Paranormals (Book 2): We Are Not Alone (8 page)

Then, a ray of light! He spotted a flyer at the apartment’s Laundromat — the police were holding an auction for confiscated and impounded items that the state was looking to liquidate. And one of them was a truck just like he’d driven all those years! It was a little older than he’d prefer, but based on the short description on the flyer, it sounded in better shape than the company truck he’d been forced to vacate.

Cooper attended the auction, which was held in a rundown warehouse in a shady part of town ... but then, the police were as affected by the bad economy as anyone else, weren’t they? The truck wasn’t on property for his inspection, which was disappointing, but they had more pictures and detailed information, and the uniformed officer stationed behind the cheap table was able to answer most of his questions. It all looked pretty good.

So when the truck came up for auction, he started bidding. He’d never done it before, and it was kind of exciting. He and another fellow got into a little bidding war, and Cooper grew worried that they would soon surpass the meager amount left in his savings account, but the other guy eventually dropped off, and Cooper won his truck! He signed a bunch of paperwork, gave them the routing number for his bank account, and accepted the voucher for the pink slip. They stressed how important it was that he keep the voucher safe, and said they would be contacting him by the end of the week with the particulars as to when and where he would take possession of the truck.

So Cooper waited. And waited.

The end of the week came and went. He kept his patience through the weekend, but by Monday he was climbing the walls. On Tuesday morning, he called the phone number at the top of the voucher. The number was disconnected.

Before noon, Cooper paid a visit to the local police station. His Ford Tempo was acting up again, so he walked. The weather was nice, but that was the high point of his day ...

Contrary to the stereotype usually depicted in the movies, the Desk Sergeant on duty was a kind, helpful man in his thirties. How he handled Cooper was fine, it was the information he imparted that was the problem: No record of any police auction the previous week. No record of the code numbers printed along the left side of Cooper’s voucher; worse, the voucher was not even the proper format for this state. No record of the truck Cooper described in the impound, either.

The auction — the uniformed police officer present, the low-key auctioneer, the police Lieutenant who read off a bunch of bylaws on the liquidation of criminal material ... the whole thing had been one huge, ballsy
scam
.

At the Desk Sergeant’s unneeded urging, Cooper called his bank right away. Oh, yes, the money had been withdrawn from his savings account the day after the auction ... in fact,
all
of the money had been withdrawn from his savings account.

For the next five hours, Cooper’s time was divided between filling out police reports and talking over the phone to his bank (the Sergeant was very accommodating, letting Cooper monopolize the old, beat-up phone at the far end of the front desk). The bank employees were courteous enough, but Cooper realized too late that he had put his foot in his mouth when he admitted that he had freely given the routing information to the con artists. Cooper talked to one bank employee, then another, then had to go back to the first one. And then they told him this was the wrong department, so he had to start over. And then things got even more exacerbated when his call got cut off while on hold, but he hadn’t yet written down the newest woman’s name, so he had to start all over again. And don’t even get him
started
on that frustrating automated voice system of theirs!

The next day, Cooper was back at the police station at the proverbial crack of dawn. A different Desk Sergeant was on duty today, and this asshole wasn’t nearly as helpful. Then the Detective assigned to his case was late for work, not showing up until well after lunch. And when he finally
did
show up and summon Cooper to his desk, he spent most of the time exchanging texts with his son (supposedly at home with the flu, but as far as Cooper knew, the jerk might’ve been exchanging dirty messages with some bimbo lover) while Cooper filled out another report that he could’ve sworn he’d filled out twice already.

To make matters worse, the Detective had yet to give Cooper any useful information, when the policeman suddenly claimed he had “a very important meeting to attend,” and asked if Cooper could come back later — not after-the-meeting later, but the next day.

So Cooper trudged home — hungry, fuming, and dejected. His first impulse was to go out and get blind, stinking drunk, but if he did, he would be aware of every dollar leaving his wallet, each representing a terrifying portion of his total remaining net worth.

He needed
something
to occupy his mind from this nightmare (if that were even possible). Something simple, something he didn’t really have to think about, something that didn’t involve people screwing him over ...

His Ford! He could work on his Ford. Just pop the hood and tinker around, see if he could figure out what had been causing that annoying rattle, or that sluggish cough when the engine turned over. He pretended not to think about the fact that he might need to sell the damn thing in a hurry, but focused on—

Cooper stopped dead in his tracks.

He gaped at his car. Between its troubled performance and all that had been going on, it had been at least a week since he’d been back here, since he’d last laid eyes on it.

The windshield was covered in bright red graffiti. The punks had gotten the driver’s door, too; maybe more, but that’s all he could see from where he stood. He had seen these markings before, knew they were the territorial symbols of one of the local Hispanic gangs.

The spray paint wasn’t the only thing red now. So was Cooper’s face. And so was his vision.

A suspect leaped to the forefront of Cooper’s raging mind: That young Latino punk who lived two doors down and across the hall from his apartment, who wore wife-beaters and low-riding, baggy pants, who left all his cigarette butts in the open hallway and blared music at all hours, and who gave Cooper all those smug, challenging looks.

That punk had given Cooper that same look just two days ago. But had it been more smug than usual that day? Had it been a touch mocking, as if he knew something that Cooper didn’t and thought it was goddamned funny?

Well. That was the last time he’d give that look to Perry Cooper. The last time he’d give it to
anyone
.

Cooper hit the stairs running, his fury building the closer he got to that piece of shit’s apartment. Oh, that Mexican thug had blown it this time. He had no idea how badly he had blown it — but he was about to find out!

In the back of his mind, Cooper knew he should go get Dwayne, the stout retiree who worked security for the apartment complex. Cooper was the injured party (and it didn’t hurt that they were occasional drinking buddies), so Dwayne would take his side— hell, maybe Dwayne would even join him in confronting the asshole who did this!

But no, Dwayne would want to fill out a form, take photos, call the police, drag the whole thing out.

Cooper wanted satisfaction
right now
!

Cooper’s feet pounded the second-story hallway, his upper lip peeled back from his teeth in what could have been a snarl or a vicious grin, but was in fact both.

Reaching the punk’s apartment door, Cooper pounded on it with the flats of his hands, slapping the cheap material so hard it stung his palms. Oh, he was going to relish this! For the first time ever, Perry Cooper was
thrilled
to be paranorm—

The door jerked open, and it took Cooper a moment to realize that his quarry stood before him. The punk’s expression was as smug as ever, irritated but full of confidence, but the rest didn’t fit at all. Neither the wife-beater nor the low-riding pants were in evidence today. No, today the punk was dressed in nice work attire, in slacks that fit right and a button-down dress shirt and a tasteful tie, loosened at the end of a long day. A nondescript name badge even adorned his left breast pocket. He looked, for all the world, like an enterprising young member of America’s law-abiding workforce.

The whole unexpected package threatened to derail all of Cooper’s forward momentum, to grind his gears to a halt and bring forth an apology rather than threats.

Then the punk blew it. His chest puffed out and he spat, “What the hell do
you
want, old man? You got a problem,
pendejo
?”

Cooper did not speak Spanish; he had only the vaguest idea of what “pendejo” meant. But he really didn’t care. The tone of voice was all that he heard, all that mattered to him. That was enough.

Cooper took one step forward, putting his nose about an inch from the punk’s. The younger man blinked, startled by the surprising bravado, and retreated on impulse ... but he was too slow.

Perry Cooper’s shield snapped on. It lifted him from the floor, cracking the doorframe out of shape as it forced all three sides away from him; the door itself wrenched at its hinges, nearly falling off.

Cooper didn’t care about any of that. All he cared about was the specific result he sought, and he got that in full glory: The punk barked in shock as the shield slammed him in the face and chest, bloodying his nose and busting his lips and knocking the breath from his lungs. While Cooper’s feet rose gently from the floor, the punk flew back as if he’d been struck by a bus — he sailed backward into his living room, his thighs striking a recliner and flipping him over onto his head.

Cooper leaned forward, and his shield rolled him into the apartment. A standing rack of cubbyholes, filled with shoes and random clothing, toppled away from him as he passed it on his right, while the Sheetrock on his left cracked and split.

The punk scrambled free of the recliner, shaking his head to clear it — Cooper enjoyed seeing how hard he’d rung the immature asshole’s bell. The punk tried to stand, but it was too soon; he only succeeded in getting his left leg under himself and almost fell onto his back. So he crouched there, one arm and one leg supporting him as he leaned way over to his right.

Cooper rolled his shield closer.

The punk shook his head again, looking up at Cooper as he approached. “What the hell, man?! What ...?” His eyes widened as what he was seeing sank in. “Oh, shit. Oh,
shit
.”

“Yeah,” Cooper grinned. “ ‘Oh, shit.’ ”

 “Arturo?” drifted a woman’s voice from behind Cooper; an older woman by the sound of it. “Arturo,
lo que pasó
?” Cooper’s shield muffled all outside sounds, so he couldn’t tell how much deeper in the apartment the woman was.

The punk — Arturo — looked past Cooper, his eyes widening further. All smugness was gone from his face, and the fear that had appeared when he realized a paranormal was looming over him deepened. “
Mamá
! Stay back,
mamá
! Stay in your room!”

“Oh, don’t worry, Arturo. I’m not after your mama.” Cooper rolled forward again. Arturo scurried back until he struck the wall beside the living room couch. “I’m after the asshole who
spray-painted my car!
”

Arturo shook his head again, this time in confusion — or so he wanted Cooper to think. “I ... look, man, I don’t know what you’re—
Ow!
”

Cooper’s shield rolled forward onto Arturo’s foot. It didn’t mash it much worse than if Cooper had personally stepped on it (as near as Cooper could tell, his shield possessed almost no weight of its own), but it didn’t feel good. Arturo tried to tug his foot free, but he had neither the room nor the leverage.

“My car!” Cooper yelled. “My
Ford Tempo! The car I
paid
for while you and your hoodlum friends were out stealing yours!”

“
Arturo!
”

Cooper flinched in spite of himself as the older woman screamed her son’s name in terror. He turned, his shield rotating with him, as she rushed him, her hands balled into frail fists and her tasteful, red moomoo trailing out behind her.

“Let my boy alone!” she cried, her hands pounding against Cooper’s shield. “He’s no hoodlum! Leave him
alone
!”

Cooper rotated further, eliciting a grunt of pain from Arturo as his shield twisted atop his foot. “Your punk-ass boy graffitied my car!” he yelled back at her. “Him and his gang friends tagged their shit all over it! There’s gang shit sprayed all over the body, all over the windshield!”

Arturo’s mother showed no fear in the face of Cooper’s paranormal power. She slapped both palms against his shield and straightened in indignation. “My Arturo’s in no gang! He’s a good, hardworking boy!”

Cooper scoffed and rolled his eyes, and rotated back toward Arturo. “Yeah, sure.”

“Arturo is a good boy!” she threw at him, sounding desperate now. “He has a good job! He
earns
his money! He’s a teller at a bank! A
bank
!”

She said more, but Cooper tuned it out, his anger faltering again. Could that be right? Had he lashed out at the wrong target after all?

Cooper squatted carefully so that his shield would remain where it was. Ignoring both mother and son, he peered down for a closer look at Arturo’s name badge ...

Sure enough, the piece of plastic said
Arturo
in a small font at the bottom, and the top bore the name and logo of
G
REAT
A
MERICAN
B
ANK
.

Cooper’s anger slipped further, and the beginning of shame crept through him. Had he really screwed up? Maybe ...

No! No, he
hadn’t
screwed up! Okay, maybe Arturo here hadn’t been the one who spray-painted his car. Whatever. But the almighty Great American Bank had turned him down for a loan not once, but twice! So if Arturo worked for them ... well, then he ... he ...

Cooper was floundering, and he knew it. He wasn’t a bad man, he had just been under a great deal of stress lately and he wasn’t thinking clearly. Maybe he could fix this, put things back together before he ruined his own life and this kid’s along with it.