The inbetween, p.29
The InBetween, page 29
part #1 of Painter Mann Series
Alice nodded. “That must be the newsroom gallows humor Brenda told me about.”
A shrug. “If the average person knew what we said, what we joked about, in newsrooms around the country? They would burn our buildings to the ground. But if you don’t, it gets too much. You’d lose your everlovin’ mind.” He nodded slowly. “I’ve seen it.”
The frail woman took another sip of her water, slid over some paper as a coaster, then set it back down on the desk. She looked through the window’s office into the newsroom. “The horror that must come through here daily.”
“Yeah. We also got a cooking section,” he said, smiling. “Truth is, it’s pretty horrific, too. Who the hell eats beetroot?”
Alice chuckled, the first in a long time. Pete gave her a warm smile. She was quiet for a moment then gave a small nod.
“It’s funny, you know? You said to pick the nearest murderer around, and odds are they’re the doer.”
“Doer?”
“Yeah, ain’t that what the cop shows and detective novels say?”
“Probably. I’m sorry, I interrupted you. You were saying?”
“Well, this was a lunchroom full of violent women,” he said, talking faster now. “Sure, some were domestics, maybe set a shitty boyfriend or husband on fire. Who could blame them, right?”
She nodded slowly.
“But some of these ladies, you read their sheets, and it’ll make your short hairs curl.” He then thought about what he’d just said and added, “Curl more, I suppose.”
“So there were a lot of suspects?”
“Ma’am, everyone there, every woman with a metal cafeteria tray and a plastic spork, would have been a possible killer.”
Alice leaned forward and slowly stood up to stretch her legs. Watching Pete move around the room made sitting difficult. She exhaled a deep breath and walked to the window, where the light was giving up its fight against the night.
“So too many suspects. A glen full of wolves, each baring bloodstained teeth. Impossible to know which had made the killing blow.” Alice nodded and extended her hand with a weak smile.
Pete nodded and jutted his lip out in what he tried to pass off as a smile. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking at his scuffed brown shoes. “I know that’s not what you hoped to hear. Not what you wanted to leave with.”
With effort, the thin woman with the rounded shoulders offered him another smile. Nodding, she turned, reached for the door, and opened it. Then she stopped.
Pete watched the dying woman, who seemed momentarily frozen in thought.
It was clear she wouldn’t see the end of the year. Possibly not the month. Out of respect, he just waited. He watched as she, strangely and ever so slightly, nodded a few times, each several seconds apart. As if… as if remembering some list? Or instructions?
Then she turned toward the managing editor and stiffened her back and squared her shoulders.
“You know something more, don’t you?”
He shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry, Ms. Weathers, I do not. Hand on heart.”
Again, she paused. Nodded again, only slightly. “But something doesn’t sit right with you, then? This case gives you an, um, itch in your brain.”
Pete’s mouth hung open for a moment, his eyebrows raised. “Where’d you hear that expression?”
“Who do you think?”
He smiled. “Sure, Brenda. She would have been a good reporter. Smart. Pain in the ass. But she could smell blood, that one. I admit I miss her.”
The editor watched the strangest expression come to the woman’s face. It suddenly flushed with warmth and sadness, and tears quickly pooled on her eyelids. One hand went to the thin skin of her chest, while the other hung in the air, outstretched toward empty space.
She righted herself, sniffed, cleared her throat, and asked again, “What’s your gut tell you? Something about this case bothe—”
“I told you!” Pete barked then softened and put his hands up. “I already said it. You missed it.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not a journalist. I was a dancer, and a very good one for a while. But while I won’t ask you to pirouette, I would hope you would do me the same professional courtesy, Mr. Davis. Explain.”
“Too many suspects. She was in a mess hall with dozens of murderers.”
“You said that.”
“Right,” he said, rounding to her quickly and pushing the door closed again. They stood at the threshold face to face. His voice quieter but strained, he continued, “She was accused of vehicular manslaughter. The first jury, they weren’t entirely convinced she even did it. Hell, she didn’t even know if she did it. She wasn’t like the others.”
“The others?”
“Killers, murderers, attempted murderers. Violent gang members. Ex-military that couldn’t quite shake the bloodlust. Psychotics, lunatics…”
Alice’s gaze was momentarily pulled to a spot on the opposite side of the room, then her eyes met the editor’s again.
He finally said, “Why the fuck was a woman awaiting trial, no prior violent offenses, no violent tendencies as far as anyone could see… locked in a cage full of killers?”
Alice nodded slowly. “She shouldn’t have been there. Maybe minimum security or whatever the middle level is.”
“Medium security, right,” he said, eyes darting toward the tiny window of his office door. “Makes more sense. Who knows, courts mighta known something the rest of us didn’t. Flight risk, maybe. But maximum security? That don’t make sense.”
The woman put her hand on the handle of the door, propping herself up. Her jaw tightened, and she said, “What aren’t you telling me? Brenda says—”
Pete burst away from the door, throwing his hands up. “Brenda says. You’re batshit crazy, you know that? Losing your grip on reality. You need to get back to the home or the hospital or whoever helped you into those shoes this morning! I don’t need you dying in my office.”
He walked back to the wall, to the other side of the desk. Alice took slow, deliberate steps, rounded the chair, and put both hands on the desktop. She looked up and waited for a moment. Then she spoke slowly but deliberately.
“Brenda would have been your best reporter,” she said, her voice shaking. “Better than you’d ever seen. Maybe better than you.”
He laughed with flat eyes, crossing his arms.
“She was so strong, so tenacious, so dogged as you said, maybe she wasn’t ready to give this last story up. Just this last one. Her passion project.” Alice rounded the desk and stood before the newspaper editor. “Maybe that strength means, despite her death, she wasn’t ready to go yet. So she didn’t and convinced a sick woman to get up from her hospital bed and put on her own damn shoes, thank you very much, and for the first time in nearly a year leave the care home, catch the number 17 bus downtown to ask a man she trusted and respected for some help in her last story.”
The tall, thin man blinked then blinked again. His arms fell to his sides.
“This is it, Pete,” Alice said. “Give her one more shot.”
For nearly a minute, Pete Davis stared out the window, and Alice could see the reflection of the dimming sun off his eye. Finally, he turned and spoke in a soft voice.
“Like I said, the congressman, he did well. But a killer fiancée? That was hurting his chances.” He pulled in a deep, deep breath and blew it out. “She dies in prison, she dies at that point as an innocent woman in prison, and not only is this scandal not weighing him down, but who knows, the guy lost his fiancée. Sympathy vote, maybe. Either way, Congressman Lee benefited.” He turned to the woman and gently placed his hands on her shoulders. “My crime guys have been doing this since back when they locked guys in bell towers, for chrissakes. They say she should have never been in that prison. Not maximum security, no way. And that riot? It wasn’t any riot, that was cover.”
“Cover for what?”
“To murder Chandra Withy. Someone put her in there and put a hit out on her so she’d go away. Someone needed her to go away.”
Alice did that quick bird look to a corner, smiled, then began to once again walk for the door. Then she stopped and gave Pete Davis a hug, her thin arms barely able to get around his body. He could hardly tell she was hugging him, but it was the sweetest thing he’d felt in as long as he could remember.
The frail woman began to walk to the door, labored. Pete huffed dramatically then held her arm gently, helping her.
She said, “Thank you.”
“You got it.”
When they got to the door, she took a couple breaths and said, “I don’t really want to take the number 17 back. I’m told there’s something called a taxi chit that I should ask for. You got ’em in your desk.”
Pete just stared at her with a smile. “You’re told. I think,” he said as he walked to his desk and pulled open a drawer, “that you knew my reporter far better than you’re letting on.”
Alice grinned. “I just met her, but we’re fast becoming friends.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Why had I gone to precisely the last place I wanted to be in the world?
Sure, my plan sounded so brave when I ran it past the Professor. I thought it sounded brave, despite her saying, “Painter, that’s stupid. You’re going to get hurt. Or worse.”
I knew what worse was. I’d been there already in the very building I was now looking at. Inside, at least one hundred spooks were doing worse.
The Minnesota State Fairgrounds.
Minnesota doesn’t sound scary, but if you ever saw Garrison Keillor coming at you down a dark alley gnawing on a deep-fried Snickers, you’d be shitting kittens.
Brenda was tracking down Chandra, and since she was a reporter, she’d probably found her. If there hadn’t been yet, there would be a confrontation. That was why I was standing in front of the building that housed the Twin Cities branch of the Ghost Mob’s power grid.
Our dead-livie’s arrangement with the Mob gave her juice from here and Chicago. Thick tendrils of light, ethereal extension cords. Enough to give her the strength to move around in a living person’s body! That was not power we could hope to combat. Not both of us. Hell, probably not twenty spooks. So I had to weaken her by taking this power station offline.
Down to just the one in Chicago, she’d still be the most powerful creature in the world, but she would be half as powerful.
That might help.
And if my short time with Brenda was any indication, the reporter wasn’t waiting for me. She had that sense of right and morality that young journalists have. A righteousness that could trump rationality.
No question, she was going to try to take on Chandra without me.
So I knew I had to take one of the asshole’s legs out from under her before that happened. And time was running out.
A quick glance left, then right, then behind, and I drifted across the street toward the Gass Station. The homeless guy I’d seen earlier was leaning against the wall. The night had turned a bit crisp, so he piled clothes on either side to block the wind. He was eating something out of a tin in front of him. A can of Sterno sat between the heels of his well-worn sneakers, lashing ribbons of light across his haggard face.
“Hey, man, some bizarre shit’s about to go down. You might wanna keep low,” I said, although any real dangers there were in the spirit world would not affect this man, who had already taken the brunt of the living world. No, between the two of us, there was only one that was way out of his depth. And it wasn’t the guy wearing the horrifically stained Red Lobster bib.
He nodded to himself slowly, as if he’d found a nice tasty bit, and I turned away.
After another quick glance to each side, I again moved toward the wall and pushed my face inside.
The machine of light was even larger than before, pulsing and surging, fat ribbons of light moving up and down the spooks trapped in rows like spiders’ legs.
Before I’d come here, I’d spoken with Sergeant Peterson to see if he could spare a few of his zoo people to lend a hand. He’d reiterated his “we keep to ourselves” mantra, which I had to respect. It was my Rule Number One: Don’ want no douchey, don’ be no douchey with a Monroe Doctrine. However, I’d explained the circumstances, and he’d said he would run it by his people. Maybe a small win could help convince them.
As still as a mask, I scanned the room for any of the Mob but saw no one. No patrols, no lookouts. It seemed I was free and clear, but after my last experience, the worst moments I’d ever spent in the InBetween, I was cautious. If I got caught now, the pains delivered to me by the hideous machine before me wouldn’t be able to hold a candle to what the Ghost Mob was planning to bring to the world.
Quickly, I wove through the hunched-over men and women, almost indiscernible from one another, grist for the mill, each bobbing slightly in perfect rhythm to a song played only for those in the grasp of the machine.
It took me a few minutes, but I finally found Bernard the mailman. Emblazoned on the back of his blue coveralls was the stylized rectangle and eagle’s head. Reaching down to grab his shoulders, I instantly felt sick, weakened, and as if my head was going to burst off my body.
I pulled up and then back, unsure of what unseen chains might hold him in place. It was energy, so it seemed if I could just break the field…
“Come on, man. It’s Painter. Let’s go, little brother,” I said, straining, my mind feeling as if I’d dropped acid while smoking crack and downing tequila shooters. “You gotta help me, man, come on.”
Slowly, I felt he was lifting away, but it was hard to tell. Up was becoming indistinguishable from down. The only difference seemed to be that my arms were straining less.
“That’s it, man,” I said, grunting.
Then, as if someone had momentarily shut down the stadium lights, the rush of panicked energy was gone. I held the man as he got reoriented to his feet and saw the tiniest flicker in the hulking power station. It was down by one. It would barely register, but it was at least movement in the right direction.
Bernie lifted his head, eyes a bit crossed, but after a moment, a look of realization passed over his face.
“Heyyy, is that you, Painter?”
“Yeah, man. Sorry I took so long.”
“Did you? I… I don’t remember much. What the hell was all that? I feel kinda oozy. I think I might throw up.”
“You can’t throw up, man,” I said. “You’re still dead, dude.”
He looked to the ceiling and took a breath. “Oh, yeah. That’s right. That sucks. I wish I weren’t dead.”
“Well, if wishes were kisses…”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
Then, as if he’d snapped awake, he reached out and gave me a hug. Hugging wasn’t really a thing in the InBetween because it could drain your energy into another person a little bit. Hell, it’d been a long time since anyone had hugged me.
My memories of the past, the living part of my life, were all just wisps of smoke now. I couldn’t remember the last time—
“Hey, Paint?” Bernie said as he let go of me and looked to the wall I’d just come through.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t think we’re safe.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Brenda was moving quickly through the dark city, eyes trained on the sky.
Above her was the crisscrossed latticework of energy she’d seen since Day One, but if she looked closely, she could see two distinct lines arching down toward the ground, coming to an intersection.
That’s where he would be.
Jan Jorgensen, the man who’d killed her.
Or, actually, the murdered, back-from-the-dead sociopath named Chandra.
“No problem.” Brenda swallowed, looking left and right as she crossed a street, blinking quickly.
She knew that she was tracking the most powerful creature on Earth, the most dangerous in the realms of both Before and After. And, of course, she had no idea what she would do when she found him.
Her.
Whatever.
The reporter looked up and spread her arms, palms splayed as she slowed for a moment.
Jorgensen looked as if he’d stopped moving. Wherever he was headed, he seemed to have arrived. And as she traced her eyes up and down the skyline, she knew where she was looking. That would be where Chandra’s old attorney lived. The livie-spook was going to kill her tonight.
Brenda started moving, more quickly now, still without a real plan of what she’d do when she arrived.
She took some small solace in the knowledge that Alice—the Amazing Alice!—was now heading back to the Post. Pete Davis would make sure she was okay. Their quick return trip to the congressman’s office had been productive.
Twenty minutes earlier, Lee had put up a strong front, but it collapsed quickly. The congressman, like any successful diplomat or politician, was good at convincing people of the story he was selling.
But in the past few hours, since meeting this frail woman named Alice in the hospital shoes, the world had changed. Stephen Lee had always been quick to adapt. But this had cracked that resolve. Evidence of something called “the InBetween” had turned everything upside down. And he was still reeling.
When he’d first emerged, she’d been sitting in his office for a second time, arms in her lap. Stephen Lee had stepped out of his bathroom, wiping his face with a towel. His eyes looked red. He’d spent a minute denying it, but with Brenda’s help, Alice reminded the congressman that, in the space of an hour, everything had become different.
He was in danger.
After a long, long stare out to the city skyline, he’d caved.
“I’m not a bad person,” he said. “I just… I feel you need to know that.”
Alice’s bony shoulders moved slightly. “How did this happen? You couldn’t have snuck in there yourself.”
