Possession (18 page)

“Copy. Moving to eight.” Sam reached over to change channels. “Delta Echo Six Five, what’s up?”

“Reese, what’s your location?” It was Matt Crewe, one of the two men sent over to Dover Lake to pick up Larry Jaynes.

“We’re heading for the station. Our ETA is about seventeen minutes. Did you get Jaynes?”

“Negative,” the detective said in a definitely pissed-off tone of voice. “The perp escaped custody.”

“How?” The word was spoken simultaneously by Sam and Kiel.

“We had him, but he somehow managed to elude us when we got back to the station. We’re having a pow-wow right now in Captain Redd’s office. Hurry up and get here as soon as you can.”

“Will do. Six Five out.”

Seconds ticked by in silence. Kiel looked again at his older brother in the rearview mirror.

“Do you think the guy knew he was a dead man if he came back here, and that’s why he hauled ass the first chance he got?”

“If he did, Jaynes is heading away from town as fast as he can. Chances are he may be making a beeline for the city limits.” Sam keyed the mic. “Delta Echo Six Five to base.”

“Base. Go ahead, Six Five.”

“Jaynes isn’t running,” J interrupted.

Her voice had that empty, echoing sound Kiel already recognized.

Sam paused from answering the two-way. “He’s not?”

“The Shredder has him.”

Before the words left her mouth, Kiel and Sam already knew the answer to the riddle. Sam jerked the wheel, pulling the vehicle into the parking lot of a dry cleaner, and almost did a one-eighty before heading back the way they’d come.

“Go ahead, Six Five. We copy.”

Kiel scrambled for the mic thrown on the passenger seat. “Possible thirty at Fairview and Mallista. La Vista Grande apartments. En route Code Two. Need immediate backup, including EMS and coroner!”

“Copy, Six Five.”

“Tell Captain Redd suspect Jaynes may be on the premises.”

“Copy, Six Five. Confirming fire and ambulance are en route
.”

Dropping the mic, Kiel glanced over to see Sam concentrating on the road. Thank God it was the wee hours of the morning. Traffic was light or nonexistent.

A tiny sound made him drop back onto the seat and turn to find J pale and shaking. He grabbed her hands, which was like holding ice.

“J, what’s wrong? What’s happening?”

She made a gurgling sound in her throat. Her eyes were glassy, her vision drawn inward. Beads of sweat were popping out on her face. Whatever she was “seeing” wasn’t good. Worse, she was too deep inside herself to answer him, if she heard him at all.

“Sam, I think J’s going into shock.”

“What?”

“Hurry!”

* * * *

Blood. Hatred. Screams. Blood. Pain.

The rod lifted, covered in redness and pieces of flesh.

It descended. More blood. Splatters arched overhead and landed on the wall. A stream of it steamed in the cool early morning air as it meandered across the concrete floor toward the drain. The rod lifted again.

The screams were deafening.

No! No! Stop!

The world smelled of death. The aura around it was as brittle as glass and tinted dark gray.

The rod fell again. Again. Again. The screaming lessened until it was no more than weeping and raspy breathing.

“…to me, J!”

It’s was Kiel’s voice.

She struggled to answer him. “Dying.”

“Dying? You mean Jaynes? Is Conader killing him? Now? Right this moment? Is that what you’re seeing?” He gave her hands a tug, but she was frozen in place as if she had been tied at the scene to witness the man’s execution.

The car came to an abrupt stop. The door beside her opened, and someone grabbed one of her arms. Sam.

Kiel had her other arm. They were holding her up, facing her toward the apartment building.

“Where is he, J? Tell us.”

“You stay here. I’m going in to—”

“Fuck that, Sam! The man could be dead, and I don’t want you facing the Shredder alone! Come on, J. Speak to us.” Her shoulder was given a little shake.

Jaynes was dying. He was lying on the concrete, unmoving, no longer in agony as his nerve endings sizzled and burned out. But there was still a spark of life left in him, and Conader knew that. The immense black shape remained standing over the remains of what had been a man, waiting, waiting.

“J!”

“Kiel, you could go up there and run through the rooms faster than I could. Start with the fourth floor. If that doesn’t pan out, go to three.”

“No.”

It was more breath than sound, but somehow she had been able to utter it where they could hear. Both men leaned closer in.

“No, what?”

“He’s…not…”

“Not, what? Being killed? Dead? Here?
What
, J?”

They were too impatient, too worried, and as terrified as she was. Jaynes they could handle with little trouble. It was the Shredder who froze the blood in their veins.

She managed to back away slightly from the images in her brain. “He’s not in the apartment building.”

“What?”

“Then where is he? Quick, J. Where’s Jaynes? If he’s not here, where is he?”

They started to shove her back into the car, but this time she was able to pull away from them. “Here. He’s here, but not in that building.”

“Then where is he?” Sam asked. “Where would he be, if he’s here, but not inside?”

Kiel cupped the side of her face. He drew closer, almost nose-to-nose, until all she could see was the halo of light. “What do you see, J? What’s surrounding Jaynes? Describe it to us.”

Describe it? Yes. If she couldn’t easily identify the where, she could at least identify the what: surroundings, furniture, walls, tile or carpeting.

Carpeting.
“No, no carpeting.”

Both men hushed.

“No carpeting,” J repeated hesitantly as the area slowly came into focus. “Cement. A cement floor. Walls. No paint. Aluminum? Lots of metal. Metal supports.”

“Cement floor and metal supports?” Sam repeated. “Sounds like a warehouse.”

“There’s no warehouse around here!” Kiel said.

“Car.” She could see it now. Her fingers moved, remembering the shape of the toy cars Douggie used to shove into her hands when he tried to teach her about things.

“Oh, shit. A garage?” Kiel whispered.

“An underground garage! Now it makes sense!” Sam almost crowed. “Now I know what I couldn’t put my finger on! There’s only a few parking spaces back here and in front. Too few for the number of apartments. There’s gotta be an underground garage!”

“Then how come we haven’t found it before now?”

“Look around us, Kiel. What do you see? Rubble, right? My guess is the drive-in entrance is covered up with crap.”

“Then how are we going to find it and get inside?”

The answer came to them simultaneously, and they answered in chorus. “The stairs!”

Her body felt like smoke, detached from reality. Both men hustled her into the apartment building, then through the door to the stairwell. Their footsteps rang like out-of-tune chimes as they hurried down the metal stairs, and stopped inside a room that felt damp and closed in.

“Fuck! Just as I thought. It’s the basement!” Kiel said.

Sam moved ahead and disappeared from sight. A second later he called out, “Found it! There’s a door leading to parking level A!”

The door was partially stuck. J heard the men shoving against the bar. On their second try they were able to push it open.

At first she felt lost in the vast cavern of space. Their footsteps sounded hollow, bouncing off of what appeared to be a high ceiling and through lots of emptiness. She heard a click to her left.

Then Sam commented, “Some serious dark in here. They must’ve bulldozed the entrances to make sure nobody got in down here.”

A wind blew over her, light but foul-smelling, as though something passed by. J honed in on the path it had taken, and pointed in the opposite direction. “There.”

They ran around several concrete support columns until they reached the far end of the garage. Kiel held her back, and J heard Sam grunt as his flashlight wavered over the remains of Lawrence Jaynes.

“Sweet Jesus.”

She blinked and focused toward the floor, but there was nothing. Whatever essence had been inside the victim was gone. She could see nothing but a void. Kiel moved up beside her like a shining firmament.

“Can we make a positive I.D.?” Kiel asked.

“It’s hard to tell.” Sam must have crouched down. She heard his knees pop.

“It’s him,” J assured them. “That’s Lawrence Jaynes.”

“At least his fingers are still intact where we’ll be able to pull prints.”

A hand reached out to brush some stray hairs out of her face.

“It’s times like this I’m glad you’re blind,” Kiel said.

His voice was strangled. Forced. She wondered if ghosts could gag. J managed a small smile.

“He has no life force left. The only way I would know a body is here is if I stumbled over it.”

“You can’t smell it?”

“This whole garage reeks, Kiel. Right now he blends in.”

“What about the Shredder?” Sam asked. He was to her right and slightly behind her. J turned to view his deep purple aura.

“I don’t feel anything. Nothing,” she admitted, which was the truth. The acidic darkness that had been here was gone. Any residue left behind was masked by mildew and ancient fumes of gasoline. The Shredder had done his business. All of his men were now accounted for. There was no reason for him to remain on this earthly plane any longer.

Sam stood and walked away from them. “There looks to be more blood over here,” he commented. “Hmm. Odd.”

“Think this place could have been where Conader committed any of the other murders?” Kiel questioned.

Suddenly, he was next to his brother, and J had not heard any footsteps move in that direction.

“What’s odd?” she called out.

“Look here, Kiel. What do you see?”

“Here? The floor’s a different color.”

“Yeah. Near where these stains are.” There was the sound of someone rubbing the sole of a shoe on the floor. “It’s rougher, too.”

“What’s rougher? The floor? Why is that unusual?” J tried again.

“Part of the floor is a different color, and it’s not as smooth,” Kiel told her. “You’re right, Sam. Look. It’s rectangular in shape. It’s been patched, and recently, too.”

“What does that mean?” J asked.

Again, Kiel answered. “It means that someone has come in not too long ago and poured fresh concrete in this area, and didn’t take the time or effort to match the rest of the surrounding flooring.”

“Why would someone do that?” she wondered.

“Could be for a number of reasons,” Sam replied. He moved around, examining the area.

J strained to hear Kiel but couldn’t. “Kiel?”

“He’s gone upstairs.”

She held out a hand. “Take me away from the body, please.”

“Oh. Sorry.” He walked over to guide her elsewhere, when she hesitated. Sam paused. “What?”

“Is there a window somewhere?”

“No. Why? Are you sensing something?”

She sorted softly. “I thought I felt something wet, like rain coming in.”

“Hmm. There’s pipes overhead. Maybe what you’re feeling is some water dripping on you. Here. I’m taking you over to the stairs. It’ll keep you out of the direct line of traffic when the rest of the crew arrive.”

He led her over to the door leading to the stairwell and backed her up until she could feel the cool, hard wall. At the same time, she caught the sound of many feet stomping down the stairs.

“I put you between the stairs and the elevator. You should be okay here. If you need me, yell.” He squeezed her arm as she nodded, then went back to the other end.

Within minutes there were at least a half-dozen more people in the garage. Their glows bounced around like jeweled balls, yet they all paled next to the beacon that was Kiel. J listened closely as they took pictures of the scene and brought in floodlights. The portable generators sent vibrations through the walls and floor, which added to the organized chaos.

At one point Kiel came over to keep her posted. “They’re bringing in a jackhammer to break up that concrete patch. It’s going to get pretty noisy in here. Want me to take you upstairs?”

She shook her head. “No. Please let me stay. Kiel?”

“What?”

“What happens now?”

“Well…” He started to answer her but the jackhammer drowned out his words. They waited for it to cease.

To steady herself, J clutched his arm, and the feel of his strong muscles reminded her of how tenderly they had been holding her an hour ago.

The jackhammer chewed through the cement easily. J overheard someone comment that the patch had been inferior. The concrete crumbled like a dry cookie. Earlier she had smelled the bright bitterness of fresh plastic when Jaynes’s remains passed by in the body bag. A crime scene unit investigator followed soon after, muttering under his breath about old bloodstains.

She tugged on Kiel’s sleeve. “What’s going on?”

“The coroner took the body to the morgue where they’ll do an autopsy on it. Looks like they’re finished blasting through the cement patch. Sam’s over there now helping them sift through it.”

“I thought I heard something about old bloodstains.”

“Yeah. That back wall where the patch is has several old spray patterns on it. We’re guessing this place has been the site of other murders.”

“By the Shredder?”

“Yes. Most likely.”

He moved, and suddenly J felt a shudder run through him. She remembered whenever she used to do that, her grandmama would tell her that someone had just walked over her grave. The memory brought a smile to her face, and J started to tell him about it when the truth slammed into her. She gasped. Air refused to enter her lungs as the cold truth washed over her.

“J?”

“Hey, Kiel! You need to come look at this!” Sam yelled from other side of the garage.

Kiel gently tried to brush away her hand to leave, but she tightened her grip.

“Kiel, no!”

“It’s okay, J. I’ll be right over there. I’ll keep an eye on you.”

“Kiel,
no
! Stop and think! Old blood. What if…what if it’s—”

It rose up in front of them like an boiling black cloud, without warning and without mercy. Anger and fury burned in the air as a roar as deafening as a tornado’s howl reverberated over and over inside the enclosed structure.

J screamed as the Shredder descended upon the small cluster of people still inside the garage. She had not expected the creature to return. Nothing had preceded its entrance. She had gotten no sense of it, but something had called it back. Something they had done had forced Conader to make himself known. And he was returning, intent on maiming, destroying, killing.

Shredding.

There was more screaming as people scattered. Gunshots exploded. The generators shut down.

J was shoved to the floor, and she knew Kiel had left her. Maybe he thought he could draw the creature away from her. Maybe he thought he could face Conader one-on-one, and keep the spirit away from the others. She yelled his name as something oily rubbed past her and left its smear of decay on her skin and clothes.

Something clogged her ears. It ran down past her lobes and cheeks like a rancid, viscous fluid. Filled with the essence of all the men he had killed, the Shredder was able to affect everything around them—smell, taste, sight, and now sound.

Faintly, J heard Sam cry out to Kiel. Pleading for help. Demanding.

Screaming.

Hearing Sam’s shriek of pain, J yelled out his name and started crawling on hands and knees toward him. In the distance she could see his aura, the color of spring violets—