The Hysteria: Book 4, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (6 page)

Witherspoon was no skilled fighter. He fell into the former category, but all the same, anybody with a knife is as deadly as a tall redhead.

He tried a backhand slash first. I bursted, catching his forearm before he could complete his swing and simultaneously put a hard jab just next to his eye. Krav maga teaches you a lot, but the most fundamental piece of advice is to always, always, always move from defense to offense as quickly as possible, if not simultaneously.

Witherspoon stumbled back but I kept hold of his arm and went in for the disarm with an elbow lock.

I thought he was dazed. Turned out I was wrong. With his free hand he produced another knife. This one was small and had a very short blade. It’d probably been tucked away in the pocket of his bathrobe. He’d been smart to go for the bigger blade first and keep this one up his proverbial sleeve.

I saw it coming. A second too late.

The knife flashed in front of my eyes and a second later I felt the sting on my cheek. I didn’t have time to survey the damage, just figured he’d caught me under my left eye as I’d pulled my head back.

A lot of fighting is keeping your mind on more than one thing at a time. My teacher loved to say,
One day your training will save you or a loved one, I promise
. And today he was right.

Witherspoon had put all his focus on the small knife he’d used to give me a new smile. He’d momentarily forgotten about the other one.

I hadn’t.

Defense and immediate offense.

I dropped to a knee and brought his locked arm down and used my torque to twist his hand so the first knife skewered his thigh.

He howled.

I exploded from the kneeling position and uppercutted him in the throat. When you put all your legs into a punch like that, it tends to work. I have no qualms about fighting ugly.

He went from howling to gagging. Part of me hoped I’d crushed his windpipe. But the other part of me realized I needed to get information out of him.

He was doubled-over, his mind divided between the knife sticking out of his leg and his difficulty breathing. I rounded behind him to take the other knife off him.

He spun and lunged again.

I was ready for it. I grabbed his knife hand but his momentum pushed me back. I didn’t have my feet under me enough. He walked me back and pinned me to the wall. I heel-stomped his toes. He wasn’t wearing shoes so it hurt like hell, but he fought through the pain, all the while breathing like he had asthma.

His eyes were crazy. I wondered how he could fight through this kind of pain when he couldn’t take a full, deep breath. Maybe he was hopped up on something.

I reached to push the embedded knife a little deeper into his thigh but found his free hand already there.

He was pulling the knife out.

Because he wanted to use it on me.

Fighting dirty had worked so far. I decided to keep going.

I bit down as hard as I could on the wrist of the hand trying to push the small knife into my face. At the same time, I wrestled the large blade out of his grip. I had no choice. It was do or die.

I chose do.

I gutted him with the big knife. The shock of it backed him up a few feet. He dropped the other knife and looked down at his gut.

“Don’t take it out…you’ll bleed to death,” I panted.

He took my advice. Instead of taking the big knife out of his gut, he knelt and reached for the small knife he’d just dropped.

The fucker was still trying to fight.

I took one big step and clocked him in the jaw.

***

“Tell Quick to come to Jamie Witherspoon’s place.” I gave the desk sergeant the address. “Yeah, I already called 9-1-1.”

Witherspoon was a bleeding mess. I’m not good around blood and honestly the sight of him gored was deja vuing the shit out of me to the point where I saw my brother Tim in Witherspoon’s place.

I had to get out of the room, get some air. The walls were closing on me.

I took the knives away and checked Witherspoon’s person to be sure he wasn’t concealing anymore. I didn’t check his ass. If he was hiding something in there, more power to him.

As soon as I stepped in the hallway, I heard my name.

“Mr. McCloskey?”

I turned and found a striking brunette in a black business suit standing beside a guy big enough to have played linebacker in the NFL.

“Who’s asking?”             

I was watching Linebacker. They must have figured on that because the lady sprayed something in my nose and my legs went numb.

Linebacker and Ms. Kidnapper stood over me in an orange room. There was a funky pattern cross-hatched on the wall that gave the illusion of three-dimensions. The wall seemed to move and it was making me nauseous.

I was in a chair. But not restrained. I stood.

“The hell am I?”

“You’re with us,” Linebacker said.

I tried taking a step. Bad idea. My inner ear had gone on vacation, leaving me no balance. I nearly face-planted in the carpet. I managed to get on my hands and knees. I looked up.

Another bad idea.

The pattern on the walls had taken life. It was throbbing. I could taste bile in the back of my throat.

“What’d you give me?” I said.

Linebacker took a knee next to me. “Where’s Megan Turner?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

The brunette folded her arms. “Why were you talking to her ex-husband?”

It was hard to talk. Hard to think. But some things were starting to come together.

“You were the ones that scared that private dickless, Chester Leonard, off this case, weren’t you?”

They didn’t answer the question. They just kept going with theirs.

“Where’s Megan Turner?” Linebacker asked.

“You should know—” My stomach clenched, I felt the vomit rising.

“What did Jamie Witherspoon tell you?” Brunette asked.

“Everything, and nothing.”

“Where’s Megan?” Linebacker again.

I picked my head up off the carpet and screwed a smile on my face before I barfed. Linebacker was ready for it and hopped out of the danger zone.

Brunette didn’t even wait for me to finish puking. “What did Witherspoon tell you?”

I held up a finger. “Need a minute here, lady.”

I kept retching.

“Where’s Megan?” Linebacker.

“What did he tell you?” Brunette.

I shut my eyes, hoping that would be enough against the wobbly wall. After a couple aftershock retches, my stomach loosened up. I kept my eyes shut tight.

“Where’s Megan?”

“I don’t know.”

“Mr. McCloskey, you’re going to tell us everything we want to know.”

“Let me outta here, you fucking Nazis.” I climbed to my feet but kept my eyes closed. It seemed to be working.

“Don’t step there—” Linebacker started saying before I wiped out presumably on my own puke.

I went down and hit the back of my head. Not hard enough to ring my bell, just enough to hurt. I needed to get out of this room. I needed information. I needed to get these people on my side. It was time to get creative.

I started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Brunette said.

“Because you’re federal agents and you have no idea how to find one of your own, Megan Turner.”

“Megan doesn’t work for—” Brunette started to say.

She was cut off by a gravelly voice coming through an intercom. “Why is that funny, Mr. McCloskey?”

“Because I know how to find her.”

***

Linebacker had to help me out of the room. He deposited me in a chair and some lights came up. After my eyes adjusted, I counted three doors in the windowless room. He gave me a towel, I did a perfunctory wipe of my face. Fortune had favored the blind—somehow I hadn’t landed in the vomit when I’d slipped.

A sixtyish man sat on the edge of a desk about five steps from me. He had enormous hands. He was movie star handsome, not a silver hair out of place on his head.

He said, “How can we find Megan?”

“I didn’t say you could find her. I said
I
could find her.”

He smiled confidently. “How are you going to find her?”

I shook my head. “I’ve got you at a disadvantage.”

He laughed. “Hope really does spring eternal.”

“You want to find Megan. You can’t. I know how. That makes me valuable to you. That’s why you pulled me out of Hell Room over there.”

I watched his eyes when I said Hell Room. They drifted a fraction to his right. Now I knew which door would lead me back into that torture chamber, in the event I had to effectuate an escape.

Not that I would physically be able to. I was weaker than a chemo patient.

“I’d say, at best, we’re on an equal footing here.” He walked over to me, bent at the waist, and examined me like he was a doctor. “Feeling better?”

“I’m fine, must have eaten something that disagreed with me is all.”

He laughed at my bravado. “Perhaps it was that poppy seed bagel with cream cheese.”

The nausea was dissipating. “This is where I’m supposed to be freaked out because you were following me, right?”

“You’re telling me you aren’t?”

I shook my head. “I had people watching my every movement for a year while I was in the clink. I got used to it.”

“Possession with intent. Early parole for good behavior.” He looked over his shoulder at Linebacker and Brunette. “We know so much about you, I think it’s time we introduced ourselves.”

“Right, like these names are going to be real.”

He ignored my barb. “My name is Patterson, everybody calls me Pater.” He gestured for the others to make their introductions.

Brunette looked at him incredulously for a moment. He gave her a hurry-it-up gesture.

She faced me. Her eyes were fierce. “I’m Manetti.”

“And what do they call you? Filia?” Patterson smiled at my Latin.

“No, Manetti.”

“Makes sense.”

Linebacker bopped his head at me. He was six-five, had a barrel of a torso and a face made of granite. “I’m Riehl.”

“As in, the Real Deal?”

He smirked. “I like that.”

I looked at Pater. “Who are you with?”

“The government.”

“If you want my help, you need to be more specific.”

“The federal government.”

Pater was a cool customer. “I want out of here, wherever here is, I want my car, I want guaranteed safe passage, before I tell you anything.”

“You have my word.”

“I don’t think you understand, Patterson. I know this is my only bargaining (...only) chip (...ing) so (...chip) I’m (...I’m) not (...not) going to (... going to) I’m not (...I’m) listen (...not) ...”

I didn’t understand how it was happening, but my words were echoing in my ears, almost as quickly as I could speak they were rebounding back at me. I tried speeding up, slowing down, keeping my cadence chaotic. Nothing worked. I couldn’t focus on what I wanted to say because I kept hearing what I’d just said. It was maddening. I degenerated into a babbling idiot. And eventually shut up.

“We don’t have many human resources on my team, but boy, we do get some cool hand-me-down tech from DARPA, Mr. McCloskey.” Pater smiled, proud of his federal government.

“I know a good attorney,” I said. “When I—”

“If you want to make a call on your cell, go ahead.”

I took my phone out. “No service.”

“Oh right.” He rubbed his hands together gleefully. “I’ll have to take down the jammer.”

They had a cell phone jammer? I didn’t think those things were real. “Why don’t you do that. And while you’re at it, start giving me my constitutional rights back.”

“Eddie, no one is keeping you against your will. If you’d like to leave, there’s the door.”

He pointed at the door behind me, not at the torture chamber.

“You were never placed under arrest.”

“Bullshit, you knocked me out with something then put me in the vomitorium.”

“The chemical agent Ms. Manetti used on you in the course of protecting herself—”

“
Protecting herself
?”

“—from a known ex-convict who’d just come from a knife-fight will be long gone from your system by the time you can get any kind of meaningful blood test. It probably already is.”

“Yeah, but you put me in the puke room…”

“Nobody knows we’re here, Eddie. And if anybody were ever to show up, we’d know they were on their way. Plenty of time to leave no trace behind. No one will lay eyes on that room as it currently exists unless we want them to.”

“You’ve got somebody on the police.”

He shook his head. “I’ve got something better than that.”

“Something or
someone
?”

He didn’t answer. Instead he pointed at the door. “You’re free to go. Of course, you know we’ll be watching. So we’ll essentially find Megan when you do.”

I looked from Pater to the other two. “You’re not going to scare me off like you did Chester Leonard.”

Nobody said anything. Score one for Eddie. They’d stepped in when the private eye was looking for their agent and told him to take heel.

“Wait. If you didn’t want her found when Leonard was looking for her, but now you do…” More of the picture came together. “…Megan was undercover, wasn’t she?”

Pater looked at his two agents. Riehl nodded. Manetti looked as pissed as her official capacity would allow. She obviously didn’t approve of me being let in. She’d probably worked hard to get where she was, glass ceiling and all that, and here was this shlub ex-con who’d skipped tryouts and now was being considered for the starting lineup by coach.

I went on. “She was under when she disappeared from her house. You didn’t want Leonard finding her, ruining the operation, whatever the hell it is, but now she’s actually gone.”

Pater raised an eyebrow. “You’re smarter than you look.”

“You must think I’m a genius then.”

Manetti’s eyes shot daggers at me. Despite her olive skin, I could see the enraged blush on her face. Pater ignored her. Riehl seemed to be enjoying this, in a detached sort of way. But when it was game time, I knew he’d go cold and switch on.

I said, “I’d start with Ken Hernando.”

Manetti’s head snapped toward me. “Who’s Hernando?”

I shrugged. “Witherspoon mentioned him.”

Pater and Manetti exchanged a look, then Manetti left the room by the door Pater had just indicated to me. I couldn’t see much of anything in the next room. It was dark with maybe the light of a computer monitor hitting the wall.

“What do you think’s going on here?” Pater asked.

“I think I’m being Patriot Acted up the ass.”

Pater smiled. “I mean here, in this town, with Megan. What do you think is happening?”

I smiled right back. I had an idea. I hoped it was right.

“You’ve got a mass psychogenic illness on your hands.”

“What’s that?”

The nausea was gone. There was only the beginning of a dull headache. “Could I get some water? I tend to get dehydrated when I puke my guts out.”

Riehl disappeared behind me. I waited for him to come back with a bottled water before I said anything. I took a sip.

“There is no such thing as coincidence.” I smiled at Pater. “Over the years there have been cluster murders annually around here. One of the more recent vics was Megan’s mother. In her search for answers, Megan must have come across MPI. It sparked her interest and she wrote her senior thesis on the subject. She joined your team, she presented these cluster murders as potential MPI outbreaks, you thought there was enough evidence to investigate, and voila, here you are.”

Pater said nothing.

I kept on. “Definitionally, MPI is very similar to mass hysteria, though it’s differentiated by the fact it has no organic cause. And we have some very good examples of it in the historical record.”

“Tell me about them.”

He was testing me. I didn’t like tests but I also wanted to find Megan Turner and I figured I could do that better with Pater’s help. I didn’t want to let a little thing like ego get in the way of finding Megan, especially if the working hypothesis was correct and she was in the throes of an MPI.

I drank half the bottled water in one gulp. “My favorite example is the Tanganyika laughter epidemic. It’s part of Megan’s thesis. Girls between the ages of 12 and 18 broke into laughing fits, some of which lasted for two weeks straight. At one point, they had to close the school because nobody could focus on the lessons.”

Pater said nothing.

I decided to keep on impressing teach. “The laughing fit spread to a couple other schools and villages where some of the students lived. As abruptly as it started, it ended.”

“You’re a man that likes to read,” Pater said.

“I’m a man that likes to do his job. I want to find Megan. So do you. Let’s start helping each other.”

He ignored that. “What do they think caused the laughing fit in Africa?”

“I’m done with your little test, Patterson, or Pater, or whatever the hell your name is. You know who I am, what I’ve done. You can let me in so I’m playing with a full deck, or I’m walking and I’ll do it myself. What’s it going to be?”