Grimm - The Icy Touch (17 page)

He was worried about the Perkins boy, too, and Mrs. Perkins. Would they be abducted next?

He had to do
something...

“Guilt, Monroe,” he muttered aloud as he started the car. “Maybe that’s all it is.”

Guilt? It wasn’t that simple...

A few minutes later he was switching off his windshield wipers as he drove up NE Halsey toward Salem Boulevard. The rain had stopped and the wet cars parked along Halsey gleamed colorfully in the neon light of taverns and a late-night grocery.

He had a bad feeling about this little side trip. But he didn’t have to
do
anything. He could just have a look around. Wouldn’t have to get in Nick’s way. Wouldn’t have to actually
confront
anyone... probably

He turned left onto NE Salem and drove along till he got to a block where the streetlamps had been shot out, and the only light came from a storefront with blanked out front windows and no sign, and the feeble yellow moon occasionally looking through the clouds, like a sick old man peeking through curtains.

He drove on, up to the corner and around it, half expecting to see police cars, maybe Nick and Hank standing around. But he saw nothing like that. Just a burned out abandoned car, a vacant lot, trash, and a wino asleep in the doorway of a boarded-over building.

He parked, switched the lights off, licked his lips, and thought,
What if Rosalee calls? I’d have to lie to her or get in an argument on a street where I don’t want to draw attention to myself.

He took out his cell phone, and switched it off.

“Come on, do it or don’t,” he told his worried reflection in the rearview.

He climbed out of the truck, locked it, stuck his hands in his pockets and headed down the street.

A ways down, a couple blocks, was what looked like a neon sign at some tavern. Were there police lights blinking, down there? Maybe so.

Those guys were doing their job. Trained police personnel. What did he hope to find, here, by himself?

A short walk couldn’t hurt.

He strode quickly along the cracked, weedy sidewalk, approaching the storefront. It was one story, sticking out from a three-story building. The taller building behind was dark. There were lights behind the brown-paper that covered the windows of the storefront. He could see the stretched out silhouettes of people, shadows from the other side of the brown paper. What went on in there? One of those “private social clubs” that were fronts for local gangs? Or just somebody’s low-rent crash pad?

A big dude emerged from the building; he had bushy black hair and a beard, and was clothed in worn blue jeans, steel-toe boots and a sleeveless Levi jacket. His arms were blue with old prison tattoos. He paused to look up at the roof. The man was still about a hundred feet away but it seemed like he was talking to someone up there; to a dark shape on the roof.

Don’t stare, Monroe. Just keep walking and stay alert.

Monroe continued on, noticing the bushy-bearded guy crossing the sidewalk to a dented, heavy Ford pickup. It was the kind of truck used by wildcat contractors, guys who fixed roofs and fences, or claimed to, without having a contractor’s license. The bed was lined with locked metal toolboxes; the rear piled with odds and ends of plasterboard and paint-splashed two-by-fours.

Bushy beard climbed up in back, opened a tool kit— then straightened to glower down at Monroe.

Monroe hastily lowered his eyes and tried to look casual as he walked by, not meeting bushy-beard’s eyes.

Monroe could smell the guy, though. He didn’t bathe too often. And there was a particular tang he recognized...

It was the scent left by the Blutbaden at Lily Perkins’ house.

Monroe slowed, almost turned, was close to going full-on woge; was ready to jump the guy.

Don’t do it. Be smart. Get Nick.

He felt someone else to his left, on that roof. Someone up there was watching him. He caught an acrid smell from that direction, too. Was that the reek of... carrion?

Monroe walked a little faster.

He heard someone talking behind him, but they didn’t follow him. He hurried on, down toward that neon sign and the police lights. A drunk staggered past him, asked him for something. He ignored the guy and kept going.

What if he had to take a couple of these Blutbaden down himself? Could he do it?

He found himself remembering something Rosalee had said, right before they’d gone to do their separate errands.
“Monroe
—
I’m kind of worried about how far you’ve gotten involved in police work. I like to help Nick too but... I mean, you were wrestling a man for a gun and the man got his head shot off. Now you’re talking about tracking down gangsters. I mean—where are you going with this, Monroe?”

Good question. Where in fact
was
he going with this?

He just kept walking.

Monroe came to the bar, saw it was called The Flyover. Someone slammed a car door to his right and he turned, saw a tow truck starting up, pulling a van away. Was that Sergeant Wu, just down the side street, waving to a couple of guys in a cruiser?

Yeah. It was Wu.

He couldn’t see Nick, or Hank. Monroe decided not to ask Wu where the detectives were.

He’d go into The Flyover, think things over. Find a quiet spot to call Nick...

Nick and Hank stood at The Flyover’s dingy bar talking to a couple of droopy mouthed plug-uglies in stained football jerseys. Nick had already made sure: definitely not Wesen.

It was a well-worn drinking establishment, a lot of dark wood and designs stamped on the old, brown-painted sheet metal ceiling. The inevitable big screen TV was tuned to ESPN and the usual electric beer signs and posters showed winking, leggy girls offering brimming shot glasses of Jack Daniels and Maker’s Mark. A leather-clad biker at a green-felt table broke a delta of pool balls with a resounding clack and a bark of, “Ha!”

“Look, fellas,” Hank said, “We’re just curious about anybody new operating out here on the street. Whatever it might be. Just any kind of sense of it at all. Especially...
where.
We don’t need names.”

“Don’t know of anything going on except what’s alla time here,” said the larger of the two men. “Which is nothin’.”

“Yeah!” the other guy said, laughing and hiccupping at the same time. “Nothin’!”

The plug-uglies bumped fists.

Nick did sense a Wesen in the room, then. Somewhere behind him. He looked around—and saw Monroe, coming in the door. He nudged his partner with an elbow.

“Hank, look who’s here.”

Hank glanced over. “Monroe. He better have a damned good reason for showing up here.”

“Our idea of a good reason and his aren’t likely to be the same.”

Monroe had spotted them, was pointing, across his stomach, in a way he thought was sly, to a corner booth. He raised an eyebrow as he looked directly at Nick and Hank. Everyone in the room, of course, knew that he was signaling the two cops to meet him there.

“The man is just not a good candidate for undercover work,” Hank murmured, as they crossed over to the booth.

“You got that right.”

They sat down across from Monroe.

“What’s up, Monroe?” Hank asked.

Monroe licked his lips. “Maybe I should order a beer to look normal and casual, and, you know, for cover.”

“I wouldn’t bother with cover at this point,” Nick said. “What’re you doing out here?”

Monroe shrugged expansively as if to say,
No big deal.

“Hey, I just... I heard a reference to you doing something out here, uh, heard it on my scanner and, um, just thought I’d swing by and see if there was anything I could, you know, sniff out, and there
was,
actually...”

Just then, someone played the internet jukebox, a Metallica song, “Wherever I May Roam,” came on and they had to lean closer to one another to be heard.

“Someone sniff
you
out, in the process, Monroe?” Nick asked.

“Me? No! No, I’m sure... well, I’m not sure, but I’m
pretty
sure... mostly... that he didn’t sniff me out as a Blutbad...”

“You’re saying you ran into another Blutbad on the street around here?” Hank asked.

Nick glanced around the room. He noticed a woman he hadn’t seen before, coming out of the men’s room. She was an attractive Hispanic woman, black hair flipped smoothly to one side; she wore a black leather designer blazer, a white silk blouse, black leather pants, spike-heeled red boots. There was a glint of pure hostility in her eyes as she returned his look—and then her face went blank when she saw the gold badge clipped to his belt. But before the careful blankness, he glimpsed the disfiguring Hexenbiest decay spread across her face, corrupting her lips and eyes. The flicker of Grimm insight passed and she was once more the pretty but hard-faced Latina.

“You know her?” Hank asked, noticing Nick’s stare as the woman hurried out.

“No. But she’s a Hexenbiest.” Nick looked at Monroe.

Monroe shook his head. “I don’t know her.” Then he leaned way toward them like he wanted to climb over the table. “But I know what I scented on the street out there— the same urine marker I found at the Perkins’ house.”

Hank stared at him. “What? You’re going around a crime scene on your hands and knees and, like, smelling the ground?”

“No! I didn’t have to get down on my hands and knees. I just... hunched down a little. Well, I squatted...”

“You’re lucky you weren’t arrested,” Nick said. “Where was this guy you... sniffed out?”

“Right down Salem Boulevard, dude!” Monroe replied.

The song ended but then a plane taking off from the nearby airport rumbled over, so low the building shook slightly.

Monroe glanced at the ceiling. “Wow. So that’s why they call that it The Flyover. Yeah, the guy had the scent marker on him... I didn’t actually notice the address up there but it’s a storefront, windows papered over. The only building with any lights on in that whole block down there. Where the streetlights are busted out. You totally cannot miss it.”

Hank shook his head. “Wonder how long those streetlights have been out. This happened over in Northwest, those people with money would get their streetlights back on right away.”

Nick pulled his phone out, then decided not to make the call in the bar.

“Come on,” he said.

He led the way outside. A mist of evaporating rainwater rose from the sidewalk, taking on the hot neon colors of the bar sign. He looked for the Hexenbiest in black leather, and didn’t see her.

They walked down the side street to Hank’s car, which chirped in response to his key signal. They got in, Hank behind the wheel, Monroe in back.

Nick speed-dialed Renard, and got the answering machine.

“Dammit! Uh, Captain, it’s Burkhardt, we’ve got a tip out here, a
hot
tip, that the perp who snatched the Perkins girl is within a few blocks of that abandoned van. It’s not quite probable cause but close enough for a warrant. Be faster if you get it for us... Call me, please.”

He broke the connection, sighed with frustration.

“Might be faster for us to get the warrant,” Hank suggested. “Email Judge Bernstein yourself, he takes night warrant requests. He’ll email us a warrant.”

“They
email
warrants now?” Monroe asked, sounding surprised.

“They do. We get ’em on our phones.”

Nick thought about it. “It would still be faster if the Renard does it. He works pretty closely with Bernstein. I’ll try texting the Captain...”

Hank grunted and shook his head.

“Wait—I just realized that Bernstein is out sick.”

“Great. This might have to wait till tomorrow...”

Monroe leaned forward from the back seat.

“Come on—Lily is
in there,
dude, right now! I know she is!”

“You don’t
know
that, Monroe,” Hank said.

“It’s... I can
sense
it. I’ve got a kind of paternal connection with that girl. Blutbaden can sense things. She’s
in that building.”

“Connection with a girl you never met?” Hank said. “Getting kind of creepy, Monroe.”

Monroe went very still... then snarled at Hank.

“Take that back.”

“Whoa!” Hank laughed nervously. “I didn’t mean it. Chill out. But you’re going to have to wait for us to raid the place. We can set up surveillance on it.”

Monroe made a visible effort to calm down, but his eyes were narrowed and his lips compressed. He was close to going Blutbad.

“Hank, if you put some cops out there watching the place, then they’ll spot them—they got some guys on the roof. They’ll make her a hostage or something.”

“Guys on the roof? You mean Icy Touch gangsters?” Nick asked.

“I’m guessing. I don’t know what kind of Wesen they are but they gave me the heebie jeebies.” Monroe pointed at Hank. “And don’t say
I
give you the heebie jeebies.”

Hank shrugged. “Okay, I won’t say it.”

“If they’ve got lookouts on the roof,” Nick said, thinking aloud, “all the more reason we need a warrant. We can get a major raid going and really surround the area.”

Hank ran the edge of his thumb along his close-clipped goatee.

“What happens if a lot of cops run in there and these guys are, like, woged?”

Nick shrugged. “They’ll know when someone’s busting in on them. They’ll change to human form. So far The Icy Touch has kept to that part of the code. They show themselves to other Wesen—not to anyone else. Not that they’re necessarily going to come along like good boys.”

Monroe shook his head in disgust.

“Let’s just move in on these guys. Hey—maybe I can provoke them and you can come to my defense? Like, ‘We were driving by and saw them attacking this poor helpless citizen.’”

Hank snorted. “No, Monroe.” He turned to Nick. “You’re not going to play that game, are you? Because I’m already bothered we’re skirting the law three or four ways on all this. We’re holding stuff back from the feds. From the department. We need to do this by the book for once.”

“She’s a fourteen-year-old girl!” Monroe said, desperately. “They could be raping her right now!”

“
If
she’s even in there,” Nick said. “I know how you feel, Monroe, but...”