The Man Who Walked in Darkness (Miles Franco #2) (Miles Franco Urban Fantasy), Page 2

  “Miles,” Vivian said again.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. I reached out and brushed a stray hair away from Claudia’s face. “See you, kid,” I whispered to her.

  Vivian led me away while the pathologist slipped the sheet back over Claudia’s head. He gave a sigh of relief as I left the room.

  Wade found us a quiet interview room at the station filled with off-white walls and unpadded furniture. I walked in like a clockwork robot and dropped into the closest seat, the last dregs of alcohol in my system giving the place a dreamy feel.

  Claudia’s face swam in front of my eyes. It mingled with the others, with the gangsters I’d killed last winter outside John Andrews’ mansion. I’d been off my head on Chroma at the time, but the photos the prosecution showed at court left no doubt about what I’d done. Burned, crushed, mutilated, human and Vei skulls cracked open, leaking their contents onto tiled floors.

  And now Claudia.

  “I should have been there,” I whispered.

  Wade and Vivian pulled out seats opposite me. “Thought you said you hadn’t seen her in a year,” Wade said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “So?”

  “So why you looking so guilty?”

  “Bite me, Pretty Boy.”

  “What do you know, Franco?”

  Vivian raised her hand a little. “Gunnar,” she said warningly. He shot her a look, then shut his yap and settled for giving me the eye.

  Vivian reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out a little notebook. “You have to cooperate, Miles. You aren’t a suspect. But you knew her, and you might be able to give us something to go on.”

  I chewed my lip and knocked on the table with my knuckles. I couldn’t bring myself to meet Vivian’s eye, even now.

  “I wasn’t lying, I haven’t seen her in forever. But…but a couple of days ago she called me.”

  “Is that strange?”

  “For her, it was. She didn’t much care for phones. She was like me that way.”

  Wade sat there with a little smirk on his face, but Vivian dutifully scribbled a couple of notes down and nodded. “What did she call about?”

  I closed my eyes. Jesus, Claudia. She had no sense, calling a loser like me. “I don’t remember.”

  “Ah, enough of this bullshit,” Wade said. “He’s trying to pull a fast one.”

  “I’m telling the truth.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I’ve read your report, Franco. Forgive me if I don’t believe you. Maybe you can call up your pal, the mayor. From what I hear she was all too keen to swallow every line you gave her.”

  “Huh, whaddya know.” I cocked my head to the side. “You really are dumber than you look. Fancy that.”

  “All right, that’s it.” He stood up and pulled a pair of cuffs from his belt. “Let’s see if you feel like talking after a few hours in a cell.”

  “Gunnar,” Vivian said, “it’s okay. Miles is going to talk.”

  The asshole shook his head, but he tossed the cuffs down on the table and returned to his seat.

  “I don’t remember,” I said, “because I was drunk.” I fixed Wade with a look. “Got it?”

  He made a disbelieving noise. “If you were drunk, how do you know she called?”

  “I was at home, waiting for the next day of the trial so I could go back in and hear them tear me apart again. I felt like having a bit of a break from it all. So I knocked back half a bottle of bourbon. Nice break, huh?”

  “Get on with it, Franco,” Wade said.

  “The phone started buzzing, so I stumbled over and picked it up. I was pretty plastered by that time. It was Claudia, of course. She wanted to meet, wanted my help with something, I think. Only then…” I screwed up my eyes.

  “Then what?” Vivian said.

  “It’s all a blank. Next thing I knew I was waking up on the couch. I’d passed out.” I slammed my hands down on the table and got to my feet. The chair spun, so I picked it up and hurled it against the wall. “I fucking passed out when she needed my help!”

  The chair clattered to the ground. My face burned, my eyes burned, every bit of me burned. Christ, I was a screw-up. I’d managed to go my whole goddamn life as one, but it’d never hurt anyone but myself. Now, I couldn’t seem to go two steps without destroying someone’s life, without leaving a trail of bodies behind me.

  Wade slammed into me, knocking the rage out of me. He wrenched my arm behind my back and pushed me up against the wall.

  “Enough!” Vivian yelled.

  The pressure on my arm didn’t ease, and to be honest, I didn’t want it to. I should’ve gone to prison. At least there I couldn’t do as much damage.

  “Are you going to be calm?” Wade said into my ear.

  “He’ll be calm,” Vivian said. She appeared beside me, close enough I could smell the hint of cinnamon in her perfume. “Right, Miles?”

  I took a few deep breaths and nodded. Wade lessened the pressure on my arm, giving me enough room to turn and shove the bastard away by his sports jacket. I half-hoped he’d sock me one, but he just picked up the chair I’d thrown and thumped it down in front of me. “Sit.”

  I sat. Vivian rested against the table while Wade folded his arms and leaned menacingly in the corner.

  “Tell us about her,” Vivian said.

  I nodded and tried to get my thoughts together. “Like I said, she sang with my band sometimes.” Calling it a band was a stretch, to be honest. A trumpet, a double bass, and a keyboard do not a band make. “She first showed up at one of our gigs about two years back, when we sucked even more than we do now.”

  I could still remember the white cocktail dress she’d worn, in a biker bar, no less. You couldn’t not notice her. Bubbles, our keyboardist, nearly fell over himself when he saw her sitting there, waiting for us to start playing. I can’t say I was much better. I’ve always been wary of women. But Claudia was something else.

  “She can’t have been off the plane for more than a couple of months,” I continued. “Still had an accent thick enough to spread on your toast. But she had a pair of lungs on her, that’s for sure. Salin, our double bassist, convinced her to come sing with us a few nights a month. She didn’t take much convincing, really.”

  “Were you two intimate?” Vivian asked.

  My face grew hot. Why couldn’t it have been Wade who asked me questions like that? “No, never. She lived alone, I don’t know where. I don’t think she even had a boyfriend. Never once heard her talk about stuff like that. The music was enough for her.”

  Vivian scribbled away in her notebook. “And you don’t have any idea what trouble she was in?”

  I suppressed the urge to punch things again and settled for shaking my head. “I wish I did. Christ, you have no idea.”

  Vivian nodded and gave Wade a look. I couldn’t tell what secret cop signals passed between them, but he just twisted his mouth up and shrugged.

  “Okay, that’s great, Miles,” Vivian said. She sounded tired. Had I done that to her? “We’ll get in touch with your bandmates, see if they know anything.”

  “What are you going to do with her?”

  “We’ll do the autopsy, see what we can find out. Then we’ll return her to her family.”

  I nodded. This was a nightmare. Wade opened the interview room door while Vivian stood up. I got to my feet as well, feeling like I was carrying a sack of rocks on my back.

  “One thing, before I go,” I said. “I didn’t think you were a murder cop.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Then what is this to you?”

  She shrugged and gave Wade a glance.

  “There’s been others, hasn’t there?” I asked.

  “We’ll call you if we need to ask you anything else,” Vivian said. She stepped aside and gestured to the door.

  I chewed my lip and nodded slowly. “Yeah, all right. You still owe me that talk.” I waved to Wade. “See you round, Pretty Boy.”

  He smirked and said nothing. I walked out of the interro
gation room alone. The two cops shut the door behind me. A uniform escorted me outside, back into the oppressive heat. He didn’t talk, and neither did I. Everyone was happier that way.

  He left me on the footpath, where cars spewed out smog that billowed in the heat. I walked along the block a little way, avoiding all eye contact with the strangers that passed, until I found a cool alley free of homeless people.

  I bent over behind a dumpster and heaved my guts into a stormwater drain. Again and again I threw up, acid burning my nose, tears welling in my eyes. I could see Claudia standing in front of me, clear as day, her eyes wide open. I stretched out my hand toward her, but I couldn’t touch her. Enough sanity clung to my mind to tell me she wasn’t really there. That sure as hell didn’t make it less spooky. What the hell was wrong with me? Was it the drink, or the stress of the trial? Or was it something worse? My aching stomach clenched. Had something taken a bite out of my mind? I looked to Claudia for answers, but she wasn’t in a talking mood. Silently, she accused me of failing her. She was right.

  When my stomach ran dry, I stumbled back and dropped down onto a flattened cardboard box. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the notebook I’d swiped from Wade’s jacket pocket after my little tantrum.

  The cocky son of a bitch had never even noticed. He almost made it too easy.

  It was one of those notebooks that flip open at the top, so you could easily hold it with one hand. Wade’s writing was neat, almost girlish. I flipped through until I found the names of the other victims. Other people dead the same way as Claudia.

  Steve A. Tyler. Human. Dock worker. Deceased.

  Robert Mooney. Vei. Transient. Deceased.

  Leslie Croy. Vei. Cleaner (no work permit). Deceased.

  Teresa A. Bruening. Human. Transient. Deceased.

  Jerry K. McLawhorn. Human. Gang associate. Deceased.

  Penny Coleman. Vei. Prostitute. Patient at Mercy of the Eight Hospital.

  I read the last entry again. One of them was alive? I read the rest of the page. This Penny Coleman was in intensive care at a private hospital that only treated Vei. I’d ridden past the place a couple of times. It looked expensive. How could a Vei prostitute get treatment there?

  And more importantly, what did she know about what’d happened to Claudia?

  I read the brief entry a couple more times. It wasn’t far. I could go see her, do some snooping. Maybe find out…

  I sighed and closed my eyes. What the hell was I doing? I’d screwed up enough already. I was barely out of court, and it wouldn’t take much to get me back in front of a judge. The cops could do their job. They’d find out what happened to Claudia.

  I stood and tossed the notebook into the dumpster. The ghosts of the people I’d killed followed me as I walked back out onto the street, a new one at their head. I hailed a taxi, and Claudia climbed in beside me.

  “Where to, chief?” the driver asked.

  “Get me to a bar,” I said.

  Claudia stared at me, unblinking. I tried not to notice.

  THREE

  It wasn’t even 9 p.m. when the bartender kicked me out. I’d only polished off half a dozen beers and a whiskey or three, but I was in the mood for self-flagellation. As it turned out, I got someone else to do it for me. Some associate of the Gravediggers gang was trying his moves on a plump girl that couldn’t have been more than twenty, and he wasn’t taking no for an answer.

  By that time I was buzzed enough and angry enough to stick my nose in. I had a small bottle of Kemia in my pocket, and a couple of Pin Holes that would teach the bastard a lesson. Maybe I could even come up with something a bit more original. How well would his harassment work if I turned his underwear into a full-strength chastity belt?

  But I never put my hand on the Kemia. As I pictured opening the Pin Hole, the image of a bloodied corpse flashed in front of my eyes. The ghosts had been absent since I drowned them in beer, but even the thought of Tunneling…

  So I did it the old-fashioned way. I strode across the room, pulled the maggot off the poor girl, and shoved him up against the bar. “Who taught you your manners?”

  If he answered, I didn’t hear, since his pal broke a pool cue over my head. I went down in a heap and took a couple of blows to the ribs before the gruff-looking barkeep broke it up. Wasn’t much of a bar brawl. I took it the wannabe Gravediggers were regulars, because it was me that got put out on my ass after they cleaned out my wallet of the lone twenty.

  I wasn’t hurt bad, but I sat out on the corner just the same. A cop car blasted past, sirens blazing. A couple of ghosts watched me from across the road.

  The girl who was being accosted stumbled out of the bar a few minutes later. She saw me sitting there and drew up short.

  “You okay, kid?” I asked, clambering to my feet. “He didn’t touch you, did he?”

  She sniffed and gave me the evil eye. “Fucking weirdo.” She turned on her high heels and clattered away down the street. I didn’t begrudge her it. She didn’t owe me anything.

  All right, a goddamn “thank you” would’ve been nice, but I wasn’t bitter or nothing.

  It was a warm night, so I slung my jacket over my shoulder and stumbled home with my ghosts in tow. Home, for me, was 2310 Marlowe Street, an apartment building next to a laundromat that I’m pretty sure was a front for a drug house. The apartment building was practically begging to be torn down. When it was windy the building threatened to do the job itself. Still, it was home.

  I was deep inside my own head as the building came into sight across the road. I couldn’t get Claudia out of my thoughts. What the hell had she gotten into? Did I really know her as well as I thought I did? Most of our conversations had revolved around simple things. The finer points of Johnny Hodges’ saxophone work in “Don't Get Around Much Anymore”, or whether Stan Kenton’s jazz orchestra was too grandiose. She was normally a pretty quiet girl, but when it came to music, it was a different story.

  She wasn’t talking much now, though. She walked beside me, her shoes not making so much as a whisper. Her eyes never left my face. Please, Claudia, I begged, let me be. I can’t go round messing things up anymore. I can’t—

  A sensation of fleeting chaos passed through my head.

  I stopped dead. That was a Pin Hole. Someone was Tunneling, and they were close.

  I cast my eyes around. Light trickled through a crack in the curtains on the ninth floor of my apartment building.

  That was my apartment. But who…?

  “Tania,” I whispered.

  I dashed across the road, earning myself an angry horn blast from a passing motorist. No time to bother with the front door. The fire escape was faster.

  I pulled my bottle of Kemia and a small silver coin from my jacket pockets as I ran. I couldn’t afford to be worried about Tunneling now. Blood pounded in my head. I tossed my jacket away and ripped the cork from the bottle. The expensive liquid splashed out as I upended the bottle over the coin. Silvery Kemia flowed into the grooves I’d carved into the coin. A new chaotic awareness pressed behind my eyes.

  Kemia was a catalyst. Making a Tunnel or a Pin Hole without one was like trying to cook a steak with a candle. But give your prepared circle a dash of the good stuff, and you had yourself a goddamn bonfire.

  I hummed as I ran, more out of habit than anything else, while I matched my thoughts to the chaos fighting for release. Tunneling worked by opening a link between this world and Heaven, a world where the only constant was change, where probability and instability controlled everything.

  I balled up my rage and fear and delivered it to the coin in a blow of energy. Chaos exploded inside my mind for a moment before I walled it off. A black spot appeared in the center of the coin and started expanding.

  Reality shimmered around me as I tapped into the madness of Heaven and let it expand into our world. Each Pin Hole is crafted for a specific purpose. A special delivery of controlled chaos. This one was new, something I’d only worked out a few months ago. It w
as powerful, and I’d be a wreck when I was done, but it was worth it. I turned the chaos inward and felt it change me into a reflection of what I could have been, had a few things in history been different.

  My ears popped, then I wasn’t me anymore. Still running, I dropped down on all fours, coiled the muscles in my arms and legs, and leaped.

  I reached the second floor fire escape platform in a single bound. Huge, simian hands had replaced mine. They snatched at the rusted iron handrail and swung me up. Animal strength surged through me, fueled by fear and adrenaline.

  Above me, I could feel the other chaos. I gritted my teeth and leaped again and again, platform to platform.

  I hit the ninth floor and wrenched open my bedroom window, nearly taking the thing out of its frame. Light flooded into my room from the living area. The sensation of unreality hit a crescendo.

  “Tania!” I yelled as I dived through the window. A scraping sound came from the other room. I released my Pin Hole, allowing my body to snap back to its normal, scrawny self. I staggered out into the living room.

  Tania sprang to her feet and nearly tripped over the couch as she backpedaled from me. My landlady’s daughter was a teenager, but she cowered like a toddler. Her hands slid quickly behind her back, but not quick enough.

  “The hell you think you’re doing?” I said. “Release the Pin Hole.”

  “But—”

  “Now, kid.”

  She narrowed her eyes and gave me one of her most practiced glares. I wasn’t buying it.

  “Release it,” I growled, “or I swear to God I’ll march you downstairs and tell your mother what you’ve been up to.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.” She took a step toward me, ponytail bouncing behind her. “Mom would crucify you.”

  “Try me.”

  The staring contest lasted nearly a minute. She was a petite thing, dressed in a V-neck T-shirt and a pair of shorts, but I’ll be damned if she didn’t look like a beat cop about to administer some street justice.

  The sensation of chaos wavered. “You’re losing concentration,” I said. “Drop it.”