Sleight (41 page)

IT TOOK SOME time for Mr. Goodturn to do his thing. Thinking about Sawyer agreeing to lead Brin away made me wonder. Did he know what was happening? And had Mr. Goodturn played around in his head too? Seemed likely. It made me feel as though I couldn’t rely on my own memories. Another of my mother’s homespun quotes hummed in the background:
‘deal with the devil’.

My life would be substantially worse without Mr. G in it. In fact, I probably would have died more than once. When he stepped back from Talia and released her, her response would have been comical if it hadn’t also been creepy as hell.

“What do you want old man?” she asked, adjusting her grip on her backpack.

“Nothing much my dear. Only to thank you for coming out on such a stormy evening. We’re just glad that your brother and sister are all right,” Mr. Goodturn said. I couldn’t guess at the intricate revisionist history he’d built in her mind to tie all the pieces together.

“Whatever,” she said, and then she turned to me extending a hand. “Nice to meet you Benjamin.”

“Nice to meet you too,” I said, swallowing uncomfortably. I grabbed my coat and slipped it on, trying to hide my reaction to her memory loss.

We walked to the front door with them and I volunteered to see them out through the pawnshop while Mr. Goodturn stayed behind. None of us made an effort to talk so it was a quiet ride down to the shop. As I let them out through the shop’s front door, Sawyer turned to me.

“Benny, I know I’ve done some stuff that might prevent us from being friends but I want you to know that I appreciate what you did for my sister.”

Not knowing what Mr. Goodturn may or may not have done with his memories led me to keep my response short. “Family’s important. Don’t worry about it.”

He gave me a rueful smile and flipped up the collar of his coat as he stepped out into the heavy snowfall. I watched them walk down the sidewalk. Talia put her arm around Brin and Sawyer walked slightly behind them. Every family has its issues I guess.

Heading back upstairs wasn’t appealing and I decided to go home to my own bed. As soon as I walked inside the lobby the faint smell of lemon hit me. The floor was shiny and clean, except for the threshold where a dark rug had been put down for people to stomp their feet and knock off the snow. Breno protecting his floor. He’d also strung some multi-colored lights along the bannister. They twinkled in the late afternoon light. The woodwork gleamed and the amber light from the globe lights overhead reflected off of all the clean surfaces. All that, and the snow outside made it feel Christmassy, but the events of the last hour dampened the mood.

I tromped up the stairs thinking over all the loose ends in the Shade network problem. It made my head hurt. I was tired of thinking about all of it. When it had just been spooky conversations with Mr. Goodturn about his life in Nazi Germany, or Kenwoode referring to shadowy work with Mr. Goodturn on the East Coast it had all been just stories, not close enough to home to get totally freaked out about.

Now it was all literally in my own backyard. And it was snaking into every aspect of my life. Those were the happy thoughts swimming in my mind when I turned the corner on the landing just below my floor.

“Wondered how long it would take you to get home,” said Danton, leaning against the handrail at the top of the stairs.

“How did you get in?” I asked, walking the last flight up to where he waited.

He winked at me. “Your buddy Breno was more than happy to accommodate my buzz in request. I didn’t want your ‘grandpa’ to know that I was contacting you.”

Moving past him I walked to my door and knacked it open, he made a face as he followed me inside.

“Even knowing you can do crap like that I can’t get used to it,” he said.

Using my knack to swing the door shut, I knacked the deadbolt as well. Danton squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.

“What’s up?” I asked as we walked over to the kitchen.  I slung my snow dusted jacket over a bar stool, Danton did the same with his overcoat, but left his jacket on. We took seats at the dinette table where he’d quasi-interrogated me, and I wondered where the conversation was headed.

“I have some new information that doesn’t jive with what I’ve been told. That kind of thing doesn’t sit well with me,” he said.

I wracked my brain trying to think back on what I’d told him, worried that I’d ticked him off.

“Nothing you’ve said. It’s what Goodturn and Kenwoode have offered up,” he said, practically reading my mind. I wrote it off to his ‘cop-ness’.

“What’s is it?” I asked, not really wanting to know. I was already feeling weird about all the things we had been doing.

He leaned back in the chair and ran a hand through his hair that was damp from the melting snow. “That guy that got shot downtown? And the multi-car pile-up?”

So it
was
me he was pissed at. “I didn’t do that Danton. That guy…”

Waving a hand he frowned. “Not the issue. The problem is that this morning we pulled more video from several cameras in the vicinity. Normal for a traffic fatality. Not to mention a shooting.”

I just nodded.

His mouth twisted. “So, this morning we’re slogging through video feeds and guess what?”

I raised my eyebrows but didn’t say anything.

“Lots of video was missing or screwed up. I figured that was Goodturn covering your tracks, but it pissed me off anyway. When everybody else got busy with paperwork and interviews I took advantage and kept looking. I went back several days, and then for grins I went forward, to last night. Guess who showed up?”

“Who?” I asked hoarsely.

He tapped the tabletop with his index finger. “Kenwoode. He wasn’t hard to ID seeing as how I spent time with all of you earlier in the evening. Now what do you think he was doing?”

“I don’t know.” He’d supposedly been dropping everyone off at random locations.

Danton leaned forward jabbing at the tabletop with his finger. Using it to punctuate what he was saying. “He was sneaking into the building, using the emergency stairwell. They fixed the security cameras that had been messed with. I got a good look at who he was escorting.”

I tasted acid in the back of my throat. “Who?”

“They were bundled up, but there’s no doubt in my mind. It was the high society woman in the gray dress, and the bald guy, the one that shot Justine Winters. He smuggled them in together.”

MY STOMACH LURCHED. Why on earth would Kenwoode smuggle
both
of them into the condo building where Weller lived? I had been blindsided by so many betrayals that my mind spun. He’d told us that he was going to drop them off at random locations.

But he’d lied.

“So what do you think about that, Benny?” Danton asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. Then I made a decision. I needed to trust him. Danton was a cop, but he didn’t have an agenda. All he wanted was to do the right thing.

And that’s what I wanted too.

I told him about my earlier conversations with Constance and her history with Kenwoode. I touched on Kenwoode’s personal philosophy on knacks, mentioned his vague comment that he’d been a fixer, and that his jargon often sounded like a former member of the military.

I’d thought I would feel guilty sharing details about Kenwoode’s background, but when I finished, I felt lighter. Like a heavy load had been lifted off my shoulders.

Danton just sat and listened. He pulled his cigarettes out and stuck one in his mouth, but didn’t light it. Stretching his legs out in front of him he blew out a breath, almost losing his ciggy.

“That parallels some of my concerns. I’m planning on visiting that condo. I want to know what the hell is going on down there. And I have another problem: I want an answer as to why people are still showing up in the streets practically dead.”

It was my turn to be surprised, I raised my eyebrows.

Nodding he took the cigarette out and stuck it in the opposite corner of his mouth.

“Yeah. You guys told me that Sonja was responsible for the Zombie Deaths. I saw Kenwoode toss her in the bay last night. She’d looked so wasted that she couldn’t have been hurting anyone. But people have still been showing up in the streets looking like old laundry. Wasted, and practically unable to breathe on their own.”

Swallowing hard I wondered who could of been responsible. He was right, Sonja hadn’t looked like she had been feeding on anyone’s knacks. My scalp tingled with apprehension.

Watching me he frowned. “I want you to come with me,” he said.

“Me? Why?”

He ran his hand through his hair again. “Because I don’t want to walk in the front door. I don’t want a record of my visit since I’m not authorized to be investigating anything down there. You can help me around that, you know, with your magic.”

“I don’t know Danton. I think Mr. Goodturn—”

Holding up a hand he gave his head a quick shake, like he was shrugging off a fly. “Stop right there. I know you want to trust him. So do I. But there’s some slippage here. One of those guys, maybe both, hasn’t been telling us everything. I want to find out which. And why.”

“It has to be Kenwoode,” I said.

He arched an eyebrow. “Maybe, but I don’t see it as clear cut as you. You’re telling me that Goodturn has never withheld some information? That you haven’t run up against something that he didn’t tell you?”

That certainly hit home. As much as I cared about Mr. Goodturn, his life had been one giant onion, with the layers peeling back slowly.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said.

He stood up and grabbed his overcoat. “Grab your coat. I want to do this now.”

“Now?” I asked.

Yanking the cigarette out of his mouth he held it between two fingers and pointed it at me. “Can you think of a better time?”

I guess he had me there.

Because there was
NO
good time to do it.

DANTON’S ABILITY TO slalom through the snowy hills of downtown Seattle left a lot to be desired. The fact that it was already dark out made it even more unsettling. His front-heavy two-wheel drive sedan slid and spun around turns with a sickeningly loose feel. Once or twice I felt like we were going to slam into a snow covered parked car.

On
my
side.

“You okay? You look nervous,” Danton said.

There was no doubt he knew why I was gripping the seat with both hands, he was just trying to be funny.

Hilarious.

“First time driving in the snow?” I asked, as the car’s wheels spun free on a frozen patch of ground and I gritted my teeth.

“Nah, I’ve done this a bunch,” he said, the sedan narrowly missing a curb. “But it’s been a while.”

By the time we pulled into a parking spot a couple of blocks from the condo building I was more than happy to get out. I reached for the door handle, but Danton grabbed my sleeve.

“Hang on speedy. Let’s talk this through. I want to get in and not be seen. Then we’ll need to get out the same way. That’s why you’re here. I figure if you can help me finesse this I’ll still have my job at the end of the evening.”

“Why? I mean, what are we doing here at all? Especially if it puts your job on the line.” I asked, watching the windshield slowly disappear under a blanket of snow.

He hadn’t lit up in the car which I appreciated, but he started patting the pockets of his jacket trying to locate his pack of cigarettes. Rolling his eyes he gave up. “Fair. That’s fair. This may not mean anything to
you
. To
anyone
who isn’t a cop, but I felt drawn to this job. When I gave Goodturn my word to keep all this magic mumbo jumbo to myself it bothered me. First it’s just frickin’ weird. Second, I can’t discuss it on the job. Third, and this is a big one, there’s lethal B.S. going on in
my
city and it bothers the hell out of me.”

He pulled his keys from the ignition and cleared his throat. “If I’m going to sign on with all this crazy business I need to know I can trust the men that are calling the shots.” He looked at me. “Right now I don’t. That makes this little expedition worth it.”

It made complete sense to me. My own reservations with blindly counting on Kenwoode, and Mr. G’s past history continuing to reveal new layers had me in a very similar place. “I get it. But what are we doing? What do you want to accomplish?”

“Let’s get in that penthouse and see what there is to see. He smuggled the Weller woman into the building. It’s a lock that he’d stash her in her own condo, otherwise why bring her here at all? I can’t imagine that he’d dump the bald guy somewhere else after toting him into the building. We’ll take it from there. With any luck we’ll pick up some clues.”

I smirked. “Clues, haha.”

Frowning he narrowed his eyes. “Don’t get cute. A word is just a word and when it fits it just does.”

My segue toward levity evaporated. It sounded simple, and that was what worried me. “What if she’s home?”

He grinned. “That’s why we won’t knock first.”

Oh, well sure. We could do
that
, just walk right in to who knows what.

‘For Pete’s sake’

That would be my mother’s voice echoing in my mind with another amusing and unhelpful phrase. Once again I didn’t thank her memory for offering country witticisms at a less than ideal moment.

I explained how we’d left the building unobserved the day Silver had tried to make himself a hood ornament, and Danton sketched out our plan for getting in unnoticed. We walked to the screening hedge of bushes, Danton with his collar up and a fedora pulled low over his face, me in complete camo mode.

When we skirted the hedge, I used my telekinesis to tilt the camera so that it was focused up.

I knacked the door, twisting the tumblers for the alarm first and then the latch. We got to the top floor unnoticed after I duplicated my camera disabling maneuver at the top floor.

“Which one?” asked Danton, staring at the three doors that opened onto the hall.

I pointed to the one at the end. “That one.”

Not wasting any time we went to the door. Pausing before I knacked the lock I looked at Danton.

“You’re not going to go in there shooting are you?”

”Benny, we’re here because I
don’t
want people to die. Not the other way around,” he said.

Rubbing my sweaty hands on my pants I nodded. “What are you going to do if it gets crazy though?”

Lifting his coat out of the way he pulled a Taser. The real deal, not a stun gun like I carried.

“How far does that shoot?” I asked.

He tapped the barrel. “Thirty feet. So I have to be fairly close, but it’s non-lethal.”

I grimaced and turned to the door. Knacking it open took one second. Danton made a face and shook his head as we stepped over the threshold. He closed the door carefully behind us.

“Where’s the room where you rescued the Winters’ girl?” he asked.

I nodded toward the long hall that was visible to our right, just beyond the large living area with the fancy bar and ginormous TV.

“Okay. Typically I would go first and have you stay here, but with your invisibility thing we’ll have you go first. But slowly. Before you open any doors or breach a doorway look to me. Got it?”

“It’s not invisibility. It isn’t perfect. And slow is good because it works better that way,” I said, my nerves jangling.

Holding his Taser in a two-handed grip he motioned me down the hall. Having been in the condo before I was more confident in moving forward, even if I was as sweaty as the first time I’d been there. When we neared the end of the hall I heard noise coming from the room where we had found Justine. The door was closed and the sounds were muffled and hard to make out.

Looking over my shoulder I raised an eyebrow at Danton.

Holding a finger to his lips he pointed at me then at the door handle. I nodded and he hugged the wall immediately to the left of the door, pointing the Taser at the floor.

Invoking my camouflage I reached out with my telekinesis and quietly opened the door. As it swung inward the view of the room expanded until I could see everything, which turned out to be more than I had bargained for.