Darkness of the Soul (4 page)

But
all
that
is
later.
In
the
present,
Michael
Drakanis
has
just
been
made
a
widower
for
a
reason
he
cannot
guess,
and
as
he
floats
into
the
pleasant
space
opened
by
the
gateway
called
Valium,
a
single
thought,
more
true
than
he
may
now
know,
follows
him
down.

I knew that fucking painting was trouble.

Chapter
2
 

8:30 am, December 8, 1999

At first, Drakanis didn’t even realize the sound wasn’t part of the dream; he figured the racket was just another new addition to the same nightmare he’d been having for years, like when he actually remembered breaking Perez’s nose (not that he’d ever doubted it, but he hadn’t really remembered doing that until recently). He thought this too was just some new thing remembered or some new twist added for his amusement.

It took him several moments of blinking and staring around the room before he developed a sense of place. The carpet was the easiest thing to focus on, the easiest detail to use to differentiate dream from reality. It was now a solemn brown. The blue had been ruined, and the brown was the easiest and cheapest option to replace it, once he had been sane enough to even contemplate such mundane things. The lack of hominess in the room in general helped as well; with Joey and Gina gone, Drakanis had not been much for interior decorating, and the knickknacks and sculptures had all been shuffled off to the attic where they were less prone to bring on a crying jag or fit of destructive rage. With the exception of the dilapidated chair he sat in and the television, the room might have been a sample used to showcase new apartment housing, but that very plainness allowed him to remember where he was, the building he lived in—though he no longer really considered it home—and what he was doing, which was nothing at all, really, at least not since his psych leave had kicked in.

Drakanis tried to stand but discovered that at some point during the nightmare, he’d shifted into the wrong position, and now his legs were almost totally useless. With an explosion of pins and needles, he dropped back into the chair, knocking over the chipped coffee cup from the arm and slopping the contents all over his crotch.
Not
that
it
matters;
isn’t
like
company’s
coming,
he thought, while considering the virtues of actually trying to stand and clean up the mess.

So thinking, he sat there in the easy chair, with a lapful of cold coffee. The television was now displaying pictures of some new movie he really didn’t give much of a shit about. A perky blonde and some old man tried to look convincing while they flirted with the most recent of the movie bimbo squad. It hadn’t yet occurred to him that the sound was actually real and not just some other fragment of the dream that shoved him out of sleep so often of late; the concept that the sound was the impatient slamming of flesh on wood, perpetrated by someone who knew he was home and would answer eventually, was not yet clear in his head.

The sound continued for a while. Outside, Parker finally lowered his hand, sighing and letting his cigarette smolder in the corner of his mouth for a moment. Standing there on the stoop, head down against the wind that wanted to put his smoke out—or take half of it for itself—he looked like some strange mourner at a giant’s funeral.

Towering at over six and a half feet, Sergeant Vincent Parker was nearly as wide as he was tall. This led many people to believe he was also slow and stupid, and Parker never saw much reason to disabuse them of the notion. Only a rare few ever realized the feral intelligence that gleamed in his eyes; fewer still had ever seen him move at his best, and they knew enough to keep quiet about it. His other traits didn’t help to banish that image either, though he tried to look as respectable as he could. Still, with his shaggy blond hair, which he chopped low every other week because it fought any attempt to style it, thick unibrow, and scrunched blue eyes, the marks of his Viking heritage, he looked less like a cop and more like a berserker who had washed ashore and stolen someone’s dress blues.

When he raised his ham-sized fists to bang on the door, one might have expected the whole house to shudder from the impact. Belying his size and stature, though, Parker rapped politely once more, the knock of an Avon lady or the mailman. Though Parker was certainly capable of shaking the house, of knocking through the door like it was tissue paper, he simply chose not to. Besides, he knew where the key was.

“Mikey!” Parker’s voice fit his body perfectly. It was a bass rumble that would cause children’s ears to bleed and animals to flee if raised to full volume. When breathing or holding a normal conversation, his voice was somewhere around the volume of a diesel on idle, as it was now; he spoke loudly enough for Mike to hear, if he was there, though Parker wouldn’t bet on him answering the door.

Sighing again, Parker gave him a ten-count. He waited long enough to finish his cigarette and drop it in the decrepit Maxwell House can sitting next to the stoop and then reached up over the eaves.

For
a
cop,
you’re
not
very
imaginative
with
where
you
hide
your
keys,
Mikey
my
man.

It took him a couple of minutes of fumbling—not because the key was particularly well hidden, but just because his fingers were a little too big to really fit in there with any ease—but he finally came up with the key. A moment later, he was in the house, letting his voice out at full volume this time. “Mikey! Wake the fuck up, you dumb bastard!”

Drakanis started at that, woke up—
really
woke up—and managed to slop the rest of his coffee in his lap. The part of him that had been born and bred to be a cop and that always would be, regardless of what happened to the rest of him, had his hand instinctively reaching to his hip for the familiar comforting feel of steel, before dropping once more as reality finally asserted itself fully and he recognized the voice as belonging to Parker, who was giving off his usual—and occasionally annoying—bravado.

“I’m in here, Vince.”

Drakanis’s voice was weary and still thick, blurred with the remnants of sleep, but Parker’s banging and hollering stopped at hearing it regardless. Parker crept into the little niche off of the living room. Drakanis had left that room mostly alone since Gina’s death except for removing some of the decorations and getting the carpeting done. He had set up a much smaller television and chair in what used to be a walk-in closet and did most of his pretending in there. Parker took a good look at the haggard face before slumping to the floor.

“What’s up, Mikey? Feel like giving an old pal a help, eh?”

Drakanis leaned back in the chair, setting the empty cup on the rummage-sale end table next to him and giving an appraising glance at the bigger man.

“What do you want, Vince?”

Parker snorted, raking a hand through his hair in an unsuccessful attempt to smooth back the mop. Drakanis’s instincts were dulled from the time away, probably purposefully so; but they were still good enough to recognize the aura of tension around his former partner, conveyed by the giant’s body language and facial tics.
I
need
your
help,
those things said, but Drakanis was not at all sure he was ready to give any.

Parker cracked his neck, staying quiet for a long moment before looking up again; when he did, his eyes were hard to read, like a shroud had been draped over them. His voice had lost most of its gusto, dropping to a funeral parlor whisper.

“Somebody’s dead, Mikey. I think it might… well…”

He fidgeted for a minute, and Drakanis really didn’t care to see this. Normally, Parker was like a rock, unperturbed by anything short of being shot at—and even that usually served to piss him off more than it actually got him worried—but something in his nervous posture and the quick downward cast of his eyes was ringing alarm bells in the back of Drakanis’s head. He was about to speak, when Parker finally continued, looking back up again.

“I think it might have something to do with Gina and Joey. There’s… a few similarities.”

Drakanis had been spending a great deal of time alone since his quaintly termed “retirement,” and while he was the number-one champ at hiding things from himself, that solitude did nothing for covering his emotions to others. Parker could read the shock and grief painted on the other man’s face with ease and would have been able to see it even if he
wasn’t
his childhood friend and former partner. That look spoke volumes about Drakanis’s life of late, and Parker found himself glad he’d come over, even if it had hurt. At least the man was feeling
something
now.

“Same MO, same thing stolen—exact same thing, Mikey—and the same sanitized crime scene. I need you to help me, to see things the way you do. I think we can get ’em this time, Mike. I really do. But I need you to help me do it.”

Drakanis got out of his chair. He moved too quickly and jarred the table, sending the coffee cup off to an important meeting with the floor. Parker saw it coming, and his right hand flipped out with lightning speed, catching the cup before it had an opportunity to turn the carpet an even uglier shade of brown, and set it back in place. He did it without even looking, quick as you please, all the while keeping his eyes focused on Drakanis, watching and waiting for the other man’s reaction.

Drakanis shook his head. “I don’t do that anymore. I’m retired, remember?” He pushed his way past Parker’s stone idol body, moved back into the kitchen, and called out, “You want coffee, asshole? Since you’re going to tell me anyway.” There was a note of resignation in his voice, and Parker knew that he’d get his help; the only question was if it would do any good or if he was hurting his old friend more than he was helping by coming to him with this.

“Yeah, I want coffee, dickhead.” Parker’s lips spread in a bit of a smile. At least Drakanis was well enough to fall into their old patter. That had to count for something. How much, Parker would find out, he guessed. Pulling himself up from his position on the floor, he winced and grunted. One hand went to his back and rubbed at it while he lurched into the kitchen and let himself fall into one of the crappy little chairs surrounding the crappy little card table. His eyes were bright as he watched Drakanis go through the motions of prepping the coffeepot, again apparently, since what had been in there that morning was now barbecued black sludge at the bottom of the pot. He had a deep look of concentration on his face as he reset the timer on it.

Drakanis, for all his other talents, was not a particularly technical person; and he’d always been of the opinion that a coffeepot didn’t need more switches than his goddamn PC, but he’d also been too lazy to go buy a cheap replacement. Once he’d finished fussing with the coffeemaker, he settled into a chair across from Parker and glared at the man.

“Quit looking at me like that, man. Like I said, I’m fucking retired; didn’t you get the memo?”

He shook his head and then buried his face in his hands, groaning. Parker watched him with a look composed of equal parts contempt and concern and blew his nose between his fingers, giving it a good scrub before speaking.

“Yeah, I got that fucking memo, Mikey, and I didn’t fucking care for it either.” Though the tone was conversational, Drakanis could hear the undercurrent of irritation in it and knew that there were storm clouds brewing in Parker’s brain, ready to unload on the first thing that pushed him too far.

“But,” he continued, “memo or no, you and I both know you’ve got this thing going on, that way of tapping in. I need that. Ain’t no other way this is gonna get resolved, and you know it.” He spread his hands and managed half a grin, displaying his crooked teeth. He then glanced around, hooked a dirty saucer from the microwave stand, and started rummaging in his pocket for the pack of Salems.

“Do you have to do that in here?”

“What? Blow my nose? Fuck you. It’s stuffy in here, Mikey.”

Drakanis lifted his head back up. He arched a brow and tried to summon a glare but failed miserably. He had to admit, having Vince around did feel better than sitting there talking to himself all day, and except for the fact he was wearing blues instead of a suit—
And
what’s
up
with
that
anyway?
He
get
demoted
again,
or
is
he
just
playing
at
being
a
beat
cop
today?
his mind asked—it was almost like old times. It just lacked the yelling kid and the exasperated wife.

Parker’s only response to the glare was to flick a match against the table, put the fire to one of the few battered survivors of the pack—he’d had to dig around in the cruiser’s glove box to find this one, and God only knew how long it had been there—take in a deep drag, and just watch Drakanis through the smoke. Finally, he broke, as Parker had known he would.