Grimm - The Icy Touch (7 page)

He did not want to be eaten. Especially not eaten alive.

Maybe this is a dream, a nightmare,
he thought. Then he looked down at his own vomit, and then over at the shining pool of syrup-thick scarlet around Jimmy. He knew it was no dream. This was real. The
espiritu bestia
of legend must be real. His uncle had told him stories of them and Santiago had not believed. But they had returned, and they were reclaiming the world...

“Si,”
he said again, retching.
“Si. Si...”

“Nick? You awake? This is Monroe.”

“I know it’s Monroe, dammit. What time is it?” Nick sat up, saw that Juliette had already gotten up. She had an operation on a golden retriever scheduled early

“Six-thirtyish in the morning. Okay, six-fifteen... Sorry about that, Nick. I
totally
knew something had happened when I woke up and realized I hadn’t heard from Smitty—”

“Wait, who’s Smitty?”

“You didn’t get my message?”

Nick turned on a light by his bed. It was still mostly dark outside.

“No. I haven’t checked voicemail since I went to bed, naturally.”

“About a Wesen, in danger, a Blutbad, Smitty...”

Nick rubbed his eyes. “What can I do for you at six-fifteen in the morning on my only day off, Monroe?”

“It’s this outfit, The Icy Touch, he—”

“Wait. You said Icy Touch?”

“That’s what he—”

“Hold it. Just... wait.” Nick thought about it. “Monroe? You at home?”

“Yeah.”

“Wait there, I’m gonna come and pick you up.”

* * *

“Not only on your day off, but this early, damn,” Hank said, as Nick got into the car.

“Just drive,” Nick said, putting his coffee in the cup holder. “Monroe’s place.”

Hank ran the windshield wipers for a few swipes, then turned them off. The rain was just stopping.

“Man, you’re nearly as bossy as Renard.” He drove the Crown Victoria onto the street. “Look at you, Mr. Up-at-Seven-Thirty-on-His-Day-Off.”

“Not my idea. Monroe’s. Looks like I’m working on my day off too. He’s got an Icy Touch connection. Friend of his...”

“Yeah? Wesen?”

“Blutbaden. What’s up with this ride? No clown car?”

“Hey, nothing to stop me from checking out an unmarked car, is there?”

“Good thought. Funny they use these Crown Victorias as unmarked cars. They look so damn much like cop cars even without the lights. Because they
are
police cars, almost everywhere. Stupid.”

“Stupid? Police department planning? Is that possible?”

Nick laughed and sipped his coffee.

When they got there, Monroe was waiting out front in the drizzle. He had a watch cap on his head; rings under his eyes.

“Monroe looks more tired than you,” Hank remarked.

Monroe got in the back, passing Hank a slip of paper with the address.

“Thanks for this, you guys,” he said.

“You’re helping us,” Hank said. “I mean, if this really has an Icy Touch connection. But don’t let anyone know we’re checking them out, will you?”

“Me?” Monroe sounded offended. “When have I ever been big mouthed, y’know, talking out of school, all that?”

Nick turned and stared at him.

“Well, okay, a little, but...”

It was about half an hour to Smitty’s place, with the early morning traffic. Nick’s stomach was starting to react against coffee, more coffee, and nothing else, when Hank pulled up in front of the apartment building.

It was the grungy sort of place built on the cheap in the early seventies, big and blocky, with a vague modern look, covered in gawdy red and yellow paint. The landscaping around the front was overgrown with weeds. A grimy concrete donkey, once part of the landscaping, seemed trapped in the overgrowth.

“He’s second floor,” Monroe muttered, jumping out of the car before Hank had turned the engine off.

Hank and Nick climbed out and followed him through the open gate into a courtyard, up pebbled concrete steps to the row of apartments along the second-floor balcony.

Monroe knocked on Number 27. They waited. No answer.

Monroe got out his cell phone, tapped a redial.

“Come on, Smitty, answer...” he murmured.

They could hear a phone ringing inside.

“He got a landline?” Hank asked.

Monroe shook his head. “Don’t think so. He wasn’t even staying here—he was in a damn shed over by the Marine Terminal. But he came back here to get his stuff this morning... and he was supposed to call me...”

The phone rang, and rang. Monroe shook his head and hung up.

Nick peered at the door, examining the lock. It seemed bent out.

“Hank—that look like it was jimmied or... something?”

Hank leaned forward to take a closer look.

“Or something,” he agreed.

Nick shoved the door—and it swung open. The lock, he saw now, had been snapped. That was probable cause for police entry. So was the trail of blood inside the front door.

“Looks like he tried to stop them coming in,” Hank said, as he drew his side arm and entered.

Nick pulled out his own gun, gestured for Monroe to wait outside.

Nick followed Hank into the dank hallway and from there into the living room.

Seconds later Monroe rushed in behind him.

He stared in horror at the blood on the carpet, the blood splashed on the television screen, the blood on the wall. For a moment Nick got a psychic glimpse of the Blutbad’s face, complete with fur, animal eyes and fangs, his Wesen form revealed by anxiety. At this stage Monroe’s Blutbad appearance would be invisible to anyone but a Grimm or a Wesen. It vanished as Monroe pointed at the door which must be the bedroom.

“You guys—go! I can’t...”

Nick gripped his 9 mm Glock, and followed Hank to the bedroom.

Hank pushed the door open. The remains of the body were spread all around the room. Parts of it were stuck to the walls. A man’s head was set up on a pillow, on the bed, without the rest of the corpse. The victim’s eyes stared at the ceiling, looking as if he’d just awakened without his body. It seemed someone had left it there as some kind of morbid joke.

A fly buzzed over the dead man’s mouth. The room smelled heavily of blood, feces, sweat, and death.

The claw marks on the face were clear-cut. The man’s torso, lying on the floor chest down, was clawed up, his clothes shredded.

Nick squatted down—at his feet was a man’s arm, and hand. The hand clutched a hank of fur—orange-golden fur, with a little black in it. Like a jaguar’s.

Balam
Wesen,
maybe,
Nick figured. Jaguar people. So many different types of Wesen seemed to be caught up in this thing...

Nick picked up a wallet from the floor, and opened it. He could see the cash and credit cards were still there. He stood up, silently handed the wallet to Hank.

“Here’s the ID,” Hank said. He looked at the driver’s license photo and then at the head on the pillow.

“Monroe—don’t come in here,” Hank called. “But is the guy’s name Lemuel Smith?”

“Yeah...” Monroe’s voice sounded half strangled. “Smitty.”

Nick sighed. “Okay, let’s send for forensics, the body bag boys, and...” His voice seemed to trail off of its own accord. The vic was Monroe’s old friend. This was gonna hit Monroe hard.

Hank nodded and they turned away, grateful to leave the charnel house bedroom, and went back into the living room.

Monroe was already out on the balcony, leaning on the iron railing.

Nick went out and stood beside him, looking down at the concrete courtyard. A child’s plastic tricycle, missing a wheel, lay on its side next to a rusty charcoal barbecue grill. Monroe was frowning down at the barbecue as if he was hoping to find an answer there.

“Sorry about your friend,” Nick said. “Wish we could’ve...”

“You couldn’t,” Monroe said, his voice husky. “Because I didn’t get on this fast enough.”

“Not your fault, Monroe.”

Monroe shook his head. “Theoretically—no, it isn’t. But still...”

Nick nodded. “I know how you feel.”

“You know—you’re not a Wesen. That’s something you don’t know—what it’s like for us.”

It began to rain again, the first drops freckling the concrete below them. The smell of concrete in rainwater rose to meet them. A few steps down the balcony, Hank was calling the crime scene in.

Monroe cleared his throat, and went on, “See, Nick... an ordinary human being gets scared, they can go to the nearest police department, or the FBI, and they can get help. But not a Wesen—not if the danger is from other Wesen. Or...” He smiled sadly. “Or from a Grimm. Nothing personal, there, bro. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“But—you know what I mean... We got no place to turn, really. I mean, there are Wesen organizations but they can’t do much. And when it’s something like this...”

“Yeah. We’ll find a way, Monroe. We can’t save everyone. But we’ll find a way to take these guys down.”

Monroe shook his head. “Hard to see how. I mean—I smelled cat in there. A big cat...”

“Yeah, maybe. Balam, I think. Jaguar people.”

“More than one. Maybe two of ’em. Least he didn’t get cooked alive like that Drang-zorn. Daemonfeuer hunting people down ”

“You heard about that?”

“Smitty told me. This Icy Touch, it’s leaving messages, man. Messages for Wesen. Newspapers will say drug-crazed killer, or something, when they report on Smitty’s murder. Chainsaws or whatever. But Wesen will know...”

“Looks that way. I figure the Drang-zorn death was another message. ‘If we come for you, you play along or you die ugly.’”

Monroe rubbed his eyes. “Man! Daemonfeuer and now Balam. What’s next, Spinnetod? How many kinds of Wesen are they bringing into this thing?”

“I was thinking about that too.”

Sirens sounded in the distance. Ambulances. Patrol cars. The body bag guys.

“That many types of Wesen—kind of says that this thing is big. And they plan to make it bigger...”

* * *

“So this guy Smitty said there was a tunnel, here?” Hank asked. He sounded doubtful.

Nick and Hank were walking along the dock under the massive freighter. It was still drizzling but they were used to it, and hardly noticed. To their left was the sheer black steel cliff of the freighter’s hull. The ship was called
La Conquete.
Above the ship towered the white painted cargo cranes.

“Not using those cranes today,” Hank said. “But it’s morning. There oughta be work getting done. And there’s containers up there to offload.”

“I thought that too. There could be reasons. But... yeah.” Nick replied.

No sound came from the ship at all, except a faint creaking. They could hear their footsteps echoing on the dock.

They walked past the high prow of the ship. Hank paused and looked up and down the terminal’s long metal and concrete dock.

“How could there be a tunnel here nobody would notice? Does it come out under water, or what?”

“I was thinking about that. There’s one possibility. Might be a culvert there, see it?”

“Where?”

“Over here...”

Nick walked quickly up the dock, stopped another fifty paces on, Hank jogged after him.

Nick could see the outflow from the culvert, the wrinkling of the water’s surface as run off flowed at right angles into the river. Nick lay down on his stomach, shuffled forward, and looked over the edge. The culvert was hard to see from the dock, but from here it was a barred opening about twenty feet in diameter, stretching into darkness. Water ran along the bottom, just a stream about three feet wide, to a concrete lip where it spilled into the river. A rusty barred gate closed the culvert off, just above the outflow.

Hank laid down beside him.

“You wear those cheap suits, doesn’t bother you to lie on the damn ground. Nick, that thing’s all locked up.”

“It’s closed. It’s got hinges on it. There’s a padlock. Padlocks can be opened.”

“You think they load stuff in and out from a boat?”

“A big launch could lower off the far side of that boat at night, carry stuff over here. They could get it up there and into the tunnel.”

Hank stood up, dusting himself off. “Wrinkling my clean pants,” he muttered. He indicated. “That ship there, you think?”

“Hard to say. But they were kind of pushy about getting Smitty to help them with something. Like it was happening soon. And there’s the ship.”

“That’s not probable cause. We need a warrant to get on that ship. We could call the Coast Guard, I guess...”

“Rather we searched the ship ourselves. I’ll call Renard about the warrant.”

“They don’t give out warrants like French fries at a drive-thru. Going to take some time.”

“Something else we can do in the meantime. You hear that?”

Hank shook his head. “What?”

Nick cupped his ear and pretended to hear something.

“There’s someone yelling for help from that culvert.”

“No, there isn’t. If there were, protocol would be call the fire department.”

“No time for that. Sounds urgent.”

“We even need a warrant for a culvert?”

“I don’t think so. But we should have a reason for going in there, just in case.”

“Like imagining we hear someone down there?”

“I almost do hear them. Kind of.”

“Okay, Nick. Well, you enjoy hunting around in there.”

“Not going alone, Detective Griffin. Need you there, pal.”

“No way, not in these shoes. Not going to do it.”

“We can get some wading boots from somewhere. Hey, look—” Nick pointed at a blue and white boat moving slowly up the river. “—one of those little Coast Guard river boats! We can wave ’em over, get ’em to loan us some boots, take us in a boat right up to the culvert...”

“Hey, wait—what if that gate’s locked?”

“I can accidentally break the lock. Accidents happen, Hank.”

* * *

Monroe knew he shouldn’t be following Nick and Hank like this. He shouldn’t have followed them in his truck, and now on foot. He was using Blutbad skills to evade their notice, following back at the fence, moving along parallel to them as they walked up the dock. Keeping his distance—knowing if he got any closer Nick’s Grimm abilities would alert him.