Headcase, p.11
Headcase, page 11
She wasn’t as muscular as Thistle, and her skin was smooth—no scars.
My stomach growled.
A smile tugged at the corner of Zara’s mouth. She seemed flattered.
I averted my eyes as I pulled on the polyester pants, wondering which one of us was crazier.
Soon I was dressed in a puffy jacket with a fur-lined hood. I didn’t have a gun—without a thumb, the recoil was likely to break my nose—so I took a cheap knife from the cutlery drawer and zippered it into one of my pockets.
Zara had finally selected a ball cap and a dark UCLA sweater, the Ruger taped to her belly beneath it. ‘Good to go?’ she asked.
I peeped through the slit between the curtains. It was dark out there now. Still no new cars in the lot. Either our pursuers had decided to stake us out from the road rather than getting a room, or they were gone.
Or maybe they didn’t exist. There might be no second vehicle. The Wrangler could have found us some other way. A bug in our car, or spyware in our phones. Or, if it was the Chinese government, a secret spy plane hovering above our heads.
‘Good to go,’ I said.
The window in the bathroom wasn’t designed to open all the way, but Zara got the brackets off with the screwdriver on her Swiss Army knife while I put my prosthesis back on. I dragged a chair across and flung a towel over the windowsill. Zara went out first, as nimbly as a cat. I was clumsier, bruising my chest despite the towel, and knocking over the chair with a flailing leg. Zara wrapped one arm around my torso as I wriggled through, and helped me get to the ground without further injury. She was stronger than she looked.
I pulled up the hood of my jacket to keep the rain off, and looked around. There was a vacant lot behind our room, separated from us by a wire fence. According to a weathered sign, a fire station had been demolished after dangerous chemicals leaked into the soil. Judging by the rips at the bottom of the wire, the sign hadn’t deterred people from sneaking in. Maybe it had even encouraged them. People thought this would be a private place to do drugs or have sex, because everyone else would be smart enough to stay away.
We walked along the fence, past the back of a tyre store and the dumpsters behind a greasy spoon. After about two hundred yards we turned right, and soon met the road again. It was a desolate stretch of blacktop. There was no sidewalk on the other side, just an overgrown verge leading to a concrete stormwater channel. Nothing on this side except the motel and a few businesses that had closed for the night, or maybe for good. The rain had eased to a sprinkle, though I could hear thunder to the east.
Three cars were parked nearby. On a road like this, I’d have expected to see one or two, maximum.
‘Split up,’ Zara murmured. It made sense. If our pursuers were watching for a pair, they might not recognise us individually.
I crossed to the other side and started walking along the street, as close to the kerb as I could get without stepping in the puddles. I could hear water churning in the channel, but couldn’t see it from here.
The first car I came to was a taxi with a dented bumper. A taxi is a great surveillance vehicle, because they all look pretty much the same, and they’re often parked in strange places between fares. I walked past it, keeping a distance of about five yards.
The driver had her seat tilted back, wireless earbuds in. She was looking down at her phone. Not surveilling us, or at least, not well. And the dented bumper made the cab distinctive—not the sort a spy would use.
On the other side of the street, Zara was approaching the second car—a midnight-blue Mitsubishi with tinted windows. She’d opted for the riskier direct approach. She tapped on the window. It rolled down, but from this angle, I couldn’t see the driver.
Zara smiled and leaned in, so the driver could see down her shirt. ‘Are you my Uber?’
I couldn’t hear the reply.
‘Okay, sorry,’ Zara said, and kept walking down the street, frowning at her phone as though confused by an app. With her other hand, she tucked her hair behind her ear, which meant no contact. Whoever she’d seen in the car, she didn’t think they’d been following us.
That left one more car—a white Ford sedan on my side of the street, opposite the motel. Texas plates. I didn’t recognise the numbers, but the car might have kept well back while following us. The tyres looked over-inflated. The car had been cleaned recently, but had driven through mud even more recently. Possibly a rental, though any signage had been removed.
I walked past, this time only three feet away. As casually as I could, I leaned forwards, trying to snatch a glance at the driver.
The car was empty. Perfect. I dug a month-old cigarette from my pocket and stuck it in my mouth, like this was my rental and I’d gotten out for a smoke. I held a lighter in my hand, even though I couldn’t operate it without a thumb, and leaned sideways against the car, peering in the window.
The binoculars in the passenger-side footwell made it pretty obvious this was the car that had been following us. There were also packets of nuts, empty coffee cups and those massage toys you use when your legs cramp up. There was a bottle to drink from, but I didn’t see one to piss in, which could mean the occupant was female, and also explain where she’d gone.
I scratched the back of my neck, which meant confirmed. Then I shifted sideways and wiped the rain off the glass with my palm so I could see more of the interior.
A manila folder on the seat caught my eye. It was closed, and face down, but one of the papers inside had slid far enough that I could see the bottom edge. In a tiny font, the footer read: Order through law, justice with mercy.
I knew that motto. We were being pursued by the Houston Police Department.
I tried the handle. Locked. My mind was racing. Chinese spies might have made sense, but why would the local cops be following us?
‘Hey!’ a voice shouted.
My gaze snapped up. A woman stood on the other side of the street, maybe fifteen feet away. She was short, forties, with dark hair, wearing a jacket over a V-neck shirt, jeans and boots. I guessed she was the driver. Once she was convinced Zara and I weren’t coming out of our room, she must have gone in to question the owner.
As she crossed the street, I recognised her. She was the cop who had pulled us over on our way to the meeting with Ariel Wilcox in the theatre. The cop who’d thought I was the Reaper, until she saw my prosthesis.
Behind her, Zara had flattened herself against the exterior wall of the motel, like a lizard. The woman hadn’t spotted her.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded. Maybe she didn’t recognise me through the rain, in the dark, under the hood of my jacket—or maybe she was pretending not to, so I wouldn’t realise she’d been following me.
‘This your car?’ I mumbled around my cigarette.
‘Yes sir.’ She used sir as a period, rather than a mark of respect.
‘How much did it cost? I’m thinking of buying one.’ I lifted one of the wipers and peered into the gap between the windshield and the hood.
She didn’t look convinced. ‘I’ll need you to step back.’ ‘Okay, okay. Have a nice night.’
As I backed away, I went to put my hands in my pockets. She must have thought I was reaching for a weapon—in an instant she had a Glock 22 pointed at my chest.
So she did recognise me. My heart rate kicked up a notch.
‘Hands where I can see them,’ she said.
‘Whoa, take it easy.’
The woman didn’t take it easy. Tendons bulged in her neck. Her eyes were wide with fear. Whatever she’d been told about me, it was bad.
‘Turn around,’ she said. ‘Right now.’
‘I don’t know who you think I am—’ I began.
‘Do it!’
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Zara peel herself off the wall. She crossed the street towards us, fast, silent, wraith-like. As she closed in, she reached under her sweatshirt for her weapon.
‘There’s no need for this,’ I said, talking to both of them. The Glock trembled in the cop’s grip. ‘Turn around. Interlace your fingers behind your head.’
‘Okay, okay.’ I couldn’t actually do that, since the silicone fingers were attached to each other, but I put both hands on the back of my skull. As I turned away, I saw Zara drawing her gun. Lining up the sights on the woman’s back.
I spent half a second churning through options and outcomes.
Then I ran.
‘Hey!’ the cop yelled. There was no cover, so she could easily have shot me in the back. But police are trained not to open fire unless they’ve seen a weapon, and this officer, at least, remembered her training. She didn’t shoot me, and Zara didn’t shoot her. Instead, the cop ran after me, her heavy shoes pounding the mud as I sprinted towards the stormwater channel that cut through the field. My hood blew off, and the rain speckled my face.
The closer I got, the longer and wider the channel seemed—a deep concrete groove with angled walls, stretching to the horizon in both directions. When I reached it, I realised I’d made a mistake. I’d expected to be able to leap over, but the torrent was ten feet wide and moving fast. I’d heard that floodwater five inches deep could sweep a person away. Ten inches could carry off a car.
I wasn’t weighed down by a gun, a radio or a pair of handcuffs. Maybe the cop wouldn’t try to make the jump. That was more or less my only hope.
I took a run-up and then threw myself over the channel. The dark water rushed past beneath me. My legs pedalled the air as I soared through the rain. Halfway across, I could already tell I wasn’t going to make it.
I splashed down a foot from the far edge. The flow was only knee-deep but seemed to have incredible power—it knocked my legs out from beneath me and suddenly I was under. The cold blasted my face and my hand first, then penetrated my clothes a second later and flash-froze the rest of my body. The water wasn’t deep enough to swim in, even if I’d been capable of swimming with only one arm. Instead it dragged me along the concrete bed of the channel, scraping the skin off my palm and the flesh off one of my cheeks. My nose flooded, then my sinuses. My heart hammered.
If I didn’t get out of this, I’d end up in the Rio Grande. I couldn’t swim, so I rolled, as if a gator had me in its jaws. This didn’t take me any closer to the side of the channel, but it slowed me down, enough that I finally got some grip with my shoes. Fighting the current, I dragged myself sideways out of the flow, bleeding and shivering.
Gunshots popped in the air. The cop must have decided it didn’t matter whether she’d seen a weapon—she’d rather face a tribunal than let me get away. The first bullet hit nothing. The second ricocheted off the concrete to my right with a twang like a bowstring, sending fragments of lead and concrete upwards. I wasn’t hit. I scrambled up the angled wall of the channel and kept running, arms covering my head.
The cop didn’t try again. ‘Dispatch, I’m in pursuit of a homicide suspect, white male, five foot eight, wearing a brown jacket with a hood, suspect is on foot, halfway between—’
That was all I heard before I was out of earshot, still running through the weeds.
Soon I reached another road and ran across. No cars. There was a fast-food place and a strip club ahead—I ducked through the alley in between. Broken glass, worn down to grits, crunched under my cheap shoes. I took a left turn towards the lights of the city. Other police would arrive to search the area before too long. My best hope was to find a crowd and disappear into it. A dripping-wet one-armed man didn’t attract as much attention in Houston as you might think.
I made it two hundred yards before Zara’s car screeched to a halt next to me.
I wrenched open the passenger door and threw myself into the seat. Water quickly saturated the fabric. The AC chilled me to the bone.
Zara floored the accelerator. The car hurtled towards the Loop, which was the fastest way out of any potential police cordon. She looked like she was buzzing with energy. Plenty of tangy adrenaline in her blood. Mine, too.
‘What the hell was that?’ she said, by way of greeting.
‘That was the cop who pulled us over yesterday.’
‘You sure?’
‘Very sure.’
‘Detective Jones was supposed to let the FBI take over the case,’ Zara said. ‘Maybe he slow-walked it. The local cops don’t always trust the feds.’
‘This has nothing to do with the body at Space City. She thinks I’m the Reaper.’
Zara glanced at me. ‘Why would she think that?’
‘I don’t know.’ I watched the mirrors. I couldn’t see any signs of pursuit, but I could hear them. Sirens on the wind.
I caught sight of my own reflection. My hair was slicked to my skull, and blood trickled down my cheek where the concrete had scraped it.
Zara took an exit, headed for the safe house. The car zipped through the dark, quiet suburbs, headlights catching the rain.
‘I saw you go under,’ she said. ‘I thought you were drowning.’
‘So did I.’
‘What did it feel like?’
I squinted at her. ‘Drowning?’
‘Thinking you were about to die.’
Water was still tickling my lungs. I coughed into my elbow. ‘It wasn’t my first time.’
Zara left this alone. The wipers carved overlapping semicircles through the rain. Finally she said, ‘I’ll go to the Houston PD tomorrow and find out why they’re after you.’
‘Won’t they recognise you, from when they pulled us over?’
Zara gave me some side-eye.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Forgot who I was talking to. What about me?’
‘You go to the FBI field office. Talk to your old colleagues. The sooner we can kill their investigation into Space City, the sooner we can get you out of Houston.’
I doubted she was concerned for my safety. She probably just didn’t want to expose an illegal CIA operation.
‘Okay,’ I said.
Zara was looking at my hands. ‘Oh my God. You’re hit.’ The cop’s first shot hadn’t missed after all. It had punched a hole through my right palm. As I looked at it, the pain hit me, a hot throb surging up my arm. But it was imaginary, like the tingles you feel when you see someone else getting a scalp massage.
I held up the hand and peered at Zara through the hole in the silicone. ‘No, I’m not.’
Her laugh came with a little gasp. It sounded like genuine relief, which surprised me. I hadn’t really thought Zara cared whether I lived or died, except my body would be hard to dispose of, with no cannibal available.
I found myself laughing, too. A dark chuckle that became helpless giggles. Mad laughter at a mad world.
Soon we were at the safe house. As we entered, Zara did her usual sweep, checking the sawdust on the floor and the alignment of the furniture. No one had been here in our absence.
I was freezing. ‘I’m gonna take a shower.’
‘No, you’re not.’ Zara sat me down on a milk crate in the corner of the living room, surrounded by power tools. She got a first-aid kit and a flashlight from the cupboard.
‘I can patch myself up.’
‘You need stitches.’ Zara brought back the kit and pulled out a bottle of Elastoplast wound spray.
‘I’ve given myself stitches before.’ Though I’d had two hands at the time.
‘So have I. Trust me, it’s much, much better to let someone else do it.’
She squirted a stinging mist on my face. I hoped it was as painful for the bacteria as it was for me. She unwrapped a sterilised cloth and dabbed my cheekbone. It came back pink with blood.
Once the wound was clean, Zara picked up a needle and threaded it. She held my chin with one hand. The tip of the needle hovered dangerously close to my eyeball.
‘Stay still, okay?’ she said.
I thought back to the motel room, where I’d watched her undress. Her unblemished skin. ‘Where did you give yourself stitches?’
‘Pakistan.’
‘I meant where on your body.’
She hesitated. I’d caught her in a lie.
‘I really can do this,’ she said.
‘All right,’ I said. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply.
The needle hurt. I focused on her other hand, cool on my chin. Not holding me still, just resting there.
It seemed like a long time since anyone had touched me like that. Gently, carefully, no judgement. Even people who didn’t know I was a cannibal avoided getting too close, sensing something was wrong with me. I remembered hearing somewhere that babies died without regular skin-to-skin contact. Maybe it was true for adults, too. We perished but kept walking around, for fear that someone would realise we were dead. That we were so repulsive no one had been willing to touch us with their bare hands.
It felt like I’d been dead since Thistle left. But Zara had chosen to bring me back, even though—or perhaps because—she knew the truth.
I tried to talk without moving my face: ‘How’d you find me, after I got out of the water?’
‘I don’t know. I ran back to the car and started driving, and I just … guessed which way you’d go.’
‘It’s probably a bad sign that I’m so predictable.’
‘Only to me—we have a lot in common.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘For saving me.’
‘Any time. All better?’
I realised it was over already. I opened my eyes. My cheek was stiff, and even sorer than before. I nodded.
Zara went to put the first-aid box away, but hesitated. She reached in and unwrapped a bandaid. Then, smiling, she carefully stuck it over the bullet hole in my prosthesis.
CHAPTER 15
Now
I keep waiting, waiting, waiting for this sickness to leave me be. What am I?
Dr Diaz snaps her notebook shut. ‘I think that will do for today.’
I look at the clock. It feels like I’ve been talking for years, but only the usual ninety minutes have passed. The hands sweep silently past eleven-thirty.
‘Your call, doc,’ I say, and stand up. It takes effort. I feel simultaneously drained and energised. Precisely once in my life I went jogging, and I felt this same way afterwards.
