God of the Dead (Seasons of Blood #1): A dark paranormal crime thriller novel (3 page)

CHAPTER THREE

Clover let out a sigh of relief as she shut the door behind her parents. Dealing with them in any bad situation was tiresome, but this had just been...
beyond
. Her father was appalled that she had been awake at such an hour, let alone out wandering the streets. He acted like he hadn’t known there was a two in the
morning
.

“What were you doing out there anyway?” he’d demanded.

“I went to get cigarettes.” She mentally kicked herself in the ass. They hadn’t known she smoked. After a lecture on the evils of tobacco that had lasted an exhausting half an hour, her father began quoting scripture to her and saying how she’d never done anything like this when she lived at home, by golly.

“You don’t know half of what I did at home,” she’d snapped back. Another mistake. Her father yelled some more, her mother sobbed through the thick Prozac cocoon in which she spent most of her days.

Your wife’s a drug addict and you have the balls to lecture me, Clover thought. Mercifully, she’d kept that to herself.

But now they were gone and maybe she could get some peace. An hour ago the prospect of sleep had seemed wonderful but now she wasn’t even tired. Clover lay in bed, thinking of all that had transpired in the last couple of hours. She smiled; it hurt her lip, which was a little swollen and sort of purple, but the pain had faded to almost a memory. Other than that and a scrape on her back, she was fine.

Her mind kept turning to those few seconds that had felt like an eternity when her eyes met his, after he’d wiped the blood off her mouth. She thought of the tingle that had went through her at his touch, seeming to erase the pain.

Clover Danning lay there in the grey light of dawn, thinking about AJ, and he was still on her mind when she drifted to sleep.

* * * * *

It was 7:23 A.M. Having worked the night shift for a few months, AJ was adjusted to being up at this hour; in fact, he never went to bed before nine in the morning or so. But sitting in that stale-smelling police station room, Clover an hour gone, he was drained.

His throat hurt from when he was choked, the coffee sucked, and he just wanted to take a shower, maybe smoke a joint, and go to bed.

The door opened and a cop stepped in. “You wanna go home now or you wanna try for residency?”

“Thank Christ. What was the holdup any ways?”

“Wheels a’ justice, son,” the cop said with a crooked smile, putting out his hand. “Officer Gomez.”

AJ was much too tired to laugh but he shook the man’s hand. “AJ Lancaster. Well, can we get outta here or is this some clever façade to get my hopes up?”

The cop grinned. “Naw. Let’s get you home.”

AJ followed him to a police cruiser and they left. They didn’t speak much. AJ had had enough of talking with the police for one night, even if it hadn’t been this cop in particular. His mind was on two things: the man he killed and the girl he met. Mostly the girl.

A grey dawn washed over the city, slowly bringing it to life as they cruised through it. AJ watched as bakery trucks were filled for their morning deliveries, as a tired old man in a little pickup truck added a stack of morning papers into a street kiosk. There were people out walking their dogs and taking their morning jog, people on their morning commute, their faces still a little puffed with sleep. As they got into his end of town he saw men huddled around barrel fires, a car with all the windows busted out, and graffiti—the only real thing of beauty his end of town held, in his opinion—that seemed to be on every surface. He read the names he’d learned; Phloyd, one said. Another read “Hero” in a perfect, grimy Philly tall hand.

They were stopped five or six cars back from a light and AJ looked out his window, up an alley, and watched an old bum lurch toward the mouth of it, his eyes blank and his face twisted with anger. He seemed to be looking right at AJ, was reaching one half-gloved and filthy hand out toward him as though he could stretch his arm another twenty feet and wring his neck for being young, for having a place to sleep and food in his fridge.

The light changed and the car began to roll and still the old man stared at him, his body turning after the cop car as it picked up speed. AJ glanced at the cop behind the seat, wondering if maybe the old guy had needed help.

“Yeah, I saw him too,” Gomez said.

“You think he’s all right?”

Gomez just shook his head in a way that seemed both incredibly cynical and sad. AJ sighed and settled back down in his seat, wondering if Clover had gotten home okay, if she had fake-numbered him, or if maybe when she woke up she would realize that her end of the connection had been little more than adrenaline and high emotions. He wished he could just shut off that loud, shitty part of his brain that had always been there, telling him he wasn’t good enough.

“Left up here, yeah?” Gomez asked.

“Yup, that’s me, second from the corner.”

The car pulled to a stop, double-parked, but who the fuck was going to say anything? No one, not in his neighborhood.

“John—Detective Lubbock--he told me what you went through tonight, man. I’m sorry this happened to you.”

AJ smiled, touched in spite of himself. “Thank you.”

Gomez nodded. “This city’s a real piece a’ shit sometimes, and I’ve seen the worst of it, but you know what? I see the best of it too.”

“Yeah? I could use some of that right now,” AJ said, the sound of the baseball bat against a skull echoing in his head, again and again, thoughts of the pretty girl pushed far from the front of his mind for a moment.

“About a year back, right? About three in the morning, I’m on my beat, me and a partner, and this car just blows through a red, right in front of us, doing like sixty, yeah?”

“Yeah?”

“So we light ‘em up, guy pulls over like right away, which we didn’t expect. Then he jumps out of the car and starts waving his hands over his head. Turns out the guy’s wife is in the back, with their kid. Little boy, like two years old. Kid’s not breathing, like, had an allergic reaction.”

“Jesus,” AJ said.

“No shit, that’s what I said. We got a kit in the trunk, though. I grab the kit and just get in the back of the car with the mom and the kid and Mikey, my partner that night, he just looks at the dad and he’s like, follow me, and lights it up again, we’re like sixteen blocks from Memorial, right? So the dad has it fucking punched and the mom’s starting to lose it and this kid’s neck is like purple, and all swole up. I open the kit and stab this kid with an EpiPen, and it’s like letting the air out of a balloon, yeah? Like, you can see it help immediately, and I’m about to shit my pants I’m so goddamn happy this fuckin pen thing is working, but the kid, he still isn’t breathing. I start compressions though, you know, resuscitation actions, all that, and by the time we get to the ER drop off for Memorial, this kid is sitting in his mom’s lap, sucking his thumb. We saved that kid’s life.
I
saved his life. Brought him back.”

“Holy shit,” AJ said.

“Yeah. Every couple weeks or so, I stop by their place, you know, just kinda check in. I’m not really supposed to do that, you know, but it’s like…you know how plants will grow facing the sun?”

AJ nodded.

“This is like that, man. You gotta find the sunshine in all this, whatever it is, and just…face it. Every time I have a real shit day, you know, I think of that little kid. That family. Have a beer with the folks—off-clock of course—the kid makes me all these little drawings and stuff, like, recharges me, get it?”

“I do. Thank you,” AJ said, stunned and repeating the advice to himself:
find the sunshine and face it
, and was there anything he expected
less
to come from a cop?

“You did the right thing, from everything John says, and if John says it, that shit is like gospel ‘round here, I promise you that. I don’t know if you’re worried about any kind of charges, accidental manslaughter or whatever the fuck, but I
promise
you, kid. John says you’re good, so you’re
good
.”

AJ let out a long, slow breath. He’d been feeling better, figuring if they were going to charge him they wouldn’t have let him go, but he didn’t really know how these things worked, and it was nice to hear.

“Thank you,” AJ said. “Not just for the ride, but for…all of it.”

“You’re welcome. Remember that for me, huh? Find the sunshine, and face it.”

“I will, man,” AJ said and put out his hand. Right then, it was not him and a cop, but just two guys, two people, and AJ felt another bit of the weight he’d been carrying all night roll off his chest. “Thanks again.”

“No problem,” Gomez said. “You gonna be around later today?”

“Until eight tonight. Then I gotta work. Why?”

“You may have to answer some follow-ups, or talk to someone else if John moves to a different case.”

“Shouldn’t this be kind of an open-and-shut thing?”

Gomez shrugged. “As far as charges for you? Absolutely, that part is over. Anything else? You never know.”

AJ would later reflect on those words,
you never know
, thinking they were the truest he’d ever heard. The black and white drove away and AJ stood for a moment in front of his building, watching the taillights recede. He looked up at the morning sky, breathing deeply. There were a couple large birds circling overhead and the slow sounds of light morning traffic, the hydraulic hiss of buses stopping, the rumble of a garbage truck a block over. Peaceful, in its own way.

AJ went upstairs, too tired to shower or roll a j. He fell asleep thinking of the phone number now sitting on his dresser and when he could call it.

* * * * *

Detective John Lubbock sat in a darkened room in front of a television, which provided the only light. The footage was a little grainy but not bad. For a traffic camera, it wasn’t bad at all, really. They’d been installing them all over the city the last few years; they were supposed to cut down on crime, make people feel safer. It didn’t do much of either, John thought. They were occasionally useful for determining fault in a traffic accident but he hadn’t found much more use for them than that until tonight.

He checked the call log and then the time stamp on the video. He’d listened to the call half a dozen times, didn’t need to anymore. The panic in it was genuine. Whether it was panic for their friend or panic at the prospect of being caught or just panic from their high being ruined, it was real.

In the tape the car, nondescript, no license plates, probably stolen, swerved over to the curb and slammed to a stop near the corner of 86
th
and Downing. Two people in the front of the car got out, their faces covered: one with a ski mask, the other with a hat on low and hood pulled up over it.

They ran around to the rear passenger door and opened it, then they both tried to climb in at once. Ski Mask whacked his head on the car door and it would have been funny if he didn’t know that here, in about five seconds, they were going to pull a man out of the car, each holding one of his arms.

They dropped the man on the sidewalk, arms still splayed above his head, ran back to the car, got in, and were gone.

Lubbock shifted in his seat, staring at the time stamp as the seconds rolled by.

One minute and nothing.

Two minutes and a bum shuffles up, checking the pockets of the man on the sidewalk.

Well, now we know what happened to his ID,
John thought, taking a sip of his coffee. He grimaced a bit at the taste but relished it, too; it was like chewing aspirin or scratching a bug bite when you know it will only make it feel worse in the long run.

The time stamp on the video ran a little past three minutes and on the screen the man’s foot began to twitch. John sat up a little straighter, leaning in a little toward the TV. Three-and-a-half minutes in and he goes into a full body seizure, then just sits up like someone was pulling his strings.

The man got to his feet, stumbled, rocked back and forth, and fell back to the ground. He lay there for a moment, rocking back and forth on his back, like a turtle stuck on its shell, and then managed to roll over to his hands and knees. He remained on all fours for a good ten seconds or so and then his back began to hitch. He vomited onto the sidewalk and then struggled to his feet, swaying before gaining something a little closer to balance. He stood relatively still, then cocked his head to one side. Thirty seconds he stood that way. Then he started walking east on Downing.

The gas station, that’s how you would get there from that intersection. He checked the time stamp when the man shambled around the corner of 86
th
and out of sight, by then not much more than a grey-colored blob no bigger than an inch high on the screen.

John stopped the tape. 2:29 A.M.

AJ’s 911 call had come in at 2:51.

Lubbock looked at the pictures Fenster and Andrews had taken at the scene. He knew it was him, same guy. Same coat, same build, same fuckin’ face.

Okay, John thought. He shoots up with his buddies, takes a little more than he bargained for, gets a bad shot, whatever. They were still waiting for the tox-screen to know which one for sure. His friends see him going over, put him in the car, call 911, drop him at an intersection. It was shitty but it happened more in his city than he cared to think about. Lotta bad dope up here.