Ribbons (19 page)

26

Matt thought the man lying on the bed looked like a stage magician who had just made his own clothes disappear. He was naked and pigeon chested, but he still wore a top hat and sported a nice goatee. Sitting on his lap was a ventriloquist’s dummy. It wore a top hat, too. And unlike his owner, the dummy still had most of his clothes on. He was dressed in a tux with tails, but his tuxedo pants were pulled down. Jutting out between the dummy’s legs was an erection. Whether it belonged to the man or the dummy was hard to tell because it was completely covered by a pink French tickler.

“Hi,” said Matt. “Mr. . . . Johnson? Really? That’s the name you’re going with?”

Mr. Johnson gestured dramatically to the dummy sitting on his junk. “And this is Wally.”

They were in the party room. Matt stood next to the bed with Christy behind him by the door. She was hugging a short silk robe around her body and glaring at Mr. Johnson. There was a panic button hidden behind one of the nightstands, and Christy had pressed it a few minutes ago. It lit up a small red light behind the bar in the parlor, as well as one on the desk in the office. This was the first time the panic button had been used since Matt had taken over. He wasn’t sure exactly how to react.

“It sounds like there’s been a little confusion here,” said Matt.

“I’m not confused,” said Mr. Johnson. “She didn’t give me what I wanted. She’s a whore. That’s her job.”

“Well, now, her job is to entertain you on an hourly basis,” said Matt. “So maybe you were confused on the services offered per hour?”

Wally turned his wooden head toward Matt. “She’s a fucking whore!”

Not bad. Matt didn’t see Mr. Johnson’s lips move at all.

Christy was less impressed. She lunged forward at him. Luckily, Matt was between them. He held out his hands toward Christy to block her path.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” he said.

She stopped, but the look in her eyes was demanding blood. Matt kept one hand up in front of her, but then he pointed the other toward Mr. Johnson. The guy didn’t seem fazed at all by Christy’s reaction.

“Hey,” said Matt, “no need to be rude. We’re just having a customer service conversation here.”

Wally’s eyebrows waggled. “Maybe you should off-shore that shit.”

Matt was reminded of his call to the financial software helpline. He wondered what Sean might say in this situation.

“You know what I’m gonna do?” asked Matt. “I’m just gonna look right past that so we can get to the point. You and Christy had an understanding.”

Both Wally and Mr. Johnson turned to give Matt blank stares. Christy snorted and walked over to the nightstand where she had left her clutch purse.

Matt continued. “You agreed to the . . .
entrée
she was offering. But then you tried to add a
side dish
? One that we don’t even serve here. Now she’s pretty upset.”

Mr. Johnson waved a hand dismissively. “Is this about money? Do you want more money?”

As he said that, Wally took the opportunity to bend over and start sucking on the French tickler. He made glugging sounds as he bobbed his head. It was kind of like when a ventriloquist drinks a glass of water while his puppet performs a monologue. Matt was beginning to realize that this was not really a customer service type of conversation.

“Well,” Matt said, “no. I think what you owe us is an apology. This has been very traumatic.” He couldn’t take is eyes off the bobbing puppet. “You know . . . for all concerned.”

Wally looked up from his work. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you and Nip Slip here go fuck yourselves off?”

Matt turned toward Christy and started walking her out the doorway. “This guy’s a jerk. Let’s just get him out of here.”

Christy had something in her hand. A small cylinder of some sort. “Sure. One sec.”

She stepped back inside the party room and closed the door. Matt stood alone in the hallway for a second. Maybe she forgot something. Then he heard Wally through the door.

“Oh, you want some more? I thought you might. Once you’ve had wood, nothing else is quite as good.”

Christy didn’t reply, but there was a faint hissing sound. It was followed by screaming.

“Ahh! Fuuuck! My eyes! Fuuuck!”

“I can see your lips moving this time,” said Christy.

There was a sharp crack, like something got slapped hard. Matt was a little afraid to open the door now. Whatever it had been, it sounded like Mr. Johnson was still more concerned about his eyes.

“They’re fucking melting!”

“You both need to work on your manners,” said Christy.

Christy opened the door. She was carrying Wally’s head. “They apologized.”

Matt noticed a single drop of blood on her forehead. “Oh, you’re bleeding!”

“No, I’m not,” said Christy.

There was a whimper from the bed and something thumped to the floor. Christy closed the door and looked at Matt. She wasn’t quite smiling.

“I suppose I should have taken care of that,” said Matt. “That’s what managers are for.”

Christy pointed Wally’s head at the bandage on Matt’s nose. “You’ve already taken one for the team.”

“Yeah, well, I snore now,” said Matt.

Something got knocked over as Mr. Johnson fumbled around in the party room. “Is anybody there? I’m fucking dying here!”

Matt raised an eyebrow at Christy.

“He’s not dying,” said Christy. “Unless he’s severely allergic to pepper spray.” She sounded hopeful.

“Okay,” said Matt, “I’ll see if I can get our new
partner
to help me take out the trash.  My guess is, he’ll just watch and laugh instead.”

Thug Guy
did
laugh when Matt told him. He was in the kitchen standing by the sink with his sleeves were rolled up and his newsboy hat pushed back. He had a knife in his hand. It was the stubby one with the hook at the tip. From the break room, Matt couldn’t see what Thug Guy was cooking up.

Thug Guy gestured to his ear with his knife. “I thought I hear moaning. Not the good kind. Is he dead?”

“What? No! Why would you think that?” asked Matt.

Thug Guy rolled his eyes and then looked down at whatever it was that he was cutting. “He could be bad for business. Maybe he tell people what happen. Maybe he tell cops.”

Matt crossed his arms but lowered his voice. “I wouldn’t kill him. That’s crazy!”

Thug Guy didn’t lower his voice. He held something with one hand and jabbed his knife into it with his other. “Is natural. The strong prey on the weak. You must kill to survive. Don’t you watch . . . uh . . . Discovery Channel?”

Matt moved toward the kitchen, hoping Thug Guy would lower his voice if he got a little closer. “Nobody’s going to
prey
on anyone. I just want to get him out of here. Beside, the cops aren’t a problem. We have that covered.”

He could see the kitchen counter now, and Thug Guy wasn’t preparing a meal. Newspaper had been laid out over the counter. Lying in the center of it was a dead crow. Blood was pooling around it but not a lot. There was a cut between the bird’s legs, and Thug Guy was using the hook part of the knife to tease something out of it.

Thug Guy didn’t look up from his work. “Oh? Maybe I misjudge you? Maybe you are big-time criminal? A real gangster?” The sarcasm was clear, even with his thick accent.

The smell hit Matt as the hook pulled out some of the bird’s organs. It reminded him of the animal cages at the zoo. Not rotten, but an exotic kind of stink. Something caught inside the crow, and Thug Guy gave a little tug. There was a popping sound, and another glob of bird parts spilled out.

Matt’s throat felt thick as he swallowed. “I think gangsters plan their crimes. I just kind of blunder into them. So are you gonna help me?”

“Sure. I will help. Maybe I break something small as reminder.”

“You mean on him, right?”

Thug Guy used his knife to scrape something into the garbage disposal. He looked up at Matt. “Sure.”

Matt figured he’d better get back to Mr. Johnson in the party room. He also didn’t want to learn any more about crow anatomy.

He left Thug Guy to clean up and went back out into the hallway. The party room door was wide open. Matt’s stomach tightened, and he stepped quietly down the hallway like he was expecting somebody to jump out at him.

He slowly leaned his head into the room. “Hello?”

Nobody.

It was still early, so there weren’t a lot of people in the parlor. That was good. At least there wouldn’t be a big audience if Mr. Johnson decided to go
perform
onstage. Matt didn’t hear any yelling so he guessed that wasn’t the case. He slowly turned in a circle, trying to figure out where a deranged ventriloquist might hide.

“What are you doing?”

Matt looked toward the foyer and saw Christy just coming down the stairs. She had jeans on now and a loose-fitting blouse. Not her normal work clothes.

“Where’s the puppet master?” asked Matt.

“Oh,” said Christy, “he left. As soon as he could see again, he grabbed his clothes and ran. He couldn’t see very well, though. I think I heard him hit a garbage can with his car. At least, I hope it was only a garbage can.”

“Did he take Wally?” he asked.

“Most of him,” said Christy. “I put his head on my nightstand.”

“That’s creepy.”

“Maybe a little. I’ll sleep fine, though,” she said. “I think we still have Mr. Johnson’s credit card at the bar.”

“Drinks are on him, then.”

“I’ll have to have mine later. I’m heading over to Erica’s. She wanted to talk.”

Matt was surprised. “You guys talk?”

“Sometimes,” Christy said. “She doesn’t have a lot of friends. I think that’s the way she wants it.”

“What about the cop?” asked Matt.

“Dani? They broke up,” she said. “That’s why she wants me to come over. We’ll probably also bitch about you. Because that’s what you do when the boss isn’t around.”

Matt nodded. “That makes sense. What about Adam? We’re not closing for a while.”

Christy smiled. “He’s in his clubhouse. I can’t get him out of there. He’d sleep in there if I let him. Do you think you could check in on him in a bit?”

“Yeah, sure. I like it in there myself.”

“Thanks. I shouldn’t be too late.”

Matt watched Christy go. Thug Guy must have been watching her, too.

“Very beautiful,” he said.

Matt turned to look at him. Thug Guy had a knowing smile on his face, like they were sharing some kind of secret. Matt didn’t like it. He decided to change the subject as quickly as possible.

“False alarm,” he said. “Mr. Johnson found his own way out. You can go back to your . . . work.”

Thug Guy tilted his head from side to side and shrugged. He gave Matt another smile and lumbered back into the break room. Matt wondered who he was making his new crow for. Or maybe he just collected them as souvenirs from his travels.

Matt thought about heading out to the clubhouse now. The day had turned out to be stranger than most, and hiding away from the rest of it sounded like a good idea.

27

The SWAT van smelled like sweat. It was fresh sweat, but that didn’t make it smell any better. Dani was crammed in the back with seven other officers. Each of them wore a helmet and layers of body armor. She was trying to think about her training. She had completed Dynamic Entry training a couple of years ago, but she wasn’t part of the regular SWAT team. As the investigative specialist on the case, it was her job to help direct the team after the location had been secured. In a few minutes the side door would slide open and there would be no more time to think.

One of the other officers was bouncing his leg in a steady rhythm by the ball of his foot. Another leaned his head back with his eyes closed. Dani was nervous, but she clearly wasn’t the only one sweating.

Dwayne sat up front with the driver. He turned back to face them as the van slowed, and it started making its way through residential streets. “No sirens. No lights,” he said. “We’ll park half a block up and approach on foot. We announce ourselves as we breach.”

They had gone over all this earlier in the war room. Three separate times. With maps. He was stating the obvious again, but this time she thought it was more for the team than for himself. He was getting everybody focused before the doors opened and he yelled,
Go, go, go, go!

“We want him alive,” he said. Then he added, “I’m required to say that.”

The tip had come in just a couple of hours ago. There were lots of tips coming in, though, and so far none of them had provided any significant leads. At first this one had sounded like it could be a dead end, too. Maybe just a nosy neighbor complaining about a vagrant. But the woman had been very insistent, so the call had gotten through the initial screening process and Dani had picked up the phone. The woman’s name was Lois. Once she had calmed down and finished her rant about not being taken seriously, Dani started to run through her standard questions. Lois stopped her right there. What she had to say made Dani stand up and wave Dwayne over as she put Lois on speakerphone.

Lois spoke deliberately, like she was reliving the experience. Her description of the box cutter was what got Dani’s attention. That and what the man had said when he was talking to himself. It was Foster. It had to be.

Everybody sat up straight as the van slowed to a stop. Dani adjusted her grip on her assault rifle and jammed the stock under her armpit. They parked next to a small house that had a car up on blocks in the driveway. Based on the layer of dust on the car, it had probably been years since anybody had worked on it.

There was a moment of absolute stillness as the sergeant checked in with another officer who had eyes on the abandoned building. It was like waiting for a roller coaster to crest the rise before the first big drop. Everybody stared at the sergeant’s radio.

A hiss of static broke the silence. “Confirmed. No pedestrians on the street. Green light.”

“Go, go, go, go!”

Daylight lit up the interior of the van as the doors cracked open. The team was out in seconds and lined up on the sidewalk. They moved forward, crouched with their weapons angling out in front of them. The sergeant joined Dani at the rear of the column, radio in one hand, pistol in the other.

A man stepped through the front door of the house next to them. He stopped short, and a cigarette tumbled out of his lips as he gawked at the squad. He looked like he was trying to figure out what he’d done wrong. The second officer in the column jabbed a finger at the man and then at the front door. He had to do it again before the man got the hint and stepped back into his house. His face appeared in the front window a few seconds later.

The officer taking point got to the fence line of the abandoned building and dropped to one knee. He leaned around the edge of the fence and raised his rifle to cover the rest of the column as the team hurried past. The next officer stopped at a faded sign that read,
Tule Springs Group Home
and then did the same. Dani had a strange sense of déjà vu as boots trampled through the old playground. Cops and robbers. Cowboys and Indians. Duck, duck, goose. Kids were always hunting each other.

Officers stacked up against the wall next to the entrance of the building. Gun mounted flashlights clicked on. It was still early afternoon, but the building was boarded up, and it was going to be dark inside. It would take them time to adjust to the light. Just a few seconds, but Dani knew she could empty her rifle in just a few seconds. The lead officer unclipped a flashbang grenade to even the playing field. He looked back at the sergeant.

Dwayne tapped the rear officer and motioned him forward with a flick of his fingers. The officer ducked low and rushed up. He was carrying a small metal battering ram. The double door had a chain threaded through its tarnished brass handles, and one of the handles flew off in an explosion of splinters as the ram made contact. Both doors flew open, and dust billowed up like smoke. The entryway was inky black.

The lead officer stood with his back against the wall but directed his voice into the building. “Police! On the ground! Now!”

He didn’t wait for a reply. His finger yanked a pin, and everybody ducked low as he threw the grenade into the darkness. There was a dull thunking sound as the grenade rattled across a linoleum floor. The shadows disappeared in a white strobe. It was followed by a thunderclap and then everybody was up and running.

At first, their flashlights just served to create cones of white smoke in the darkness. As bodies rushed in, the smoke swirled and started to disperse. Dani’s flashlight lit up an old poster telling her to
Just Say No
. She turned to the right and stayed low until she reached a corner. Then she spun around and aimed her rifle out into the middle of the room. It looked like a reception area. There was a low wall with a desk behind it across from her.

Somebody yelled, “Clear!” He must have been able to see more than Dani could.

Everybody was up and moving again. There were two doors leading out of the room and a hallway that stretched back deeper into the building. Dani stuck with the team on the right. Two officers covered the hallway but didn’t move down. The other two got into position by one of the doors. Dani put her back to a wall and noticed that she was crunching through something on the ground. She looked down. They were papers of some sort. More fluttered down around her as she moved down the hall. She pointed her light at the wall and saw a row of children’s drawing just barely clinging to the surface, held in place by ancient, yellowed tape.

One officer by the door nodded, and the other kicked it in with a booted foot. He stepped back after the kick, and the first officer rushed inside, weapon raised. Bathroom stalls were illuminated in a dancing beam of light. There was another kick, and then a woman’s voice shouted, “Clear! Coming out!” She rejoined her partner, and they headed back toward Dani. Apparently, that was a dead end.

Another voice shouted, “Clear!” from the other side of the reception area. Dani turned and saw Dwayne motioning toward the hallway. Officers lined up along the walls to either side. The sergeant tapped one on the shoulder. The officer spun around the corner, low and already looking down the sights of his weapon. Officers leapfrogged down the hallway, a new one crouching down to cover the rest every twenty feet or so.

“Watch those windows!” The sergeant was pointing to some interior windows facing out into the hallway.

A team cleared the room. Some kind of administration office, Dani guessed. Another cleared a cafeteria and then went deeper in to clear the attached kitchen. Dani stayed in the hall with Dwayne. They had been in the building less than a minute.

“Light!” The officer on point in the hallway was motioning at a door farther down.

Dani saw a faint line of light spilling out from the crack beneath the door. She thought she saw movement in that light. It was hard to tell because her eyes had to keep adjusting from bright LED lights to dusty shadows. She also thought she heard something. Laughter.

Dani and the sergeant backed up two other officers that formed up on the door. Dani remembered what Dwayne had said about being a crap shot. She let him go first. He tapped the officer in front of him, and the officer’s boot kicked out, the door exploding inward upon impact. Adrenaline shot through Dani’s body like a jolt. She gritted her teeth and rushed in with the rest. She forced herself to exhale the way she did when she squeezed the trigger on her pistol. It came out as a low growl.

Nobody.

She still heard that laughter, though.

This room had more light than the others. The plywood covering one of the windows was gone, and the glass had been shattered. Toys sat on old shelves. They were evenly spaced out, and each one seemed deliberately placed, like tiny shrines to nostalgic gods. One of the toys was moving. It was a chubby-looking thing with a drooping eye and big pointy ears—a Furby? The fur it still had left was matted with mud or else falling off in patches. Its plastic mouth opened and closed in spasms as the gears that worked it slipped and stuttered. It made the laughter seem out of sync, like in an old kung fu movie.

One of the officers had his weapon pointed at the toy, but he kept his cool. “Clear!”

The sergeant pointed to the open window. “Check that! Circle around back.”

The officer covering the creepy toy moved to the window. “Coming out!” Then he poked his head out, rifle leading the way. The other officer planted one hand on the window frame and vaulted out after him.

Dwayne was moving to follow the officers, but Dani put a hand on his shoulder. When he turned to look at her, she pointed at the wall. Her flashlight lit up a mosaic made up of fairy tales. Pages had been torn out of dozens of storybooks and pasted to the wall from floor to ceiling. Knights and dragons, mermaids and pirates, castles in the clouds, and cats with fiddles—all ripped into fragments and remade into a new image. Or rather, the shreds of paper created the outline around the empty space that formed the image.

It was shaped like the silhouettes of three women holding hands under a tree with long snaking branches. Lines drawn on the wall decorated the silhouettes. Lines that told a story in a language they couldn’t read. Lines that smelled like imaginary berries.

Dwayne lowered his pistol. “Well fuck.”

His radio hissed. “Building clear. No contact.”

Another voice came over the speaker. “No movement out front.”

Dwayne mashed a button on the side of his radio as he held it up to his mouth. “Clear it again. All points. Check everything. Lockers. Kitchen cabinets. Crawl spaces. He had no way out.”

“Understood.”

He lowered the radio and looked at Dani. “Where is he?”

She slowly shook her head. “I don’t think he’s here.”

She stepped closer to the mosaic and raised her flashlight again. The beam swept from one silhouette to the next. They weren’t all the same. Two of the women had blue paper eyes. One didn’t have any eyes at all.

Dani reached up to touch the silhouette. “I think he’s looking for her.”