Known Devil (29 page)

“Fine,” he said when I was done, slapping a palm on his desk. “Just great. One of my detectives may or may not be deceased, and I won’t even
know
until” – he glanced at his watch – “something like five fucking hours from now.”

“
We
won’t know,” I said. I might’ve said that with a little more emphasis than I usually use with the boss, but like I said, I was tired.

McGuire stared at me for a second, as if he was wondering how I’d look with a shiny new asshole, but then blew out a breath between his lips and slowly sat back in his chair. “Yeah, alright. I know. It’s not all about me.”

“No, I’d say it was mostly about Karl.”

He nodded tiredly. “Well, while we’re waiting for the sunset to resolve that particular issue, there’s no shortage of other ones to think about.”

“Like what Karl got out of Slattery, there at the end.”

“That’d be pretty high on my list, yeah,” he said. “Helter fucking-skelter. Jesus. Never thought I’d hear that again, except maybe on some TV documentary about the Sixties or something.”

“Patton Wilson,” I said. “He’s back. Has to be.”

“I heard that bastard was hiding out in Australia someplace.”

“Maybe he was,” I said. “Or that could’ve been a rumor he started himself, to throw the feds off his trail. Anyway, I’m betting he’s in Scranton now. Or someplace close by.”

“Close by,” McGuire said with a slow nod. “That’s right – he never was much for delegating, was he?”

“No, he wasn’t,” I said. “He’s a very hands-on terrorist, is Mister Wilson.”

“Terrorist?”

“I don’t know what else to call the bastard. He wants to wipe out all the supes by starting a ‘race war’ between them and humans. If that’s not terrorism, I guess it’ll do until the real thing comes along.”

“Yeah you got a point there. Last time, he just used that bunch of religious whackos he controlled–”

“The Church of the True Cross,” I said.

“Yeah, them. But this time, he’s doing what the military calls ‘fighting on multiple fronts’.”

“Multiple is right,” I said as I rubbed my forehead. “It makes my brain hurt just trying to get a handle on it all.”

“The Patriot Party’s the easy one,” McGuire said. “We got that straight from the horse’s mouth not an hour ago.”

“Wilson’s gotta be behind the Delatassos, too,” I said. “Delatasso Junior, anyway.”

“The bombings, you mean?”

“That’s one part,” I said. “Those bombs have got the people scared shitless, and I don’t blame them. And since the bombing’s all part of the gang war, supes get the blame, with the fucking Patriot Party right there to fan the flames. Just like the Nazis and the Reichstag fire.”

McGuire’s a World War Two buff, so I didn’t have to explain to him what I meant. “For them, it was the Jews,” he said slowly. “And for the PP, it’s supes.”

“With a similar result in mind,” I said.

“You said the bombings were only one part of it,” McGuire said. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I am, if you’re thinking about Slide,” I said. “Drug-addicted supes are gonna commit crimes to get money. And every time they do, the PP gets something else to be outraged about.”

“And if the Patriot Party wins the election…”

“Wilson gets a city government that’s gonna do whatever he tells it to. Same thing if the Delatassos wipe out the Calabrese family and take over local organized crime. Then Wilson controls both the cops
and
the crooks.”

“But the Delatassos are supes, too,” McGuire said. “They’re
vamps
, for God’s sake.”

“I figure Wilson’s willing to overlook that – for a while,” I told him. “Shit, the Nazis had an alliance with Japan, remember? And the Japanese weren’t exactly what Hitler and his crew considered members of the fucking master race.”

“Alright, fine,” he said. “But let’s put the history lesson aside. The important thing–”

“Wait! Wait a second – something just occurred to me.”

He raised an eyebrow in my direction. “I don’t suppose it’s a miraculous solution to all our problems.”

“Sorry, no. In fact, it’s another problem – or it is if I’ve got things figured right.”

“Then let’s hope you’re wrong,” McGuire said. “But you better tell me anyway.”

“I just remembered something Christine was telling me the other night. Now that Victor Castle’s dead, that leaves a power vacuum in the supe community.”

“You needed your daughter to tell you that? You must be slipping, Markowski.”

“No, I figured that part out for myself. But what I
didn’t
know is that there’s a guy – a vamp – who’s angling for the job. And it sounds like he’s pushing pretty hard.”

“Pushing how?”

“The usual combination of carrot and stick. The stick is what you might expect – he’s known as a bad guy to cross, you should pardon the expression. Any supe who’s against him runs into a world of hurt.”

McGuire leaned back in his chair. “If that’s the way he does business, I’m surprised we haven’t encountered him before now. Or maybe we have – what’s his name?”

“Dimitri Kaspar.”

He shook his head slowly. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“The guy doesn’t have a sheet, at least not locally. I asked the Staties to check their database, see if he’s been busted anyplace else in Pennsylvania. But you know how that works.”

He nodded. “They’re going to get back to you – any day now.”

“Yeah, that’s about it,” I said.

“Still, this Kaspar just sounds like a run-of-the mill punk, whether he’s got fangs on him or not.”

“I’d agree with you,” I said, “except for the size of the carrot he’s offering to those who go along with him.”

“What kind of carrot are we talking about?”

“The usual kind – money. Apparently he’s been spreading a lot of it around. But here’s the thing, boss – this guy works at the Post Office, sorting mail. He should barely be able to make the rent every month, let alone throw cash around like he’s been doing. Unless he’s hit the lottery, there’s only one explanation I can think of.”

McGuire stared at me for three or four seconds. “You know, under other circumstances, I’d be inclined to say you were batshit paranoid.”

“Yeah, but just cause we’re paranoid doesn’t mean that Patton Wilson isn’t really out to get us.”

McGuire let out his breath in a long sigh. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

“The bastard’s thorough,” I said. “You gotta give him that.”

“Alright,” McGuire said. “Whether you’re right about this vamp Kaspar or not, it’s pretty damn clear that Wilson is back, and he’s up to the same shit as last time – but on a much bigger scale. Question is: what the fuck are we gonna do about it?”

“Oh,” I said. “You don’t know, either?”

 

I got through the rest of the day somehow. I wouldn’t have minded going out on some calls, even though I felt beat to shit, but McGuire said he couldn’t authorize the overtime for half a detective team. He didn’t mind if I hung around the squad room, though, so I spent a lot of time at my desk.

Lieutenant Crestwell, the squad’s day-shift commander, came on duty at some point. McGuire must’ve asked him to leave me alone, because Crestwell didn’t acknowledge my existence all day, beyond a nod when he first entered the squad room. That was fine with me – I was busy thinking about the return of Patton Wilson. I wish I could say that some brilliant idea occurred to me as I sat there, but brilliant ideas seemed to be in short supply for me lately.

That bastard Wilson was angling to be the power behind three thrones – the local Mafia family, the city government, and the Scranton supe community – assuming you want to dignify any of those positions with a word like “throne”. Well, you couldn’t fault Wilson for nerve – the guy had the balls of a brass ape. Unfortunately, he also had both brains and bucks in abundance – maybe enough to make his twisted ambition a reality. Unless somebody stopped him. Somehow.

I realized that Christine would be rising at sunset, and she’d expect to find me at home. If I wasn’t there, she might assume the worst, so I called and left a message on her voice mail.

I hoped that last sentence didn’t turn out to be a lie. I didn’t know what, if anything, Christine had going on with my partner, but I still didn’t relish the idea of telling her Karl wouldn’t be coming around anymore – ever.

Apart from a shower and quick change of clothes in the locker room, I spent most of the day at the station house. But as the sun finally lowered over the city, I was in another part of town, standing behind my parked Toyota Lycan, with the trunk key in my hand – waiting.

Today’s
Times-Tribune
and
Weatherwitch.com
both agreed – sunset was scheduled for 6.07. I checked my watch – it was coming up on 6.00. Of course, the jury was still out on whether vampires rise and sleep at meteorological dawn and dusk, or whether they’re obeying some other, more fundamental, impulse.

6.04
: No sounds or stirring from inside my trunk, where Karl Renfer slept. Whether his current state was going to last a couple more minutes or go on forever was the question that had my guts feeling like a tightly clenched fist.

6.06
: I found myself wondering what kind of funeral Karl would have wanted, and pulled my mind away from that thought as quick as I’d yank my hand from a hot stove. I’m not one of those nitwits who think the “power of positive thinking” ever changed one goddamn thing, but I was
not
going to stand here and think about Karl being dead forever.
I was not going to do that
.

6. 07
: Full dark now – at least, it seemed that way to me. The interior of the trunk remained as quiet as the grave, a metaphor I banished from my mind the instant it showed up. I thought about Rachel and wondered what she was doing right now – as if I didn’t know. Wherever she was, she had the face of a clock or watch in view. She’d probably be trying not to stare at it, to distract her mind with other stuff – and failing, just as I was.

6.08
: I was going to have to tell Rachel, eventually. After all, I’d promised. “Call me, either way,” she’d said. McGuire would want to know, too. I wondered how long I should wait before deciding to make the call that both of them were dreading. It seemed that I should–

That pissed-off voice came from inside my trunk, and it was the voice of Karl Renfer – loud, and clear, and alive. Well, undead, anyway.

“Just a second, Karl!” I yelled. I nearly pounded my fists on the trunk lid in relief, but had enough sense to realize that Karl might misinterpret the sound, not knowing where he was. “Everything’s fine – just give me a second!” I started patting my pockets for the car keys, then realized that they’d been in my left hand the whole time.

I finally got the Lycan’s trunk open, and the light came on to reveal the body bag, bent at a sharp right angle. We’d had to bend Karl at the waist in order to get him into my trunk, which isn’t exactly roomy. Most Toyotas are compact cars, unless you want to spring for the Hexus, which is the luxury model, and I’ve never had that kind of money.

I could see slight movement from inside the body bag. Karl could have torn his way out of that thing in about a second, but I’d asked him to wait, and that’s what he was doing.

I grabbed the tab of the big zipper and yanked it down all the way to reveal my partner, who was looking a whole lot better than when I’d zipped him in there six hours earlier. For one thing, his eyes were open.

He blinked at me a couple of times. “What the fuck, Stan?”

“I’ll explain in a second,” I said. “But first, let’s get you out of there.”

It took a little while to get him straightened out and completely free of the bag, but finally Karl was standing on the sidewalk next to my car, making a futile effort at brushing out the wrinkles his suit had developed during the day. He gave up after a few seconds and raised his head to look around.

“Hey, we’re in front of my building,” he said.

“I figured once you were out of there, you might want a change of clothes, maybe a shower and something to eat.” Like any self-respecting vampire, Karl had a supply of blood in his fridge.

“You figured right,” he said. “But what the hell was I doing in…
oh
.”

“Remember what happened now?”

He slowly ran a hand through his hair, which was pretty mussed up from getting in and out of the body bag. “I’d just used some Influence to slip what’s-his-name, Slattery, a question, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I remember he answered, something about helter-skelter. Then all the PP guys walked out in a huff. I went over near the door, hoping for another shot at Slattery when he passed, but then his pet gorilla started waving a cross at me.”

“How’d you feel, when he did that?”

Karl made a face. “At first, it was the same as always – I saw the cross and had the urge to be someplace else –
fast
. But then the stuff I’ve been working on with Doc Watson came back to me. I used one of the relaxation techniques he’d had me practicing, and, shit – it
worked
. I was able to look at the cross, and then…” Karl shook his head in wonderment.

“And then you took it away from him, remember? You grabbed his wrist, made him let go of the cross, and then you caught it.
You held it in your hand, Karl
.”

He lifted his right hand and stared at it, turning it back and forth as if checking for damage. “Shit,” he said again. “No burns, nothing.”