The Nature of the Beast (26 page)

After several minutes, he composed himself, wiped his nose on his sleeve and reached into his pocket. As always, the cold steel gave him comfort.

He looked down at the boy
.
“
It
’
s over now.
”
His words were tinged with sadness. Almost an apology.
Didn
’
t matter though.

The boy was gone.

__

Halfway to the front of the garage, the rapidly diminishing crack of light disappeared altogether, leaving Craig and Williams stumbling arm and arm through the darkness.

Above their heads, the hissing doubled in decibels.

“Stay low,” Craig said, grabbing her by the shoulder and pulling her to her knees.

Shoulder to shoulder, they crawled the last few yards in quadrupedic lockstep.

“Hold your breath,” he said again.

Under the circumstances, Audrey was not inclined to argue. She counted off seconds in her head, watching in bug-eyed silence as Jackson Craig rose to his feet, found a hand-hold and attempted to force the door open. The door groaned but didn’t budge. He tried again. Again with no result. He dropped to his knees by her side and began to cough into his hand.

Audrey sought his eyes in the darkness when her breath suddenly gave out in a great whoosh. She sucked in air…air that tasted as if it had been burnt. Immediately, her lungs began to itch. She coughed. Her chest felt heavy and wet now, as if she was trying to breathe underwater. She groaned and rolled over onto her back.

Next thing she knew, Jackson Craig had her by the collar and was dragging her away from the steel door. She opened her mouth to speak but found herself unable to inhale. Her lips suddenly felt cracked and dry. She closed her eyes and was transported in time, back to Branchbrook Park when she’d fallen from her bicycle and landed on the handlebars. She was nine and the blow to her solar plexus had left her gasping and unable to breathe for the only other time in her life. It was a feeling she’d never forgotten. She was still gasping for breath and gazing upward through remembered trees when the first gunshot jolted her from her reverie.

In such an enclosed area, the noise quickly fell to the floor. Another shot and then two more followed and then, before she could fully process what was happening, Craig was dragging her again. This time, he turned her over onto her stomach and took her head in both of his hands. He pushed her face up against the cold steel of the door. Instinctively, she resisted, but Craig was far too strong, pushing her forward despite her best efforts to prevent him.

“Breathe,” he ordered. “Breathe.”

A jet of cold fresh air on her cheek slackened her urge to struggle. Her lips sought the aperture and then quickly closed around it. She hacked several times but never took her lips from the life-giving bullet holes. From the corner of her eye, she watched as Jackson Craig likewise used his puckered lips to pull fresh air into his tortured lungs from another set of holes in the garage door.

After several deep breaths, Craig recovered sufficiently to rummage through his various pockets, find his phone and then to hold his breath long enough to call 911. The dispatcher was brief and to the point. “Shouldn’t take but a minute or two sir,” she said. “We’ve got an ‘officer down’ call right around the corner from your position. Half the department’s down there already.”

48

Michael was lost.
He
’
d tried really hard to memorize the tangled knot of tunnels but had almost immediately lost track of his lefts and rights, a distinction about which, on the best of days, he
’
d never been too terribly clear.
Everything down here looked the same, smelled the same, brick and stone, stone and brick. Cold. Wet.
Wet. Cold.

The same
survival instinct that forced a baby antelope to its feet seconds after being born, kept Michael moving away from the light, away from the voice, moving deeper and deeper into the underground maze, despite an abiding fear of the dark.

He remembered the last words Becky said to him.
“
Be brave,
”
she
’
d told him. He was trying as hard as he could, but terror kept creeping in,
like the squirrels they
’
d had in the attic last winter. He clamped both hands over his mouth and swallowed a sob.

“
Be brave,
”
he told himself again.

Somewhere in the gloom, the man was calling his name.
Michael couldn
’
t tell whether the voice was getting closer or moving further away, only that it was moving.

Michael looked around.
He
’
d come to a T in the tunnel.
To the left an oily canal flowed around a corner and out of sight.
The other way a rusted set of stairs clung precariously to the back wall of the building.

“
Be brave,
”
he said to himself as he mounted the first step.

A century
’
s worth of grime and rust crunched and crumbled beneath the soles of his sneakers.
He reached out and grabbed the rail only to have a layer of decomposing metal come loose and stick to his hand.
He stopped climbing, wiped his crusty palm on the front of his shirt, and then continued up, one step at a time, looking only forward and upward, telling himself,
“
Be brave.
Be Brave.
”
He tried counting the steps but lost count right after seventeen.
He started over.
“
One…two…
”

The sound of the man came roiling up the stairway like a tongue of fire.Michael forced himself to keep moving.
“
Nine…ten…
”

Michael felt the vibrations in his feet. A tremor in the metal as the man stepped onto the staircase.
And then the feel of rapid footfalls as the man began to climb.

__

The young man lay on his back, one leg bent awkwardly beneath his body, his dull, lusterless eyes staring at the sky. A narrow stream of blood had trickled across the sidewalk before disappearing down a crack. Under the circumstances, the mandatory iridescent safety vest seemed both garishly colored and pitifully ineffective, especially with a trio of bloody holes decorating the front.

“Where’s his stack of posters,” Craig asked.

Detective Sergeant Leonard looked around and shrugged. “We found one of em wadded up on the pavement. Forensics took it with ‘em. They’re dusting it for prints.” He scanned the immediate area again. “Perp must’ve taken the rest,” he suggested.

As Craig had noted earlier, Detective Sergeant Leonard was quite a snappy dresser. Everything on his body was top of the line and European. Unless he was independently wealthy, Craig figured he had to be single. Wives and kids tended to put the kibosh on six hundred dollar loafers.

Craig scanned nearest light poles. “Let me guess. No cameras on this block.”

“No,” the sergeant said.

“Figures,” Audrey said.

“Why’s that figure?”

“He goes out of his way to avoid cameras,” Craig said.

“And he’s wired into the CPD surveillance network,” Audrey added. “So he knows where the cameras are and how to avoid them as much as possible.”

“Thinking was…there’s nothing down here to tape,” the cop said disgustedly. He pointed south. “Got a moving and storage company and a little bodega down on Killkenny.” He dropped his hands to his sides with a slap. “Other that that it’s all either old-school industrial or condemned and waiting for the next wave of yuppie gentrification to begin.”

“Any idea on a time-line?” Audrey asked.

“The techs say he’d been down maybe a half-hour when he was found. Just about cold but no sign of rigor.”

“Who found the body?”

“The kid was supposed to meet one of the other recruits whenever he got done with this block. When he didn’t show, the other kid came looking for him. Found him right where he is now.”

“What about cameras at the storage company and the bodega?” Audrey asked.

“We’ve got footage from both of them. Half hour before and after. Four customers at the bodega. Two men, two women. Two at the moving and storage joint. Both men. I’ve seen the tape. Believe me, nothing exactly jumps off the screen. Just regular people doing regular shit.” He anticipated the next query. “We’re running everybody down, checking everybody out, top to bottom.”

“Could you make us a copy?” Craig asked. “We’ll run it through Bio-Metric Analysis and see if there’s anything there.”

Leonard nodded and then shot a glance back over his shoulder. A small army of cops, firemen and other emergency personnel milled around between the barricades. Directly across the street, half a dozen suits and ties leaned together in a tight whispering knot. Every ten seconds or so one of the heads snuck a look at the body on the sidewalk and then went back to the fevered whispering.

Leonard turned his back on them. He stepped closer to Craig. “The brass is real jumpy about this. Not only have we just lost one of our own but there’s some question of legal liability regarding the death of a trainee. That’s how come so damn many suits are down in this neck of the woods risking their shoe shines.”

On the sidewalk behind the sergeant, the Chicago Medical Examiner’s minions were lifting the young man’s body into a black rubber bag.

“Heard you had a little excitement over on Raven Street,” Leonard said.

“A bit more than we bargained for I’m afraid,” Craig allowed.

The cops eyes narrowed. “I thought we agreed. You were going to keep us in the loop.”

“Just trying to make ourselves useful,” Craig said apologetically.

“If you don’t mind me saying, soul kissing garage doors doesn’t lend much to your agency credibility.”

“Place had a Halon system big enough for a bowling alley,” Craig groused. “About ten seconds after the system activated there wasn’t enough oxygen in that bloody garage to keep a canary alive.”

“Nasty stuff,” Leonard said. “Probably why they don’t let ‘em make it anymore.”

“The place had mostly been cleaned out. ATF’s going through what’s left now.”

Leonard started across the street. “Lemme see what I can do about a copy of that video for you.”

Audrey sidled over. “Nice suit,” she commented.

“English,” Craig said. “Henry Poole, I imagine.”

“You know what’s bothering me here?” she asked as soon as the sergeant was out of earshot.

“Same thing that’s bothering me,” Craig said.

Audrey raised a quizzical brow. “No quote about how great minds think alike?”

“No,” he said emphatically. “Everybody’s so tied up in the politics that nobody’s asking how it is that this recruit walks up and engages our suspect
in the first place
…” His voice rose slightly. “…stands face to face with him, close enough for knife work and what?… he doesn’t recognize the face he’s been plastering up all over this part of the city all afternoon.”

“Unless the sketch is way off.”

“Composites certainly run the gamut,” Craig said. “I’ve had them spot on and I’ve had a few that made you wonder what the witness had been drinking.”

The sound of shoes slapping on concrete drew their attention out into the street. Sergeant Leonard was jogging their way. His right index finger was poking through the hole in a CD. He pushed it toward Audrey, who slipped it into her jacket pocket.

“Helicopter reports a kid on a roof top,” he said.

49

For a moment, Michael wondered if he
’
d died.
As he stumbled out onto the roof,
the roar of heaven and the bright white celestial light cascaded down from the sky in a dazzling cone of brilliance.
All he could think of was the picture of Jesus in his momma
’
s Bible, walking on air, arms spread wide, awash in heavenly illumination as he suffered the little children. He wasn
’
t exactly sure what that meant, but the suffering part didn
’
t sound too good.

Celestial wonder faded when he tripped over a broken piece of concrete block and dropped
to his hands and knees. The tiny pieces of gravel imbedded in his palms quickly dispelled any confusion he may have been experiencing.
He whimpered, dusted his hands together and again looked skyward for deliverance.

The roar of the turbine engine was deafening; the light was blinding.
He shaded his eyes, but it didn
’
t help.
An amplified voice rang out from above.
“
Stay where you are,
”
the voice said.
“
Stay where you are.
”

He covered his ears and toddled forward, trying to escape the glare of the halogen lights, weaving through the forest of chimneys and plumbing vents rising from the roof-top.
The ancient tar and gravel surface was littered with debris.
Cans and bottles, old buckets of tar and pieces of broken brick.
He picked his way among the rubble, glancing up every other step, watching as a man in a helmet swung out in a rescue sling and started down toward him.
Michael waved.
Helmet waved back.

Bang.
The loud report scared him so badly he nearly lost his balance.
He turned toward the sound.
The man was dressed like a robot.
A black canvas bag slung over his shoulder and the big shiny gun in his hand.
Same gun he
’
d shot the mail lady with.
The man aimed upward and fired again.
By the time Michael processed the information and checked the sky again, the helicopter was veering off to the left with the man in the helmet swinging wildly beneath the fuselage like a yo-yo on
a string.