Bitter Waters (20 page)

“That's one thing.”

“I'm getting to it,” Sam snapped. “The second is the kid he hooked up with in prison. Dad remembers he had some hick name like Billy Bob and was a serious Steelers fan. Word is that when Goodman got out of prison, he couldn't get a job because of the child molesting conviction. Billy Bob, though, had gotten out of prison a couple of years ago, gone back East, and nailed down something with money; he wired money for Goodman to join him. It was like a thousand dollars. Goodman flashed the money around and ended up taking the bus, nearly broke.”

Max swore because an airplane ticket would have Goodman's name on it, making it easy to track him. A car with state registration, insurance, and inspection would have made finding Goodman simple. “Indigo can check with Western Union on the wire transfer. When was this?”

“Six months ago, when Goodman dropped off the face of the earth.” Sam flipped through her notepad, tapping various notes with red checks beside them. “There haven't been hits on his credit reports. None of his past employers or old landlords have had reference checks. I got hold of a temporary secretary at his most recent employer, so I managed to talk a fax of his employment application off of her.” She hunted through loose paper on her desk and showed it to them. Goodman had surprisingly neat handwriting, all the slots were
filled in, and spelled correctly. It was the type of application that Max would have tapped for an interview just based on the attention to detail it showed. “I've tried all his emergency contacts, and if they're telling the truth, haven't heard from him since he came East.”

“He hooked into something shifty,” Max guessed.

“If I didn't know better, I'd say he was dead,” Sam said.

If Sam hadn't winged Goodman, Ukiah would say that he might have been made a Get. Ukiah walked back through the conversation. The girl was key. If she was a local runaway, then she might have talked to friends or family after meeting Goodman.

“I think I should go see Vic.”

“Vic?” Sam asked as Max said it was a good idea.

“Victor Danforth is head of missing persons for Allegheny County. We've worked with him a couple of times, a good guy.”

 

Max wanted to stay by the phone, in case the kidnappers called early. He urged Sam to go with Ukiah to see Vic. “If you're going to stay, you should get to know your way around.”

“Wolf Boy!” Vic clasped Ukiah's hand in a surprisingly warm greeting. “I heard about your kid. I'm really sorry. If there's anything I can do?”

“Thanks, Vic.” Ukiah indicated Sam beside him. “This is Sam Killington. She helped us out in finding Alicia in Oregon. She might be working with us.” Sam and Vic shook hands. Ukiah took out the artist sketch of the girl and explained about Goodman and his young female partner. “Sam's . . . source . . . in California suggested we check local runaways.”

Vic studied the paper. “She looks familiar. Maybe.” He handed back the sketch and walked to a filing cabinet. “You're talking the proverbial needle in a haystack, you know. We get a couple thousand runaways reported every year, and that's just us, not counting Butler or Westmoreland County. We don't have fingerprints for these kids. Heck, we often don't have recent photographs, and you know how
much kids can change in appearance in a year. And the hell of it, most of them aren't runaways.”

“What are they? Kidnappings?”

“They're walkaways. Driftaways.” Vic shuffled through the files. “We call them couch kids; they sleep on the couches of friends and relatives—anywhere but home. These kids hit twelve or thirteen, and they think they've got the whole world figured out.”

“I thought that was a definition of a teenager,” Sam said.

“Some of them have good cause; they've been abused. A lot of them, though, just don't want to go to school, clean their rooms, or eat their peas. They're selfish little brats.”

“Are they so bad for just wanting control of their own lives?” Sam asked.

“If we lived in a perfect world, no. But the problem is that they willfully jump into the cracks and never come back out. Sooner or later, they move out of my files and into someone else's. Burglary. Vice. Homicide.” He pulled out a thick file and held it out. “This year's missing children. If she's one of ours, she's in here. You're welcome to look through it.”

Vic gave them use of a desk. They split the file between them and started to flip through them. Ukiah studied the pictures, growing dismayed at the number and ages of the missing children. He thought of Pittsburgh as a safe place; he and Max were part of a system that kept kids from disappearing. Apparently for every child that triggered a massive manhunt, dozens quietly vanished. Couch kids. Runaways. Children snatched by noncustodial parents. Just plain missing.

And Kittanning was now one of them.

While in Oregon, Max had chanted, “You're nearly indestructible.” Ukiah understood now how much comfort it provided.

Keeping in mind that the pictures might not be recent ones, and that children sometimes changed dramatically, he moved carefully through his pile. Sam occasionally handed him sheets on blond, teenage girls, saying, “What about her?” The last one, he stared at several minutes, before nodding. “Yeah, that's her.”

The girl in the picture verged on heavyset, and looked
sullen and angry. Life with Goodman had thinned her down. Made her scared. Made her nearly unrecognizable.

“Eve Linden,” Vic read the name. “Yeah, she moved from a mild annoyance to a real concern. She's been drifting for like two years, but her aunt gave her a cell phone and paid the bill to keep it connected, so the family kept tabs on her until last month. She hit her aunt up for money, saying she wanted to buy school clothes, promising that she was going to buckle down this year. No one has heard from her since then. Her phone was discovered in a Dumpster near the mall a day later and that's when her family reported her missing.”

Ukiah flipped through the file, taking in names and addresses in a glance. “We were hoping that someone had talked to her, give us a lead on Goodman.”

“If she's gotten in touch with anyone, they haven't let us know that she's alive,” Vic said. “I'll fax this over to the FBI and let them know you've IDed the girl.”

 

“Assuming you've got that all memorized, do we start calling her little friends? See if any of them have heard from her and not told the police.”

Ukiah shook his head. “I think Goodman tossed the phone to cut her connection with her family and friends.”

“Can't hurt to check though.”

“Goodman's from California,” Ukiah said. “He's been in Pittsburgh six months or less. He might be using her as a native guide. What we should ask her friends about is any secret hangouts that she might know about.”

 

They got back to the offices by two. Max shook his head as they came in, saying, “No call.”

Indigo arrived minutes after them and settled beside Ukiah on the living-room couch, leaning against his strength. As if they had been following her, the Pack gathered close to the house, waiting patiently for news.

They watched the hands of the grandfather clock creep around to three, then onto four, with only the clock chimes breaking the silence.

Max checked his wristwatch for the hundredth time. “He's not going to call.”

Indigo's phone rang and she answered it with a tense, “Special Agent Zheng.” As she listened, she reached out and caught Ukiah's hand, crushing it tight. “Yes. Yes. Yes. I'll be right there.”

He swallowed hard against his fear. “What is it?”

“They found another baby dead,” she whispered.

Bennett Detective Agency, Shadyside, Pennsylvania
Wednesday, September 15, 2004

The dead baby was Isaiah, the black boy infant taken from the Homestead supermarket. His body was found in a Dumpster behind a South Hills restaurant, thrown away like so much trash. Indigo excused herself to the bathroom, where she apparently meditated, coming out calm and focused. Under the composed surface, though, was a mountain of icy rage.

“If you come with me,” Indigo said, “I'm not going to be able to let you disturb the crime scene.”

“I'm going to take in Kittanning's memory and try to use it to find him. I'm not sure it will work; it depends on what memories it's holding.”

She clasped his hand briefly as if touching him more would break her carefully built control. “Keep me up-to-date.”

 

They readied for war, donning their new body armor that had just arrived and loading their guns with care: pistols for humans, shotguns for Ontongard. Max and Sam packed the Hummer with everything short of C4, and the Pack brought that.

Ukiah spilled the caterpillar into his hand, stroked the prickly bristles, feeling its shimmer of joy at being so close to its progenitor. He hated the idea of absorbing it, taking in what might be the only thing left of Kittanning, of
obliterating his son from the world. He tried to keep forefront in his mind that it would be more merciful to welcome back these few cells instead of leaving them alone and afraid. Surely if he found Kittanning intact, his son would be better without these horrific memories.

“Come to me,” he whispered, still feeling as if he were betraying Kittanning. “Give me your secrets.”

It vanished into his hand, a tiny pool of blood quickly gone.

. . . light played on the ceiling of Kittanning's bedroom. It was at once both wonderful and irritating. Grammy had strung crystals in the window and they broke the light into dancing colors. Still, the room was so small when compared to the universe he knew existed beyond the ceiling, represented by the rarely glimpsed night sky. Those memories of brilliant stars, harsh blue whites and deep bloodreds, were winking out, disappearing before he had a chance to call them up and lock them away. His world, with all its joyful assault upon his senses of things, distracted him constantly. A sudden stirring in the bedroom above his reminded him that his daddy was home, and all else was forgotten. Impatient now for Daddy, he squawked, demanding attention.

“Good morning, dumpling.” Grammy eclipsed the dancing lights.

Normally he'd be pleased to see her, but Daddy was just upstairs, stretching in bed and gazing at slants of sunlight across his own ceiling . . .

Ukiah pressed on through the fragments of memory, trying not to think about how in doing so he might be erasing the last living traces of his son. He immersed himself in the recall, and thus noticed that while Kittanning had an integrated personality, just like he did, the thousand-fold chorus of his individual cells lay close to the surface, busily relocating fuel reserves at a maddening pace. The cells fretted at Kittanning's limitations, and with alien-borne efficiency, pushed him toward mobility and the ability to protect himself. Normally Ukiah would have found this distressing, but now he found comfort in it—Kittanning's body could protect him through dangers that would kill any normal child.

Because the caterpillar had been more bone than blood, the back memories extended to Kittanning's birth. They had lucked out that the kidnapper had waited so many hours before wounding Kittanning. The memories of the kidnapping itself had been encoded into genetic memories, and fully accessible. He found the beginning of the kidnapping.

. . . shock slammed through Daddy's body as a bullet struck him down. Kittanning wailed, feeling the pain as if it were his own flesh being torn. Daddy's warm comforting thoughts vanished as he dropped dead onto the floor. The gunman came down the dark hallway, footsteps loud, his stride breaking where he stepped over Daddy's body. He cast a shadow over Kittanning's car seat moments before he loomed over the baby, gun still in hand, wreathed in gunsmoke. The smell of blood flooded the kitchen. Daddy's blood. Kittanning screamed in helpless terror and anger . . .

There, the true start, as Kittanning's car seat was roughly jerked upward.

Ukiah got up from his desk and walked through the kitchen, picking up his shotgun as he passed. There was the soft rumble like a gathering storm as the Pack started their motorcycles. Max cut short his conversation with Sam and climbed into the Hummer. Ukiah tucked the shotgun into the Hummer's gun safe and swung into the passenger seat.

“Start on the front street, heading south.” He rubbed the spot where Kittanning's memory had absorbed into his skin.

“Hold on, Kitt, Daddy's coming.”

 

Goodman had carried Kittanning out to the waiting car; Eve opened the back door as Goodman approached the sedan. The kidnapper slid into the backseat, slammed the door shut, and sat bleeding and swearing. Eve drove hesitantly with lots of startled cries of dismay while Goodman shouted instructions.

Ukiah leaned back so his field of vision matched Kittanning's limited range, and guided Max through remembered turns and stops. The Dog Warriors followed, close at hand, on their motorcycles. Ironically, as their current time of day matched that of the kidnapping, they fought the same heavy
rush-hour traffic. They crawled through the random turns that the kidnappers took trying to lose Sam, and then risked tangling with the police to follow the busway down to Grant Street rather than lose the thread of Kittanning's memories.

. . . the car cut down to the dusty, sun-baked parking lots of the strip district. There the girl, Eve, slithered into the backseat, and plucked a still crying Kittanning from his car seat.

Goodman got out, slammed the back door shut, and opened the driver's door. “Just like we practiced, remember? Piece of cake.”

“What if I can't find you?”

“Just keep going around the block.” Goodman slid in behind the wheel. “Now get out, hurry.”

Eve threw open the back passenger door, stepped out of the car holding Kittanning, and swung the door shut. As Goodman pulled away, she shouldered Kittanning with an irritated, “Oh, be quiet, I'm not happy about this either.”

Three steps and they were at another car, a dark blue Honda, just beyond the parking lot's barrier. She must have had a key fob; there was the solid “thunk” of doors unlocking. A car seat was already in place.

Her parking space was too good to be just luck. Goodman must have parked it late at night, when the lot was empty. From the parking lot, Eve doglegged to Fort Duquesne Boulevard, and then turned left onto Stanwix to stop at the curb where Ukiah had lost Goodman the night before. It was a short easy drive, even in rush hour, for an inexperienced driver.

“So far, so good,” Max murmured.

Goodman took over driving, rounding the corner to jump on I-279. Ukiah and Rennie had guessed right—with the other routes deadlocked, the kidnappers had taken the only route with freely moving traffic out of the city—but they were too far behind to catch up.

“We drive straight for a long time,” Ukiah said. “I think they're heading for the turnpike.”

“Did Kitt see the outside of the car they're in?” Max asked.

“It's a dark blue Honda. He didn't see the plates. They're
going someplace very rural. After they arrive, his memory starts to fragment.”

“Hopefully they didn't move him.”

“At the end they start to talk about going to the bathroom, making something to eat, and going to bed. It sounds like they stopped wherever they've been living. Eve put a blanket over Kittanning as they got out, so I don't have any visual memories of the place.” And after that, the gaps of blackness started.

They fell silent, neither wanting to speak about what happened to Kittanning the next morning.

“When we get there,” Ukiah said finally, “you hang back and the Pack and I will go in.”

“Like hell,” Max snapped.

“If this is Ontongard, you're the only one that can be killed,” Ukiah said. “Even if they're only human, you don't want to get between them and the Pack.” Max glowered at the road until Ukiah added, “I won't be taking point either.”

 

Goodman took the turnpike out to Irwin, a small town on the very fringe of Pittsburgh's sprawl. Housing plans gathered around the turnpike exit, still congested with commuters arriving home. They continued east, away from Pittsburgh, and houses dropped away to farms and woods. The road grew narrow and windy.

“Slow down,” Ukiah said finally, watching the steep woodlot of wild cherry and maples alongside the road. “We make a right-hand turn soon. Slower. Slower. Here.”

Here
was a little more than a tractor path through the woodlot, climbing a short, steep hill as it curved to the left so its far end vanished behind the trees. Tall grass grew up the center of two hard-packed ruts, bent over by passing cars, indicating that the road had seen little travel all summer and only recently been put to use. A rusted-through mailbox leaned at a drunken angle beside the turn, the only indication that the dirt driveway led back to a house.

Max pulled into the drive far enough to get his back bumper off the road and killed the engine. Ukiah checked his clip and stepped out of the Hummer, closing the door quietly behind him.

The Pack settled around him, silencing their engines.

“We're close,” Ukiah said, keeping his voice low, speaking aloud for Max's sake. “The car stops in a couple of minutes and Kittanning's taken out of the car.”

Rennie flared his nostrils, sniffing the wind. “I don't sense Hex or Kittanning.”

Fresh tire tracks pressed into the ruts, coming and going, several different makes of cars. The Pack walked their bikes up until they were out of sight of the main road and tucked them in among the trees, and then fanned out around Ukiah, armed to the teeth and pissed off.

Max handed Ukiah a headset. “Be careful.”

Rennie and Bear took point, loping off on the hunt. Ukiah followed, gun in hand, keeping to the dappled shadows.

After the drive reached the top of the short hill, the scrub trees gave way to an old apple orchard, a layer of Macintoshes rotting on the ground under gnarled trees. The farm perched on a ridge wrapped around a steep hollow, shaped like a thumb pressed against a forefinger. The forefinger was a shorn field of wheat; the thumb was the orchard, the farmhouse, and its outbuildings, with a deep, narrow crease in the land between field and buildings. They had just climbed the base of the thumb. There, where the valley started its pleat, sat the stone foundation of a roofless springhouse. Water gushed out of a short pipe onto the ancient flagstone floor and out the doorless entry. A well-beaten path indicated that the kidnappers were using the spring as a water source. The path joined the road and headed toward the house with a barn beyond it, resting on the far knuckle of land.

A little farther down the driveway, a crude outhouse had been set up, basically a bench straddling a narrow pit. Diapers mixed with urine and feces in the open, reeking hole. Opposite the outhouse, a handful of worn gravestones marked a family graveyard. It would have been lost under knee-high wildflowers except someone had trampled down the flowers, and pried up one or two of the stones, leaving pits to mark the theft.

The house had been built sometime in the last century, a two-story clapboard farmhouse. Weather had long worn off
the paint, leaving bare gray wood. All the windows facing the driveway were broken, leaving jagged dark mouths. The front porch looking out over the valley had collapsed into a jumble of rotten wood and slate roofing tiles. Some attempt had been made recently to make the collapsing back porch safe—new two-by-fours propped up the sagging porch roof and the stolen gravestones were arranged to replace broken steps. A massive oak shaded the backyard with autumn leaves that had run to bloodred. Rennie moved ghost silent to the oak and crouched behind its wide trunk to eye the back porch. Ukiah dropped down behind him, and went still as only a Pack dog could.

“Bad juju there,”
Rennie murmured into Ukiah's mind, indicating the gravestones.

Ukiah reached out, searching for Kittanning's Pack presence. He could sense the Dog Warriors ranging invisibly through the trees and grass around him, but of his son, there was nothing. Nor did there seem to be anything moving in the house.
“Kittanning's not here.”

Rennie's lip curled back in a soundless snarl.

They moved as one to the back porch. Plaster dust coated the worn wood, a fine grit underfoot as they crept to the back door and peered through.

Built before modern utilities, the house had never been updated, thus the kitchen had no electric outlets or lights and only a rusted hand pump for plumbing. Built-in wood cabinets lined the walls, except where a wood stove once sat, its access to the brick chimney still an open black sore, scenting the kitchen with ancient soot.

Temporary adaptations had been made. A trestle table, made of old lumber and sawhorses, held a propane camping stove, various pots and pans and cooking utensils. Tucked under the table, a large ice chest took the place of a refrigerator. A plastic dishpan and gallon milk jugs filled with spring water stood in for a sink. A paper shopping bag served as a waste container, a line of ants crawling down its side. Ukiah lightly touched one of the ants, making it scurry off in a panic; it wasn't Kittanning's. Two empty formula cans sat in the bag, the source of the ants' interest. He caught the slight scent of
old blood and pushed the cans aside. A plastic bag from Borders bookstore held a folded newspaper, stained with Kittanning's blood, which had been sucked up by the paper and killed.