A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper #1) (40 page)

It was still dark when she came to. She couldn’t tell how long she’d been out, and she couldn’t move to look at her watch.
Oh my God, they’ve broken my neck,
she thought. She saw objects moving past her, each glowing dull red, barely illuminating whatever was carrying them—tiny skeletal faces—fangs, and claws and dead, empty eye sockets. The soul vessels appeared to be floating across the floor, with a carrion puppet escort. Then she felt claws, the creatures, touching her, moving under her. She tried to scream, but her mouth had been taped shut.

She felt herself being lifted, then made out the shape of the back door of her shop opening as she was carried through it, only a foot or so off the floor. Then she was hoisted nearly upright, and she felt herself falling into a dark abyss.

T
hey found the back door to the pawnshop open and the basset hound taped up in the corner. Rivera checked the shop with his weapon drawn and a flashlight in one hand, then called Charlie in from the alley when he found no one there.

Charlie turned on the shop lights as he came in. “Uh-oh,” he said.

“What?” Rivera said.

Charlie pointed to a display case with the glass broken out. “This case is where she displayed her soul vessels. It was nearly full when I was in here—now, well…”

Rivera looked at the empty case. “Don’t touch anything. Whatever happened here, I don’t think it was the same perp who hit the other shopkeepers.”

“Why?” Charlie looked back to the back room, to the bound basset hound.

“Because of him,” Rivera said. “You don’t tie up the dog if you’re going to slaughter the people and leave blood and body parts everywhere. That’s not the same kind of mentality.”

“Maybe she was tying him up when they surprised her,” Charlie said. “She kind of had the look of a lady cop.”

“Yeah, and all cops are into dog bondage, is that what you’re saying?” Rivera holstered his weapon, pulled a penknife from his pocket, and went to where the basset hound was squirming on the floor.

“No, I’m not. Sorry. She did have a gun, though.”

“She must have been here,” Rivera said. “Otherwise the alarms would have been set. What’s that on that doorjamb?” He was sawing through the duct tape on the basset’s paws, being careful not to cut him. He nodded toward the doorway from the shop to the back room.

“Blood,” Charlie said. “And a little hair.”

Rivera nodded. “That blood on the floor there, too? Don’t touch.”

Charlie looked at a three-inch puddle to the left of the door. “Yep, I think so.”

Rivera had the basset’s paws free and was kneeling on him to hold him still while he took the tape off his muzzle. “Those tracks in it, don’t smear them. What are they, partial shoe prints?”

“Look like bird-feet prints. Chickens maybe?”

“No.” Rivera released the basset, who immediately tried to jump on the inspector’s Italian dress slacks and lick his face in celebration. He held the basset hound by the collar and moved to where Charlie was examining the tracks.

“They do look like chicken tracks,” he said.

“Yep,” Charlie said. “And you have dog drool on your jacket.”

“I need to call this in, Charlie.”

“So dog drool is the determining factor in calling in backup?”

“Forget the dog drool. The dog drool is not relevant. I need to report this and I need to call my partner in. He’ll be pissed that I’ve waited this long. I need to take you home.”

“If you can’t get the stain out of that thousand-dollar suit jacket, you’ll think it’s relevant.”

“Focus, Charlie. As soon as I can get another unit here, I’m sending you home. You have my cell. Let me know if anything happens. Anything.”

Rivera called the dispatcher on his cell phone and asked him to send a uniform unit and the crime-scene squad as soon as they were available. When he snapped the phone shut, Charlie said, “So I’m not under arrest anymore?”

“No. Stay in touch. And stay safe, okay? You might even want to spend a few nights outside of the City.”

“I can’t. I’m the Luminatus, I have responsibilities.”

“But you don’t know what they are—”

“Just because I don’t know what they are doesn’t mean I don’t have them,” Charlie said, perhaps a little too defensively.

“And you’re sure you don’t know how many of these Death Merchants are in the City, or where they might be?”

“Minty Fresh said there was at least a dozen, that’s all I know. This woman and the guy in the Mission were the only ones I spotted on my walks.”

They heard a car pull up in the alley and Rivera went to the back door and signaled to the officers, then turned to Charlie. “You go home and get some sleep, if you can, Charlie. I’ll be in touch.”

Charlie let the uniformed police officer lead him to the cruiser and help him into the back, then waved to Rivera and the basset hound as the patrol car backed out of the alley.

I
t was a fucked-up day in the City by the Bay. At first light, flocks of vultures perched on the superstructures of the Golden Gate and
Bay
Bridges
, and glared down at commuters as if they had a lot of goddamn gall to still be alive and driving. Traffic copters that were diverted to photograph the ranks of carrion birds ended up covering a spiral cloud of bats that circled the Transamerica pyramid for ten minutes, then seemed to evaporate into a black mist that floated out over the Bay. Three swimmers who had been competing in the San Francisco Triathlon drowned in the Bay, and a helicopter camera photographed something under the water, a dark shape approaching one of the swimmers from below and dragging him under. Numerous replays of the tape revealed that rather than the sleek shape of a shark, the creature had a wide wingspan and a distinctly horned head, unlike any ray or skate that anyone had ever seen before. The ducks in
Golden Gate
Park
suddenly took to the wing and left the area, the hundreds of sea lions that normally lounged in the sun down at Pier 39 were gone as well, and even the pigeons seemed to have disappeared from the City.

A grunt reporter who had been covering the overnight police blotter noticed the coincidence of seven reports of violence or missing persons at local-area secondhand stores, and by early evening the television stations were mentioning it, along with spectacular footage of the Book ’em Danno building burning in the Mission. And there were hundreds of singular events experienced by individuals: creatures moving in the shadows, voices and screams from the sewer grates, milk souring, cats scratching owners, dogs howling, and a thousand people woke up to find that they no longer cared for the taste of chocolate. It was a fucked-up day.

Charlie spent the rest of the night fretting and checking locks, then double-checking them, then looking on the Internet for clues about the Underworlders, just in case someone posted a brand-new ancient document since he’d last checked. He wrote a will, and several letters, which he walked outside and put in the mailbox out on the street rather than with the outgoing mail on the counter of the store. Then, around dawn, completely exhausted yet with his Beta Male imagination racing at a thousand miles an hour, he took two of the sleeping pills Jane had given him and slept through the fucked-up day, to be awakened in early evening by a call from his darling daughter.

“Hello.”

“Aunt Cassie is an anti-Semite,” said Sophie.

“Honey, it’s six in the morning. Can we discuss Aunt Cassie’s politics a little later?”

“It is not, it’s six at night. It’s bath time, and Aunt Cassie won’t let me bring Alvin and Mohammed into the bathroom with me for my bath, because she’s an anti-Semite.”

Charlie looked at his watch. He was sort of glad that it was six in the evening and he was talking to his daughter. Whatever happened while he was sleeping at least hadn’t affected that.

“Cassie is not an anti-Semite.” It was Jane on the other line.

“Is too,” said Sophie. “Be careful, Daddy, Aunt Jane is an anti-Semite sympathizer.”

“I am not,” Jane said.

“Listen to how smart my daughter is,” said Charlie. “I didn’t know words like
anti-Semite
and
sympathizer
when I was her age, did you?”

“You can’t trust the goyim, Daddy,” said Sophie. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “They hate baths, the goyim.”

“Daddy’s a goyim, too, baby.”

“Oh my God, they’re everywhere, like pod people!” He heard his daughter drop the phone, scream, and then a door slammed.

“Sophie, you unlock this door this instant,” Cassie said in the background.

Jane said, “Charlie, where does she get this stuff? Are you teaching her this?”

“It’s Mrs. Korjev—she’s descended from Cossacks and she has a little residual guilt for what her ancestors did to the Jews.”

“Oh,” Jane said, not interested now that she couldn’t blame Charlie. “Well, you shouldn’t let the dogs in the bathroom with her. They eat the soap and sometimes they get in the tub, and then—”

“Let them go with her, Jane,” Charlie interrupted. “They may be the only thing that can protect her.”

“Okay, but I’m only letting them eat the cheap soaps. No French-milled soaps.”

“They’re fine with domestic soap, Jane. Look, I drew up a holographic will last night. If something happens to me, I want you to raise Sophie. It’s in there.”

Jane didn’t answer. He could hear her breathing on the other end.

“Jane?”

“Sure, sure. Of course. What the hell is going on with you guys? What’s the big danger Sophie’s in? Why are you being spooky like this? And why didn’t you call earlier, you fucker?”

“I was up all night doing stuff. Then I took two of those sleeping pills you gave me. Suddenly twelve hours are gone.”

“You took two? Never take two.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Charlie said. “Anyway, I’m sure I’ll be okay, but if for some reason I’m not, you need to take Sophie and get out of the City for a while. I mean like up in the Sierras. I also sent you a letter explaining everything, as much as I know, anyway. Only open it if something happens, okay?”

“Nothing better happen, you fuck. I just lost Mom, and I—why the hell are you talking like this, Charlie? What kind of trouble are you in?”

“I can’t tell you, Jane. You have to trust me that I didn’t have any choice in the matter.”

“How can I help?”

“By doing exactly what you’re doing, taking care of Sophie, keeping her safe, and keeping the hellhounds with her at all times.”

“Okay, but nothing better happen to you. Cassie and I are going to get married and I want you to give me away. And I want to borrow your tux, too. It’s Armani, right?”

“No, Jane.”

“You won’t give me away?”

“No, no, it’s not that, I’d pay her to take you, it’s not that.”

“Then you don’t think that gay people should be allowed to get married, is that it? You’re finally coming clean. I knew it, after all—”

“I just don’t think that gay people should be allowed to get married wearing my tux.”

“Oh,” Jane said.

“You’ll wear my Armani tux and I’ll have to rent some piece of crap or buy something new and cheap, and then I’ll go through eternity looking like a total dork in the wedding pictures. I know how you guys like to show wedding pictures—it’s like a disease.”

“By ‘you guys,’ you mean lesbians?” Jane said, sounding very much like a prosecuting attorney.

“Yes, I mean lesbians, dumbfuck,” said Charlie, sounding very much like a hostile witness.

“Oh, okay,” Jane said. “It
is
my wedding, I guess I can buy a tux.”

“That would be nice,” Charlie said.

“I’m sort of needing the pants cut a little looser in the seat these days anyway,” Jane said.

“Thatta girl.”

“So you’ll be safe and give me away.”

“I’ll sure try. You think Cassandra will let me bring the little Jewish kid?”

Jane laughed. “Call me every hour,” she said.

“I won’t do that.”

“Okay, when you can.”

“Yeah,” Charlie said. “Bye.” He smiled to himself and rolled out of bed, wondering if this might be the last time he would ever do that. Smile.

C
harlie showered, ate a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, and put on a thousand-dollar suit for which he had paid forty bucks. He limped around the bedroom for a few minutes and decided that his leg felt pretty good and he could do without the foam walking cast, so he left it on the floor by the bed. He put on a pot of coffee and called Inspector Rivera.

“It was a fucked-up day,” Rivera said. “Charlie, you need to take your daughter and get out of town.”

“I can’t do that. This is about me. You’ll keep me informed, right?”

“Promise you won’t try to do anything stupid or heroic?”

“Not in my DNA, Inspector. I’ll call you if I see anything.”