud of white smoke while screeching to a stop.

That’s right.

It was awesome.

Boo yah.

Karen appeared less impressed, holding a hand to her chest. Panting, she scolded me in a cross tone, “Oh my, and here I thought my heart would kill me.”

My smile grew wider, until my cheeks hurt.

It faded as I looked around the parking lot, experiencing a heart-wrenching sense of déjà vu.

I was sure I’d been here before.

And no, not in any weird, astral projection, past life kind of way. I don’t believe in nonsense like crystals and past lives.

Well, uh…okay. It
might
apply in my case.

But just on a technicality.

With a shake of my head, I pushed the feeling away. Either it would come to me or it wouldn’t. There was more important business to be done.

“Which apartment is it?”

Karen checked her notes quickly to be certain. “3C.”

3C?
Really?
What were the odds? This was getting ridiculous. This victim, my new apartment, and before that…

Everything clicked; I
had
been here before.

On a cold January night.

With three inches of snow on the ground.

Karen, unaware of my epiphany, continued on. “The name is…”

“I know,” I barked, and then more gently, “I know her name.”

Karen’s head snapped up; her eyes found my face. While I’m not exactly certain what they saw there, her expression softened. “Do you know her?”

“I do,” I stammered, “I did… I don’t know…”

She smiled sadly, reaching out to squeeze my hand. “Oh my, but of course you don’t.” She nodded, probably not understanding what I didn’t have the words to say, but recognizing the emotion behind it.

“Karen, she was…” I trailed off, uncertain how to finish.

She squeezed my hand once more, patted it twice, and then withdrew. “I’ll be right here, Michael.”

With a nod, I slipped from the driver’s seat.

Alone, I walked through the parking lot in a silence laden with anticipation. I smiled sadly at the memory of another hand in mine.

Ascending two flights of floating concrete stairs, I arrived on the third floor. I found the blue door marked 3C from memory. At the foot of the entrance lay a welcome mat in the stylized shape of an owl in brown and gray wicker. It asked the question, “Who’s there?”

How much time had passed…six months? Seven? I’d expected the mat to be gone by now.

After all, it had been a gift; she told me so.

My knock on the door received no response. I hesitated only briefly before sending out a thought.

The door swung slowly inward.

I stepped inside.

The near-dark left me blind. Outside was bright, even through the clouds, but here the shades were drawn. A heavy scent of dust and neglect filled the air.

My eyes quickly adjusted, and soon I could discern muted details: the leather couch and chair; a small television in a simple wooden stand; pictures of friends and family in frames on the wall; two large potted plants in the far corners of the room and a third, smaller one on the kitchen counter, all three long dead.

A shiver of apprehension ran through me as I walked down the hallway toward the closed bedroom door. My fingers rested on the handle, hesitating.

Thumping from my chest spread along my extremities. My breath quickened.

There wasn’t anything beyond that door I needed to see again.

“What are you doing in there?” the rough, heavy voice of a lifelong smoker accused from beyond the apartment’s threshold. The frail, robe-clad elderly woman glared at me suspiciously over her walker. A cigarette hung from her lips, burning only inches below the oxygen tube she wore under her nose.

“Hello, ma’am. I’m Michael, a friend of Michelle’s.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed, and she snorted. Her cigarette quivered erratically as she spoke around it. “Some friend. Don’t even know she ain’t here.”

“I’ve been,” I hesitated, “away.”

“She went and got herself shot, she and that fella. Nasty business.” The woman ducked her head into the apartment to look around, but the walker didn’t budge.

People can be superstitious about death.

After satisfying her curiosity, she pulled back. “Father keeps the place.”

“And why, ma’am, would he do that?”

“In case she wakes up, I s’pose. Damn fool thing.”

My heart skipped a beat. “Wait…Michelle’s alive?”

Her eyes narrowed further. “More or less, I s’pose. Lying in some hospital bed. Coma, ya know.”

A coma.

Not dead, but not exactly alive either.

A question mark.

“Which hospital?”

The elderly woman frowned, as if offended. “I’m sure I don’t know, like some nosy busybody.”

Right.

I scrawled my name, phone number and address on a pad from the kitchen counter, handing it to her. “If it comes to mind, please call me.”

The woman grunted noncommittally, pocketing the slip.

I quickly said my goodbyes, running back to the Mustang. I had a monster to find.

Michelle’s attacker.

The killer from a rundown warehouse.

The bastard that stole my life.

XX

Another One Bites the Dust

“Tomorrow, Karen. I promise we’ll look more tomorrow.”

The Mustang idled in front of Parkview Condominiums. We’d originally planned to spend the day checking addresses from the list, looking for clues.

But plans change.

Michelle was alive.

“This Michelle Harris…do you know her well?”

I nodded.

“But you didn’t know about her coma?”

I didn’t think Karen’s words were meant as an accusation, but they stung all the same. “I’ve been…away…a while. I…thought she was…”  My eyes started to burn; I closed them tight before the tears could fall.

Karen put a hand on my arm, her voice soft and gentle. “Goodness, Michael, you love her.”

I swallowed, my throat dry. We’d only dated a few days, three dates total. There was definitely a connection, but love doesn’t happen that quickly.

Does it?

Uncertain what to say, I shrugged.

Karen smiled sadly. “I can’t ask you to abandon your Michelle for my Robert.”

“Karen, we…” I stalled, unable to think of the right words.

“I know, Michael. Call me tomorrow.”

Karen slipped from the Mustang, leaving the folded list on her seat with a pat. She smiled, a twinkle in her eyes. “Just in case.”

Guilt ridden, I watched Karen walk to her condo.

She didn’t know everything, and I lacked the heart to tell her.

I’d missed when it happened—sometime after leaving Maria Scott’s house. First I was distracted by Bradley Kim, then by Michelle, and I just hadn’t paid enough attention.

I noticed it only when we reached Karen’s Green Lake home.

Her aura had changed.

It was now pitch black.

At rush hour, the Reaper walked unnoticed though a bustling crowd in the heart of downtown Everett—people hurrying home to their families. The now-familiar pocket of space enveloped me, leaving my progress unhindered.

Twenty-five miles north of Seattle, Everett is the blue-collar, working man’s answer to the shinier, more commercial glitz to the south; the forgotten, plain Jane to its more famous sister. Everything feels a little older and just the slightest bit run down.

My intention had been to head home, start calling the Seattle area hospitals. Of course, it had been six months; Michelle could be in a nursing home. If that were the case, there’d be a lot more phone calls to make.

A half-mile from Karen’s condo, the blinding white light flashed inside my eyes. Life has an annoying habit of interrupting at the worst possible times.

After a short, three-block walk, the crowd thinned significantly. Many of the buildings along this street were decrepit—most businesses abandoned. The only significant exception appeared to be the Honey Pot Motel.

And that only barely.

The Honey Pot had seen better days. Its four stories surrounded the parking lot on three sides. Many of the windows were boarded over, but a half-dozen broken panes of glass were still visible. Various shades of orange, the room doors were all faded and badly marred.

The Honey Pot’s sign proclaimed both short and long term rates. A few nice cars sat in the parking lot, surrounded by clunkers that might not ever run. This was the rare kind of place where the well-to-do mixed with those down on their luck. The former stayed a couple of hours for their secret lunch hour trysts. The latter might never be fortunate enough to leave.

A man smoked in the parking lot, dressed in dark clothes, face hidden behind the lowered bill of his hat. He did a quick cash deal as I approached; his customer ducked back into a room with their purchase.

I climbed the stairs to room 227, where my glowing red guide lit the door brightly, pulsing as it patiently waited. I scanned the parking lot and surrounding windows; no women in white peered back from any place I could see.

Not that their absence meant anything, of course.

With a deep breath, I pushed my way inside.

Beyond the door, the room was dim and the air heavy with unpleasant odors. Clothing lay strewn over the floor. The TV had a shattered screen. Freddie Mercury and Queen sang quietly from an iPod by the bathroom sink.

“…and another one gone and another one gone…”

A man lay unconscious on the bed, his thin black aura faded nearly to translucency. Tan foam hung at his nostrils and the corner of his lips. The bedding was torn and rumpled beneath him.

On the nightstand, a razor blade sat next to three lines of white powder.

I watched as his heart, outlined for me in red, beat only once or twice a minute.

His name was Marcus, though he went by Mack.

Unfortunately, he was no man.

Mack was just barely seventeen.

As before, the little black clouds gave frustratingly few details, but I was getting better at asking the right questions and guessing at missing facts. The answers were always scenes from the past, and those scenes often held important clues in the background, if I watched them carefully enough.

Mack’s home life was trouble. A junkie and prostitute, his mother beat him when he was late, or got bad grades, or just because she had nothing better to do. About four months ago, he ran off and moved to the Honey Pot. The rent was low enough that with part time work, he could keep going to school.

Back in May, Mack agreed to run drugs for the man I’d seen in the parking lot. The money was good, and the work easier than night shifts at McDonalds. He stopped going to school in June. He’d been sampling the product for almost three weeks now.

“Marcus Christopher Olsen.”

The boy’s soul rose quickly from his body, as if he’d simply been awaiting my arrival. His dark skin was almost invisible in the dim room, making his bright, alert eyes seem to float on their own, eerily disembodied.

He glanced from the nightstand, to his body on the bed, and finally to me.

“Shit,” he managed.

I felt the same way.

“I didn’t OD. I couldn’t have. I barely touched it.”

The bed creaked as I sat beside the boy. “I wish I wasn’t here, Mack, but I am. Your life has come to an end. It’s time to go.”

“I can’t.” He lowered his eyes and nearly vanished from sight.

“One way or another, you’ll move on tonight. Why are you fighting it?”

He shook his head, then glanced at a bundle on the floor.

I pulled back the brown paper, revealing money—thousands of dollars. I didn’t bother to count it.

“For Ma,” he managed huskily, his voice heavy with emotion. “With that, maybe…” he trailed off.

My heart beat heavily, filling my head with the sound. I’d gotten some of the important details wrong. He hadn’t escaped; he’d gone looking for help.

And that sick bastard in the parking lot had perverted it into something horrible.

Something that ultimately killed Marcus.

“I’ll do what I can to make this right, Mack, but I’m afraid that my work starts with you.”

The boy’s eyes snapped up, terrified. “You won’t hurt Ma, will you?”

“No, Marcus.” I shook my head. “She’ll never even see me.”

I watched the drug dealer quietly from the shadows. My pulsing green beacon called from the street, but I’d already made my decision. Marcus’s bundle sat nestled beneath my left arm.

The man was in his late forties, and white. In the two hours I’d watched, four African-American teens had come by to exchange packages with the dealer. Why the police would allow this to continue, I could only speculate; he did almost nothing to hide his illegal activities.

Perhaps he had an understanding with local law enforcement.

If so, that understanding was about to change.

I watched until the sun gave way to night. The pattern was regular. A different boy came every thirty minutes. He also served the motel guests, but there were only three customers in the time I watched.

Right on time, a boy arrived to exchange packages without a word. Just one minute, and the man again stood alone.

I strode purposefully between the cars, a towering icon of rage and death. Without giving warning, I grabbed a fistful of his t-shirt.

“Hey!” He started to turn.

I swept the dealer’s legs with my scythe and shoved him down hard. His head clacked loudly as it bounced off the pavement, his hat skittering away.

He started to struggle. “What the fu…” and then he saw me. A foul stench filled the air.

I laid my scythe blade against his throat. It was the ice cold of the grave.

The stench grew stronger.

“You knew Marcus Olsen?”

His voice croaked in a barely audible whisper, “You mean Mack?”

I pushed the blade until the edge dug in, dimpling his skin. I knew it wouldn’t cut him.

But he didn’t.

“And Mack’s mother?”

“Yeah,” he stammered. “That hot piece over on Rucker.”

I bounced his head against the pavement again, then threw Marcus’s bundle onto his chest. “We’re going to take this to her, and you’ll apologize for killing her son.”

“Shit, Mack’s dead?”

The third time I bounced his head, the dealer’s eyes unfocused briefly. “You’re never going to deal to her again. And you’ll make sure no one else does either. Understood?”

He started to whimper in my grasp. “How long?”

“Until the end of your worthless days, if that’s what it takes. You’re going to get her clean and on her feet, and make sure she stays that way. And you
will not
lay a hand on her, ever, for any reason. The very first time you fail, the first time she needs something and you’re not there for her,” I leaned forward until my skull lay against the skin of his face, my empty black eyes filling his vision.

“I
will
be there for you.”

I slumped, dejected, into the driver’s seat of the Mustang. Other than me, the bottom floor of the underground garage was completely empty.

The dealer wasn’t reliable, I knew that. He feared for his life, and for that reason alone he’d done what I demanded. Even then, I probably couldn’t have trusted him if I hadn’t stood right behind him the whole time, scythe to his back.