A Most Helpful Text
Copyright 2011 by Michael Angel and J.D. Cutler
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Table of Contents
Enter the World of Michael Angel
Meet Michael Angel and J.D. Cutler
A Most Helpful Text
by
Michael Angel and J.D. Cutler
When Madeline Ferrero found herself lying atop a rain-slicked piece of steel and suspended over a busy Chicago freeway, she concluded that her ability to see patterns could be more curse than blessing.
The plane of metal she clung to let out a creak. She moaned in fear and pressed her stomach to the cool steel surface. Steadied herself as best she could on a raised lip of plastic by her feet. From above, the tarry smells of burning fabric. Melting rubber. Wind laced with stinging rain lashed her exposed hands.
Her cell phone emitted a ping. A new text message had arrived.
And no matter what, she’d have to get it.
With a speed only a glacier could have envied, she pried her right hand from its grip on the metal. Slid it into her jacket pocket. The cell phone fell into her shivering palm.
She grasped it the way a drowning person would clutch a lifeline.
Breathing hard. Stomach crawling, muscles aching. She brought the phone up to where she could see it.
Sirens in the distance, coming closer. The sound of people gathering beneath where she dangled above the outbound side of the Cook County Skyway.
She didn’t feel the dull ache of a wound. Felt no trickle of blood. But Madeline felt her thoughts flow like syrup on a cold morning. Clumpy. Slow.
Shocky, trauma specialists called it.
She pushed the feeling aside so that she could will her fingers and thumb to open the clamshell case of the phone.
A two word message greeted her.
LET GO.
The sludgy, numb feeling fell away. Not replaced by fear. By a sudden, strange feeling of clarity. Not what she expected.
Not what she’d have even dreamed of at the start of this day.
This morning, like many late September mornings in the Windy City, came in with fog. Not the ‘arriving on little cat’s feet’ kind of fog, either. A real Lake Michigan style pea-souper.
Madeline Ferrero pushed through the brass-frame doors of the Chicago Daily Sentinel. A sensible, water-resistant jacket clung to her trim form. Dark hair freshly coiffed, nails done just so.
Her high heels beat out a precise march on the marble floor: tic-tac-tic.
Places-to-go. Things-to-see. Job-to-do.
A brief ride in the Art Deco-trimmed elevator. Brisk walk to the safe confines of her cubicle. A shrug to slide the plum-colored jacket onto a handy hook.
The trio of flat-screen monitors that dominated her desk glowed warmly. Each screen displayed feeds from Twitter, local user’s forums, and a half-dozen of the top social networking sites. She sat in her chair, back ramrod straight, and adjusted her keyboard to the angle she favored.
Her neighbor in the cubicle across the aisle leaned back to watch her morning ritual. Bill Young downed a slurp of Dunkin Donut’s finest morning brew and gave her a fellow office-worker salute with the raising of his cup.
“Hey, good morning, Madeline,” he said, with a sepia-toned smile made possible by endless pots of coffee.
“What’s so good about it?” she replied, half in jest, half in mild annoyance. “The trains on the Red line were running ten minutes slow today, I haven’t seen the sun in over a week, and this morning – on a day that looks like it’s going to rain cats and dogs, I forgot my umbrella at home.”
Bill let out a tsk.
“Waking up on the wrong side of the bed and all that. Should’ve brought in a box of my daughter’s Thin Mints, cheer you right up.”
“Much as I love them, it’s not what I need right now,” Madeline replied, with a trace more kindness in her voice. She opened her bottom desk drawer and pulled out a pair of identical looking electric blue-and-orange cans. “It’s time to do the journalist thing. My style of it, anyway.”
Madeline popped the tab on one container. Raised the bottom of the can to the ceiling. Listened to the gurgle of a Lightspeed Energy Drink going down the hatch.
She forced herself to swallow. The taste of what was supposed to be sour lime and tart pomegranate swirled at the back of her tongue. At least, it tasted like what a college dropout of a food chemist could whip up in his lab. Bill watched her silently, sipping at his own beverage without comment.
Madeline rinsed and repeated with the second can.
Whap.
The energy drinks hit her bloodstream with a mule’s kick. Hairs standing at static-electricity attention, skin tingling. A distant ringing in the ear. Heart pounding like a thoroughbred waiting for the track gates to spring open.
Flexed her fingers. Showtime.
“Okay,” Madeline said to herself, “Time to see who’s talking about what.”
With a humming click of keystrokes, images flickered across Madeline’s triptych of screens. Pages of ‘tweets’ from the past two weeks. Forum posts from the newsgroups, the networking sites. Online news from the local web sources, both large and small.
Each screen melted into a meaningless, glassy blur of images and text.
Meaningless, except to her.
Gradually, like a spinning tilt-a-whirl coming to a stop, the flow of pages slowed to a trickle, then a stop. Madeline copied and pasted three messages into her word processing program. Three lines that had jumped out of the maelstrom at her.
9/6: 0215 – 0330 AVOID THE KENNEDY / DAN RYAN FWY SPLIT.
9/13: 0910 – 0925 SKIP THE ZOO OPENING ON PORTAGE PARK DR.
9/22: POLICE TIP RE: BOMB AT TERMINAL 3, O’HARE.
“Don’t know which is freakier,” Bill said, as he ran a hand over his balding pate. “How you do your ‘thing’, or the information you manager to pull out of it.”
“It’s not ‘freaky’. I’ve always been able to see patterns in things. My Dad called it the ‘Seeing-Eye’ talent.”
“Seeing-Eye?”
“It’s like those Seeing-Eye image books. Stare at a page long enough, and a three-dee image sort of ‘pops’ into view. And the kicker is, once you see the image, you can’t go back to seeing the page in the old way.”
“So just what are you seeing?”
“The same damned pattern I spotted months ago: anonymous postings that warn of some kind of danger.”
“Ah. The ‘Helpful Gremlin’. You’re still on that kick.”
“You can’t argue with results.” Madeline pointed at each item on the screen in turn. “Here, on the sixth. Around four a.m., highway patrol reported a multiple-car pileup at the highway split mentioned. Then the next date: an hour after the zoo opened, someone fell into the lion pen and got mauled.”
Bill took another slurp of coffee, this one louder.
Madeline continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “As for the airport though…the TSA’s finest didn’t find anything last week when they did a search.”
“So that one turned out to be a dud?”
“Maybe not. The terminal search delayed all the flights out by an hour. Maybe the poster just wanted that delay? So that a danger could be avoided?”
“Still say it’s co-incidence. Lucky ones. Well, maybe not lucky for the poor saps that got it in the neck, but still.”
“I know it sounds weird,” Madeline said, tapping her fingers on the desk impatiently, “I’ll be damned if I know how it works. But, somehow, it does.”
A dark shadow fell across the office carpet between the cubicles. Bill downed the last of his coffee in a furtive gulp. He swiveled back to face his monitor as a man with a shopworn face and slept-in-it-overnight suit spoke to Madeline with all the warmth of a traffic cop writing out a ticket.
“You know, the ‘how’ doesn’t interest me. Only the ‘who’,” intoned Editor in Chief Preston Lynch. He nodded in the direction of his office. “We need to talk, Ferrero.”
Madeline grimaced, but said nothing as she followed in the man’s wake. Lynch graciously stood aside, let her enter his office first. Then pulled the frosted glass door shut as if he were a medieval lord cranking up the moat’s drawbridge. He sat back in his editor’s chair with a plush-sounding squeak, and then tilted his gaze up at her.
“I just got a call from two angry councilmen. And before that, an even angrier Congresswoman. Both want my scalp nailed to the wall next to yours.”
Madeline raised an eyebrow.
“Would these two councilmen be connected with the shoddy repair work I found being done on the Rosemont overpass?”
Lynch set his jaw. “Never you mind–”
“Afraid I have to. And the Congresswoman, doesn’t she have majority stock in that scam company I found? The one that pretends to seal gas leaks?”
“Let’s say you’re right. They’re demanding to know your sources.”
Madeline stared, incredulous. “You think I actually know who this ‘Helpful Gremlin’ character is?”
“And you think I buy your little act?” Lynch said. His face started to turn an unpleasant shade of pickled-beet red. “You think I believe in your ‘Magic Eye’ nonsense? These people want to know who–”
“They can go hang, as far as I care.”
Madeline’s cell phone let out a plaintive-sounding ping. Out of habit, she flipped the clamshell-shaped device open. She’d gotten a text from a number marked on the screen as ‘UNLISTED’.
A three-word message filled the display.
U should STOP.
She frowned. Tried to concentrate on Lynch. “…not a matter of what you care about! These people control the leases around here, and they can make my life, all of our lives very difficult.”
“Then let them, Lynch,” Madeline shot back. “It’s what we’re supposed to do. Investigative journalism, remember?”
Another ping from her phone.
U GET HIM angry. NO WHAT U WANT.
“Don’t you lecture me,” Lynch snarled. “I’ve been on the Daily Sentinel since you were covering band practice at Skokie High. You’re not going to embarrass this paper any more–”
Madeline looked up at Lynch, angry, then back down at the phone. What was going on? Was someone listening in?
“Damn it, Ferrero!” Lynch slammed a fist on his desk. “Put that phone away and quit ignoring me!”
A ping. STOP STOP STOP
Madeline’s head reeled as she tried to keep up with Lynch. “I’m not ignoring you, but…”
TOO late.
“–and I want you out!”
Madeline blinked. “What did you say?”
“I said, you’re out! Done! You’re finished at this paper!”
A silence as deafening as the heated words enveloped the office. And then, a single ping from the phone.
ASK lynch ABOUT isabella.
Madeline looked around at the walls. Could someone be listening?
Well, if they were, she wouldn’t turn down help if it were offered.
“Before I go,” Madeline said carefully, “Would you care to tell me about someone named Isabella?”
Lynch’s jaw shut with a snap.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
A ping. THE woman U stay WITH WHEN wife OUT OF town.
“I believe you know who I mean,” Madeline said. She weighed her voice precisely. As if the words uttered were made of candy glass. “The lady you visit when your wife goes out of town.”
Lynch’s face turned pale. Chalk pale.
“Perhaps I was hasty, there.”
“Perhaps you were.”
“Let’s let this one lie for now,” Lynch said, his face set, hard and sheer as a crag of granite. “We both have things to do, don’t we?”
Madeline nodded agreement and rushed back to her cubicle. She thumbed the ‘OK’ button on her phone in order to reply to the last text.
The screen read: SERVICE NOT AVAILABLE FOR THIS NUMBER.
She had to try more than once to press the three keys for Star-69 to redial the last number received by her phone.
“We’re sorry,” an automated, Speak-N-Spell voice recited, “You have tried a service that is only available on Midwest Telecom land lines. Please check the number you wish to redial and try aga–”
Madeline got on the office phone and called the cell provider to confirm. A cheerful service rep regretfully informed her that the recall feature was not available for the paging number.
Her cell made another ping. I would NO DO THAT.
“Dammit, cut that out!” she said, as she held the phone, white-knuckled, in her grasp. “I don’t have a frickin’ way to reply to you!”
Madeline put her face in her hands for a moment. It was possible, just possible, that the ‘Helpful Gremlin’ she envisioned didn’t exist at all. That someone had simply put together a real doozy of a prank.
She cast a suspicious look in Bill’s direction. He’d left his desk. The coffee cup lay empty and crumpled in the wastebasket.
A long shot, in any case. Five years of working together, and Bill Young hadn’t ever played so much as a practical joke on her. The man’s mind just didn’t seem wired that way.
Wired. Perhaps that was it.
She got up and ran her hands over the walls of her cube in a frenzy. Oblivious to the odd look cast her way by anyone walking past, she pulled up the carpet beneath her chair. Unhooked each of her monitors. Unscrewed her office phone’s receiver and probed the dusty electronic innards with an index finger.
A ping rewarded her efforts.
U just STOP. DO NO GOOD.
“And can you just cut it out with the stupid pidgin English?” Madeline said aloud to the air.
Hands shaking, she fell back in her chair. Grasped one hand in the other, clasped the fingers together firmly until they remained still. Mind still awhirl from the messages. The threat from Lynch. And maybe, just maybe, from the caffeine-laced energy drinks still circulating in her bloodstream. She forced herself to press through it all and think.
Start with the premise of the story: That these messages are from the Helpful Gremlin. Okay. Sticking with it so far.
Why would s/he start talking directly to her now?
The answer hit her square-on.
Because Lynch demanded that she expose her sources. And somehow, her source knew that was a threat.
Madeline plugged her monitors back in as a thought occurred to her: How long has this Helpful Gremlin been around?
Her fingers flew over the keys as she clicked on the archived directories of the forum sites, the online news sites in the city that used public postings for local interest. Seeking ever further, ever farther backwards.
Two more pings from her phone, in quick succession.
CAN NO help U IF U NO STOP.
PLEASE.
“I don’t know who or what you are, but I’ve had just about enough of you.” She shut her phone off and closed it with a clack.
Her last distraction removed, Madeline let her talent loose. Allowed information to scroll past in a blur of light. Let her sniff the electronic breeze like a virtual bloodhound.
Like shapes emerging from mist, the patterns emerged. From five years ago. Seven years. Ten, even.
Similar warnings, done anonymously online.
Fewer people online back then. Fewer people saw them.
She picked a handful of warnings that seemed to correspond to the biggest early events.
Ten years ago: Prediction of a crane accident in Linden Hills.
Nine years ago: A parking garage collapse in Sedgwick.
Eight-and-a-half: Bank robbery and shoot-out on Ashland Avenue.
Seven years ago: Tour boat fire on the Chicago River.
Madeline chewed a nail in thought. Back then, fewer people heeded the warnings, even the big ones. Bigger likelihood that the disaster might claim lives.
What might a modern-day Nostradamus do, if they had the hot-ticket prediction in hand, but knew that they wouldn’t be heard?
Madeline stood as the tumblers in her brain clicked into place. Shrugging her coat back on, she worked her way back outside. Cool fog had given way to storm-tossed clouds and the occasional gust of rain.
She pulled her hood up and headed towards the closest rail station. Leaving one hand deep in a warm coat pocket, she used the other to open her cell phone. A press of a button to turn it on.
No waiting texts. Good.
Her walk accelerated to her usual rhythmic tic-tac-tic as she speed-dialed the paper’s remote office.
“Archives,” a bored-sounding voice said over the line.
“Lorenzo, it’s Madeline. I need a favor.”
“You still need a date to Abbot Park? Shoot, all you needed to do was ask.”
“Easy there, Romeo. Only dates I’m looking for are seven to ten years back.
“What, you get tired of looking at glowing glass screens?”
“The electronic archive only stores text. I need to see the headline archives, the physical stuff. I want to get my hands on the paper copies, it’s urgent.”
“Shoot, I can have it for you in an hour, if you need it.”
Madeline glanced at her watch. Still mid-morning, plenty of time.
“Yeah, I’ll need it. I’ll hop the Gray Line, be at your office before eleven.”
“See you, then. Careful in the rain.”
“I’m walking between the drops.” A stray gust drizzled her with icy droplets, giving lie to her claim. Madeline ducked into the station, pushed through the ticket gate, and had made it to the platform when the phone pinged again.
Almost against her will, she flipped open the phone.
STOP!!!!!!
She frowned. One word, six exclamation points.
“Well, someone’s worried that I’m getting closer to them.” She shook her head ruefully and deleted the text.
With a roar of metal and compressed air, the light rail cars pulled into the station. A rattle as the car doors opened in unison. Beckoning her.
A ping. DO NO DO IT!
“Yeah, right. I’m going to find you, Gremlin. Bite me.”
Madeline stepped across the small chasm between door and platform. She glanced about, saw no one on the car. Figured. Too late for rush-hour, too early for the lunch crowd.
A final ping as the doors closed behind her with a deathly cold rattle.
NO NO NO GET OFF THE train!
A chill thrummed through her. The twang of a dark guitar string. She grabbed hold of an overhead strap as the train accelerated to speed.
Thoughts caromed inside her head. Helpful Gremlin hadn’t been trying to get her to give up the search. The last set of texts had been trying to steer her clear.
Her eyes went wide a she realized what she’d done.
She’d gotten on a train. After getting three warnings. From someone who was damned good at predicting disaster.
Madeline let out a squeak of fear as the car jolted. Heart thudding, she looked out the window. Her view of the city shifted as the car ascended onto the elevated tracks.
She let go over the strap. Moved as fast as she could towards the rear of the car. Heels drumming a tic-tac-tic on the hard plastic floor.
Spotted the emergency call phone. Grabbed the handle. Yanked open the phone’s cover.
Madeline gasped.
The cord dangled loose. Receiver slashed away and a bright red ‘UNDER REPAIR’ sticker plastered across the keypad.
She didn’t have time to swear.
A gradual, almost stealthy shudder ran the length of the car. The shriek of metal on metal. The blooming roar of an explosion.
She grabbed the nearest hand strap.
The front section of her car buckled. Crumpled. As if a giant had smacked it with his fist.
Madeline screamed as the rear section tore open around her. Flung her off to the right. The strap made a regretful sounding ‘pop’ as it tore loose from its base.
The floor convulsed.
Threw her into the air for one horrible second. Slammed her on her stomach. Breath driven out of her. She reflexively grabbed hold, wrapped arms around the metal surface beneath her.
A white and red flash of light.
Slash of rain across one cheek. Smell of burnt plastic, rubber, fabric. Taste of hot copper in her mouth.
Her own breath, ragged, pounding in her ears. The howl of wind, making her realize how exposed she was. From below, the sound of traffic.
The ping came. She opened the phone.
Breathing hard, stomach crawling, muscles aching, she brought the phone up to where she could see it.
LET GO.
A feeling of calmness, of acceptance, flooded through her.
Madeline relaxed her grip.
She fell into open air.
* * *
Another blustery, fog-wrapped morning in the Windy City. Droplets of rain spattered the sidewalk like handfuls of sodden cake sprinkles.
Madeline Ferrero made her way along one of the steep streets that led up from the shore of Lake Michigan. She turned into one of the elegant Victorian-style townhouses at the swanky heart of the city’s Gold Coast district. She moved at a slow pace. Hobbling, cane in hand.
She took a deep breath, steadying herself, and then rang the doorbell.
The woman who answered the door had sparkling, periwinkle eyes and a powder puff of gray hair that matched the silver frame of her power wheelchair. One withered arm lay in her lap like a docile pet. The other grasped the control stick on the wheelchair’s arm with a surgeon’s precision.
Madeline had to clear her throat to speak. “Are you… Elysia Papadakis?”
The woman nodded slowly in the affirmative. Her expression was one of resignation. As if this day had been long expected.
The silence between the two women threatened to get awkward. Madeline spoke again to fill it.
“I’m Madeline Ferrero. And…if you are who I think you are, then you know why I’m here.”
“I know, Miss Ferrero.” Elysia’s voice sounded cushion-soft to Madeline, with a hint of the old, gracious South. With a nudge of the control stick, the chair scooted back a few feet. “Come in, please. We have much that needs a talk-about.”
Elysia led her into a living room lined with shelves of antique brass instruments and leather-bound books. A wall-to-wall bay window framed one side of the room like a gigantic rectangular eye. She waved Madeline over to a sprawling couch that looked as if it could have graced Scarlett O’Hara’s study from Gone with the Wind.
A snow-white Angora cat with a jeweled pink collar picked her way delicately across the room. She rubbed up against Madeline’s leg with a soft purr.
“She likes you,” Elysia ventured. “You’re a cat person. I know.”
“I figured you would.” Madeline set aside her cane, and then carefully bent forward. She picked up the cat and settled the feline comfortably on her lap. As she stroked the cotton-soft fur, she added, “I guess I owe you my life.”
Elysia looked at her intently. “You believe? In the power?”
“I don’t know what to believe,” Madeline admitted. “Except that random chance didn’t make an open-topped garbage truck drive by as I fell. A truck full of nice, soft garbage, I should add. Or I’d have a lot more in a cast than my foot.”
“It was the best that could be done. The future…well, I suppose it’s like a hallway with many doors. You close one, you open another set. A limited set, sometimes.”
“I just want to…I just want to understand. How.”
“I’d be delighted to explain more to you. But first, I’d like you to tell me how you found my house.”
Madeline looked down to where the cat lay dozing, pooled in her lap like a roll of white satin.
“After I got out of the hospital, I finished my trip. I’d been on my way to the archival office in Granville. I needed to see the photos around our headlines.”
Elysia nodded sagely.
“I felt that if you’d been trying to warn people all of these years, that maybe you’d have also tried to be there in person. At least for the biggest, worst disasters. Maybe you couldn’t save everyone, but you could call for help, maybe direct people to where there were survivors.”
The cat let out a happy purr. Elysia said nothing. But rested her chin in the palm of her good hand, listening.
“I have this talent at spotting patterns. I picked out your face in several crowd photos. One time, you were sitting next to your car.”
Elysia nodded. “I was still able to drive, back then.”
“And your car had special license plates. For ‘disabled’ drivers. I ran the plate numbers by the Cook County Motor Vehicle department. And here I am.”
“Impressive, Miss Ferrero.” Elysia said. “As for my part of the bargain…you are familiar with the curse of Cassandra, are you not?”
It took Madeline only a moment. “The woman cursed by the gods. Cursed to know the future – but that no one would ever listen to her.”
“It’s no myth. And Miss Ferrero, what if the curse went beyond what we commonly know?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what if the curse followed you? Not only all of your life, but into the next life? And the next? What if even reincarnation couldn’t break it? And not only could the curse rob you of the ability to convince others, it could rob you of the ability to speak.”
Madeline blinked. “You seem to be able to speak just fine.”
“It wasn’t until modern-day inventions came along, you know. Until Cassandra found a way to express herself to people via the Internet. And, of course, she found an owner who could understand.”
Madeline froze in disbelief. The little white cat sat up in her lap. Rubbed noses with her as she let out a miaow.
“She uses a special keyboard in my study,” Elysia explained. “I make use of it on the days that my disability gets the better of me. Extra-large keys for my hand.”
“And some keys have single words. Like ‘NO’, ‘YOU’, and ‘STOP’,” Madeline said, understanding. “I guess I must have worried both of you. Worried that I’d have exposed you.”
Cassandra leaped down off of Madeline’s lap, traded it for her usual place on Elysia’s. Elysia Papadakis let out a weary sigh.
“We were. If you wrote about us? Why, we’d just be another media sideshow. At least, when we’re anonymous, we get some people to listen. We’re not just a crippled old woman and a very strange, very talented cat.”
Madeline nodded as Elysia went on.
“But you should know something, my dear. We rather liked having someone on the outside working with us, for a change. Someone in the media publicizing what we found, getting people to fix problems. Not just to clean up the wreckage after-the-fact.”
“I like the idea of putting both of our talents to work,” Madeline said. She spread her hands with a smile. “You know, I may just have some ideas on how we could do that.”
Elysia returned the smile with one of her own.
“We had hoped that you might stay for lunch. To discuss that very thing. Besides, you saw what it was like on the way here. It seems like it’s going to rain cats and dogs.”
“Really?” Madeline looked out the window to where Lake Michigan stretched to the horizon, green and glistening. “Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like the sun’s about to come out.”
The End
New Book Preview:
Enter the World of Michael Angel:
The Detective & The Unicorn
When LAPD detective Derek Ridder’s friend is brutally murdered by a warlock from the magical world of the Morning Land, he’s assigned a new partner. Her name is Tavia, and she’s a brash, driven unicorn filly. She identifies the killer as Sir William Teach, the one man she is sworn to capture or kill at all cost.
Together, Derek and Tavia must uncover Teach’s dark plans to dominate or destroy both of their worlds. Their path takes them through Los Angeles and deep into the fantasy realm of the Morning Land. It is along this road that they discover what can break a mythical creature’s heart, what can heal death itself, and whether or not one needs to be virgin-pure in order to touch a unicorn.
The pages that follow provide a glimpse into
the world of The Detective & The Unicorn.
Available in 2011 from
and at all major eBook retailers.
Print edition coming Fall 2011.
THE DETECTIVE & THE UNICORN
By Michael Angel
The photo of a snow–white pegasus in the company of the President of the United States has made the front page of the Los Angeles Times twice now.
Both times this happened, someone close to me has been killed.
The first time had been three years ago, when the President welcomed a pegasus, a dryad, and a pair of griffins to the White House. Their arrival became a kind of cultural touchstone for everyone, like the Kennedy assassination, the moon landing, or maybe 9–11.
Television networks and the internet broadcast the event across the planet. I remember thinking that the whole thing looked a little surreal. Between the somber blue–black suits of the President’s cabinet and the colorful, Renaissance Faire medievalism of the group from the newly discovered ‘Morning Land’, it was Norman Rockwell meets the cast of Narnia.
For the next three years, the cable channels ran plenty of documentaries featuring the strange and exotic peoples from that world. I didn’t pay a lick of attention. I had nose to grindstone, trying to make a name for myself at the Los Angeles Police Department.
And I was doing the best I could to rebuild my life after losing Beth.
* * *
I pulled into the Sub Shack off San Fernando Boulevard and put the unmarked Chevy Impala into park. Next to me, Dorian Martinez squinted into the last rays of the sunset. The blood–red cast of the light gave his skin the shade of mahogany.
“And another eight hours of taxpayer–funded time flushed down the drain,” he sighed. “Wish we were casing North Hollywood, see a little more action.”
“Too much action for my blood,” I said. I peered through the store’s windows and grimaced. The line from the counter snaked out the door and onto the sidewalk. “Think we can get a line jump from your favorite waitress?”
“Derek, I’m shocked.” Dorian gave me a look of mock surprise. “Do you doubt my powers?”
“Just get us some dinner, hotshot.” I replied, with a grin. Dorian Martinez and I had worked Narcotics off and on for the last couple of years. His unfailing good humor made even our last boring, fruitless stakeout bearable.
He came up to the counter and effortlessly charmed the Latina cashier. He’d have been the perfect partner had he not been a dead ringer for a young Antonio Banderas. Dorian—even his name suggested he had a picture up in his attic doing his damned aging for him—attracted women like honeybees to a flower.
Of course, Dorian did his best to share the sweet nectar with as many as possible. Young, free, single. Things I didn’t feel like very much anymore. I fiddled with the battered silver circlet on my fourth finger. I still wore the ring, even after all this time.
Dorian brought back a pair of turkey subs, a crumpled copy of the Los Angeles Times, and a couple cans of soda that dripped icy beads of condensation in the dull summer heat. He slipped into his seat and pushed the paper into my hands.
“Check out the picture on the front page,” Dorian said. “Bet your niece wouldn’t mind getting a copy of it. Little girls love horses.”
I unfolded the top section and read the headline: Morning Land Joins President to Select New Envoy to U.N. The president stood off to one side, grinning a politician’s grin and waving to the crowd. To his left, the pegasus looked as if he’d been sculpted out of fresh snow, from his muscled legs to the downy tips of his wings. His dark, liquid eyes sparkled in the photographers’ camera flashes. I couldn’t help but think of a proud, young swan.
The car’s radio crackled to life. “Victor two–three, this is Eagle’s Nest.”
I picked up the transmitter. “This is two–three, Detectives Ridder and Martinez. Go ahead, Nest.”
“Victor two–three, we have report of a disturbance at 2200 Durham.”
“Copy that,” I replied. “Two–three on approach, out.”
I put the radio back in its holder and pulled out of the lot. With a mild curse, Dorian crammed the sandwiches in the door compartment.
It only took us a few minutes to cover the distance. The look of the avenues leading up to Durham took a steep nose dive. Streetlights cast forlorn circles of amber. Every third lamp hung askew and broken, knocked out by rocks or neglect. Barbed wire fencing sprang up along empty lots like fresh crops of weeds.
Gravel crunched under the tires as I pulled up in front of a sprawling two–story place that looked like a flophouse gone to seed. The sun finally sank behind the nearby hills, probably in disgust. The building’s hot pink neon signs and a rising full moon provided the only illumination.
2200 Durham housed the TomKat, one of Southern California’s nightclubs for ‘Discriminating Gentlemen’. In this case, ‘discriminating’ meant that the patrons required a lap dancer to be able to fog a mirror while swaying her hips in a circle.
I killed the Impala’s engine. The evening went quiet. Dead quiet. I could see the glow of the club’s interior lights, but I didn’t hear a thing. No sounds of rowdy drunks, throbbing dance music, hustling bartenders, parties of loud businessmen looking for a way to unwind while on the road. And on a Friday evening, no less.
“Man, I really don’t like this,” Dorian said, echoing my thoughts.
We got out and peered more closely at the building. The swinging saloon–type entry doors swayed gently in the wind. The windows were open on the second floor. A hazy, blue–white glow radiated from within.
“Better call this in,” I said. Dorian nodded and grabbed the radio at his belt.
“Detective Martinez to Nest...” He frowned. “Not working.”
I tried my own radio. A press of the transmit button yielded nothing. Dorian leaned into the car and tried the vehicle radio.
“This is unit two–three, requesting backup.” Static crackled back. He looked at me, puzzled. “All three on the fritz at the same time? What’re the odds?”
I flipped open my cell phone. The screen read NO SIGNAL.
“Don’t think we ever marked the TomKat as a signal dead zone,” I said cautiously. My mouth had gone dry, held a sour, metallic taste. “Maybe we–”
A loud thumping came from upstairs. A queer flash of light from the upstairs windows. Something that looked like bluish ball lightning. Then our eardrums throbbed as a high–pitched scream cut the air. It sounded like someone in agonizing pain.
Dorian and I drew our semis. We ran towards the TomKat’s entrance. The saloon–style doors waggled back and forth in the wind as we approached.
As if they were the lips and tongue of some enormous creature set to devour us whole.
I froze as I pushed through the doors.
“Sweet Jesus, what happened here?” I breathed.
It sounded like someone was in trouble on the second floor, but I don’t think anyone could have passed up what I saw without pausing. Behind me, I heard Dorian gasp in shock.
Bodies lay in rough tumbles across the room. The bartender rested with his head in his arms by the beer taps. A pair of cocktail waitresses sprawled out one–two at the bar. A group of businessmen from what looked like the National Pocket Protector Association slumped at one of the tables.
But the patrons’ expressions were peaceful. Eyes closed, faces in repose.
“All breathing,” whispered Dorian. “Sleeping?”
I couldn’t begin to explain it. Another blue–white flash of light, this time from the staircase, left a ghostly scrawl across my retina. We didn’t have time to speculate. I motioned towards the stairs and Dorian followed.
A wooden staircase covered with dingy gold shag led to the second floor. A trio of bulbs stuck into a fake chandelier above lit the way. It swayed overhead, making our shadows skitter back and forth across the ratty carpet.
Blue–white light flared from behind the half–open door at the top. As we came to the last three steps, I began to hear a faint murmur. Almost a thrumming in the air, as if a crowd of unseen people around me were going ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…
Dorian moved to one side of the door. I shifted to the other. Even if we’d felt free to talk, I don’t think we could have used our voices.
The volume, the thrumming in the air increased. Picked up energy as if the crowd were on their feet now. As if they sought to drown out every other sound in the world not made by their spectral vocal cords.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…
The bulbs in the chandelier flickered. The hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood straight up at attention. Like I was in the eye of an electrical storm. Whatever was happening, we had to go in now.
We went through the door with a crash.
Dorian went in first and to the right. I followed through on the left. Guns drawn at the ready. Into the room and sectioning it off. Searching for threats.
The blue–white light radiated from a congealed pool of mist on the ceiling. I didn’t see a power cord. Office furniture had been shoved against the walls to clear the center of the room. Chalky smells of day–old charcoal and burnt sawdust assaulted my nose, made me want to sneeze.
The scents rose from where I thought someone had thrown a fistful of lit cigarette butts on the bare, pitted wood floor. Burning sparks outlined a complex diagram made up of symbols and shapes. The sparks danced along the diagram like a flame following a line of gasoline in a channel of dry sand. The sound, the awful humming sound of the crowd had gotten so loud that I could see the panes of glass in the windows vibrate.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH…
And then, silence.
Silence as deafening as if someone had just pulled the plug on a rock band’s main amp.
Dorian took a step back. The toe of his boot had scuffed a piece of the lines out. The line had smeared, like he’d walked across a kid’s hopscotch grid.
“Not again.”
It wasn’t Dorian’s voice. It was the voice of someone older, someone harsh and unforgiving.
A man stepped out of the shadows and into Dorian’s line of fire. A weather–beaten black duster hung from his wiry frame. Leather gloves, denim jeans, and Western–style boots with rusted steel tips completed his outfit.
His features jutted out knife–sharp. Bony cheeks under taut pale skin. He had dead, doll’s eyes like a shark’s. A tattoo shaped like an obscene question mark coiled under his left eye.
The man spoke something in a foreign tongue. The words didn’t sound right. Didn’t sound human. Ugly sounding. Too ugly to come out of a man’s mouth, too ugly to have been formed in a man’s brain.
The gut–instinct part of my brain reacted. Told me that no matter my training, to hesitate now meant a horrible death. I tried to cry out.
Shoot! Shoot, Dorian! He’s right in your sights, shoot the son of a bitch!
Dorian didn’t move. I didn’t either. Couldn’t move.
My brain had nothing, no guide wires to make the muscles move. With a sick shock of horror, I realized that the man in the black duster had done this. Somehow, he’d immobilized us. Like insects entombed in a drop of amber.
“I have had enough of you people,” he said. The man eyed the scuff mark made by Dorian’s boot. “I’m going to make an example out of you.”
The man leaned forward and whispered something quiet but horrible sounding in Dorian’s ear. A sudden wind kicked up through the open windows. It made the man’s black duster ripple as he stepped back a few paces.
“Don’t want to get my clothes dirty,” he said into the darkness. “Go ahead.”
Dorian’s arm moved. He placed the muzzle of his semiautomatic under his chin. Without any hesitation at all, he pulled the trigger.
A loud bang! and the nine–millimeter slug exploded out the top of his skull in a fountain of blood and bone. Dorian fell backward on the floor. His body jerked spasmodically for a second. The stench of his singed hair flooded my nostrils. His dead eyes looked up at the ceiling, a pair of glassy brown marbles.
The man in the black duster turned his eyes to me.
“Now,” he said calmly, “It’s your turn.”
The man’s boots made a heavy tread on the floor as he made his way across the room towards me. To deliver his poisoned word into my ear like a junkie’s dirty hypodermic needle. I couldn’t move, but my mind was racing. My emotions shifted like water through rapids, torn between fury and terror.
Something primal tore loose in my brain with a snap! that echoed inside my head. Something awful, fueled in equal parts by rage and despair. Hot fingers caressed my forehead and drove daggers of salt into my eyes. I realized that I was dripping sweat as if I were in a high fever. My hand twitched.
Slowly, I began to raise my gun. Pain lanced through me as I fought to keep moving it. Like I’d plunged my arm into a barrel of boiling pitch. The Glock felt like a lump of metal welded to my palm.
The man in the black duster saw my movement. His eyes went wide with amazement. I heard the sharp intake of his breath.
You didn’t expect this, did you? If you like it so far, then you’ll just love what comes next, you bastard.
“It can’t be,” he said. He stretched out one bony hand to grab the gun.
My vision dimmed black around the edges. With a convulsive jerk, I got my Glock up as high as his waist. The man in black was on me. His clammy fingers touched my wrist. The touch of a corpse.
I squeezed the trigger.
The man spun away as if I’d shoved him. He hit the floor. Flopped over, gasping like a hooked fish stranded on the dock. I saw the bullet hole on the lower left side of his torso, an inch above his belt. A crimson stain around the wound started spreading, fast.
I was almost ashamed at my delight when I saw it start to drip.
“You–” he choked out. Stopped as he saw my arm continue to move haltingly, quivering as if it was made of rubber.
The man struggled to his knees and said another ugly word. He began to fade away, like the ghost of a picture on a television screen. At the last moment, before he vanished, his eyes locked with mine. Hate and pain filled his gaze.
I returned the look with a hell of a lot of interest.
The hold over my body vanished. I fell. Cracked my head on the floor. Grappled blindly for my radio. My voice came out in a croak.
“This is Detective Ridder. Anyone, please respond.”
The dispatcher’s voice came in clear. “Victor two–three, come again?”
“Code eight,” I gasped. “Officer down. 2200 Durham. Upper floor.” My eyes closed. The world went spiraling off into darkness.
* * *
I came to in a hospital bed. The doctors wanted to keep me under evaluation for the night. I had to threaten an orderly with bodily harm if they insisted. Even so, with all the poking and prodding, midnight passed in the rearview mirror by the time that I was able to drive back to my house.
My seven–year old niece Rachel hit me like a cannonball as I walked in the door. I picked her up as she covered my face with kisses and tears. Rachel clung to me stubbornly and wouldn’t let me put her down until I paid the sitter and saw the woman out the door.
All I did for the next few minutes was croon, “I’m here, shhh...” to calm Rachel’s nerves. Eventually, she let me put her down at the kitchen table.
“What…what happened?” she asked. “Will you tell me?”
I suppose if I’d been a proper dad, I would have said ‘this is adult stuff, and you’d better get off to bed’. But I wasn’t a dad. I’d wanted to have my own kids with Beth. But that was something from another time and place. When I wasn’t a widower who hadn’t quite yet seen the end of his twenties.
But I was just an uncle, one who had been roped into niece–sitting while Rachel’s mom was away on business. I wasn’t sure how to handle a little girl beyond the basics of feeding and tucking in. So I sat quietly with her for a minute.
I’d always been honest with Rachel about what I did in my line of work. Yes, I smoothed some of the edges. But I wouldn’t talk down to her. She was too smart for that kind of thing anyway.
I told her about how Dorian and I had answered a call from the station. I told her about the man in black. But all I could say next was that Dorian would no longer be coming by the house. That he had gone on to a better place.
“What do you think that man was?” Rachel asked softly.
“I don’t know, honey, I don’t know who that was.”
“Was he a monster?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and I swung her up in my arms again. “But I’m here to watch over you, no matter what. Got that?”
“Yeah, I got it,” she said. Rachel rested her head against my shoulder as I walked back to the bedroom. Her sheets lay all tangled up. I awkwardly pulled them into something resembling a bed more than a bird’s nest and tucked her in.
I picked up one of Rachel’s favorite stuffed animals, a marmalade–colored doll named Sugar Pony. Rachel snuggled the doll, then looked up and said, “Maybe Sugar Pony needs some of her friends tonight, Uncle Derek.”
“Now that’s a good idea, why didn’t I think of that?” I went down the ranks of animals perched on her shelf. “How about Frankfurter the Dog?” He got the nod, so I put him in the bed. So did ‘Pig’ the Pig, ‘Harvey’ the Lobster, and ‘Super Pickle’ the Zebra. “Are all the animals on the Ark gonna sleep tight tonight?”
“All night,” Rachel said sleepily. I knelt by the bed, kissed her goodnight, and switched the light off on the way out.
I went to my bathroom. Shut the door and locked it. I didn’t want Rachel to see me lose control. Not when I’d told her that I’d watch over her. I groped for the sink. Gripped the porcelain sides as tight as a drunk hugging a lamppost.
I stifled a grim laugh. Watch over her, protect her? Yeah, Derek Ridder’s track record as a protector looked pretty damned rotten right now.
I’d gotten Dorian killed. I let him go into the building, should have gone myself, should have gone upstairs alone, should have, should have, should have…
I should have saved my wife, too.
That felt like I’d been slugged in the kidneys. I slumped to my knees. A howl of despair threatened to burst from my lips. I twisted a towel into a rat’s tail, shoved it into my mouth, and pressed my forehead to the cold floor tile. I lay there, sobbing into the towel I’d jammed into my mouth.
I must have drifted off to sleep then. A cold draft woke me, carrying the scent of morning dew tinged with bath soap. Outside, the sky started to brighten towards dawn. I splashed some cold water on my face to wake up. The liquid from the nickel–plated tap left a heavy, mineral taste in my mouth. I went out the back door and leaned up against the outside wall. The knobby texture of the stucco dug into my back through my thin shirt.
I didn’t have much choice, really. I had to carry on. I knew that I had to try and live up to Rachel’s trust in me. To do right by Dorian. And for Beth’s sake.
I just wished to heaven that I knew what to do.
A ghost lay in wait for me back at the station.
I’d been doing plainclothes work out on the street, where the late summer sun beat down like a sledgehammer. I hit the showers and did my best to steam off the sticky layer of sweat. When I came out, I tried to rake my mop of black hair into place. Not that it did much to improve my looks. Even Beth had once charitably described me as a cross between Matthew Broderick and Frankenstein.
I wrapped a towel around my gut and opened my locker. Right then, the ghost fell out from its hiding spot.
“Ooooo–weeee–oooooo!” The ghost jiggled at the end of its clear monofilament line. Its black plastic eyes flashed with colorful Halloween cheer. I snatched the toy up and nudged the ‘off’ switch on its base.
“Clever,” I said, holding back my temper.
I looked around the locker room at the other guys. Several gave me an uneasy laugh back. But a couple of them didn’t meet my eyes.
I’d recounted at the formal inquiry what happened to me and Dorian at the TomKat. Depending on what people chose to believe, I was hopped up on adrenaline, wrung out from seeing Dorian buy the farm, or flat–out crazy.
I kept my mouth shut outside the station. We were going with the story that carbon monoxide fumes from a faulty heating unit had overcome everyone at the TomKat. Never mind that nobody in Los Angeles would be running a heater in the middle of August.
The people I’d seen downstairs started coming to about an hour after I’d been sent to the hospital. If they’d been exposed to some kind of poison, it didn’t take. No one had reported so much as a headache.
I just finished changing when the desk sergeant poked his head in the door. “Hey, Ridder,” he called, “The Captain wants to see you in his office, ASAP.”
I stood and ran my fingers through my hair with a sigh. I straightened out my shirt with a brief tug and went to see Birch.
* * *
The door to the Captain’s office stood ajar. I could see the broad expanse of his back as he fumbled with something behind and under his desk. I rapped on the doorframe to announce my arrival.
“You needed to see me, sir?”
“Detective Ridder? Come in, close the door,” Birch said.
I took the seat in front of his desk as Birch found the jumbo–sized bottle of Maalox he’d been digging for in his desk drawer. He shook out a couple tablets, chewed them to powder, then washed them down with a sip of coffee.
Captain Alan Birch made an unlikely looking commander. He was tall, almost as tall as I was, with a barrel chest and bulging forearms that would’ve made Popeye envious. Birch had an affinity for cowboy hats, Tabasco sauce, and antacid, in roughly that order. To top it off, he’d risen through the ranks without having to shave off a handlebar mustache that wouldn’t have looked out of place on baseball pitcher Rollie Fingers.
“How’ve you been bearing up, Derek?” Birch asked.
“Feeling fine, sir. If you think I need some more head–shrinking, that’s your call. But I’d rather we spent the money on something else.”
Birch steepled his fingers. He paused, then seemed to come to some kind of conclusion about me before he spoke. “Something’s stirred up a hornet’s nest all the way up our food chain. Is there anything, anything at all that you want to tell me? Something that might not have found its way into your report?”
“I’m sorry, Captain. If there’s thunder from upstairs, then I’ll be as surprised as you when it starts to rain.”
“And as wet,” he quipped. He let out a deep breath. “I’ve been ordered to put you on special assignment. Specifically, the case involving the TomKat.”
“Sir, I don’t think that will be–” I stopped in surprise.
He nodded, acknowledging my unspoken question.
“Orders signed and sealed by the Governor, Detective Ridder. I’m supposed to give you a copy, and a letter addressed specifically for you. You’re to read it, and then go to the Mayor’s Residence in Hancock Park.”
Birch pulled out an oversized manila folder and handed it to me. I took it gingerly, then pulled out its contents. There were two memos and a cream–colored envelope. I carefully laid them out on Birch’s side table one at a time.
The first memo bore the seal of the Governor’s office of California. It listed the Captain’s orders in terse bullet points. The second memo also bore a seal—the one used by the United Nations. The text contained a lot of diplomatic lingo—but the gist of it was that someone was asking for the highest degree of confidentiality.
The writer hadn’t signed the letters by hand. They had neatly typed their signature at the bottom of the page:
Ambassador Stormwind, Clan of the Osprey
United Nations Embassy—The Morning Land
My first thought was something along the lines of: Stormwind? You have to be joking! Which member of the flower–power generation got to name this kid?
Then it hit me.
No, it couldn’t be. Could it?
I let out a laugh. Birch looked at me, eyebrows raised in query. “Captain, we just got a memo…from a pegasus! Did he send the letter as well?”
“Not sure,” Birch replied, “Your letter didn’t come with a return address.”
A glistening mass of purple wax held the flap of the large, cream–colored envelope shut. Birch leaned across the desk and handed me a letter opener. I used its sharp edge to break the seal.
The rich scent of wild blackberries filled the room as bits of wax crumbled away. The flap came open. The paper inside felt like fine, stiff cloth.
I took out the letter, unfolded it, and held it in trembling hands.
I read the message over twice to make sure I understood it. Wordlessly, I handed the letter over for Captain Birch to see.
Greetings and Salutations Mr. Derek Ridder:
I received your summons this week past. I find that your plight has touched me deeply. I shall come to your aid.
I look forward to the day that we stand shoulder to shoulder against those who would cause you harm.
Very Truly Yours,
Tavia, Daughter of the Warder of Cavilad
The City of Seven Bells
Province of Cavilad
The Morning Land
“What do you make of it?” Birch asked.
“I’m not sure. The large block letters reminds me when I visited Rachel’s elementary school. Like a kid’s handwriting.”
“That could be a clue as to the age of whoever wrote this. ‘Daughter of the Warder’? What grown woman signs a letter like that?”
“Maybe women in the Morning Land sign everything from their letters to their alimony checks that way.”
“Or maybe this woman, this girl, doesn’t have full command of our language,” Birch pointed out. “What’s this ‘summons’ she’s talking about?”
And then something caught my eye. A second, tattered piece of paper lay at the bottom of the envelope. I carefully removed it with two fingers and turned the paper over. I let out a sharp exhale. The careful lettering carried the unmistakable scent of Crayola crayons.
This is a note for my uncle Derek.
He is brave and protects us and my famly.
I love him verrrry much and He
needs your help fighting monsters.
Fine examples of crayon art decorated each corner. A bright yellow sun rising over the mountains hung at ten o’ clock, my house at two. A police badge nestled in the bottom left. And at the bottom right, Rachel had drawn a person, almost a stick figure, really.
The picture showed a man in a blue uniform. I suppose that it looked as much like me as one could expect from a crayon portrait. Rachel had drawn me as big and strong. But my mouth was a dead black line and my eyes looked very sad.
* * *
The motor pool had lent out the last spare cruiser. So I took a mud–and–bug spattered Ford Ranger pickup that had originally been assigned to our K–9 patrol. When it rained, the upholstery would start to smell charmingly like wet dog.
When I got to the Mayor’s Residence in Hancock Park, the rent–a–cop guards buzzed me upstairs to a waiting room outside the mayor’s office. I made it up to the top of the stairs when the door opened. A tall, sallow–faced man stepped through and saw me. He looked me up and down for a moment, then spoke over his shoulder in a voice both crisp and cold.
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