Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4) (15 page)

I’d felt that sharp dose of terror around the biggest concentration of blood spatters, which made sense, but now I moved my attention away from those, knowing those imprints had to be primarily if not solely Norberg’s.

I could feel Black wanting me to find the actual perp in all this.

Now that I had some idea of what I was looking for, I found myself scanning the wood where my feet rested too, and the ladder where Black now stood.

But nothing vibrated with that same intensity––nothing that didn’t belong to Norberg.

Look for different flavors, doc. Equally complex... different resonance.

I nodded, looking for more subtle lights among the profusion. I saw things that felt simple, that I realize must be birds and possibly fish. I even felt what might have been insects.

Complex, doc,
Black repeated, his mind a touch sharper.
Human minds are complex. Even the crazy ones.
He paused.
Especially the crazy ones...

I targeted one that definitely felt highly complex, but Black pushed me gently away.

That’s me, doc.

Flushing a little, I moved on. I found another imprint that had a more complicated structure, but Black nudged me again, more gently that time.

That’s human, you’re right... but I tracked that one back to CSI. What you want right now is more subtle. Log that flavor and eliminate it when you feel it next. Same with the cops... starting with the ones you know.

I nodded, squinting down at the wood again.

Again I paused on a more complex-feeling vibration.

CSI again, doc. Same guy.

Exhaling in some frustration, I fought to concentrate on finer gradations of those glowing prints. Then I felt something else. Something that still felt recent, but nothing like what I’d felt from Norberg, or the CSI guy, or the cop remnants I could feel around me on the pier.

He was there,
I sent a few seconds later, pointing.
Where you are.

Black nodded, and that time he exuded a heated pulse of approval.
Good. Really good, doc. Tell me about him.

I frowned, trying to get more now that I’d zeroed in on a flavor.

He was standing on the ladder?
I sent after a few more seconds of concentration.
Holding on where you are now...?

A little further down, but close, doc.
Black nodded.
That’s good. What else?

I met his gaze.
Aren’t you worried about messing with the imprints? Standing right where you think he was standing when he killed him?

Black shook his head.
Doesn’t work that way, doc. Not for this. I can feel him better down here. What else?

I went back to concentrating on the place where Black stood. After a few more seconds, I frowned.
He’s really... blank,
I sent finally.
No emotion at all. No excitement or arousal. No pride. No fear. Just... nothing.

Black nodded again, barely perceptible that time.

“What does that mean?” I said aloud.

Instead of answering me, Black began climbing the ladder back up to where I was.

When he reached me, I had an urge to catch hold of him, but he walked around me without touching me. Somehow, it hurt more that time than it had at the police station.

In the same set of seconds, he withdrew from my mind again, too.

Black walked directly up to Nick.

“I need to go run down a few things,” he said. “I’ll call you later.” He looked about to walk away when he paused, staring down at Nick with a harder frown. “And have your contracting people call my office,” he added, a little colder. “About the money, Nick.”

Nick gave him an irritated look, but nodded, waving him off.

Black glanced back at me. For a second, I almost thought he would say something. Then he seemed to think better of it and only nodded instead.

Before I could decide if I should say anything to him, he was already walking away.

Six

LOOKING

CLIVE TANNER GLANCED down the stairs from his wooden porch as the motorcycle pulled up to the curb right in front of his house.

At first, he barely looked at either the bike itself or the guy on it, other than to think to himself,
Nice ride.

He was used to jokers on rice-burners up here. A lot of wanna-be bikers lived out here, shooting off their mouths and their guns, taking their kids out to the dunes on the weekend to tear it up with ATVs and drink beer with their fat wives.

That was still a few months off now, though.

This time of year was usually quiet. Most of the guys driving by this time of day were among the “permanent leisure class,” like Clive himself.

At least he had the excuse of being old.

It was hot, even only being April, and thus the middle part of spring. Since he’d moved out here about fifteen years ago now––settling somewhere between Turlock, Yosemite National Park and the ass-end of nowhere––you’d think the heat wouldn’t bother him anymore. Or at the very least, that it wouldn’t surprise him every year.

But with his air conditioner wheezing its last, pained gasps and the old house having walls thinner than a hooker’s negligee, Clive felt the heat more every year, it seemed, not less.

“Global warming,” his friend Davis said, whenever he complained.

But Clive didn’t believe in that horse shit.

Taking a sip from the sweating bottle of Rolling Rock he held in one hand, he found himself watching the guy on the bike and expensive leathers more closely when he saw whoever he was glance up at Clive’s own house.

Clive stiffened, sitting up, when the guy dropped his helmet into the seat’s storage compartment and made his way through the rusted gate leading into the Clive’s weed-choked front yard. That yard, which Clive had been very consciously neglecting, was currently covered in half-exploded dandelions and wild pea pods.

“You just turn right on around and go back where you came from, youngster,” Clive advised, calling out as the guy in the leathers shut the squeaking gate behind him. “You’ll be seeing the end of my .45 if you don’t. Whatever you’re selling, I ain’t buying...”

“Calm the fuck down, Clive,” the man said.

Clive stared at him. “Do I know you?”

“You do know me,” the man said. “So calm down.”

“Calm down? You think I’m kidding, boy?”

“I think you’re just as much of an asshole now as you were thirty years ago,” the guy below him said. He reached the bottom of the sagging wood steps and began walking up them on expensive-looking motorcycle boots, taking the first few steps without so much as a pause. “...Now calm the fuck down. It’s a friend.”

“I don’t have any goddamned friends,” Clive spat.

The man below him laughed. “Big fucking surprise.”

“I’m serious, now,” Clive said. He was halfway out of the folding lawn chair, pausing only because his bad knee locked up and he had to work it loose. “You go on. Before I call the sheriff...”

“Clive, Jesus.”

The black-haired man in the motorcycle jacket had nearly reached the porch landing by then, and Clive couldn’t help swallowing a bit when he took in his height. Then the man looked up, meeting Clive’s gaze with a narrow, borderline irritated look on his sculpted lips.

He wore dark mirrored shades, like aviator glasses. Or, more likely––cop glasses. The kind that erased a person’s eyes from the outside.

When he reached the porch landing, however, he took them off.

Once he had, Clive could only stare. Seconds later, he felt his knees bend, almost against his will. Before he knew it, he’d sat down hard in the folding lawn chair, making it squeak although he didn’t lose his seat.

He felt nearly lost when he saw those gold, lion-like eyes narrow at him.

“Remember me now, asshole?” the man retorted, yanking leather biking gloves off his fingers one by one after he’d stuck the rim of the sunglasses in a breast pocket of his jacket. “Or do you still want to shoot me?”

“Jesus-H-Christ-on-a-popsicle-stick.” Clive stared up at him, looking him up and down and wondering suddenly if someone spiked his beer. “Black.”

“In the flesh.” The tall man with the cat-like eyes nodded towards the Rolling Rock. “Can I have one of those? It’s hotter than the Sahara out here.” He glanced around at the street below the house, frowning more delicately that time. “Christ. Could you have picked a shittier part of California to live, Clive? Maybe Bakersfield? Or Fresno?”

Clive barely heard him. “You look abso-fucking-lutely the same. How is it you look abso-fucking-lutely the same?”

The man glanced around them again, that time with sharp eyes. He looked like he half-expected the house to be under surveillance. Or maybe he thought he was back in the jungle and Charlie might shoot at him from one of the neighbor’s gardens or maybe an upstairs window.

He always was a jumpy fucker. Not a bad trait in the field.

“Black,” Clive said, still taking in his appearance. “Black, is that really you?”

The tall man exhaled, shaking his head. “How many times are you going to ask me that?”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Clive said.

The man glanced around the porch again, right before he walked over to the porch swing across from Clive’s folding chair. He sat on it, making the chains squeak in protest.

“You alone here, Clive?” The other man’s voice was soft that time. Dangerous, like the last time Clive had heard it.

Clive took a long drink of beer, shaking his head. “Who the fuck else would be here?”

“Can I have a beer or not?”

Clive continued to stare at him, drinking in his appearance as if it might change if he stared long enough. When he focused back on the calm stillness in those gold eyes, something in his chest relaxed, but not because he liked what he saw. It did cross his mind that he hadn’t really been sure if the other man had come there to kill him or not until then.

He motioned towards the front door behind him and to his left.

“Help yourself. Kitchen’s on the right.”

The black-haired man gave a single, machine-like nod.

It was a mannerism Clive also remembered.

He continued to stare at Black as the taller man walked around and past him, yanking open the screen door and stomping his feet on the mat before he went in. What seemed like bare seconds later, he returned, a green Rolling Rock bottled gripped by the neck in one hand.

He walked back around Clive, who again followed him speechlessly with his eyes. He continued to stare as Black sat heavily on the porch swing, making it squeal again from his weight, which appeared to be mostly muscle, just like it had been in the old days.

Clive just watched, silent, as Black unzipped the front of the leather motorcycle jacket, exposing a muscular chest and a wide line of sweat from the heat.

“Jesus.” Clive continued to stare at him. He felt his incredulity turn into something closer to fear as the image in front of him grew more real. “What the fuck are you? A vampire?”

Black let out a humorless snort. He took a long pull from the beer, then gazed levelly at Clive with those gold eyes, wiping sweat off his forehead with the hand not holding the bottle.