Concrete Savior (25 page)
Authors: Yvonne Navarro
Less than a minute later Georgina was coming down the stairs and opening the door, motioning at them to follow her. Her apartment was on the second floor and she held the door aside so they could enter. She gave Eran a glance but didn’t ask any more questions. When they stepped inside, it was like night and day from the appearance that Gina gave to the everyday world in that high-end tailoring shop. The place was dirty and smelled of trash that hadn’t been emptied. Mail was stacked on the coffee table in the living room, there were dishes in the sink, and clothing was draped on the furniture as if Gina had taken it off and just left it there. Her hair was mussed and stringy, just past time for a washing, and although her face was scrubbed clean of makeup, her shorts and shirt looked as though she’d slept in them.
She gestured at the small table in the nook off the kitchen but neither Eran nor Brynna made any movement to sit. Gina looked from them to the chairs, then it seemed to dawn on her that there was something piled on every chair—clothes, empty plastic grocery bags, a dozen commonplace items that most people would have put away. In a move that surprised both of them, the young woman simply swept the stuff off the chairs and let it all cascade to the floor. “There,” she said. “Fixed that.” Brynna glanced at Eran but neither of them said anything. Gina sounded exhausted, nothing like she had at the beginning of the message she’d left Brynna. She settled herself on one of the chairs and Eran and Brynna followed her cue.
Brynna waited. Finally, Gina spoke. “You said you could find my husband. Can you help me or not?”
Eran leaned forward. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”
Gina’s head swiveled toward him as if she were seeing him for the first time. “Who are you?”
iv height="0">Eran hesitated, then he answered honestly, “I’m Detective Redmond.”
The young woman’s eyes widened. “Oh no, I can’t have the police involved in this. I should have realized when you two just showed up here—I never gave her my address. I’ve been told—”
Brynna reached out and touched her hand. “It’s all right. He’s with me. And no one else knows he’s here, I promise. Gina, whoever has your husband . . . it won’t make any difference.”
Gina stared at Brynna, then her eyes filled with tears. “I know,” she whispered. “It won’t make any difference at all, will it?” She looked down at the tabletop, then up again at Brynna and Eran. “I got a telephone call,” she said. “Not too long after Vance and I got married. I can’t even tell if it’s a man or a woman. It’s just . . . a voice. And it said . . . it wanted to
know
things. Names.” She hesitated. “I—I see things,” she said, as though she suddenly realized she wasn’t making any sense. “Sometimes if I touch someone’s name that’s written down, I see things that are going to happen to that person.” Her brown eyes were big and bloodshot in her white face. “This person knew that, and wanted me to give it the name of someone who was going to do something horrible, but then was going to die instead. I don’t know how to explain it, but I can
see
those things. I know this all
sounds
crazy, but I’m not crazy, I swear to God, I’m not!”
“I know you’re not,” Brynna said. “I believe you.”
“Do you?” Gina asked. “And what about you, Mr. Detective? Do
you
believe me?”
“Yeah,” Eran answered. “Actually, I do.”
Gina’s gaze cut back and forth between the two of them, trying to figure out if they were lying.
“Then what happened?” Brynna prompted.
“I wouldn’t do it the first time the voice called. I thought it was a prank call or something. I wasn’t sure how this person knew I could do these things, so I thought it was a joke. But then . . .” Her voice faded away.
“Then?” Eran encouraged.
“Then I got the package in the mail.”
Eran’s mouth turned down. “Package?”
Gina nodded and pushed to her feet. Brynna could see the girl’s hands shaking as she tried to steady herself by holding on to the table’s edge. After a few seconds, she wobbled across the kitchen and reached for the freezer handle. Brynna’s heart sank. This was
not
going to be good.
The box Gina pulled out should have held jewelry, but Brynna knew they would never be that lucky. The young woman carried it back to the table and set it between Brynna and Eran, then pushed it toward Eran with one finger. “Here,” she said. “I can’t look at it again. I just can’t.”
Eran eyed the box, then bent over and pulled a tissue from a box of Kleenex that had ended up on the floor. “It’s a little late for that,” Gina said. “I’m sorry. I’ve handled that box too many times to count.”
“Well, just in case.” He used the tissue to hold the box in place and took another one to flip open the lid. Gina turned her face in the other direction as he and Brynna stared at the human finger inside. Brynna saw Eran’s gaze stop on the wedding ring that had slid close to the frozen knuckle, then move to the matching one on Gina’s left hand. “Damn,” he said. “How long ago?”
“A week and a half—two weeks. Let me think.” She scrubbed at her forehead. “It was . . . the week before last, on Thursday, I think. It was the strangest thing. Right after I opened the package, the voice called again. It’s like it knew I had the package, that I
opened
it. That it was watching me!”
Eran glanced at Brynna, who just tilted her head. Maybe, she thought, something
was
watching Gina. She thought again about the fancy tailoring shop where Gina worked, and how Lahash would love just such a place. “So you’ve never met the person behind the voice?” Brynna asked.
Gina shook her head. “No. At first I threatened to call the police. I got another call yesterday morning.” She laughed and the sound was high and shrill, teetering on hysteria. “But I knew . . . I just had a feeling that this would never end, and I wouldn’t do it—I wouldn’t give out another name.”
“And what did the person say?” Eran asked.
Gina’s fingers twisted together and she cracked her knuckles. The skin of her hands was almost bloody, as if she’d been doing that habitually. “The voice asked me if I’d like it if the next thing I got was his head.”
Eran could see the effort it took Gina to say those words without completely breaking down. He sat back. What could he do about this? Monitor the phone lines, see if they could trace the call, or . . . He looked over at Brynna. Get Brynna to answer the phone the next time it rang?
“Do you want to hear what the voice sounds like?” Gina asked suddenly.
Brynna sat up straighter. “You have a recording of it?”
Gina nodded. “I don’t know why. I just . . . maybe I thought that despite everything I could get the police involved, that they could somehow help me. I pushed the record button on the answering machine this morning.”
Brynna looked ready to leap out of her seat. “And you still have that on your machine? May I listen to it?”
“Sure. The machine’s in the living room.”
Brynna got up to follow her, with Eran right behind her. Gina was already at the machine, punching the button. The voice that had made her so miserable came out of the tinny speaker and he could tell that Brynna recognized it instantly. She opened her mouth, then Eran elbowed her, hard, before mouth over mind made her say something aloud that Gina shouldn’t hear.
“So . . . what do you think?” Gina asked after a moment. “I know it’s not much.”
“Let me go back to the station,” Eran said. “Go through some records. See if there’s any correlation to past cases and what you’re going through here.”
“Gina,” Brynna said carefully, “you do know that the people you told Casey Anlon about . . . two of those people have turned around and done terrible things. And this morning, he saved someone else that you told him about.”
“All right,” Brynna said. “But no more. Just don’t answer the phone, okay?”
Gina nodded. “Okay. What now?”
An idea came to Eran. “Do you have a cell phone?” When Gina nodded again, he said, “Good. Give me the number and we’ll be in touch,” Eran said. “We’ll call you on that instead of the landline. You’ll recognize my number—here’s my card—and you already have Brynna’s.”
“Are you sure?” Gina asked. “Are you
sure
I shouldn’t answer the regular phone? That I shouldn’t talk to this person?”
“Absolutely positive,” Brynna said. Something in her voice made tears fill Gina’s eyes. “It’s not going to do you any good.”
They left Gina standing at the apartment door with an absolutely hopeless look on her face. Eran could tell by her face that Brynna wished she could be of more comfort. He had a sinking feeling that she knew who the voice belonged to, and there was probably no hope for Vance Hinshaw.
“SO,” ERAN SAID WHEN
they got to the car, “can you find her husband?”
“Not necessarily.” Brynna settled onto the passenger seat. “But I can find the voice.”
“Ah. All right.” He looked at her closely. “What aren’t you telling me, Brynna?”
Brynna’s mouth stretched into a thin, hard line. “The voice isn’t human.”
Eran groaned. “I should’ve seen this coming. Go on.”
“It belongs to a demon named Jashire.”
“Another demon.”
“Yes. Pretty strong, pretty powerful. She thrives on guilt.”
“She?” Eran answered.
“Yeah. Like me. But . . . not. Anyway, I don’t know what Gina has in her past that made her so vulnerable, but there’s something there she’s not telling us about. I don’t think it really matters.” Her eyes narrowed. “I’m not sure how Jashire got hold of Gina’s name or Casey Anlon’s connection to her. I can see what she’s got on Casey, the
If I don’t save someone’s life, he might’ve been a good person who died for nothing
angle. Her whole ploy is just to make someone as dispirited as possible all the way to the end.”
“The end?”
Brynna nodded. “What she always goes for: suicide.”
“Crap. Suicide in a nephilim, like Casey?”
“It’s not unheard of. Sometimes a nephilim can get so confused, so far off the path that he or she subconsciously knows was there, that they just can’t deal with it anymore. To drive a nephilim to suicide?” She shook her head. “That would be big,
big
points in Jashire’s favor.”
Eran was already turning the car back toward the police station. “So these points, exactly what do they gain Jashire?”
Brynna shrugged. “What does something like that gain anyone? Favor, power . . . who knows? Hell’s not much different than Earth in some respects.” Her mouth twisted. “It’s all in who you know and who you can get close to.”
“So if I understand this correctly, you can find Jashire but not Vance Hinshaw.”
Brynna nodded. “And just because I find her, doesn’t mean I find Vance. I can locate wrever she is physically on this Earth, but if she’s keeping him somewhere other than with her . . .” She spread her hands. “He could be anywhere.”
“Do you think she’ll tell you?”
Brynna had to shake her head at that. “Why should she?” She went silent, then finally added, “There’s a very good chance that he’s already dead, Eran.”
Eran didn’t look at her. “Yeah. I figured that. So what’s next? Are we going after her?”