Authors: John Levitt

Unleashed (41 page)

BOOK: Unleashed

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So I stood quietly in Ramsey’s pitiful little kitchen, listening to the sounds of thumping and scrabbling coming from up above. Eventually, all sounds stopped, followed by a brief but ominous silence. Then the sound of heavy footsteps stumbling down the stairs.

I was ready. I turned on the water in the kitchen sink, squirted in a good-sized glob from an untouched bottle of dishwashing liquid, and frantically started scrubbing the blood out of my shirt. The water ran pink as it swirled down the drain, and the footsteps from the stairs became slow and hesitant. I used a roll of paper towels to clean off any of it that had spattered on my leather jacket, until both the jacket and the shirt were as clean as I could get them in such a short time. The animating force had been funneled through the blood, and if there was not enough blood left, the force would weaken. When it dropped below a certain threshold it would cease to operate.

The steps from up above faltered, and finally, with a heavy thud, Ramsey’s body collapsed and tumbled down, ending up sprawled out at the bottom of the stairs. Between the original dismemberment and the large chunks ripped off during the last struggle, what was left was barely recognizable as a human being.

I stood in the small kitchen, staring at dismembered bodies and pools of blood, and felt nothing. No horror, no relief, certainly no satisfaction.

I was burned out, blank and empty. Lou looked up at me, worried. Or maybe he just wanted to go home. Our work here was done, after all.

“Come on,” I said, and walked out the door.

TWENTY-TWO

THE CLEANUP OF RAMSEY’S APARTMENT MUST have been a nightmare. Victor handled it, along with the team he uses for such things. “Welcome to the world of grown-ups,” he’d said to me earlier. But I couldn’t begin to deal with that sort of thing; I just wanted to walk away and forget it ever happened. Someone had to do it, though, and as usual, that someone was Victor. For the first time, I got some real insight into our relationship, and why he never really took me seriously. To him, I wasn’t a grown-up, and never would be. And he might just be right about that.

Morgan was happy to find out that things were back to normal, though they’d never really be normal for her again. Collateral damage. I called her a couple of times, mostly out of a sense of obligation, but she made it clear she wanted nothing more to do with me or my world.

I never saw the Wendigo again. Well, that’s not exactly true. I was over at Emily Janover’s house one night, talking about a project she had in mind. Emily is a keyboard player and singer, a Diana Krall type. She’s good, but she could have been really good if she’d only applied herself. Of course, I’m hardly one to talk. We shared dinner and stayed up late, talking about who else she wanted for her CD and what songs to do.

She turned on the TV and switched over to a late-night talk show.

“There’s a band from the Bay Area on tonight I want to see,” she said. “The Death Turtles. Supposedly they’re the next big thing.”

We listened to them, and they weren’t bad, though not to my taste. But in the back, sitting behind a massive set of drums and grinning from ear to ear, was a curly-headed fellow I knew all too well. Emily was less than impressed by the band.

“Same old thing.” She sighed. “If you want to hit the big time, three chords and a loud voice is what you need.”

“That song had five chords,” I pointed out.

“Same difference. They sucked. Except for the drummer. I have to admit it—he’s out of this world.”

“You have no idea,” I said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Levitt grew up in New York City. After a stint at the University of Chicago, he traveled around the country and ended up running light shows for bands in San Francisco. Eventually, he moved to the Wasatch Mountains and worked at a ski lodge in Alta, Utah. After a number of years as a ski bum, he joined the Salt Lake City Police Department, where for eight years he worked as a patrol officer and later as an investigator. His experiences on the job formed the background for two mystery novels,
Carnivores
and
Ten of Swords
. For the last few years, he has split his time between Alta, where he manages the Alta Lodge, and San Francisco. When he’s not working or writing, he plays guitar with the SF rock band The Procrastinistas and also plays the occasional jazz gig. He owns no dogs, although his girlfriend now has four.

He is currently at work on the fourth book in the Dog Days series. You can visit him on the Web at
www.jlevitt.com
.