Concrete Savior (4 page)

E
ran was pouring the
last of the dirty water down the toilet when someone knocked on the kitchen door. Brynna was at an interpreter job and he’d spent part of his Monday off finishing the last of the wall washing in the kitchen; although he’d managed to tone down a lot of the black stains, it was still going to need painting. He was a cop, not a handyman, and he knew from past and not very productive experiences that even something that sounded as simple as painting a wall required skills he didn’t have. At least now the kitchen was ready and he could call the painter his landlord’s insurance company had chosen; that was the last step to finishing up the project. It was kind of ironic that something good—besides saving Brynna’s life, of course—had come out of that horrific encounter at the beginning of August. Too bad it hadn’t included revamping the enclosed porch and its pathetic, rickety wood outer door. Eran didn’t even bother with its flimsy hook-and-eye mechanism anymore.

“Just a minute,” he called, but he couldn’t help going instantly on guard. He and Brynna had spent hours talking about whether she should stay here, and whether another of Lucifer’s demon Hunters would come after her. He wanted her here desperately, yes, but not so much that he was willing to risk losing her. He’d already been through that, thank you very much, and he’d damned near been killed himself.

He quickly rinsed his hands and wiped them on his jeans as he slipped out of the bathroom. The kitchen was to his right and he could see the door that led from it to the porch, white steel with frosted, reinforced glass, another replacement part of what he thought of as the “Hunter Repair Project.” The shadow behind the glass looked human-sized but Eran still angled to his left and into the living room, where his .357 lay beneath a casually tented magazine. It wouldn’t kill a Hunter, but it would give Eran enough time to go for the sawed-off Winchester, which would vaporize the creature’s head . . .
if
his aim was on the mark. He wasn’t expecting company and he wanted to get the shotgun now, but if his visitor was human, he’d look like a crazy man opening the door with the weapon in his hands. At least he could shove the .357 into the waist of his jeans and cover it with the old oversized Bears jersey he’d been using as a paint shirt.

Armed or not, he wasn’t about to mply open the door. Demons came in many forms, and the shape most successful at hiding them was human. “Who is it?” he asked. Without thinking about it, his right hand was already behind his back, resting on the butt of his gun, and he’d stepped to the side of the door frame.

“Uh . . . hi. Are you Eran Redmond?” The voice was male and unfamiliar.

“Who’s asking?” The question came out a little surlier than he meant, but Eran had never liked people who didn’t identify themselves, either in person or on the phone. He wanted to know who he was dealing with right up front. Someone who was on the level shouldn’t have a problem with that.

“My name’s Charles Hogue,” the man answered. The shadow behind the window shifted as he moved a little closer to the door where he thought Eran could hear him more clearly. “Douglas—your father—gave me your name and address.”

“My father?” Eran repeated. He hadn’t talked to his father in . . . Christ, he couldn’t remember how long. They weren’t close. They didn’t even like each other. In reality, it was safe to say that Eran flat-out despised the old man. Who the hell was this guy, this Charles Hogue?

“Look, can I come in? It’s kind of awkward talking through the door like this.”

Reluctantly Eran released the hold he still had on his .357 and turned the dead bolt on the door. He let it swing open about ten inches, just enough to see the man outside, but he still kept his foot planted firmly at the bottom, just in case. But when he looked through the opening and into Charles Hogue’s face, he gasped and almost pulled the door open the rest of the way.

“Hi, Eran,” the man said solemnly. He offered his hand. “Like I said, my name is Charles Hogue.

“I’m your brother.”

“IT TOOK ME A
long time to track down my birth parents,” Charlie—he kept insisting Eran call him that—told him. Eran had fixed a fresh pot of coffee and they were sitting at the table, eyeing each other in between fiddling with their coffee mugs. “Ran into a lot of dead ends, bad record keeping, that sort of thing.” He used two fingers to push his mug in a complete circle. “It was pretty frustrating. I almost gave up a couple of times.”

I wish you had
, Eran thought, then immediately felt guilty. If Charles Hogue really was his brother, how far had this man come to talk to him, to find out about his mother and father, about Eran? Eran was sure he was going to find all that out, and probably soon, but in the meantime—

“This is probably going to sound rude, Mr. Hogue—”

“Charlie.”

“—but the fact is, you could be anyone. Someone my father talked to at a . . . grocery store.” He’d almost said
bar
, which would have been a helluva lot more accurate, but he wasn’t ready to get that personal. “Do you know what I do for a living, Mr. Hogue?” He said
Mr. Hogue
on purpose as a way of managing the conversation, but only because he felt like he needed that right now, needed the sense of control it gave him. His dealings with Brynna aside, it wasn’t often that he felt like things were spiraling beyond his reach, but the truth was, Eran already knew the guy sitting across from him was telling the truth. He’d known it the moment he’d looked him in the face for the first time and seen a younger version of his father, Douglas Redmond, staring back at him. More dark hair, fewer wrinkles, but Charles Hogue had the same tall build and thin facial features. Even his eyes were the same odd gray-green color, although they were clearer and cut by quite a bit more humanity than the coldhearted Douglas Redmond had ever possessed.

“No,” Eran’s visitor said. This time he didn’t bother to say
Charlie
again. “I have no idea. Douglas Redmond didn’t have much to say.” He brought out a rumpled piece of paper and placed it on the table; Eran saw his name and address written in his father’s crude, messy scrawl. “When I told him who I was, he said, ‘I thought I got rid of you when you were born.’ He wrote your name and address down and told me to come talk to you. Then he slammed the door in my face. I’d have called but your number’s unlisted.”

“Yeah, Dad’s not the world’s best conversationalist.” Eran drummed his fingers on the table. “I’m a police detective. As you can guess, that makes me the type of person who wants to see hard evidence. Especially on something like this.”

“I’m not after money, if that’s what you think. My parents told me when I was small that I was adopted. I wondered about it every now and then but it didn’t really bother me. I grew up, went to community college, then into the family business. Got married, had a couple of kids, all pretty everyday stuff. But you know, even if you’re healthy, every time you go to the doctor, they ask you these questions. ‘Is there a family history of heart disease? Diabetes? Cancer?’ And I’d go in for something as stupid as a sinus infection, then come ot with a dose of antibiotics and curiosity, wonder if some new prescription was going to raise welts on my skin because I’d turned out to be allergic.” He shrugged. “Finally I decided to do something about it. To try and find my birth mother.”

“She’s dead.” It sounded brutal, but if Charles Hogue was telling the truth, he would have already found that out.

“I know. That’s too bad, but I can’t say it’s sad, because I never knew her.” He met Eran’s eyes. “Did you?”

Eran pulled his gaze away. “Not for long. She died when I was about five years old.” He answered the question before Charles could ask it. “From a drug overdose. You can thank the old man for that.” The other man didn’t say anything, which was wise. This whole thing was bringing up memories Eran had, until about twenty minutes ago, done a damned fine job of relegating to the far background. They weren’t good ones, and they didn’t do anything but make Eran hate his father more every time he thought about them. With Charles Hogue in the picture, they were all going to be brought up again. The long-lost sibling would want to know as much as possible. So be it . . . but it wasn’t going to be an easy process.

As if he realized that, Charles reached into the breast pocket of the sport coat he’d draped over one of the kitchen chairs. “Here,” he said. “Copies of both my birth certificates. The original one and the one with my adopted parents’ names on it. You can keep them.” He was silent for a moment. “I didn’t know anything about a brother—you—until this morning. That was quite a surprise.”

“Do I have to say you’re not the only person surprised today?” Eran looked over the documents. He had to admit he was curious, but beyond that, he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel. There were plenty of stories of people finding brothers and sisters and daughters and sons after years of separation, but he wasn’t the warm and fuzzy type—no surge of sudden love here. He felt more guarded than ever. Did he really need a new and instant family—brother, sister-in-law, some indeterminate number of kids—inserting themselves into a life already horrendously complicated by the fact that he lived with a fallen angel who had escaped from Hell?

For a panicked second, he almost laughed aloud, it was so completely, utterly
ludicrous
.

Instead, Eran cleared his throat and forced his attention back to the papers he held. Everything seemed to match up on them, the dates, the names—Charles had been born in some small town in Ohio. Maybe he even still lived there. On the original birth certificate, he paused over the line where the parents’ names were listed:
Mother: Lena Merripen Redmond, age 17. Father: Douglas Redmond, age 27.
Had no one even questioned the age difference? Apparently not, the fact that they were married somehow negating what Eran would have called statutory rape.

“Merripen,” he said out loud. “My mother’s maiden name. I probably haven’t thought about that in years. I tried to find out about her before I went in the army, but I was just a kid. Having everything computerized hadn’t really happened yet. I never tried again. I guess I always figured if she had family, they would have been in touch.”

His new brother nodded. “I can understand that. But it gets tricky because your—
our
—mother ran away from home when she was fourteen. We do have family, you know. Not a lot, but there’s an aunt who was younger than our mother. She’s married, has one son, mid-thirties I think, who just got married himself.” He offered Eran the rest of the documents he’d taken out of the jacket. “I got my real parents’ names first, but not any supporting paperwork. Most babies are given up for adoption because the mother is single and can’t deal with it. I used a guy in town who’s a skip tracer to track her maiden name, because it seemed pretty unusual. It took a while, but he found out she was born in South Dakota. Then he got her parents’ names—our grandparents—and took it from there. Turns out they’re both dead, gone since the nineties, but I did find out she had a younger sister. I’ll give you the info, but I haven’t talked to them yet.”

Charles rubbed his eyes and Eran realized the guy looked tired and a little shell-shocked. No wonder. “When I finally got my original birth certificate,” Charles continued, “I realized my parents were actually married. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, why would a married couple do that—give up their child? Anyway, that’s when I started working on my father’s side. I thought maybe I’d get some answers there, but . . .” He didn’t finish. He lifted his chin. “Did they ever mention me? Or that there was even a baby?”

Eran sucked in his breath, wishing he didn’t have to answer. “No,” he finally admitted. “But you have to realize how . . .
off
things were with my parents. I’m not going into the dirty details, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Douglas made her give up the baby—you. He’s not a good man now, and he was way worse back then. Life wasn’t good. I was already in it, but maybe Lena thought you’d have a better chance with regular people, a couple who would be able to give a newborn a good home.”

Charles nodded again, but his expression was distant and unhappy. Eran couldn’t blame him. Before he’d gone to Douglas Redmond’s address this morning, he might’ve been expecting to meet a businessman, a teacher, or even a blue-collar Joe Normal, the average American construction worker who’d taken a wrong turn back in his twenties. Instead, he’d found Douglas Redmond, a nasty-tempered ex–drug addict and former convict who drew welfare? Aks, never remembered to wash his clothes, and lived in a dirty studio apartment that stank of booze and cigarettes. Not exactly the culmination of a dream. Eran really didn’t know what to say.