Viper Moon (11 page)

She hesitated, so I rushed on. “I’m a friend of her son, Michael.”

“May I see some identification?” She lifted her hand from the phone.

I dug out a driver’s license and Flynn flashed his badge and ID. Her eyes slid over my license, but lingered on Flynn’s. Flynn’s charm wasn’t like Michael’s. He had no hypnotic thing saying,
Adore me, worship me.
Flynn made a connection on a human level. He asked for nothing more than goodwill and, in this case, seemed to receive goodwill as requested.

“We don’t permit weapons—”

“None.” Flynn smiled. He drew back his vest to show he was unarmed. He gave her a dazzling smile. “Social visit.”

The woman almost smiled back. I probably should have let him sweet-talk her in the first place instead of playing a bully. Damn it!
I’m in charge here.
I glared at him and he winked. I resisted the urge to punch him.

Her eyes lingered on him as she spoke into the phone. “Mrs. Ramekin has visitors.”

A lock clicked and a door to my right opened. Two doors actually, one wood and the other behind it steel bars. A mouse-faced woman with a tag clipped to her white nurse’s uniform entered.

The receptionist waved her hand in our direction. “This nurse will escort you.” She did smile at Flynn this time.

The mouse-faced nurse, so low in the pecking order that even a receptionist didn’t introduce her by name, stepped back and motioned us to enter. She closed and locked the door behind us, and we followed her down a silent hall. Her spine was so rigid it allowed only a bare hint of movement in her hips, but practical, thick-soled oxford shoes squeaked faintly with each step on the polished wood floor.

We went through a metal detector and another barred gate. A few people walked the halls here, nurses, a janitor mopping the floor, a maintenance man with a ladder. After we passed the last checkpoint, the close halls stood empty and silent except for the squeak and shuffle of our shoes.

“This is the sun room,” Mouse Face said. Her voice carried a nasal whine. “That’s her.” She pointed at a smallish woman sitting at a table beside a vast wall of barred windows. Some designer or architect must have decided that natural light gave the illusion of freedom, but it only illuminated the cage. The nurse walked away, but not far. She stood at attention like a soldier in a milk white uniform, guarding the door we entered.

The high-ceilinged room had a number of chairs and tables, but Elise was the only occupant. She seemed like a frail child, alone in a sparse lunchroom, ostracized by her schoolmates.

I approached cautiously, not knowing what to expect. The chairs appeared to be solid blocks of foam. The tables with rounded corners were bolted to the floor, as if prepared for an act of violence.

Elise’s short hair was a cap of pure snow in the sunlight. She wore slippers and a dull green cotton dress that matched the room’s walls. It gave the illusion that she might disappear if she stood against one. The papers on the table in front of her had her undivided attention. She bent over them with unwavering intensity. As we moved close, I could see soft charcoal drawings.

“Elise,” I said softly. I didn’t think it wise to startle someone who seemed so fragile.

She didn’t look up.

“Elise.”

Still nothing.

Flynn laid a hand on my arm and said, “Elise?”

Elise raised her head and stared at us. She responded to his deeper, masculine voice. So did I. Kindness and warmth filled it, making a sinfully rich sound. Except for a few furrows on her forehead, Elise’s face was smooth as a woman no more than thirty. Her eyes held uncertainty, but cleared when she focused on Flynn. She immediately stood, laid her tiny piece of charcoal aside, and practically leaped into his arms.

She surprised him, but he seemed to have the rare ability to discern emotional need and respond immediately. He gently embraced her.

“How are you today, Elise?” His hand stroked her cap of white hair.

Elise laughed in a musical voice that sounded so much like a feminine version of Michael’s.

“I’m so happy you came.” She cocked her head as she studied him. “Ah, the wolf. The Guardian. Yes. Oh, you
are
a fine one.” True joy filled her voice.

Flynn drew a quick breath, but he didn’t falter. I bit my lip and kept my face straight. The Guardian. The Earth Mother had called him that. It surprised me, but why did it surprise him?

Flynn guided Elise back to her chair, had her sit, then knelt close beside her. She ignored me.

“Elise,” Flynn said. He held her hand. He spoke with care, as if to a child. “My friend Cass wants to ask you some questions. She’s—”

“The Huntress.” Elise sounded a bit annoyed. “The great holy whore’s bitch dog.”

I sighed.
Holy whore
. I’d heard that before, or at least read it in Abby’s history books. The Mother reigned over man- and womankind for thousands of years until the coming of the male sky gods, the gods of anarchy and war. Then mankind repudiated her and turned her daughters into possessions rather than helpmates. They also applied the vile names they gave her to those daughters, too.

So I could be on her level, too, I stepped around to kneel at her other side. As I did, I saw her drawings. All were excellent pictures of Michael. One a very young Michael, maybe ten or eleven, but he already had that compelling face that begged women to desire him. I wanted to pick one up for a closer look, but since they and the piece of charcoal appeared to be her only possessions, I left them be. Unstable people often clung to certain objects to solidify their lives.

Bitch dog
, she’d called me. I’d bet Elise had far more functioning brain cells than everyone believed—or was I just in a snit because she called me a nasty name?

“Those are nice pictures of Michael.” I gestured at the drawings. “Does he visit you often?”

“Often enough. He looks so much like his wonderful father.” Elise answered the question without looking at me. She raised a thin hand and stroked Flynn’s cheek. The hand showed her age even if the face did not. How old? Sixty? Seventy? Surely not.

“I tried to save him,” she said. “My beautiful boy. My Michael. I tried to give him the greatest gift. To be with his father.” Her mouth turned down and anger filled her voice. “But that woman came and took my little angel away.” She held out her arm. Small arc-shaped scars decorated her skin from wrist to elbow. “I bit down hard. I didn’t scream. He hurt me, but I didn’t scream. No one should know.” She glanced around as if to see who was listening, then whispered, “I was so quiet.” Elise caught Flynn’s hand with her own. “But when he came out, he cried. I tried, but I couldn’t stop him.”

She huddled closer to Flynn and said, “I have a secret. The child you seek. Your moon child.” She stared over his shoulder. “You must . . .”

Two women marched across the room toward us. One wore pale blue nurse’s scrubs and the other a gray suit so tailored it could be armor. The one in scrubs had a needle in her hand and she hurried toward Elise.

We stood to face the armor suit. The woman had drawn her hair so tight into a bun that it stretched pale skin across her cheekbones and narrowed her eyes to dark slits. The female guardians of this hellhole had an unwholesome lack of grace and humanity. I wondered if they were that way when they came, or if the place leached the warmth out of them over time.

The ID badge pinned to the suit gave her name as ANITA COHEN, DIRECTOR.

“Get out.” Cohen’s hands curled into fists. “You do not have permission—”

In a surprising move, Flynn offered her his badge. He stood tall and straight. He mastered intimidation on a cold, forceful level I couldn’t match.

“That does not impress me,” Cohen snarled.

“I’m not here to impress you, Director Cohen. I’m following leads in an active investigation and I
will
go where they take me. Hindering that investigation is a felony.” Flynn pocketed his badge. “And since you’ve incapacitated the person I was interviewing—” He nodded at Elise. The nurse in scrubs was withdrawing the needle from her arm.

“Leads? This patient?” She sneered at Elise. “They locked her in here twenty years ago. She could not possibly have any information for you. I’m going to file a complaint with your superiors and—”

“Hey!” I said the word with a little more force than I’d intended. “This patient? This woman is a human being, not an animal.”

The anger in Cohen’s face faded, replaced by a neutral mask. “Technically, you’re quite right. She’s not an animal. But I doubt if you could make the parents of the infants she strangled in their cribs believe it.” She stared at Flynn. “You’re the cop. How many were there before they caught her?”

I started to speak, then gave up. There was nothing to say.

“I want to see her records.” Flynn’s hands clenched into fists.

“Get a warrant.” Cohen called his bluff.

Two men arrived, men so bulky you knew they did some serious bodybuilding.

“Show Detective Flynn and Ms. Archer out,” Cohen ordered. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at us.

“Elise?” She watched me with vacant eyes. Hopeless. I knelt beside her. “I’ll talk to Michael. Maybe he can fix it so we can see you again.”

Flynn and I left, escorted by the two steroid boys. Neither of us spoke until the car moved onto the street and the wind blowing through the windows cooled it down to a hundred and ten.

“Wow.” I’d never had an experience like that one.

“Bullshit!” Flynn spit out the word. “You think I wouldn’t have heard of strangled babies? I know guys who have been on the force over twenty-five years. They’re always ready to lay a crime story on anyone who will listen.”

“Money buys silence. How much money to keep parents quiet? A million? Two million? I hear it costs a quarter to half a mil a year to keep someone in Avondale, and she’s been here a long time. Someone is paying her keepers not to let her talk about what happened.”

Flynn slapped his hand on the dash and instantly snatched it back. The plastic had almost reached the meltdown stage.

I reached in my pocket, pulled out the small leather case, and tossed it at him. He opened it. “This driver’s license has your picture, but . . .” He frowned. “Who’s Mary Ann Halstead?”

“No one. At least no one I know. Fake ID.”

“Jesus, Cass, that’s—”

“Yeah, yeah, illegal. But guess what. That’s the ID I used when we entered the forbidden halls of Avondale. When we left, Battleship Cohen called me Ms. Archer.”

“How did she know who you were?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why use fake ID?” He closed the leather case.

“Habit. Makes it easier to get information at times.” Flynn stared out the window for a moment, then said, “Elise called me the
wolf
. My first name is Phelan. It means wolf. How could she know that?”

“Phelan?” I grinned.

“If you call me that, the next time I find this car illegally parked, I will have it towed to the junkyard and crushed.” He pocketed my fake ID.

I laughed. He probably wasn’t serious about the car. The fake ID? Not a problem. A graphic artist whose kid I brought home made me as many as I needed.

“Are you going to talk about what else she said? I think I should know.”

His hand tugged at the seat belt as if it chafed him. “Selene’s name means moon. We called her ‘Moon Child.’ Just a nickname. She made us stop when she was eleven. It embarrassed her.” He paused. “Is there anything I should know?” I knew he was still pissed about Michael. “What’s the connection to Michael?”

“Selene is in the Barrows. Michael belongs to the Barrows. I asked him to help me and he asked me to visit his mother. That’s all I know right now. Something’s happening, things are connected, but I’m not sure how—yet. I know it’s confusing. I’m sorry I can’t figure things immediately.”

“Drop me off at the station,” Flynn said. “I want to do some research. I’ll take a cab and meet you back at your apartment. Right now I’m going to ignore the commandment to stay with you for the sake of information.”

“Okay. I need to go talk to a friend down at the mission. See if he knows anything. Sometimes kids show up there.”

The Lost Lamb Mission was a long shot in this case, but I didn’t have any other leads. I also wanted to have a serious chat with Michael about his mother—and the Goblin Den. I didn’t want Flynn around.

I had to admire Flynn, though. He’d had a lot dumped on him. Sentient snakes and a cat with a serious attitude, and now Elise’s pronouncements. He’d absorbed it and was proceeding with a good degree of calm. And he was impressive at Avondale, despite Cohen’s iron bitch attitude and Elise’s odd pronouncements naming him the Guardian and me the Huntress. He had faced the receptionist with mildly friendly flirtation, Elise with kindness and compassion, and Cohen with the firmness of the detective on the case. While I had some sympathy for Elise, my combative nature would have caused me grief before I even got to see her.

I made sure Flynn had my cell phone number and dropped him off a block from the station. Cell phones didn’t work deep in the ruins, but they did okay on River Street. The ass still didn’t want anyone else to see him with me. I headed for the Barrows, but on the way I stopped at the apartment and strapped on my gun.

A young, pretty blonde with a forced smile and narrowed eyes greeted me as I entered the Archangel a little after eleven o’clock in the morning. She wore a thin, stretchy, flesh-colored garment with a neckline cut almost to the perky nipples of her firm, perfect breasts. Her brightly manicured fingers motioned for me to follow her. When she turned, her ass, covered with the same thin, stretchy material, appeared as perfect and rounded as her tits. Definitely a surgeon-sculpted body. In fact, all of Michael’s attendants seemed to be the perfect type. What did he see in me, a woman with an ordinary body and a shitty attitude—an especially shitty attitude when it came to him? My sparkling personality? My weapons?