Watcher of the Dark: A Jeremiah Hunt Supernatual Thriller (The Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) (21 page)

When I was finished, I went to the front door, listened, and then, not hearing anything, quietly turned the knob and peeked out into the hallway.

It was empty.

Keeping my head down, I stepped out into the hallway, pulled the door shut behind me, and headed for the stairs at the far end. I could practically feel the building security cameras pointed at the back of my head all the way down the hall.

I heard the elevator ding as I pulled open the door to the stairwell, but then I was inside and headed downward. The three-foot-high twenty-four on the wall next to me told me that I had a long way to go, but the chances of running into anyone on the stairs were drastically reduced compared to the chance of doing the same on the elevator.

Ten minutes later I stepped out the emergency entrance, wandered around to the front, and slipped into the first taxi in line.

My heart was still pounding as we drove away into the night.

28

I had the cabbie drop me off down the street from the property and walked the rest of the way, slipping through the trees until I reached the back wall and then going over the top to keep from being seen by the guards at the gate.

Once on the property, I kept to the shadows and made my way over to the row of bungalows. From there it was a relatively easy matter to ease around to the front, open the door, and then slip inside.

I kept the blinds down all the time, so there was no danger of anyone seeing me as I flipped on the lights and headed directly for the bathroom. I turned on the shower and was about to strip down when I had second thoughts.

Don’t screw things up now, I told myself, and headed back into the kitchen. I got a large plastic trash bag from under the sink and carried it into the bathroom. I shook open the bag and then arranged it on the floor so that I could stand inside it. With the plastic sack underneath me to catch any dried blood that might crack and fall off my clothes, I undressed, stuffing everything that I took off into the bag around my feet.

When I was finished, I stepped out of the bag and into the shower. I felt dirty in a way I’d never felt before and I scrubbed at my skin, flaking off the splatters of dried blood and then scrubbing and scrubbing some more until my flesh was pink with the pressure. By the time I got out, I think I left more than a few layers of skin behind.

I dressed in clean clothes, dried my hair with a towel, ran a brush through it, and then dumped the towel in the garbage bag with the rest of the ruined clothing just to be safe. I bundled up the bag and tied it tight. My plan was to carry it around to the garage and bury it deep amidst the other bags that were already in the dumpster there for pickup later that afternoon.

Before I had a chance to do so, however, there was a loud pounding at my door.

For one heart-stopping moment I was certain I’d been discovered, and I found myself waiting for the shout of “Police!” and the crash of the door being broken in with a tactical ram.

Instead, I got another knock and a muffled shout. “Hunt! Open the door!”

Rivera!

I could think of only one reason he’d be pounding on my door at this hour of the morning, and it wasn’t to play Scrabble.

Getting caught with a bag of bloody clothes in my hands was probably not a good idea, so I glanced around frantically, looking for a place to stash them that wouldn’t be immediately discovered. The closet was out, as that was too obvious. So was shoving the bag in with the rest of the trash under the kitchen counter. I needed someplace to stash it long enough to get rid of it properly

My gaze fell upon the ceiling tiles above me.

I didn’t have time to think about it any longer. I stood on the edge of the tub, popped one of the tiles loose with my left hand, and stuffed the bag inside with my right. I was just pulling the tile back into place when I heard him again.

“Open the door, Hunt, or I’m coming in!”

I hopped down from the tub, hit the flush on the toilet to give me a reasonable explanation of delay, and then hurried over to open the front door.

Rivera gave me a suspicious glare when I did so, but with the sun coming up I wasn’t supposed to be able to see it and so I didn’t respond. Nor did I react when he peered past me on either side, clearly looking for something, though I didn’t know what.

Instead, I went on the offensive.

“Rivera? Do you have any idea what time it is?”

He studied me for a moment before responding. I expected some wiseass remark from him, as he usually felt the need to assert his superiority in such situations, but this time all he said was, “Fuentes wants you.”

That was all.

“Now?” I asked.

“Yes, now.”

His tone was flat, devoid of emotion, and I recognized it as a sign of intense anger. Rivera barely seemed to be in control, and I knew it wouldn’t take much to set him off. With that in mind, I decided to tread lightly and dropped the irritated act.

“Let me get my cane.”

I left the door open so he could see me as I stepped back inside and grabbed my cane off the kitchen counter. Unfolding it, I returned to the door and said, “Ready.”

Without another word Rivera turned and strode off in the direction of the main house.

I followed.

A few minutes later he was ushering me into Fuentes’s office. The boss man sat behind his desk, watching me closely as I entered. I pretended not to notice, felt for the chair I knew was there, and then stood beside it.

“Sit down, Hunt.”

I sat.

He stared at me; I pretended not to see him.

Outside I was as cool as a cucumber, but inside my thoughts were churning a mile a minute.
What did they know? Who had they talked to? What had they seen?

I didn’t have any idea.

It was the not knowing that was making me nervous.

After a moment, Fuentes said, “We have a problem, Hunt.”

I considered his words and the tone in which he said them very carefully. Taken one way, his statement could mean that he and I had a problem between us. Taken another, it could mean that there was a problem that the two of us, together, needed to solve.

There were miles between the two statements.

I fought to keep from tensing as I replied, “Something I can help with?”

“Grady’s dead.”

I froze, intentionally, trying for stunned surprise. I shook my head, as if I hadn’t heard him correctly.

“Come again?”

I could see that he was still studying me intently and I tried not to let it bother me as I waited for his answer.

“Sean Grady was killed by an intruder at some point last night.”

“Here? On the property?”

Fuentes shook his head. “No, it was … elsewhere.”

Elsewhere? That was a strange way of putting it. “Any idea what happened?”

Fuentes waved a hand; not important, the gesture said. “Rivera found the body about an hour ago.”

Most people would have glanced back toward Rivera at that point, a physical way of acknowledging that the other man had been mentioned. I’d been blind a long time and thought such instinctive behaviors had gone by the wayside long ago, but my newfound ability to see, even if it was through an unwanted passenger’s eyes, had me repeating them like I’d never lost my sight. Thankfully, I caught myself in time and turned the motion into a simple adjustment of my position in the chair.

Fuentes wasn’t finished. “He’s going back to the crime scene in a few minutes. I want you to go with him. Do what he tells you to do. Is that clear?”

Crystal
, I thought dryly, the sarcasm dying to fall from my lips, but I managed to hold my tongue and just nodded instead.

The thought came to me that this might actually be a better turn of events than I had hoped for. Fuentes wouldn’t want the police nosing about in Grady’s business because that might bring to light the thief’s connection to Fuentes and the activities he’d been performing on Fuentes’s behalf. I suspected that Rivera and I were headed back to the crime scene to do some cleaning up of our own before the authorities were brought in, if they were even brought in at all. It was more likely that Grady would be taken care of in the same manner that Perkins had: a quick disappearance and an unmarked grave somewhere remote that would quickly be forgotten. I assumed my presence there was due to my previous work with the homicide team out of Boston; Fuentes wanted to tap my knowledge of crime-scene investigative techniques to make sure that Rivera didn’t overlook anything the police might find significant.

The magister’s next words confirmed my guess.

“You’ve had some experience with this kind of thing, so feel free to speak up where you think it necessary, but follow Rivera’s lead. I’ve given him my instructions and expect them to be carried out.”

“I understand.”

I don’t know exactly what Fuentes had been looking for on my face this whole time, but apparently my answers had satisfied him. He grunted once, softly, as if to himself, and then nodded. “Good. You’re doing well, Hunt. I’m pleased with how you’re fitting in here.”

I wanted to tell him I didn’t give a rat’s ass how well I was fitting in and that I would doing everything I could to screw him royally as soon as I had the chance, but I simply nodded, once, and then rose from my seat to follow Rivera out the door.

29

That’s how I ended up riding in the passenger seat of Denise’s Charger as Rivera retraced almost the exact same route the cabbie had taken to bring me back just a hour or so again, but in reverse. For the longest time he didn’t say anything and then, almost casually, he said, “Why was your hair wet?”

It was such an innocuous question that I was taken aback at first and had no idea what he was talking about.

“My hair?”

“Yes, when I came to the door, your hair was wet. And yet it took you several minutes to open the door, as if I’d woken you up from sleep.”

I looked over at him, knowing not to do so would be more suspicious. It didn’t matter that I was blind and couldn’t see him; when someone accuses you of something, even if they don’t come right out and say it, you turn and look at that person.

“What, exactly, are you implying, Rivera?”

“I’m not implying anything,” he said. “I’m asking you a question. Why was your hair wet?”

I laughed in his face. “My hair was wet because I’d just gotten out of the shower.” Anticipating his next question, I continued. “When I can’t sleep, a hot shower usually calms my brain down enough to let me get some rest.”

It was a simple enough explanation and one that he couldn’t disprove, not unless he’d seen me coming or going from the bungalow, which I didn’t think he had. My first instinct had been to tell him that I’d showered as a result of another long and satisfying bout with Ilyana. I was confident that she’d back me up, but I didn’t know what she’d been doing all evening; for all I knew, she could have been with Rivera when he’d discovered Grady’s body and I’d have gone from the frying pan into the fire in the space of a heartbeat.

He didn’t say anything to that and so we rode in silence for the rest of the way to Grady’s apartment building. He parked the car and got out, then started walking away across the lot toward the entrance to the building. Refusing to be drawn into his game, I stood beside the car, listening to the ticking of the engine as it cooled and the activity on the street nearby. After about thirty seconds I could see him walking back over to me.

“Don’t fuck with me, Hunt,” he said, his voice low and deadly.

I put on my most innocent expression, smiled, and said, “Fuck you, asshole.” I put just the right amount of irritation and annoyance into it; that shit should have won me an Academy Award. But I wasn’t close to being done. “I’m blind, remember? Or did that little fact slip beneath your radar? You can’t just walk off and expect me to catch up if I have no idea where you’ve gone. If you want my help you’re going to have to find some common courtesy in that sorry excuse for a brain and help me.”

He didn’t know it, but I could see him perfectly fine, and I had a few gleeful moments as I watched the war of emotions spill across his face. He was furious at being spoken to that way but trapped by the fact that he needed me in order to accomplish whatever it was that Fuentes wanted me to do inside Grady’s apartment. His fists clenched, his face grew red, and his eyes bore into me like twin spikes of black lightning. All the while I stood there, playing innocent and looking off into the distance the way I normally did when talking to someone I couldn’t see.

After what felt like minutes but was probably no more than twenty seconds, he said begrudgingly, “This way,” and then waited for me to unfold my cane and follow along beside him.

Once inside, Rivera led me over to the elevator, then held the door so I could get inside without trouble.

Maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks. Who knew?

We were on our way to the twenty-fourth floor and the apartment I’d left Grady’s corpse in two hours before when a question occurred to me.

“Why did Grady have an apartment?”

Rivera didn’t say anything.

That didn’t stop me, however. “The rest of us—Perkins, myself, Ilyana, hell, even you—have living quarters of one kind or another on Fuentes’s property. And yet here we have Grady, a thief no less, living out from under the boss’s, and by extension, your own, thumb. What’s up with that?”

I really hadn’t expected him to say anything; after all, what incentive did he have, aside from assuaging my curiosity, and he really didn’t give two shits about that, I knew.

But Rivera surprised me. “He was assigned a bungalow just like the rest of you.”

Interesting.

“So this isn’t his apartment?”

Rivera shook his head. “No, it’s his apartment all right.”

“How do you know?”

The elevator came to a stop and we got off on the twenty-fourth floor, turning left toward Grady’s apartment. At the end of the hall was the stairwell that I’d gone down earlier.

“We know. That’s all.”

From his tone I decided not to push. There were a hundred different ways of confirming the information, from something as simple as a search of public property records to something more esoteric like a scrying or other mystical ritual.