Coyote (3 page)

In the foyer everyone was pressed up against the opposite wall, trying to force their way out of the building. Half of them were banging on the metal door to the internal fire stairs in a blind panic.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up at the sight. The fire door was stuck.

The rest were crowded in front of the elevator, pushing and shoving for a place inside, while the occupants resisted, shrieking with fright. Using their fists and multiple threats, two men managed to push the rest of the crowd away from the elevator. They squeezed back into the dangerously overloaded elevator and the doors closed.

Immediately there was a horrendous whining sound — metal scraping along metal.

The people in the elevator began screaming and banging their fists on the doors to get back out. There was a piercing grinding noise. Like the building was
trying to tear itself inside out. Then a thundering crash.

The elevator doors popped open again, with nothing to be seen but a black hole and a cloud of dust.

A man who'd been fighting to get into the elevator but failed, dropped to the floor, sobbing in horror. The rest, including the limping woman who'd been trapped in the lecture theatre with me, surged over to join the horde banging on the metal door to the fire stairs.

I followed, in stunned disbelief. This whole building was one giant death trap: rattlesnakes, jammed phactors, a sabotaged elevator … now locked fire stairs.

I sneezed. My eyes widened. That had to be smoke.

I pushed my way through the panicked horde to stick one hand on the metal fire door. It felt warm.

A sandy-haired man had found the fire axe on the far wall. He broke the glass, wrenched it out then roughly shoved his way through to the metal door. He raised the axe, ready to try to take out the lock.

I grabbed the axe handle, wresting it away from him. Utterly surprised, he let me take it.

‘What are you doing?' shrieked the man, ready to punch me. ‘I have to cut through the lock!'

The panic-stricken horde around us shouted for him to take the axe back and cut open the door.

‘No!' I shouted back. ‘Listen to me!'

He tried to wrestle the axe away from me.

I elbowed him off. ‘Wait a minute!' I gave him a threatening glare, bared teeth and all.

He recoiled.

I tried the fire door again. It was hot now. I slid my hand across its surface. Very hot.

The sandy-haired man watched me, confused.

I sniffed. That was definitely smoke. We had to get out of here but not this way.

The crowd, now beside themselves with fear, demanded that the man knock me down and open the fire door.

The sandy-haired man tried to take the axe back, so I grabbed his hand and stuck it on the metal door.

He jerked his hand away, his eyes wide with terror. ‘No!'

The incensed crowd pressed us both into the hot metal door, screaming for action.

‘We can't open that door!' I yelled. ‘The floors below us must be on fire. If we open that door, it'll sweep in here and incinerate us.'

The crowd was so panicked they couldn't take in what I was saying. I might as well have been speaking Swahili. If I didn't act fast they'd take the axe from me and smash open that door. Then we'd all be finished.

I started grabbing random hands and forcing them onto the hot door. Someone yelled ‘fire' at the top of their lungs. That did it — everyone careened back and away from the door, their mouths open in shock.

I searched for a diversion, a Plan B.

‘We've got to find the external fire escape!' I yelled. I looked for the nearest window and raced to it. I put the axe down to fling it open, only to stand transfixed at the sight opposite.

The next building, only a few yards away from us, was on fire too. Flames spurted out of it and upwards like a Roman candle. I stopped breathing. It was the inferno we'd become in a few short minutes.

I looked directly down. There was a grated metal landing beneath the window, with stairs leading to the ground. The fire escape looked all right, but
after all the booby traps we'd encountered could it be trusted?

The drive for survival answered my question. It had to be.

A window shattered in the building opposite. I protected my face with one hand and watched as sheets of flame exploded, grasping with fiery fingers towards our precious metal stairs.

How long before those fiery fingers would actually reach it? How long before the inferno next door engulfed us?

The manic horde had followed me to the window and now pressed me into it. The blaze engulfing the building opposite only inflamed their drive to get out of here at any cost.

But the blaze had shaken mine.

When I hesitated, the sandy-haired man pushed past me and slid out the open window. He pounded down the metal stairs. I pressed myself to one side as a river of bodies flooded past me to thud down the metal stairs after him.

I looked around — there was no one left. I had one leg out the window, ready to follow, when there was a loud moan from the far corner.

There was a body slumped face down on the floor. I rolled him over.

It was Professor Wauhope. His eyes were open but he was delirious. His hands were a swelling, oozing mass of snakebites.

Oh my God … Could I make it down the fire escape with him in time? I couldn't leave him.

I raced back to the open window and out onto the metal landing. Below me, most of the crowd had made it to the ground and were sprinting to safety — to the park in the centre of Portsmouth Square.

Good, finally some luck. The fire stairs hadn't been booby-trapped. It wouldn't be easy, but I could get Wauhope down them.

I purposely didn't look at the raging inferno next door. No point now. But I could feel it … If I could just get us down those stairs to the ground, a few scorch marks would be worth it.

Then the fire escape shifted beneath me, the metal groaning like a snakebite victim …

Holy hell!

Then it dropped by a foot.

Through the metal grating I watched in horror as the lowest flight of stairs, now heavily laden with screaming victims, peeled away from the side of the building like an opening zipper.

They all dangled in mid-air then dropped to the ground like overripe fruit.

Beneath my feet the landing dropped another foot as the unzipping raced for the top. I grabbed for the windowsill but the landing dropped again and I missed, smashing my knuckles hard against the gritty external wall.

Arrgh! That hurt.

I launched myself at the windowsill, just as the whole fire escape twisted away beneath me and fell crashing into the burning building next door. I grabbed for the sill; got it with one hand … and then the other, and hung there, dangling.

I tried to find a hold for my feet but scrambled wildly against the wall finding nothing instead. Both my dress shoes were knocked off, dropping through the space below like a warning of what was to come.

My hands were jarred from smashing against the wall. They just held me … If I didn't find a foothold soon I wouldn't be able to pull myself up.

If I didn't find a foothold soon, I'd follow the shoes.

I looked down and around only to see that the fire escape, in collapsing into the inferno next door, had propelled that blaze up and out.

Fingers of flame reached out to swipe my back and limbs. I yowled in pain and fear.

There had to be a foothold! There just had to be!

I scanned down … There was a tiny, tiny decorative ledge, no more than an inch in width, jutting out from the wall near my waist. Would it hold my weight?

It didn't matter — that was all there was. But I had to get a foot up to it. I bent my right leg, grasping up with it for the tiny ledge.

Another burst of flame seared my back and I missed, grunting with the effort to hold my weight.

My fingers felt like they were stretched to breaking point. I couldn't hold on much longer.

Ignoring the pain, I tried again, hooking my leg up to catch the ledge.

Sweat ran down my face. My fingers and palms became clammy. They started to slip …

I heaved my right leg up one last time. I was going either up or down. This was it.

I caught the ledge with my big toe, then wriggled the other four toes onto the ledge. It was only an inch wide. A toehold, not a foothold.

I used the ledge as a lever and hoisted myself up the wall, slithering over the windowsill, just as another burst of flame reached for me.

I collapsed on my side on the floor, exhausted … only to see that smoke now covered the ceiling. It was pouring out of the elevator shaft.

I found Professor Wauhope, hoisted him over my shoulder then set him down near the floor-to-ceiling window on the opposite side of the building.

Come on, Cosmos — send me some luck!

The next building on this side was close too. It had to be a boutique hotel — just below us was a fancy roof garden with a fancy turquoise swimming pool. There was no smoke pouring out of it. It looked okay. Well, a lot better than this smoke-filled death trap.

Good. With a decent run-up, I could make that jump.

Oh God … but I couldn't make it laden with Wauhope. And I couldn't swing him that far either. No way! But there was nothing for me to lower him down with. And I couldn't leave Wauhope here … not to die like this.

I checked the trajectory we'd have to follow very carefully. The swimming pool wasn't that big, and looked smaller every time I checked it.

‘Well, Kannon,' I said aloud. ‘Now you know why you work out. And why you have to lay off that damned bread.'

The floor-to-ceiling window didn't open so I threw a chair through it and used the axe to clear out the broken glass. The gaping window sucked the black smoke from the elevator shaft even further into the foyer. Soon flames would follow it.

I lifted Wauhope back onto my shoulder and sucked in as deep a breath as I could. Positioning myself in relation to the window and the pool, I backed about ten feet into the thick, clogging smoke. I wasn't game to go back any further.

Now, coughing and almost blinded by the tears streaming from my eyes, I ran towards the window like it was a lover's arms. I pushed my calves and thighs to the max, thrusting my feet into the floor like pistons.

We burst out of the smoke and straight through the window.

There was no room for holding back. I pushed off the ledge, in one final bound, like an Olympic diver going for gold.

We flew across space for a few precious seconds of momentum. Then gravity wrenched Wauhope's body off my shoulder and we dropped.

Into cold water.

 

I hauled Wauhope up and out; he was still breathing but it was far too laboured. I looked back. Flames now poured out of the broken window we'd just dived from. I grabbed heavy pool towels from the lounges, wet them and covered us both. The hotel seemed okay; it had just been evacuated. We made it down the stairs to safety and across the road to the park.

I knelt to place Wauhope gently on the ground then turned in wonder to see that Portsmouth Square was ringed in fire.

Above us a weathered stone statue of a man clad in Western gear, boots and spurs, and holding two pistols ready to fire, took aim at the conflagration we'd just escaped.

I blinked. It was the hero from Professor Wauhope's lecture — Hector Kershaw.

Wauhope muttered something. I leant in. His eyes were open and staring up at the statue behind me.

‘What did you say?'

He mumbled.

I leant closer.

‘I don't understand,' he whispered. ‘Why now?'

‘What, Professor? What are you talking about?'

He coughed once, then wheezed, struggling for each breath. ‘But the rattlesnakes mean vengeance?'

His glazed eyes held a question. His last. And one I couldn't understand — let alone answer.

‘But why now?' Wauhope's face froze and he gave a long whistling exhalation, the question still shaping his lips.

Above, the heavens opened and heavy rain battered down on us. It was as though someone had opened a trap door in the bottom of a dam. I tried to shelter Wauhope from the sudden deluge with my body.

The sirens wailed, converging on us from every direction.

The paramedics surged into the park.

I put my head in my hands — they were too late.

It was afternoon by the time the San Francisco PD finished with whoever hadn't been hospitalised.

The rain hadn't let up yet, so I was still dripping wet. I was also barefoot and my new work suit was hanging off me in stinking tatters. I was already late for work and didn't have time to drive home to get changed, so once I'd made it back to my car in the Sansome Street parking station I drove straight to my gym near Union Square. My profession — and the stress that went with it — required easy proximity to a heavy set of weights, an equally heavy punching bag and serious martial arts training.

My job meant I had to be ready for literally anything … but I didn't feel that way just at this particular moment.

Stanley Wauhope's dying face shimmered in front
of my eyes. I shoved it aside. I'd cried my heart out over him, kneeling there in the drenching rain. He shouldn't have died that way. No one should. Now I had to just deal with it.

I dragged my bag of tricks out of the boot of the car and went into the gym. I spent the next twenty minutes under a blast of hot water, trying to work out how to get through the rest of this God-awful day. There was no choice. I was scheduled to move into my new offices today and my business partner would be waiting impatiently until I showed up.

I'd already dropped my new suit of rags in the garbage bin, so, wrapped in a towel, I surveyed the contents of my bag of tricks. My business partner, Des Carmichael, had given it to me as a present when I graduated from the NTA training program. It was part joke, part serious.

Des was an ex-cop so he knew what to pick. The bag held high-quality, professional break-and-enter tools, serious binoculars, a flashlight and three kinds of high-end listening devices. As well there were two wigs, make-up and several sets of disguises. I was hoping the disguises were the joke part.

Damn! Did I want to go to my new offices dressed in grey overalls with ‘Acme Cleaning Services' across the pocket or looking like an S&M hooker?

Bloody hell!

All that was left was the black trench coat. Des did love his noir detective movies.

Klaasen and Melnick had publicly rubbed my professional nose in the dirt this morning — it didn't help having to look like I was running a second job too … But then I was just moving into my new offices today — there were no other appointments. So no one was going to see me … right?

I went for the black trench coat over fresh underwear.

I should've known better.

As I drove south I glared out at the pouring rain. Okay, it was autumn … but I'd only been here a year and a half and was still getting used to San Francisco's changeable weather.

But hey, I'd grown up in Australia. Mostly in a little coastal village just south of Sydney, tucked in between the high cliffs of the Illawarra Escarpment and the rolling Pacific Ocean. What did I know about the northern hemisphere?

Christmas was supposed to be beach weather, wasn't it?

An icy drip hit the back of my neck. Damn it! Now the roof was leaking. I hunched my neck into my shoulders, trying to prevent the icy droplet from slipping down my nicely warmed back. The car was a green 1973 Buick Riviera. It'd seemed like a good deal at the time but lately I'd spent every spare minute doing spot repairs to just keep it going.

Another icy drip hit my neck and followed its friend down my back. Hell, I didn't have time to fix this and all I needed was another bill to pay …

Setting up my new office was the least of my problems. That wasn't what made me want to ditch Moving In Day. It was what came next that really worried me. The only thing I'd have sitting in my brand-new in-tray was a pile of bills. No case, no clients — not even the prospect of one … just bills. Big ones. And no money to pay them.

Stuff that. I gripped the steering wheel too tightly then forced myself to relax. One thing at a time. I'd think of something … I always did.

Some people have talents; others are lucky. My thing was pulling the white rabbit out of the hat — or,
considering my present situation, the black hole that was my bank balance.

I grimaced. Sure, just keep telling myself that. I wasn't sure I believed it any more. I could feel self-pity slipping over my shoulders like a straitjacket …

Stanley Wauhope's face flickered into my mind. I shook it away.

I had to focus. Des was depending on me.

 

I drove south down Stockton Street, towards Market Street and the wrong side of the ritzy San Francisco tracks. My new office was a world away from the gleaming skyscrapers of the Financial District, where Klaasen and Melnick both had their flashy headquarters and teams of well-groomed assistants.

I crossed over Market into 4th.

My place was south of Market Street, known locally as SoMa. And not in the fashionably distressed, reclaimed artsy part, or the communication technology enclave either — more the unfashionably homeless and crime-ridden pocket. But it was the best I could afford close to Union Square. That's where the branch of the National Time Administration that held the time portal lived.

I drove a few blocks down 4th, then took a right into Prendergast Street … and my new neighbourhood slum. Once past the line outside the St Francis homeless shelter on the corner, I searched for a parking space in front of the derelict buildings that stood opposite my new place of business — the Zebulon Hotel.

The Zebulon sounded like one of those weird names that the ancient Sumerians gave to stars … that, or some 1950s miracle fabric. You know, the kind of drip-dry material that feels like it was manufactured
on Mars. But, according to the real-estate agent, it was named after the guy who built the hotel.

How much would your parents have to hate kids to give you a first name like that?

It'd once been a luxury hotel, now it was just this side of being condemned. Like the aged buildings directly opposite it, the Zebulon was a relic from another century, and not the last one either. It looked like it should've had ladies in whalebone corsets and long flounced skirts strolling through, their arms politely supported by gentlemen in embroidered vests, top hats and too much facial hair.

The hotel and its aged neighbours were all owned by the same company — Crumple Holdings. Not a good name, I thought, for a real-estate firm that operated on the San Andreas earthquake fault. The story was that they wanted to knock the whole lot down and build condos; SoMa was taking off as a residential quarter for the Financial District and they wanted to cash in. But the heritage listing slapped on the grand old derelicts in the 1970s still stood firm. Crumple Holdings refused to resuscitate structures they wanted to tear down … so the buildings were left to rot while the whole thing took decades to crawl through the courts.

The Zebulon Hotel had been a thing of beauty once. It was long rather than wide and four storeys high in that elaborate Italianate style that the Victorians'd had a crush on. The first thing you noticed were the long columns of bay windows that graced the upper three floors. The bay windows in the middle had the regular three straight sides, but the ones at each corner were rounded, emerging from the building like mini castle turrets. The facade was a weathered ivory and the windows and the ornately
carved moulding supporting the flat roof were picked out in faded shades of aubergine, blue and tan.

Now the Zebulon was shabby rental space, which held a weird assortment of offices and a bar and grill on the ground floor.

I'd fallen in love with the place after wending my decreasingly enthusiastic way through every soulless rental space I could dredge up for the right price and within ten minutes' drive of Union Square. I'd told the real-estate agent if I could rent one of the corner offices on the top floor I'd take it.

God knows it wasn't the allure of the amenities. The thing didn't even have an elevator!

Well, I was dealing in the past after all … Why not make my dire financial straits a strength? At least it made me stand out from my competitors in their shiny glass-and-steel towers. Let the clients think I was eccentric rather than desperate, which the other soulless little boxes would've made all too clear.

 

I grabbed my bag off the passenger seat, stuck a newspaper over my head and raced through the rain to the hotel entrance.

Goodbody's moving van was parked in front. A couple of men in street-sharp tracksuits stood under the shelter of the hotel awning and surveyed the van with acquisitive interest. As I moved towards them, they shuffled off down the street. I checked the van; it was locked tight.

With any luck that meant all our stuff had already been moved inside. The last thing I wanted to do now was carry heavy boxes up too many flights of stairs.

Once past the heavy glass-and-bronze double front doors, the high-ceilinged foyer gave way to the faded bones of a posh hotel lobby. The inside of the Zebulon,
like the outside, was all tarnished splendour and flaking paint. The lobby had an ornately moulded once-white ceiling, as much wood panelling on the walls and elaborate architraves as a fine nineteenth-century hotel required, and a line of bronze-and-glass wall scones in the shape of graceful nymphs offering the room their lamps. Above their heads, where once must've hung a chandelier, a cluster of naked light bulbs now dangled. The nymphs didn't appear that perturbed.

To the left of the scuffed wooden staircase was a reception desk and a lounge filled with worn-out leather chairs slumped on top of a threadbare carpet. That was where the building's elusive doorman was rumoured to hide out — but in all my trips here I'd never managed to catch sight of the shy creature.

To the right of the stairs was a wall of metal post boxes.

Judging from the decorative ironwork, the metal post boxes were obviously part of some long past but loving recommissioning of the old hotel to office space. Unfortunately for its present tenants, the Zebulon's fortunes had plunged dramatically since then.

The bright new sign for our detective agency stood out amongst all the other more faded mailbox labels. The name, Rewind Investigations, sat next to our logo — a gold watch with an infinity symbol across the face, inside a magenta oval. The wristwatch fitted with my company name — Rewind Investigations — and timepieces were often used as a disguise for the transponders we needed to time travel. Magenta is the colour of my namesake — Kannon the Bodhisattva of Compassion, ‘she who hears all cries for help'. Magenta — the colour of compassion.

Not everyone'd agree that my namesake was a fitting choice …

Okay, I can be tough — but I've had a tough life. My childhood wasn't close to the rosy fairy-tale one — not even in the same galaxy. So I'd grown up with a chip the size of the Himalayas on my shoulder and an attitude to match. But I'd been lucky enough to cross paths with some pretty special individuals — people who really did give a damn about me. So I'd decided to get past the crap and live life as though it had a point to it.

Now I'm still working on the rough edges … I have my moments — but in general I'm at least civilised.

From the stack of letters poking out of our slot, my business partner, Des Carmichael, hadn't cleared the mailbox yet. It was all addressed to Lindthorpe Enterprises — the previous tenant, I was guessing.

I flicked through. And stopped …

One letter was addressed in dark red ink. I grimaced. There was a skull and cross bones drawn next to the address. The tip of the pen had been pressed into the paper so hard it'd created little triangular rips. Through the rips I could see the letter inside was also written in red ink.

Hmm … Looked like the previous tenants hadn't left only friends behind.

Four burly guys wearing green uniforms clattered down the staircase, Goodbody's laughing leprechaun on their breast pockets.

I shoved the letters back into the mailbox and grabbed the man holding a clipboard as he surged past. ‘I'm Kannon Dupree, I —'

‘All finished, ma'am.' He flashed the signed invoice at me. ‘Mr Carmichael is upstairs.' He nodded his head once and then they were gone.

Our suite was on the top floor, in the left-hand corner looking up from the street. The rest of our floor was vacant; awaiting renovations, according to
the real-estate agent. He'd assured us ours had already been done. Well, the walls and ceiling had been painted anyway. Our offices, like the rest of the building, still had most of the original features. I loved it. So unless the roof fell in I had nothing to complain about.

‘Rewind Investigations', with our gold and magenta logo underneath, was freshly painted on the frosted glass panel that took up the top half of the old wooden front door. It was ajar.

Des was in full argument bark.

‘Look, don't try and tell me …!' He paused. ‘Yes, I did that already!' Another pause.

I pushed the door and moved into semi-darkness. Why were none of the lights on?

I flipped a switch — nothing happened. The only light was coming from the corridor and outside — and the storm made it seem like early evening.

Des looked up and nodded at me. He was sitting at the secretary's desk in the little foyer, surrounded by a spreading pool of water leaking out of a sodden mound of dripping wet boxes.

He was barking into the old-fashioned black phone that came with the office, ‘No, I can't wait … No, the electricity was supposed to have been put on yesterday.'

Oh, great.

I searched the sodden boxes and ripped open the one that held the towels meant for our tiny office bathroom. I laid them over the pools on the floor then stuck my head in each of the two offices leading off the reception area. Des was on the left; I was on the right. We'd flipped for the corner office and I'd won. All our furniture, filing cabinets and computers were in place, and next to my circular bay windows stood our sole pot plant: a bright green sapling.

It was an Illawarra Flame Tree. It was grown from the seed of my favourite tree in the back yard of my old home, just south of Sydney. This time of year they were in full bloom — red freckles covering the green, forested face of the Illawarra Escarpment.