Sleeping dogs, p.4
Sleeping Dogs, page 4
“No, just bring her. She’ll fetch a good price in Amsterdam.”
The man headed for the house and for Irmgard.
Irmgard played with the peas on her plate, although she wasn’t really playing. She hated them. They made her gag, and no matter how hard she tried, even when she held her nose and her breath, she still couldn’t get them to go down. Her mother used to play a game with her that helped, but even then, it was hard.
The sound of the car made her forget the peas; they didn’t often get visitors these days. She scooted off the chair, went into the living room, and peeked out the screen door, keeping her body off to the side so no one could see her.
Irmgard took after her mother. Her father called her shy, but she didn’t like it when he said that. She liked how her mother said it better. Her mother used to say she didn’t like attention.
But that didn’t mean she wasn’t curious. She peeked around the doorframe and watched as the man put his arm around her father. They must be friends, she thought, because no one but her mother, or Irmgard herself, ever hugged her father.
A commotion near the cars caught her attention, and then the man she had thought was her father’s friend took out a gun and shot him. Growing up on the farm, Irmgard was well acquainted with the concept of death. That, and what had happened to her mother. But this—seeing her father murdered right before her eyes was beyond her scope of understanding.
Irmgard watched, horrified, as other men dragged an old man out of the trunk of a car. His hands and feet were tied.
And then another man started walking toward the house. The house and her.
Irmgard ran through the kitchen and out the back door. She ran as fast as she could. Out past the sheep pen, past the barn, and into the night. Irmgard was a good runner for an eight-year-old. She had long legs and a thin, sleek torso, and she played in these hills every day. She ran and ran, even when she heard the men yelling down below her. She knew they were looking for her. Fear pushed her past the point that would usually tire her and force her to stop. She cried as she ran. She cried because she was afraid and because her mother and father were dead, and now she was all alone. But even though she cried, she kept running until her lungs ached and her legs screamed. She ran and ran.
And the men did not find her.
Not then.
But there was another hunter in the mountains and woods that night. A hunter even more deadly than the men.
9
Anthony felt the car lurch to a stop. It was cold, and he was still dressed in his gardening clothes from when they had kidnapped him. His finger ached … well … the stub anyway. It was a very strange experience. It didn’t feel like a stub to Anthony. It felt as though the finger were still there, but not really. There was a stabbing pain, all the way to the fingernail, yet there was no finger—no nail. It was a weird sensation. He didn’t like it. He would make them pay. He would make them pay in ways their puny minds could not hope to comprehend.
They should have left him alone.
Anthony had fallen into a sort of waking sleep after his Bella died. The color in life had dulled. Not to black and white like the first television they'd owned, where he would sit and laugh as he watched Jackie Gleason in The Honeymooners. Not like that.
Worse.
Life had drained from the colors, making them obscene in some macabre way, a mockery of their former brilliance. And in the same way, taste and smell, sounds and touch, were all—less. He couldn’t explain it any better. Not to the useless shrink he once visited, not to his family, and certainly not to himself. Money, power, respect, responsibility—none of them mattered to Anthony anymore.
He turned the empire he’d built through literal blood, sweat, and tears over to his most capable son, Nicky.
And he felt nothing.
No loss.
He’d gone into seclusion, to his family’s vineyard in Italy, and did nothing for nearly a year. Slowly, a small bit of the color came back. Not much, certainly not all. But a little.
He’d always wanted to grow grapes, make wine, and so he started. The vineyard was there, well cared for. All there was to do was put the work in, and Anthony had always been a hard worker. So he’d put on his work clothes and started getting his hands dirty again—literally. Anthony had a lifetime of dirty hands, but this was different. It was clean dirt, free of blood and pain and suffering.
Life was no longer what it had been with Bella, but it was becoming something different from the nonliving experience he had been hiding under since her passing. Not good, not yet, but less bad.
There was light at the end of the tunnel—just a spark. Of promise, of hope. Something he thought he would never again experience or feel.
And then they had come.
They’d invaded his home. Killed his men.
They'd zapped him with electricity and bound and gagged him. They’d cut off his finger. The finger itself meant less to him than the ring that circled it. He might well forgive an enemy for maiming him, but this—this he would never forgive. For this, he would take vengeance.
They’d moved him. He didn’t know where at first, but he’d been taken, first on a small plane, then on a boat.
When the new men took control of him at the port, he understood that he must be in Germany. Anthony spoke German well. He wondered if the men knew this about him. If not, he would not make them aware of it.
And now he was here, in the trunk of a car, still bound and gagged. They had been driving for hours. When the car stopped and the men began to talk, he scraped the tape off from over his mouth on the edge of metal by the right taillight. He started yelling in Italian that he was in the trunk and that he had been kidnapped. He heard a gunshot but didn’t feel any pain, or see any holes near him, so he continued to yell.
It didn’t take long for the men to open the trunk and drag him out. His legs and arms were numb from the long ride, but he swung forward and smashed one of the men in the nose with his forehead. Anthony was punched and kicked and knocked to the ground. When they finally picked him up, he saw the man he had smashed in the face rolling around holding his nose, blood dripping through his fingers.
There was a dead man lying crumpled at the feet of another man. The dead man sported a bullet hole in his forehead. The other man held a pistol and had only two fingers on his left hand.
Join the club, pal, Anthony thought, feeling the ache in his own hand.
Anthony smiled a tight-lipped smile. He had upset their plans in at least some minor detail. He looked back at the man rolling on the ground. His blood was not the dull gray that all colors had taken on since the death of his Bella. No. The blood was bright and vibrant, filled with life—and the promise of death.
They should have let him sleep.
10
Kenny called me around noon. I’d just finished reserving flights to Italy for Billy and me.
“Hi, Mal,” said Kenny. “I see you’re by your computer. That’s good.”
I looked around to make sure he wasn’t magically standing behind me. He wasn’t. And that was maybe even scarier than if he had been.
“I’m going to send you some vids,” said Kenny. “Surveillance of the kidnapping. Some from Carlino’s security feed, some from satellites, some from—another source.”
Satellites? Another source?
I looked behind me again, a little chill tickling my spine.
“I also canceled your flights to Italy,” said Kenny. “They already snuck Carlino out of the country. I booked you and Billy an international flight to Germany that leaves DIA at 2100 hours. Remember to be there at least two hours early to make it through security. I also took the liberty to alert them about your carrying guns and that you’d be traveling with your service dog.”
My jaw dropped.
“Germany? How do you know that?”
“It’s complicated,” he said. “At least it would be complicated explaining it to you. But basically—very basically—nearly all the mobs are tapped. Wiretapped. Actually, there are no wires. I guess you could call it digitally tapped. But then everyone is. Cell phones, security systems, tablets, home smart devices, watches. Virtually every word you speak and most of your visible actions are recorded and held in vast storage facilities that contain servers and data collection devices more advanced than you could possibly believe. It’s the Verse, Mal. And the Wave moves through the Verse freely. Ones and zeros, like I said before.”
That did nothing to ease my apprehension. Big brother scares me more than regular bad guys any day.
“Anyway,” continued Kenny, “looks like they got him out of the country in a Cessna, landed on a private airstrip in Germany, loaded him on a boat that ferried him across to a dock, where they tossed him in the trunk of a car. My guess is the Carlino family is too well established for them to hole up in Italy for very long. That’s why they shipped him out.” Kenny tapped a few keys. “I just sent you the info on where they reached port in Germany. Two cars were waiting for them. I have a video feed that shows them loading him in the trunk of one of the cars, then driving off. License plates on both vehicles are clearly visible. Rentals, of course—routed through false names and addresses. Unfortunately, the feed loses them a short distance down the road, and I haven’t been able to reacquire them … yet.”
“Any idea who took him?” I asked.
“Three possibilities. I’ll narrow it down. It’s all in the numerics I sent. I don’t have the German faction that’s helping yet but give me time.”
“Numerics?”
I could almost hear him smiling over the phone.
“Ones and zeros, Mal.”
“Nice work, Kenny,” I said. “You never cease to amaze me.”
“The Verse sees all—even the kid there next to you. Carlino’s grandson. That’s why I booked him the flight with you.”
“You’re creeping me out, Kenny,” I said.
“The Verse sees all, hears all, knows all,” he clicked off.
I saw Billy watching me.
“You got some weird friends,” he said.
Doing my best David Carradine from Kill Bill, I said, “Baby, you ain’t kiddin’.”
He gave me confused and said, “Is that from a song?”
Kids.
11
Irmgard didn’t know how long she’d slept, but she thought it hadn’t been long. The dream woke her. It was a bad dream. A scary dream. A terrible dream. In the dream, her father was—but then she remembered—it wasn’t a dream. Her father was dead. She started crying again.
The big boulder she crouched beneath shielded her from the night’s breeze, but still, she was getting cold. She hadn’t had the time or the sense of mind to grab her coat before running out of the house. At least she was wearing long sleeves, jeans, and hiking shoes. If she’d been in her nightgown, it would be worse.
The crunching of snow stopped her tears. She stared, wide-eyed, in the direction of the sound. They were still looking for her. She turned her head slowly, scanning the darkness. She wasn’t certain, but she thought she saw something coming up the mountain from below. She strained her eyes as hard as she could, and yes, she was sure now. Two faces—at least two. Not close, but not far either. Irmgard stood and made her way around the boulder. She knew these mountains better than anyone. She tried to think of the best place to hide, but there were no caves this way, and she didn’t think she could make it around the men to where there were.
She decided on the trees.
But even they held a problem. The ones that would hide her, the pines, were hard to get into and climb. The others had no leaves, offering little concealment except for their height.
Finally, she decided and crawled under a wreath of green needles until she reached a trunk, thick and rough. The heavily decorated branches blocked out the scant light the night provided, and she found herself in near-total blackness. Irmgard felt out and up, her fingers finding the bare wood of the branches, and she started climbing. It was difficult. The bark, sharp and sticky, cut at her hands. Small twigs kept jabbing at her eyes and catching in her hair, but she kept on and up until she was a good way off the ground.
She was unaware of the creature that marked her progress from a short distance away.
The wolf had picked up her scent from near the barn and had tracked her to the boulder. He was about to attack when the sound of the men stopped him. He watched as she made her way around the boulder and to the tree. He could have taken her easily, but he was not the apex predator of these mountains for no reason. He was patient, careful, wise. Besides, the men were almost to him.
“This way,” said Karl.
“Do you really know what you are about?” asked Heinrich. He was not as fit as Karl and was struggling to catch his breath. “Or are you just trying to be the big man?”
“She came this way,” he said. “You saw the rock where she rested. I think she’s close.”
Both men carried rifles.
The rifles would not help them.
The wolf struck with such speed and power that he knocked them both to the ground. He ripped out Karl’s throat with one massive gesture and turned to Heinrich, who was trying to scrabble for his weapon. The monster dove forward, crushing the man’s groin in jaws of steel, ignoring the screams and hapless flailing. The wolf moved up to the man’s stomach, tearing through the coat and past the flesh to the fragile intestines. And still, the man screamed—but not for long. Soon there was only the sound of Karl choking to death on his own blood and the crunching and snapping of the wolf’s feeding.
The girl watched it all from the tree.
The wolf knew she watched. He let her watch. He wanted her to watch.
12
Sarah had gotten right to work on the finger when she made it back to her lab, pushing her other projects to the side. Gil never failed to keep things interesting.
She started with photographs and videos, of course. Then she dabbed and swabbed and scraped before fingerprinting the loops and whorls. Strangely, it was almost always easier on a severed finger—no convincing the human mind to go limp and let her do the work. People couldn’t help but to try and help, which inevitably messed up a good print.
Next, Sarah removed the ring, a plain gold band. She noted the deep imprint and paleness of the skin. It had been in place for a long time. She took new photographs and searched the inside of the ring. No inscription. She noted the three-dimensional aspects of the finger: height, width, and length. Then she measured the severed end from top to bottom and side to side. She scraped the edges of the wound, collecting skin, dried blood, and hopefully, microscopic metal fragments from the instrument used to clip the finger from its host hand. Sarah dug under the fingernail and again collected the contents. She X-rayed the finger, checking for an old fracture or pins. Later she would run the ring through a series of advanced spectrographs. It was possible there had once been an inscription that time and wear had worn away. If so, different wavelengths of light could bring them to the surface for photographing. But for now, she concentrated on the flesh. Metal took a long time to deteriorate—meat, not so long. Of course, she would be using chemicals to preserve it, but first, she wanted to get what she could in its purest state.
Sarah’s mind drifted to Gil. He’d looked tired to her. She wondered how he’d been sleeping. She knew about the nightmares. Sarah had personal knowledge of the horrors of the dreamscape. Memories of her rape had plagued her nights in twisted versions, chasing her through her dreams. And what had happened to Gil, and to his wife and daughter, was even worse.
And if that wasn’t bad enough for him, he now had the memories of Gail, the woman who had played with Gil’s heart and mind, only to betray him in the end.
Sarah loved Gil; it was as simple as that. She’d loved him even before the Double Tap Rapist had visited her for the first time. Reflecting on the rapist filled her with terror, halting her breath and her heart, even after so long. The terror and the repulsion—his hands—his mouth—his weight—his smell. The things he said to her, the things he did. She forced her mind to leave it, to go back to Gil. How good he was. So strong. In will and strength and character. She knew he’d killed people in the war and after—he killed the Double Tap Rapist. But the people he killed deserved it.
Sarah had seen far too much in her line of work not to know that some people needed to die. If the man who had raped her stood before her, here and now, she would gladly slice his throat from ear to ear … watch him bleed out. She would scream in his face as he died. Even now, she hoped he burned in Hell. Sarah wasn’t much of a religious person, not like Gil, but she wanted to believe in a hell where he would suffer. That’s how much she hated him.
With Gil, she felt safe. But it wasn’t just that. She didn’t just love him for that. She loved him for everything he was. And he had suffered so much. She wanted to comfort him, the way he had comforted her. She wanted to hold him, to kiss him, to love him. She wanted to take all the bad dreams away. She didn’t know if she could do it. How do you fight a ghost? How could she hope to compete with his memories of Joleen and Marla?
In the mind, the dead are always perfect. Forgotten are the arguments, the hard times, the dissatisfaction. The dead remain eternally the way you need to remember them in your heart. The living are just what they are—imperfect—moody—with bad hair days and stress. What chance did she have of competing? And yet, Gail Davis had accomplished it. At least on some level. Sarah didn’t know how far things had gone between them, but she knew Gil well enough to understand something had happened. That he had had feelings for Gail.
How did Gail do it? Sarah had seen her. Gail had been an assistant district attorney, and Sarah had testified on cases with her. She was pretty. But lots of pretty girls had come on to Gil Mason with no results. What was it about Gail Davis that had broken through his defenses?
