Dead to Me (16 page)

I shook my head, another gesture wasted in the darkness.

My arm bumped into something tall, slender, and lamp-like, and I groped around it until I found a switch. With the tiniest of clicks, a Tiffany floor lamp—much like the one sitting half unpacked back home—sprang to life, its stained glass dragonflies sparkling with color. Both of us gasped as the small pool of light lit up a section of the large room. We had expected spacious, which it was. I had expected elegant, which it was. Neither of us had expected for the place to be thoroughly and abusively trashed from floor to ceiling, which sadly, it was.

I felt like someone had sucker punched me in the stomach. The similarity to my place was so striking that it was like seeing my own apartment ransacked. Tasteful antiques littered the floor, many of them now broken or overturned. Irene’s tastes definitely ran in the same circles as mine. Seeing a broken Venini bowl, a midcentury George III card table missing a leg, countless scattered books, and a shredded seat cushion on a late-eighteenth-century Highback—it all drove the pain home.

Irene Blatt might have been struck down by a cab yesterday morning, but someone had gone just as medieval on her apartment. It would be foolish to assume that the two were not connected. “My God…”

Connor whistled, and stepped carefully through the disarray as he looked around. “I know. D.E.A.’s not going to like the overtime on this one.” We started poking through all the destruction. I was a bit confused about what I was supposed to be looking for, but when I asked Connor, he just said, “You’ll know it when you find it, kid,” so I didn’t feel too bad.

“And remember, even though we got in a little practice with your powers at the Antiques Annex, use them sparingly if you have to, got it? This clutter could probably overwhelm you psychometrically.”

I nodded, slipped my gloves back on, and started poring over the scattered books, smashed relics, and broken antiques in the living room before venturing farther back into the apartment. I slowly waded through the knee-deep clutter of books, papers, and boxes, looking for any kind of sign. Most of Irene’s possessions, although broken, gave me greater insight into the living person she had been. I found myself liking her more and more, especially when I unearthed the worn-out box cover of an old board game.Hungry Hungry Hippos . A woman after my own juvenile heart.

I couldn’t resist pushing my power into it. I took my gloves off and placed a tentative finger on the head of the yellow hippo. I tried to envision Irene as a child playing the game—or maybe I’d see that she had kids or a family that she played the game with. Either way, it might offer a clue to our case. Instead, my psychometry skipped all that and jumped straight to showing me the last person who had handled it.

In my mind’s eye, the apartment was only partly trashed, but a figure in a dark robe opened the game box warily looking for something—but what? He tore the contents of the box out, smashing the plastic tray and sending the four rainbow-colored plastic hippos flying. The bottom of the box held nothing and the figure threw the whole game against the wall in frustration before heading farther down the hall, which was where I intended to go as well.

I pulled out of the vision—slightly weary—and helped myself to more of my Life Savers before wading down the hall to the first room on my left. I could probably read half the apartment with my power, but all I’d get was mental footage of that figure trashing it. I decided to conserve my power for now and entered the room on my left.

Irene had definitely been a packrat in life. The room was filled with overturned boxes, and every last article, book, or meticulously catalogued item she had ever come across was stored in them. There were other doors farther along the back hall of the massive apartment, and I imagined more of the same behind them. Whatever manner these items had originally been organized in was now lost to reckless vandalism.

A cracked frame showed a picture of Irene against a background of Italian architecture. In it, she wore a thick cable knit turtleneck sweater. The photo, at last, confirmed for us that my ghostly friend was indeed Irene Blatt, and that this trashed mess had once been her apartment. I slipped the picture from the frame and slid it into my jacket pocket, wondering who had snapped the shot. A boyfriend or maybe just a passerby. This didn’t count as stealing, I told myself, but checked the door guiltily anyway.

I was relieved to find the next room empty, and I heard the sounds of Connor searching another room close by. I turned my focus back to my immediate surroundings. There were two closets at the far end of the room I had to check out. Simply moving was a distraction, so much so that when I finally reached the closets, I didn’t even register the fact that the dark-robed figure from my vision was hiding in there—until he sprang out at me. He pushed me down in his effort to escape, and as I fell, I winced painfully as the pointy corner of a book jabbed into my lower back.

“Connor!” I shouted. “There’s someone here!”

I floundered for several seconds in the sea of scattered books and crumpled papers. The dark-robed figure rushed nimbly across the top of the debris without sinking in before racing out of the room. I hoped Connor was having better luck navigating the apartment than I was.

Clumsily, I got back on my feet and waded as quickly as I could out into the main hall. The sound of a struggle came from the direction of the living room. As the hall opened up onto the main room, I saw Connor and his assailant grappling as the two of them toppled over onto an overturned couch. When they regained their footing, I noticed two things—one strange and one dangerous. The strange thing was a large, dark wooden fish that the intruder clutched close to his body. The dangerous thing was a heavy, curved dagger he held in his other hand. I had seen its kind before, unique in that its sharpened edge was along the inside of the weapon’s curve.

A kukri,I thought. It was the calling card for someone prepared to perform ritualistic sacrifice.That’s a cultist if I ever saw one.

“Knife!” I shouted to Connor, who looked down at the blade for the first time. He moved to pry the wooden fish from the cultist’s hand. When the figure flicked the blade at Connor, he moved back to avoid its swinging arc. The blade ripped through the fabric of his shirt. Thanks to Connor’s awkward positioning, he stumbled out of reach, but not before the backs of his knees hit the couch. His arms spun out of control with the momentum and his legs flew up in the air, toppling him over once again, but saving him from his attacker’s next swipe.

For a second, the madman lifted the blade high overhead and I thought he was going to finish Connor off, so I shouted unintelligibly. It sounded ridiculous, but it did the trick and the robed figure paused and turned from the couch. I pulled my retractable bat from inside my coat and extended it, daring him to come after me.

Instead of attacking, however, the cultist flicked his wrist, and with a barely audible click, the blade disappeared up one of his voluminous sleeves. Connor reached up from behind the couch and made a grab for him, but he kicked Connor’s hand away, turned, and dashed out the apartment door.

Connor groaned as he lifted himself slowly up from behind the couch. His free hand rubbed the back of his head. He seemed on the verge of falling over again, but he grabbed the edge of the couch and steadied himself.

“After him,” Connor said and stumbled across the room. I ran for the door and together we burst into the hallway outside the apartment…to emptiness. I looked up at the elevator indicator, but neither car was even remotely close to our floor. I caught movement in the corner of my eye, though, and turned to see the door to the stairwell slowly closing. I rushed through it and looked down into the opening between the stairs going down. Catching a glimpse of robe several floors below, I hesitated a moment to check on Connor.

“You up for it, boss?” I asked. I was worried. He was still rubbing the back of his head.

“Am I up for it? And let you have all the fun, kid?” Connor leapt past me, taking the steps four or five at a time. I followed at a slightly less breakneck pace, holding on to the railing as I went. Connor was the more experienced of us, after all, and I was more than happy to let him be the more reckless pursuer, but I didn’t want to tumble to my death in my haste. And if my mentor got to collar the son of a bitch first, more power to him.

But as the chase continued downward flight after flight, it seemed like Connor was unlikely to catch up with the fugitive. The intruder kept an almost inhuman pace all the way to the ground floor. When I finally reached the bottom and caught up with Connor outside the Westmore, the robed figure had dashed into traffic on Central Park West, causing much screeching of brakes and honking. Connor and I looked at each other, registering our mutual exhaustion, and sprinted off after the cultist as he dashed into the woods at the edge of Central Park.

The rest of the chase was a blur. Trees with their low-hanging branches, pedestrians lounging on the Great Lawn, vendors…sometimes a combination of all of these got in my way, but I refused to let up on our prey. I had no idea why the stolen wooden fish was important or why it had been taken, but it was Irene’s and I wanted it back. Forty blocks later, the chase ended when the figure jumped the security turnstile at the Fifth Avenue entrance to the Empire State Building. I watched as he shoved past the tourists waiting to get in and ran off into the building. When we attempted to follow suit, however, a well-built security guard blocked our way.

“That man stole something from us!” I pleaded. “We’ve got to stop him. He’s getting away!”

A particularly nasty woman with yellow teeth thwacked me on the arm with a postcard book as she waited to get in, shouting, “There’s people on line, mister!”

“Relax, lady,” the guard said. Connor flashed his D.E.A. ID, which did count as official local government documentation, but I was still clutching my bat as I fished mine out. The guard checked them over carefully before gesturing us through the security gate one at a time.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “That guy’s not going anywhere. Damned cultists are already giving this building a bad name.”

I stood there, stopped reholstering the bat, and stared at the guard in amazement.

“Wait a second. Youknow he’s a cultist?”

“Sure,” the guard offered with a sour look on his face. “They’ve been stinking up the building for ’bout six months, ever since they started yammering to the Mayor’s Office about equal rights. They’re up on thirty-three, I think.”

We thanked him and walked toward the elevators. Connor shook his head. “Unbelievable.”

“I wonder if anyone has been informed back at the D.E.A.?” I asked. We stepped into the waiting elevator and I pushed 33.

“We’ll find that out when we talk to the Inspectre. Right now I want to get that goddamn fish back.”

The doors shut and I looked at Connor quizzically. “What’s so important about that fish?”

“I’m not sure,” Connor replied, “but if they wanted it bad enough to trash Irene’s place, then maybe it was worth killing over, too. Somebody wanted it awfully bad.That’s why I want it back.”

“Ah.”

I had hoped for a more concrete answer. Something like, “It’s the sacred fish of the Mondoogamor tribe,” or “It mystically cures young teens of acne,” but just wanting it back because it was stolen worked, too.

When the elevator reached the thirty-third floor and the doors opened, we braced ourselves for an attack. After all, the man we were pursuing had tried to fillet us, so it seemed wise to make sure the coast was clear. Connor stuck his head out quickly to the left, and I did the same on the right side, finding nothing.

“Clear?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Great,” he said.

“Where do you think he went? I’m not even sure what offices we’re looking for.”

Connor pointed to the directory on the wall straight across from the elevator, and from the listings, there was really only one choice.

Most of them were pretty standard, ending in “LLC” or “& Associates.” Only one of the listings truly stuck out. It was three simple letters done up in a Gothic bloodred font. The clincher, of course, was the fact that they had been laid out on the directory to look as if they were actually dripping blood.

S.D.L., they read cryptically. An arrow pointed down the hall to our left.

“Not much for subtlety, are they?” I asked.

“If they were subtle, they wouldn’t be cultists, would they?” Connor said, and started down the hall cautiously. “I suspect we’ll find out soon enough what they stand for. You might want to have your negotiating tool ready.”

I pulled my bat free and hid it under my coat once it was extended. “Should be lethal enough if it comes to it, I think.”

“Just follow my lead, kid. Don’t be overhasty to use it, all right? If things get hairy in there, I’ll give you a signal.”

“Right,” I said.

My body was cold from the accumulated sweat of the downtown chase, but it was also a reaction to my discomfort with the situation. The idea of pulling my bat in defense against a group of humans, regardless of their fanaticism, didn’t sit well with me. Beating a bookcase to death was one thing. Attacking humans was another. I tried not to overanalyze the situation, wanting to take things as they came.

The frosted glass doors at the end of the hall gave no hint as to what went on behind them, but the letters “S.D.L.”—this time over a foot high—marked the entrance. Connor crouched and pressed his ear to the door, listening carefully while I tried to center myself with several deep breaths.

“I can’t hear anything,” he said. “They must be soundproofed, or else it’s a lot quieter in there than we’re expecting.”

“Maybe we should pull ourselves together before going in,” I said, tucking my shirt in. “It’s an office building, after all.”