Apocalypse Crucible (44 page)

Caution filled Delroy. The deputy’s demeanor was deceiving; all down-home, good old boy one minute, and steel-trap mind the next.

“The reason I know you’ve been in a fight,” the officer continued, “is your face and your hands. Your face, all bruised up like it is, lets me know somebody whomped you pretty good.”

Delroy let that pass without comment. The deputy had delivered the statement baldly in an effort to elicit response.

“But your hands—” The deputy crossed over to Delroy and picked up his hands in both of his. Although the deputy was shorter, his hands were as long and a little broader and thicker than Delroy’s. The man could have filled gallon paint buckets with those hands. “Yes, sir, your hands tell me you give out about as good as you got.”

Looking down at his hands, Delroy saw the split skin and abrasions over his knuckles, and the deep bruising and swelling that accompanied those injuries. As a chaplain and counselor, he’d been trained to look for signs just like those when he suspected men aboard ship had been fighting.

“I was attacked,” Delroy said.

The deputy released his hands. “In the graveyard?”

“Aye. Something—” Delroy caught his mistake immediately—“some
one
attacked me.”

“You know this someone?”

“No,” Delroy answered, and the lie wasn’t completely a lie. He thought he knew
what
the creature was, but he had no name for it.

“One or more attackers?”

“One.”

The deputy squinted and made an obvious show of sizing Delroy up. “You’re a big man. I’d want to think twice about jumping you even in the dark if I was alone. Take a pretty big fella to fight you chest to chest and belt buckle to belt buckle.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

“I saw your hands when I checked you into the hospital,” the deputy said. “Had a couple things to do here in town, so I went back out to the cemetery. Saw a tore-up piece of ground where it looked like two bulls had been fighting; it hadn’t quite washed away in the rain. That was near your son’s grave.”

Delroy nodded. “That was where it happened.”

“I really went out there expecting to find a body. Surprised me when there wasn’t one.”

“Whoever did it walked away.”
Or vanished,
Delroy silently amended.

“You don’t know who did it?”

“No.”

“You see that person again, you think you’d recognize him?”

“No.” And that was the truth. Every time Delroy saw the creature it looked a little different. He also knew it could look human if it wanted to. In fact, he suddenly realized that the creature could look like a deputy sheriff if it wanted to.

“Too bad. I hate unanswered questions. They tend to stick in my mind and I worry at ‘em like a dog with a bone. One thing I found out, though: most questions usually solve themselves sooner or later.

You just gotta keep your eyes open to see it happen.”

Delroy pulled his bathrobe a little tighter and wished that the hospital had provided him shoes. His own were as soaked as his clothes. Despite being dry now, he still felt cold.

The deputy grinned and indicated the bathrobe. “How you like the hospitality?”

“I don’t have any clothes,” Delroy said, “except for the wet ones.” He kicked the bag containing the sodden mess at the side of his chair. “I’ve been thinking about putting these back on, but I was hoping to find a laundry nearby. I guess I left my duffel.”

“I’ve got your duffel out in my cruiser,” the deputy said. “I saw it and took it with me. Figured you wasn’t going but to one place after the doc cleared you: the Crossbar Hotel. I give you your clothes earlier, why you mighta gotten all dressed up and cut outta here before I had a chance to figure out what was what.”

Delroy didn’t know how he felt about that. In all his life, he’d never been arrested. “Am I going to be arrested?”

The question upped the interest of many of the nearby onlookers.

A few of them started whispering to each other, their attention diverted from the televisions in two corners of the room.

“Nah,” the deputy replied, shaking his head. “I’m not gonna arrest you. Just wanted to make sure you were all right, return your duffel to you, see if you’d come clean about the fight, and see what your plans were.”

“Plans?” Delroy frowned. He hadn’t made any plans past reaching the cemetery.

“Yeah,” the deputy said. “What you plan on doing after you suit up in some of those clothes I’m gonna bring you?”

“I—” Delroy hesitated and decided to go with the truth. “I don’t have any plans.”

The deputy looked squarely at Delroy and nodded. “Kind of figured that. Lying in the graveyard like you was, you didn’t look like a man that had planned his every move. You got anybody here in town you know?”

Delroy immediately thought of Glenda. But he didn’t know if his wife—or ex-wife, as the case might be—was still in Marbury. She might have been taken in the Rapture.

No, not
might
have been,
Delroy told himself.
She’s gone. She’s up there. She’s up there right now with Terrence.
He hoped that he was right, and was instantly ashamed that he didn’t simply believe that.

“No,” Delroy said. “Nobody.”

The deputy thought for a moment, took his glasses off, cleaned them, and put them back on. “The floor nurse said she recognized your name.”

Delroy didn’t say anything. Knowing that people might know who he was didn’t sit well. The ones who knew him also knew that he’d quit coming back home after Terrence was killed and had more or less abandoned his family. He felt shamed about that.

“She told me your daddy used to be a preacher around here,” the deputy said. “You bein’ a chaplain and all, well I guess you followed in his footsteps.”

“On my best day,” Delroy stated, “I was never the man or the preacher that my father was.” He knew that was true.

The deputy nodded and looked like he didn’t know what to say.

“I’ve got money, Deputy,” Delroy said. “Once you get me my clothes, I’ll get out of here and find a hotel.” After that, he had no clue about what to do.

“Thought you might do something else before you did that,” the officer said.

“What’s that?”

“Buy me breakfast,” the deputy said. “After all, I saved your life out there. Should be worth at least a stake in a breakfast. I figure you gotta be hungry and you probably don’t know the best place to eat at in Marbury if you ain’t been here for a while. It’s Hazel’s, of course. Probably was around even back in your day.”

“Yes, it was,” Delroy admitted, surprised at how comforting that information was. His father had taken him there as a boy, and he’d gone there on Saturday mornings with Glenda when he was on leave before they did their weekly shopping down at the farmer’s market and Werther’s IGA.

“Well, then,” the deputy said, “I gotta admit if you knew about Hazel’s then, you’d have probably found it on your own. But if you weren’t buying me breakfast, why then you’d have been without company, wouldn’t you?”

Delroy didn’t feel like company, but he didn’t feel right about rejecting the deputy’s offer.

“Don’t go and be thinking about it so much,” the officer said with an honest smile. “I’m a cheap date. You can afford me.”

Despite the sadness and melancholy that weighed within him, Delroy couldn’t help but feel a little amused at the big man. “What’s your name, Deputy? I didn’t get the chance to go through your wallet.” “Oh, it wouldn’ta done you any good,” the deputy replied. “My wife goes through it regular enough for the both of you.” He stuck out a big, freckled hand. “Name’s Purcell. Walter Purcell.”

Delroy took the man’s hand and felt the man’s strength again. “All right then, Walter, I’ll treat you to breakfast.”

“Well, you should,” Walter said. “Getting off pretty cheap for having your life saved.” He sounded tough and serious, but he winked.

“Well, what’re you standing around for?”

Delroy gestured at the bathrobe. “My clothes.”

“Hazel won’t mind the bathrobe,” Walter assured him. Then held his hands up. “I’m just joshing you. I’ll be right back with your duffel.” He turned and was gone.

Delroy watched the deputy go, wondering what he was letting himself in for by agreeing to have breakfast with the man. If Deputy Purcell hadn’t insisted on breakfast, Delroy knew he wouldn’t have eaten. He was also certain Walter knew that.

OneWorld NewsNet Corporate Offices
Bucharest, Romania
Local Time 1251 Hours

In Radu Stolojan’s office, the computer twittered.

The sound drew the producer’s attention at once. Only one person had access to the videophone capabilities of the computer. He leaned forward and tapped his security code to answer the call.

The screen opened in a rushed swirling oval, revealing Nicolae Carpathia standing before a full-length mirror in an expensive hotel room. The Romanian president adjusted his tie.

“Good afternoon, Radu,” Carpathia said in his calm baritone.

“Good morning, President Carpathia.” Stolojan knew it was still early in New York City. Carpathia turned toward the PC cam and smiled. “You can call me Nicolae. We are friends, after all.”

“I know,” Stolojan said. But he would never, in all his life, call the Romanian president anything but Mr. Carpathia. “I trust you had a safe flight.”

“Yes. Things are going very well here. I have been invited to speak to the General Assembly of the United Nations this afternoon.”

“I’ll make sure OneWorld reporters are in the audience.” Stolojan had been informed that was the plan, but this was the first word of confirmation.

“Thank you, Radu, but no special effort will be required. The press and publicity have already been taken care of.” Carpathia took a moment and reconsidered. “Of course, we should have at least a few of our people here.”

“They will be.”

“But that is not why I called you.”

Fear thrummed through Stolojan. In an eye blink Nicolae Carpathia had plucked him as a youth from the squalor and degradation of the alleys, raising and transforming him into a man of means. In even less time, Stolojan knew that Carpathia could crush him, break him down to nothing. And that would only be if Carpathia bothered to let him live.

“It appears,” Carpathia said, “that we have another problem.”

Stolojan swallowed hard. The taste of sour bile filled his mouth.

“Someone is apparently trying to access Alexander Cody’s files at the offices there,” Carpathia said.

Stolojan’s first impulse was to ask Carpathia if he was certain.

How could anyone know more about the operation going on inside the OneWorld building than he did? After all, he had all the security cameras and computer firewalls in place.

With a sick, sinking feeling, Stolojan knew that the only way Carpathia could have known was by having his own set of spies within the OneWorld NewsNet offices. Someone to watch the watchers.

“I believe you know who it might be,” Carpathia went on with calm confidence.

“Lizuca Carutasu,” Stolojan answered. There was no doubt in his mind, but he wished desperately to know how Carpathia knew that.

“Please check.” Carpathia waited patiently.

Stolojan opened another window on the computer monitor and checked for offsite transmissions linked to the video archives that Lizuca accessed. He hadn’t designed the software that allowed him to track the query back to its source, but he knew how to use it.

He also realized that if Carpathia had the capability to know that the archive files were being accessed from an outside source, he could have ordered the search done by whoever had given him the information. Stolojan took solace in that. If Carpathia meant him any ill will, he would have pointed out the mistake and the fact that he had taken care of it himself.

Only seconds later, the address of the IP searching through the video archives appeared on the computer screen. It was listed as Bites and Bytes, a cybercafé where computers, time, and access to the Internet could be rented for an hourly fee.

Stolojan opened another window and pulled up employee files. He read Lizuca Carutasu’s address and found that the cybercafé was only blocks from the apartment where she lived with her mother and sisters.