Steel Breeze (10 page)

She
hadn’t put on a combat suit since the academy. Part of her wanted the workout,
the exhilaration of sparing. At the risk of sounding like a wimp, she said,
“It’s a little cold in here, can I keep my socks on?”

“Sure,”
Marshall said, and tossed a t-shirt emblazoned with his logo at her. “You can
keep that; it’s good advertising for me. Locker room’s over there.”

* * *

When
she returned, Marshall was already wearing a full suit. He nodded at the pads
on the mat at his feet. “Those should fit you,” he said. “You can ask me about
swords while you suit up.”

“I’m
not so sure about these pants,” she said. “Limited range of motion. Maybe I
should come back for the session on another day.”

“Right,
because when a perp attacks you in the course of your duties, you’re gonna be
wearing some nice roomy sweatpants or a karate
gi
.”

“Okay,
point taken. But if they rip, I will not be happy with you.”

He
nodded but didn’t make any promises.

Drelick
remembered the basics of hand-to-hand training gear, and in a moment she was
outfitted with pads and feeling like a clown. But she’d found it impossible to
start interviewing Marshall while stepping into a groin protector and adjusting
various lengths of Velcro strapping on her arms and legs. She rose from the
crouching position in which she’d been adjusting the last shin guard and peered
into the helmet, wondering how much fermented sweat glazed the interior. It was
equipped with a face shield. Marshall’s was in the up position.

“We’ll
use the face shields instead of mouth guards so we can talk,” he said. “What’s
your first question?”

Drelick
tucked the helmet under her arm and gathered her thoughts. He was driving
everything, and she didn’t like that. She figured he was the type who not only preferred
to have authority figures approach him on his own territory but who also needed
to upend the hierarchy by throwing them off balance and establishing his own top-dog
status as early as possible. Of course, she did have Pasco to thank for
enrolling her in the lesson, and she resolved to inflict something equally
uncomfortable on him in the near future.

“Do
you know much about Japanese sword culture?”

“Of
course. Edged weapons are my specialty, and the
katana
is the ultimate
blade.”

“Do
you teach it?”

He
snorted. “No. I teach knife defense, but nobody uses swords in a street fight. I’ve
consulted in a few movies where they wanted the sword fighting to look real,
but in a real knife fight you’re dealing with a concealed weapon and a style
derived from prison shanking.”

“Actually,
some people do still use swords. Maybe you saw Geoff Lamprey on the news?”

“The
guy they found with no head?”

“Yes.
That’s my case.”

“What
makes you think it was a
katana
? Put your helmet on, let’s get started.”

She
put it on, adjusted the strap, and lowered the face shield. “Just a hunch,
really, but maybe you can confirm it. Steel blades are oiled for preservation,
right?”

“And
for lubrication…quick draw. A blade that isn’t worn upside down for gravity
release usually needs a little grease.”

“Can
you tell me why a sword might have clove oil on it?”

“You
could have learned that from the internet.”

“I
like to do things the old‐fashioned way, with human experts.”

Marshall
lowered his face shield. It darkened his tone of voice. “And that’s why they
say the government is inefficient.”

Drelick
brought her own shield down. She wasn’t even stretched. This—whatever it
was—was going to suck.

“While
we’re talking I’m going to spontaneously attack you,” Marshall said, “Like a
suspect might do during an interview. I want you to just react the way you
would. Defend yourself. Okay?”

“Got
it.”

“Japanese
sword oil is called
choji
. It’s just mineral oil with a few drops of
clove oil added for fragrance. The samurai wanted to give his sword oil a smell
that would set it apart from the cooking oil. Mineral oil is a laxative, so if
his wife mixed them up and put the sword oil in the wok, the poor guy would end
up with a raging case of the shits.”

Drelick
laughed. Marshall seized the unguarded moment to throw a few punches at her
midsection. They were controlled, but still carried enough force to throw her
off balance. She regained it quickly by sidestepping, but he closed the
distance fast, swinging a hammer fist at her from the side and connecting with
the padded collar around her throat. That hurt. She jumped backward while
launching a front kick to his chest, driving him back but failing to knock him
down.

Drelick
caught her breath and, keeping her fists up in a guarding position, asked, “Why
would a modern martial artist still use clove oil on a sword? It’s not like
they’re living in one-room huts anymore.”

Marshall
grinned. She wasn’t sure if he was amused by her defense reaction or her
question.

“You
should meet some of my students,” he said. “One‐room huts are now studio
apartments. But you're right; no real need with labels on everything. Still,
Iaido
practitioners are fussy about details. Hung up on ceremony and tradition.”

“So
it's more like a ceremonial thing these days, the oil?”

“Still
keeps the blade well lubricated, but the scent? Yeah, that's like incense. Reminds
them of the tradition.”

“Sounds
ritualistic.”

“Absolutely.
Some of them practice in front of mirrors,” he said, gesturing at a wall of
mirrors opposite the pale windows, “to make sure they're radiating enough of a
fierce warrior gaze. Supposedly the whole practice is a meditation on death.”

Drelick
looked at herself in the mirrored wall. There were white lines streaked across
the black fabric covering her neck and abdomen. She turned her right arm over
and examined the underside of the black forearm guard. More white lines. Chalk.

Marshall
turned his palm out and revealed a silver-painted plastic training knife with a
chalked edge. “Didn't even know I had it in my hand, did you?”

“How
did I not see that?”

“In
the real world you won't. Movies always show you the knife. Criminals don't.
You'll think it's just another punch when they stab it into you. And with the
adrenaline, you won’t feel it right away, either.”

Now
he had her attention. Now she wanted the lesson.

“
I
use some oil for training, too: baby oil, but here it serves a different
purpose. If someone attacks you with a knife, you will almost definitely get
cut. That’s just something you have to accept and work with. Any self-defense
move you can't do with oiled hands and forearms isn't going to work in a real
knife fight when your blood will be lubricating everything.”

She
still had other questions for him, academic questions, but now the most
pressing was, “What's the best way to disarm an attacker with a blade?” The
training she had received at Quantico suddenly felt woefully inadequate.

Chapter 9

Desmond parked
on the street in front of Laurie’s house. He didn’t know when her husband would
be getting home and didn’t want to be blocking the driveway, even though he
planned on picking Lucas up as quickly as he could. It was getting close to
bedtime.

When
he called to let her know he was running late, she sounded perfectly happy to
be entertaining Lucas, but that had been two hours ago. The wall patch had
needed several thin coats of spackle with sanding in between to ensure that it
wouldn’t be noticeable if anyone took the mirror off the wall. But he didn’t
bore her with the details of his day hiding a murder weapon in his apartment. He
had pressed the END button on his phone with an overwhelming sense of relief
that Lucas hadn’t been snatched from her yard by a man in an indigo hoodie.

Before
Desmond was out of the car, he could see Lucas in the front bay window,
standing on a couch and staring out at him. By the time he was halfway up the
brick walk, Lucas was framed in the storm door with Laurie standing behind him,
smiling. She opened the door, and Lucas yelled, “Daddy! Me and Carl played
space ship in the tree fort and I got bubbles, look!” Lucas held a bottle of
bubble juice aloft as if it were the elixir of life.

“Space
orbs,” Laurie said, setting a hand on Lucas’s shoulder, and for a moment,
Desmond had to catch his breath against one of those emotional flash floods
that sometimes washed through him without warning. The sight of Lucas all lit
up with delight over a game that someone else had played with him, a gentle,
generous woman…. Desmond bent down on one knee, took the blue plastic bottle
and examined it closely until he was sure the moisture gathering in his eyes
and sinuses wasn’t going to spill over. “Wow, real space orbs, huh? That’s
awesome.”

He
stood up and tousled Lucas’s hair. Laurie was still smiling. “Thanks,” Desmond
said. “I owe you one. Did he behave himself for you?”

“He’s
a perfect gentleman, just like his father.”

“And
he ate?”

“Some.
He says he likes the mac and cheese from the box better.”

“Yeah,
we eat a lot of that.”

Lucas’s
knapsack was sitting by the door. Desmond picked it up and slung it over his
shoulder. “Okay, buddy, it’s getting late and we need to get home for story
time. Did you say goodbye to Carl?”

“Bye,
Carl!” Lucas called down the hall toward the den, from which the sounds of a
laser gun shoot out could be heard. “Seeya, Lucas!” echoed back.

Lucas
tugged at the straps of the knapsack hanging at Desmond’s hip and said, “Daddy,
I want to show you something.”

“How
about when we get home?”

“I
want to show you the paper airplane.”

“I
think it’s a butterfly,” Laurie said.

“When
we get home, buddy. Let’s let Carl and his Mom get some rest. C’mon, take my
hand.”

Laurie
watched from the doorway until they were in the car. Desmond turned the key and
put The Beatles on. By the time the SUV rolled into the beach apartment
driveway and Desmond killed the engine and the music with it, Lucas was fast asleep
in his car seat. Desmond carried him to bed without waking him, thinking as he
did so that it wouldn’t be long before his son was too big to be transferred
like this. Carrying Lucas up the stairs and down the hall, he watched his own
reflection in the full-length mirror, growing larger as he approached it with
Lucas’s body sagging in his arms. He thought of the sword in the wall behind
the mirror, sleeping in the dark.

He
laid Lucas in bed, brushed the sweaty hair from his brow, and gently kissed his
forehead. A flickering motion caught his eye, and as he rose from the mattress
and reached to switch off the bedside lamp, he saw the unmistakable play of
blue strobes splashing across the ceiling and a high corner of the wall. Desmond
felt something in him clench tight at the realization that the flashers weren’t
moving across the ceiling the way they would if a police cruiser were passing
by. They were fixed in one spot. The police were parked outside, and apparently
they weren’t here to discretely stand watch for a hooded prowler in a samurai
mask.

Desmond
clicked off the lamp and moved to one side of the window. There was a single black-and-white
cruiser parked on the street. A uniformed officer was walking up the driveway
beside Desmond’s SUV with the white circle of his flashlight floating ahead of him
like a rising full moon, his partner climbing out of the car behind him. The
wind picked up and sent a scattering of sand across the street, drawing
Desmond’s gaze to another figure perched at the edge of the property beside a
silver Impala. He knew that car, and the lines of that silhouette—Phil Parsons.

Desmond
looked at Lucas. His first thought was that they couldn’t come in, it would
wake him, and then it would take most of an hour to get him back to sleep. They
couldn’t just show up at any hour and disturb his sleeping child. They had no
right. But, of course, they wouldn’t be here with flashers on if they didn’t
have some kind of right. An animal urge to wrap Lucas in his arms and flee out
the back door like a fugitive stirred from dormancy, dumping adrenaline into
his system. He recognized the feeling for what it was—a primal instinct to
protect his own. And what exactly did they think
they
were doing
here…protecting Lucas from
him?
“I don’t fucking think so,” he whispered
at the windowpane.

Desmond
took one more look at Lucas, then vaulted down the stairs and pulled the front
door open before they could knock on it. They could talk to him on his
doorstep.

Phil
had advanced some way up the driveway, but he was still hanging back behind the
uniforms, blue light painting his face in rapid intervals between the shadows. Desmond
looked past the officers to the flickering form of his antagonist. “What are
you doing here, Phil?”

Phil
Parsons didn’t answer the question; he just shoved his hands into his pockets
and looked up at Lucas’s bedroom window.

The
first officer to reach the steps addressed him. “Desmond Carmichael?”

“Yeah.”

“We
have a citation to remove your son Lucas Carmichael from the home. Mr. Parsons
has been granted an emergency temporary appointment of guardianship, and he has
a child safety seat in his car for the transfer.”

“Show
me the paper.”

The
cop held out an envelope. Desmond took it, removed the document, and set his eyes
on it, but the adrenaline made it hard to focus.

Sua Sponte
Order for Transfer of Care and Custody

After
taking in the title, his head swam, and fragments of the document flashed up at
him, raising his heart rate: Docket #...Lucas’s name and date of birth…without
proper guardianship...incapacity or unfitness of the parent or guardian…where
it was determined that this child’s safety and welfare required that he/she be
placed in the custody of the Department of Social Services pending a further
hearing…. Chapter 119, section 23C…continuation of the child in his or her home
is contrary to his or her best interest…signed by a Justice of the Probate and
Family Court.

“How
did you do it?” Desmond asked Phil.

This
time Phil looked at him but didn’t reply.

“You
have some old dirt on a judge? Is that how you got this? Because this is
bullshit. It won’t stand, and I swear to God, if you put him through this for
something so thin that I can rectify it on Monday….” He shook his head, didn’t
even know what to threaten, and now he could feel the cops staring at him.

“You
can’t rectify this, Desmond,” Phil said, “and you know on what grounds.”

Desmond
could feel the tension in his neck muscles, the grinding of his teeth. “Enlighten
me,” he said.

“I
had a private eye take pictures of you bringing that godforsaken sword into the
house. You’re not fit, Desmond, not anymore. It’s an unsafe environment.”

Desmond
finally looked at the cops. “Search the house,” he said, “You won’t find
anything. No weapons, nothing. See for yourselves.”

“Sir,
we’re not here on a search warrant.”

“I’m
inviting you in.”

“We’re
just here to pick up your son.”

Desmond
was surprised by the fire those words stoked in his gut. They couldn’t take
Lucas. A monster had taken Sandy, and now the men who were supposed to protect
people from monsters were going to take Lucas from him, too? He would have
nothing left.”

“Is
your son in the bedroom, sir?”

“He’s
sleeping. Come back in the morning.”

“I’m
afraid we can’t do that,” the officer said. “Please wake him and bring him to
his grandfather.”

Desmond
took a step forward, but the two uniforms blocked his advance. “You know I
didn’t kill her Phil. You do know that, don’t you?”

Phil
Parsons’ stoic façade caved in a little, and Desmond could see a flicker of
bright pain beneath the awful aging loss had inflicted upon him. “You’re making
it hard for me to know anything, Des.”

“You
can stop this before it starts,” Desmond said. “He lost his mother, and now
you’re going to confuse him, you’re going to hurt him again. Don’t.”

“I’m
not going to lose all that’s left of my daughter just because you’re unstable.”

“
Unstable?
Someone is stalking us! What more has to happen for you to accept that?”

“Let
it go, son. Don’t dig yourself deeper.”

Desmond
shook his head as Phil continued, “You’ve lost your job, you’re scaring him
with a mask and God only knows what kind of stories. You want to be a hero like
in one of your books? Then don’t go making up monsters. Don’t bring the thing
that killed his mother into the house like you’re gonna slay a dragon with it
or some crazy shit. Be a man and get him out of this dump.”

“
You
gave me that fucking thing in the first place, Phil.
You
brought it into
our home. You’re one to talk.”

The
second cop, the one who hadn’t spoken yet, put a hand on Desmond’s shoulder and
said, “You two can save all this for the court date. Right now, I need you to
get your son and put him in Mr. Parsons’ car, sir.” The cop turned sideways and
placed his body between the two men, ready to start pushing them away from each
other if it came to blows.

With
a quieter tone than the one he’d been using, Phil said, “He’s still sleeping,
Des. There are two ways this can go. Think about it.”

It
was true. There were only two ways for Lucas to leave the house tonight, but he
was
leaving. He was leaving because men with guns were here. Desmond
took a step backward, felt his shoulders crumble inward, fumbled with the door,
and opened it slowly. “Okay. I’ll get him,” he said.

“Don’t
dally, sir, or we’ll have to come in.”

Desmond
glared at the cop, then stepped into the apartment and pushed the storm door
closed until the latch clicked. He left the inner door open so they could watch
him through the glass as he climbed the stairs.

Standing
at Lucas’s bedside, watching the dim reflection of the pulsing blue lights on
his son’s cheek, he felt helpless. Lucas had been asleep for less than an hour;
just enough time for him to be cranky if woken. Desmond shook his shoulder and
spoke his name. Lucas wrinkled his face, swatted at the offending hand, and tried
to roll back into his original position. Desmond shook him again.

“No,”
Lucas said.

“Hey,
buddy. Time to wake up. Papa’s here.”

“No.”

“I’m
sorry, but you have to go to Nana and Papa’s for a sleepover.”

“No,
Daddy. I don’t want to.”

“You
can go right back to sleep when you get there, okay? Nana will make you
pancakes in the morning.”

Desmond
lifted him and carried him down the stairs, arms locked under his bottom to
form a seat. Lucas had almost fallen back asleep when Desmond set him down on
the couch to gather a few essentials—toothbrush, toothpaste, vitamins, and a
favorite toy—and toss them in the knapsack with the change of clothes, still
sitting by the front door under the coat rack where he had dropped it when they
got home from Laurie’s house.

Lucas
slid off of the couch onto his knees and started crying. “I don’t
want
to go to Nana and Papa’s house, I don’t
want
to,
I don’t want to go!
”
It became a mantra that quickly devolved into a mess of snot-clogged howling. Desmond
tried to tune it out and focus on packing. The cops beyond the glass made no
secret of the fact that they were watching. “I want to stay with
you
,
Daddy. Daddy, I want to stay with
you.
” It was a typical tantrum for an
overtired kid, but to Desmond it felt like Lucas was playing the role of the
Chorus in a Greek tragedy, giving voice to his own wretched emotions. The poor
kid had no reason to believe it would be for more than one night, and he was
this upset. What would they tell him tomorrow night and the night after that?