Child of Fire (20 page)

“You’re a real class act, boss.”

“Just do it. I have work to do in the morgue.”

She turned on her heel and stalked away. I wondered again how many dead bodies she had seen, and how long it had taken her to become what she was.

And she hadn’t even given me a chance to tell her about the predator in Emmett.

I ran into the hall, calling her name. She stopped and turned toward me. A passing nurse shushed me forcefully.

“What is it?” Annalise asked.

“Predator,” I said, my voice low. She tensed and leaned toward me. I had her attention. “Inside Emmett Dubois. I don’t know what it is, but I’d guess his brothers are infected, too.”

“How do you know this?”

I removed the scrap of wood from the inside of my jacket. She frowned and took it from me.

“Did he see this?” she asked, holding up the slowly moving design.

“Yep.”

Annalise nodded and pocketed the scrap of wood.

“You have your next assignment,” she said, and walked toward the elevators.

I went back to Cynthia. She was, apparently, my next assignment. Spending the night with her wasn’t the worst thing that could happen, but I didn’t like that Annalise had
ordered
me to do it. I didn’t even like the idea that she would know. It was creepy. I sat a little farther away from Cynthia than I had before.

“Is that your wife?” Cynthia asked. “Your girlfriend?”

I was honestly confused for a moment. “Who?”

“That redhead. The one you were just talking to.”

I laughed. “Sorry,” I said. “But that’s funny. She’s actually my boss, and she hates my guts.”

“Oh.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Well,” she said, “I’m glad she’s not your girlfriend.”

That was my cue to say something smooth. Before I could think of something, the door to Frank’s room opened and Miriam stepped out.

“Are you Ray?” she asked me.

I stood. “I am. Is there something I can do?”

“He wants to talk to you.” Her lips were pressed together in disapproval. She pointedly did not look at Cynthia.

I moved toward her and the door. “Is he well enough for that?”

“No, he isn’t. The gunshot wound was minor, but he had a heart attack in the ambulance. The surgeon is on his way to the hospital now. But he insists on speaking to you.”

“I’ll be quick,” I said, and went into the room. She shut the door behind me, remaining in the hall.

Frank lay in the hospital bed, tubes running out of his nose. Peter Lemly stood by the side of the bed, and another
man stood beside him. He must have arrived during my interrogation, because I didn’t recognize him. He was tall, straight, and serene, with graying hair carefully styled. He was the third of the four men who had met with Emmett Dubois beside the van when I saw Charles have a seizure. He turned toward me without meeting my gaze, and I saw that he was wearing a clerical collar.

It made sense for the reverend to be there. But I didn’t understand why Lemly was in the room.

“We meet again,” Frank said. His voice was hoarse and weak.

“Let’s do it without the ambulance next time,” I said. “Shouldn’t you be resting?”

He gasped between breaths. “I wanted to thank you.”

“Forget about it. Relax. You’re going to undo all my hard work.”

Miriam had entered the room just in time to catch that last word. She narrowed her eyes at me. No one else seemed to care. Ah, well, I’m the bane of respectable women everywhere.

“Anything I can do for you,” the mayor said.

“When you’re stronger, I want to talk about Hammer Bay.”

“He needs his rest,” Miriam said.

“Of course.” I backed toward the door. I was trying to think of a way to compliment him, to tell him, in front of his wife and a reporter, that I thought he was a damn brave man, but he spoke before I could.

“Hammer Bay,” he said. His voice was low and a little angry. “My town. So rotten and corrupt. It’s time I did something about it.”

Miriam glared at me. Peter Lemly lunged forward, his tape recorder in hand. “Would you repeat that, Uncle Frank?”

Miriam snatched up a clipboard and thumped Peter
on the top of his head. He wasn’t deterred. The mayor began to say something else, but the reverend grabbed Peter’s elbow and steered him out of the room after me. Within a couple of seconds, we were both out in the hall.

Cynthia was not sitting on the couch. She wasn’t anywhere in the hall that I could see. Had she stepped out for a second, or had Miriam shooed her away while I was in Frank’s room?

“Did you hear what the mayor just said?” Peter asked me. The door closed behind us. “Did you hear?”

“I heard that the mayor is your uncle,” I said.

“Never mind that.” He paced the hall. “The mayor is going to fight corruption in this town.” He sounded excited, as though he was in a thirties gangster movie.

“Tell me about the town.”

“It’s pretty straightforward,” he said. He was a guy who loved an audience. “The Hammers control the jobs. They’re the first family around here, and they’ve always had a nose for the next thing. The next move to make. Until Cabot, that is.

“The Dubois brothers keep the peace, maybe a little too much. And lately they run a protection racket. I’ve been trying to get someone in town to go on the record about this, but no one will.”

“Not since Stan, the bartender.”

“How did you know about Stan Koch? He was supposed to bring me a bunch of records showing how much he’d been paying to Wiley Dubois over the years, but he was killed.”

“Attacked by wild dogs.”

“There really aren’t a lot of dogs in town. Never have been. Someone gets a dog, it barks all night and all day, and within a couple of weeks it vanishes. That was a dull story to track down, let me tell you.”

“The Hammers and the Dubois brothers. Is that it?”

“There’s the reverend in there. Thomas Wilson. His
church is the largest in town. There is a small Catholic church behind the Bartells Pharmacy, and there are some folks who speak the language of the angels in living room ser vices, but Wilson’s is the biggest. He doesn’t do much, though. He cares about souls, not works.”

“Who else?”

“I guess Phyllis Henstrick. She runs the vice, and some of the jobs, too. When business is good, her boys build and fix. When it’s bad they get a little something from the whore house. A whore house is pretty recession-proof. That’s pretty much everyone.”

“What about drugs? There are always drugs.”

“Sure, there’s a little weed to be had here and there. No one much cares about that. Everything else, the Dubois brothers have some trick where they hunt them down.”

“They take them over?”

“Actually, no. Their mama had a little trouble with pills back in the day. Mama’s little helper, if you know what I mean. She cracked up their car, killing herself and their little sister. They don’t much like drugs. When someone goes into the woods with a trailer to start up a meth lab, they don’t come back. They just disappear, and Emmett drops by to give their friends little warnings. You know what I mean?”

“Subtle things, under the guise of investigating the disappearance, right?”

“You
do
know what I mean. So, is Hammer Bay Toys moving its manufacturing overseas?”

“If I wanted to talk to Charles Hammer the Third after business hours, where would I find him?”

“Probably at his home.”

“And where’s that?”

“Oh, no. We’re protective of our patrons around here, Mr. Lilly. You’re going to have a hard time with those sorts of questions.”

“What if I ask about his seizures?”

“The Hammer family, er,
condition
is a private affair, which means the whole town knows about it. Not that there’s anything to tell. Now, is Hammer Bay Toys moving its manufacturing overseas?”

“No comment.”

“Oh, come on! I just laid out the whole town for you, and you don’t pay me back?

“I have something for you. How much do you know about the shooting at the Hammer place?”

“Cabot took a shot at his niece after they argued about the family business. He hit Frank instead. You coldcocked him and saved them both.”

“Not quite true,” I said. “The truth is, the mayor saw the gun and stepped in front of Cynthia, protecting her. He stepped in the path of the bullet without even thinking about his own safety. Sure, I slugged Cabot, but I was standing right next to him when he came in. I don’t think he even realized I was there. And I didn’t really save anyone; Cabot’s gun came apart after one shot. Frank is the real hero.”

“Is this true?”

“Ask Cynthia.”

“Don’t think I won’t. What else?”

“First, don’t put anything in the paper about the mayor and Emmett Dubois. Not yet. Give Frank a chance to recover and prepare for the fight.”

“He’s had three terms to prepare for a fight.”

“If you publish too soon—”

“I hear you. Anything else?”

“Leave town. Go to Seattle and sign on with a big daily. Or a weekly. But go. This town is dead already.”

“So it’s true, then? The jobs are going to China?”

“I’m not kidding. It’s time to leave Hammer Bay while you still can.”

“Pft.”
He waved me off. “I’m not giving up on my town.”

The door to Frank’s room opened and Rev. Wilson stepped out. He managed to look down at us without actually looking at us. “I wonder if it would be possible,” he said, his tone stuffy and superior, “for you to converse elsewhere. These rooms are not soundproof, you know.”

Peter wedged his bulk between the reverend and me. “Are you going to support the mayor in his fight against corruption?”

“The mayor is in a terribly weakened condition. He won’t be fighting anything or anyone for quite a while. It would be irresponsible for you to claim otherwise.” He turned to me, glancing at me briefly before turning his eyes to the side. “And why are you still here?”

That was a good question. I walked away while Peter tried to get a statement from the reverend about what he was already calling the mayor’s “new initiative.”

I walked to the elevator. Beside it was a hospital directory, which told me that the morgue was in the basement. I entered the elevator and pressed the button. Cynthia hadn’t returned, so I decided to stick close to my boss.

Why was Annalise in the morgue? I hoped it had something to do with Karoly Lem. I didn’t want to go down there and see the corpse of someone I knew.

The basement was practically a ghost town. I wandered through the halls, looking for a sign that would point the way. Eventually, I found one. I followed the arrows.

I expected gray paint on the walls and rows of metal tables with bodies lying on them. I was glad to be wrong. What I found was a small reception desk in a little waiting room. Annalise stood beside the desk, filling in a form on a clipboard with her sharp, jagged writing. Her face was pale and her thin lips were white. She had a sheen of
sweat on her forehead. Opposite her was a morose-looking woman with nothing to do but watch.

“Someone will contact you about the body,” Annalise said as she handed over the clipboard. The woman accepted it and slunk through the door behind the desk. She was gone.

Annalise hefted a blue canvas bag from the edge of the counter. She winced. Then she turned to me.

“What’s in there?” I asked.

“Karoly’s things. What are you doing here? I gave you a job to do.”

“While I was looking for a club to hit her over the head with, she slipped away. I’ll have to drag her back to my cave some other time.”

She scowled at me. I saw something in her expression I hadn’t seen before. She looked vulnerable.

“Hey,” I said. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Don’t lie to me,” I said, amazed that I was genuinely worried. “How bad are your hands?”

She walked around me toward the doors, stuck her hands into the handles, and sucked air through her teeth. She was hurting. Bad.

I pulled the doors open for her. She didn’t like receiving my help, but she didn’t have a choice.

We walked up the hall together, turned a few corners, and pushed through a couple of doors. I had no idea where we were going. I decided to change the subject. “Did you find out what Karoly’s message was?”

“I have his laptop in here,” she said. “I’ll read through it when we get back to the room.”

“They let you have his laptop?”

“They searched it and didn’t find anything. Who picked you up in the van?”

“Saw that, did you? Thanks for getting me out of
trouble, boss. They worked for a player I haven’t met yet: Henstrick, the woman who runs a construction firm and a brothel.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, stick with the job I already gave you.”

“I didn’t say I … forget it.” She stared at the floor as we walked. I wondered how well she knew Karoly, and how hard she was going to grieve for him, if at all. “While I was in the Hammers’ house, I saw a picture—”

“I have an idea,” she interrupted. “Go to the parking garage and get the van. I’ll wait out front for you.”

The look she gave me was angry and dangerous. Her face was paler and more sunken than before. I backed off. She held out the blue canvas bag, and I took it, being careful not to brush it up against her injured hands. She stalked away.

My life would become a lot easier if she were killed here in Hammer Bay. At least, I assumed it would. Maybe, when a peer in the society died, her wooden man was killed, too, like a pharaoh’s slaves. Maybe the wooden man was reassigned to another peer, or traded around like a punk.

Or maybe they were cut loose. Maybe they were told to go away and not come back.

It sounded thin, but even so I didn’t want anything to happen to Annalise. She hated me and would probably engineer my death, but the power she had was fascinating.

And I liked her.

Christ, I needed to get laid.

She hit a metal panel on the wall with her elbow, and the double doors in front of her opened. She stepped through, and the doors closed behind her.

I hustled back up the hall and reentered the morgue. I wanted a look at that clipboard Annalise had filled
out. I wanted to see if it had an address on it, or a phone number. I wanted anything that I could use to track down some information on her or the Twenty Palace Society.