Grimm - The Icy Touch (24 page)

Or maybe not.

Some Blutbad intuition stirred in Monroe, then. He felt a piercing pang of worry about his friend.

Nick? Are you okay?

* * *

Nick pulled up on the road’s shoulder across the highway from the bar. He cut the lights and the engine, and looked the place over. Last time he’d driven past the roadhouse, months ago, it had looked like it had gone out of business. It didn’t appear much livelier now.

Just fifty yards from the broad dark sweep of the Columbia River, the roadhouse was a one-story rectangular building with a false front of half-logs to give it a frontier appearance. It looked run down, paint peeling, the neon Heineken sign in its only window brown with dust. But there was a bigger sign on a pole that was lit up against the night sky, “Joey’s River Snag.” The sign flickered, and the “N” on “SNAG” went out.

Nick snorted.
S AG
.

There were lights in the curtained window, too. And when he switched off the engine and opened the car door, he could hear Hank Williams on a jukebox. He couldn’t see any cars in the gravel parking lot—wait, there was one, a white vehicle of some kind parked around back, on the Columbia River side.

Nick checked that his light-weight polymer S&W was loose in its holster under his coat, and waited as a lumber truck rumbled by, its headlights seeming to turn and take him in as it came around the curve. As it passed he could smell the fresh cut fir strapped to its trailer.

He angled across the highway, heading to the right side of the building, hurrying so he was less likely to be a handy target from that front window. Maybe this guy Weems was on the up and up. But it seemed a pretty big coincidence, this old friend of his parents cropping up just when the Icy Touch trouble was going down.

Nick ignored the front door and headed for the one in the side of the building. His shoes crunched across the gravel as he approached it. He reached for the doorknob... then heard someone walking up behind him.

He spun, and saw an old man with a sparse white beard, a red windbreaker, and a white golf cap.

“I’m Chance Weems,” the old man said. He grinned, snaggled teeth, and stuck out his hand.

“You move quietly, and fast,” Nick remarked, as he took the man’s hand.

Then his Grimm insight showed him Weems’ true face. He was a Hundjager.

“You’re Wesen!” Nick blurted, starting to pull his hand back.

But Weems gripped it, hard. It was Nick’s gun hand and Weems held on tight—and grinned. He woged.

Nick twisted his hand free, reached for his gun—he heard the door to the bar opening behind him. He started to turn toward it.

But he never got completely turned around.

Something heavy hit him the side of the head, hard.

He staggered, then he was struck painfully in the chest... and his back arched as electricity coursed through him.

Taser.

He was in a shining white emptiness. He heard three tentative heartbeats—and his vision faded in.

He was lying on his back, with three Wesen standing over him. Two were Hundjager—Weems and a taller, leaner man in a tailored suit. The leering Hundjager beast-face sprouted out of the suit jacket—a Hundjager with a red silk tie—like something from a bad dream.

The third Wesen was almost a Minotaur. He was a Mordstier, complete with stubby horns, flopping bovine ears, a bull’s muzzle, and red eyes.

Weems had Nick’s gun in his hand.

“Tell you something, Grimm,” Weems growled, pointing the gun at Nick. “I
did
know your mama. She tried to kill me—I got away by the skin of my teeth, but she did kill my son. Seems she objected to something in our diet.” He turned to the taller Hundjager. “Denswoz— you promised me I could feed on his flesh.”

“You will, when the time comes. After I’m done with him,” snarled the Hundjager in the finely tailored suit. He turned to the Mordstier. “Grogan—take care of him. We’re too out in the open here.”

Nick tried to get up but he was still half paralyzed. The Mordstier dropped his knee on Nick’s chest, pinned him down, squeezing the breath out of him. There was something shiny in the Mordstier’s inhuman hand—Nick tried to knock it away, but Denswoz, growling, stamped his boot down on Nick’s wrist, holding it down, so that the Mordstier could drive the syringe home.

Trooper Virgil Vallen was patrolling the I-5 south of Roseburg, wondering when they were going to get around to changing his shift. He’d been almost three years on this night shift. He had commendations. He’d
earned
a day shift. It had been promised to him. But he was still out here on the freeway at close to eleven p.m., wondering if his wife was sleeping okay without him. Marlene was getting hung up on sleeping pills lately.

Vallen had trouble sleeping himself, on this shift, and he was feeling it. Maybe stop for some coffee... At least the rain had let up...

A car whipped past him in the fast lane. Toyota Camry, looked like, heading south—doing at least eighty-five. He glimpsed a male driver.

Fast lane’s not quite that fast, pal.

Vallen hit the lights and siren. He floored the accelerator to catch up with the Camry. At first he thought the guy wasn’t going to stop and he radioed Trooper Garcia for back up.

“You close, five-seven? I’m just passing the first truck stop south of Roseburg.”

“Copy, Virgil. Coming north, less than two miles out.”

“Hold on, he’s signaling and slowing—looks like he decided to pull over... Be good if you swung by anyway.”

“Copy, roger that. Got to get to an overpass...”

The Camry cut so sharply across lanes to the right road shoulder, once more Vallen thought the driver was going to run for it. But the vehicle fishtailed to a dusty stop in the gravel of the shoulder. The car still had its engine on.

Vallen pulled up behind, not too close, pretty sure this driver was out of it. He could be panicked by the police, could be on meth—or something else. He could be dangerous.

He wondered if he ought to wait for Garcia, but the guy in the Camry might flip out and take off during the wait.

Vallen slowly got out of the State Police patrol car, drawing his gun but keeping it low at his side. He approached the car close to its driver’s side rear fender, so the driver wouldn’t have an easy shooting angle on him.

Two cars drove by, and a semi truck. He could feel the wind of the truck passing. To his right was a shallow ditch with a little running water, and a big, dark field of sedge. Way, way off in the distance were the lights of houses. It was a lonely place on a dark road.

“Sir?” Vallen called. “Can you cut your engine?”

No response. Tailpipe was still spewing exhaust.

“Sir! Cut your engine!” Vallen called louder.

The engine cut. The driver rolled down his side window.

“I have to go,” the driver shouted, in accented English. Latino guy.

“You’ll have to wait here, sir!”

Vallen returned to his patrol car, holstered his gun, and called in the Camry’s plate. Driver was listed as “Santiago Mendoza.” Naturalized United States citizen. And... there was a warrant out on him. He was wanted by the FBI for questioning.

Vallen was glad to see Garcia pull up close behind.

“Virgil? Anything I should know?” Garcia radioed.

“Yeah. APB on the guy. Feds want him for questioning. Mexican cartel connections. Naturalized citizen, Latino. Maybe you can talk to him better but he seemed to understand me when I told him to turn the engine off.”

“Copy. You want me to come up on the right side, or you want to wait for more back up?”

“Let’s see if we can do this. You take the right.”

The troopers got out of their vehicles, and Vallen waited for Garcia to come up on his right. Then they approached the car, guns drawn and ready, safeties off. Vehicles whisked by. Vallen could hear a big truck coming up behind.

The two officers stopped just behind the Camry

“Mr. Mendoza!” Garcia called. “Keep your hands where we can see them, make sure there’s nothing in them, and get slowly out of your car!” He repeated the message in Spanish, loudly over the sound of the approaching semi-truck.

“I have to go!” the driver wailed. “Icy Touch!
Hombre bestia!
I can’t stay! They are coming—”

Something loomed on Vallen’s left, gray metal too close for comfort, and he stepped reflexively to his right.

It was as if a giant hammer had slammed into the Camry. A semi-truck without a trailer, as big a cab on it as he’d ever seen, crunched into the Camry at the driver’s side door, slamming it at a sharp angle and ramming it across the shoulder. With the Camry pushed lower, half into the ditch, the semi-truck rolled up on top of the Camry, as if it were part of a monster truck show, crushing it, almost flattening it.

Vallen could see blood squirting through a break in the roof of the car.

The truck kept going, into the wet, shallow ditch, water spraying under its wheels, bouncing when it hit the rise of the field, veering out of control—then flipping over on one side.

Vallen stared in amazement at the smashed car, the overturned truck.

Smoke suddenly billowed up from the crushed Camry.

Both troopers turned and ran toward Vallen’s cruiser, crouching behind it just in time to hear the Camry’s gas tank explode.

Vallen stood up. Flame streaked from the Camry, licking toward the gray sky; smoke billowed to veil the overturned truck.

The two men gaped at each other, Garcia shook his head.

“Holy shit,” he said.

They’d come so close to being run down. And the driver, Mendoza, was flattened. Had to be dead.

What was it he’d said?

“They are coming.”

Vallen shook his head, laughing softly in disbelief.

The two troopers turned to stare at the overturned semi. The door turned to the sky was open.

It hadn’t been a few moments before.

Was that someone running off into the darkness, beyond that barbed wire fence? Vallen wondered. Then the smoke drifted over his view again.

“You see somebody out there?” Vallen asked, nodding toward the field.

“No. Even if I did...”

“Yeah. I’ll call this in. Get some firetrucks out here and... Let’s wait for back up.”

Garcia, staring out into the darkness of the field, just nodded.

* * *

Renard was still in his office, working late, when the text came from Beatrice.

Check email.

He quickly hit refresh on his email, and an encrypted message from his cousin appeared.

He typed in the new password—a mix of Latin and Greek—and read:

Sean

Philippe convened the Gegengewicht committee. There is much skepticism. They cannot believe The Icy Touch is truly accomplishing all you claim. Not everyone is convinced the cartel is Wesen. They assume “a few Wesen members.” But this claim that it’s all predatory Wesen is hard for them to swallow. They need more proof. Something official. Everything you can give us. We will be careful with it.

B.

Renard clacked the computer mouse on his desk in irritation.

He deleted the message, then picked up his cell to make a phone call.

“Don Bloom here,” the FBI agent said crisply.

“It’s Sean Renard at Portland PD,” Renard said. “Sorry to call so late”

“It’s all right, Captain. What can I do for you?”

“First of all, anything new on The Icy Touch?”

“One gangster from the Shadow Heart bunch—
Sombra Corazón.
Guy named Santiago Mendoza. Staties picked him up heading south. We had him on a watch list, State Trooper busted him for speeding. Seemed kind of panicky. Called in his plates and we told him to hold the guy.”

“Where was this?”

“Near Roseburg. Mendoza tells ’em he can’t stay, someone’s after him. Says
Icy Touch.
Says
bestia hombres,
‘beast men’—sounds like that druggy myth stuff going around about The Icy Touch, right?”

“It kind of does,” Renard said. If this kept up, Bloom might start suspecting it was more than mythology.

“You have this Mendoza in custody, Don?”

“Nope. That’s the bitch of it.” Bloom told him the story about Santiago Mendoza’s death.

“Crap,” Renard muttered.

“Indeed. They’re crushing people with semi-trucks right in front of troopers. It was dark out there. There’s smoke, then the truck starts burning—the troopers get firemen out on the freeway. When the fire’s out... they can’t find anybody in the truck. No one! They searched the area. No one around. Just some tracks in the field by the road—too messy to get much from them.”

Some Wesen move fast,
Renard thought.
Very fast.

Aloud, Renard said, “Weird. Sounds like whoever it was had to be following this Mendoza in the truck, planning to take him out.”

“Yeah. The semi-truck was stolen. No prints. I was about to send you a report. Story’s going to be up on the news in the morning. Some of it, anyway. Clearly these bastards have big plans—just wish we knew what the Hell those plans are. They’re thorough—they go for the preemptive strike when it comes to keeping people quiet.”

“About reports—you gave us a pretty good selection on putative Icy Touch activities. But—it’s mostly American stuff. We sure could use some background on their European activities. France, say.”

Bloom chuckled. “You got wind of a... what was that movie? A French connection?”

“You could say that. Maybe if you’ve got a friend in the CIA... ?”

“Were you going to share this connection with us?”

“Just something one of the girls heard—the ones we got out of that warehouse out by the airport.”

“Well—send me a report. And I’ll see what I can find for you. First thing tomorrow. Right now, I’ve got dinner with some colleagues over here to get to.”

“Tomorrow’s fine. Thanks, Don.”

Renard hung up and stretched. He was hungry and fatigued himself. But he lingered at his desk, thinking.

Whatever the feds might have on The Icy Touch in Europe, it wouldn’t directly prove the Wesen connection to Gegengewicht. But maybe there were dots they could connect for themselves.