Downpour (17 page)

“He was your older brother and you’ve never been a good liar, Michael,” I said.

His face crumpled and he squeezed his eyes shut for several seconds until he could open them again without leaking tears. “I know. He knew I was lying and he tried to go after you. I told him he should leave you alone, that we should go back to the hospital. But he didn’t want to go and he hit me. I—I was so shocked, I couldn’t stop him. He’d never hit me before. Will was like my dad as well as my brother, but he’d never even yelled at me, and now he’d gone and smacked me one right in the face and I didn’t know what to do. The crew here tried to help hold on to him, but Will got away, and then they tried to help me, which kept me from doing anything to find him right away. Then Charlie called me when he had Will arrested for harassing you. He was pretty worried about him, too.

“When I got him out of jail, I tried to make Will go to the hospital, because he was acting so strange, but he wouldn’t go and he gave me the slip again. He kept doing that—I’d find him and then he’d get away again. That last day, he got a phone call and said he needed to go somewhere, but he wouldn’t tell me where. I figured he was stalking you again and I said I wouldn’t let him go. I needed to come here and drop off my paperwork, but I couldn’t leave him alone, so I made him come with me—I even locked him in the car like a little kid while I came inside. But he got out and when I tried to hold on to him and make him go home, he fought with me. He hit me in the face with a piece of steel pipe from one of the workbenches. I already had the black eye from earlier in the week, so I didn’t see him swing at me until it was too late. And then he was out of here so fast, no one could catch him.

“Mencez and the crew wanted to send me to the hospital, but I wouldn’t go—I didn’t know I had a broken jaw. I just had to find Will, so I went after him, but I didn’t know where he was. I just kept looking everywhere I could think of. Then I got smart and I called the rental car company—”

“Why a car rental company?”

He paused, catching his breath. “We didn’t have our own car—we sold it when we moved to England—so I had a rental. The rental company has those tracking things on the cars in case they get stolen. So I finally remembered that and called them, and they said the car was up on Queen Anne Hill. I went to get it and look for Will—”

“What time was that?” I asked.

“I don’t know . . . like seven o’clock? It wasn’t dark yet.”

That had been before I arrived, when the vampires were only just waking. The asetem and their pharaohn would have been hungry and greedy for their particular food—fear. I shuddered at the thought. I tried not to let Michael see my distress; he was upset enough already.

“All right, so what then?” I asked.

“I kept looking for Will, but I couldn’t find any sign of him and I was . . . having some trouble. People wouldn’t talk to me because of how I looked, and I couldn’t see on the left side and I felt kind of sick and dizzy. . . . I didn’t know how bad I was hurt and I don’t think I’d have cared. I drove the car around, looking for Will everywhere, anywhere he might have walked to from there. I wound up down in Myrtle Edwards Park—you know, that park along the bay front where they used to have the Hemp Festival. I don’t know how I got the car in there, but I guess I made a turn somewhere and ended up on the bike path instead of a road. About then I just stopped driving. I think I passed out. Things get pretty hazy about then. . . .”

“Where in Myrtle Edwards?” I asked, fearing the answer. The long narrow park with its winding twin bike trails borders Elliott Bay from a few miles south of the ship canal where we now stood, all the way to downtown. There are plenty of train yards, commercial ship docks, industrial Dumpsters, and unwatched bends along the shore where a body could be dropped.

Michael bit his lip, his brows knitting down and telltale sparks of sick green fear shooting off his aura. “Near the grain elevator . . .”

I swore softly: Solis must have seen the grain elevator as an ideal place to dump a body—or even a live person who couldn’t fight back, if he thought Michael had given as good as he got in the fight the mechanics had witnessed. I supposed the detective was hot to talk to me because he thought I could nail the timing for him and help put a noose around Michael’s neck whether he could find a body or not. And if I’d been Solis, I’d have been thinking the same way.

I knew Michael hadn’t done anything but try to help his brother, even while he was in pain, half-blind, and probably bleeding, but it wouldn’t look like that to an outsider. It would look like a crime of the moment driven by overwhelming rage and complicated by pain and a traumatized memory. Considering all the injuries and arguments the brothers must have had while using it, the rental car probably had plenty of blood samples from both of them. Those blood traces would have been hard to get so long after the fact, once the car had been cleaned and rented out over and over, but not impossible. All the records would have been there for Solis to put together, much like I’d put Leung’s pieces together: police reports, hospital records, impound receipts, rental agreements, witnesses. . . . Michael hadn’t helped himself with his actions and evasions, nor with his desire to skip town, which was probably no secret to anyone.

“Michael,” I asked, “why didn’t you file a missing person report on Will?”

“What could I say? I knew Will’s disappearance had to be tied up with whatever you were doing at the gymnasium—all that business with the kidnapping—and that it had to be more of what happened in London, and how could I explain that? It was rough enough with the English cops. I couldn’t do that again. The gym—that was the end of it all, wasn’t it?”

I nodded.

Michael looked teary again. “See, I knew you knew what had happened to Will, but you hadn’t said anything and he hadn’t been found, so I knew he was gone. I didn’t
need
to file a report. And if I had, it would have just been as bad for you. And why should I when I just want to leave here?”

“Oh, Michael. You should have just thrown me to the wolves and saved yourself. Now Solis has every reason to think you killed your brother and dumped the body in the grain elevator—from which it’s now long gone. He doesn’t have to have a body to build a circumstantial case and now he’s got a damned good one against you. A decent defense will break it down, but in the process, you’ll be spending a lot of time in jail over something you didn’t do and Solis and the rest of the department will try everything they can to persuade you to confess to it. Because that’s the easier route for them.”

“I may not have done it, but I deserve to be blamed—it’s my fault he’s gone. If I’d been a better brother, if I’d called the doctor, or the cops or . . . anything but what I did, he wouldn’t have gone and he wouldn’t have followed you and whatever happened to him . . . wouldn’t have happened.”

“That’s not true. He didn’t follow me to the end. He was brought there well before I got there. That must have been the phone call he got, probably from Goodall, telling him some irresistible lie about me. They used him as bait and they would have used you, too, if you’d been able to stop him from going. You were a good brother; you saved him once in London and you were trying to save him again twice over here. You did everything you could and more than most would even try to do. You didn’t fail. You don’t deserve any blame.”

“But I didn’t save him. . . .”

One of the mechanics stuck his head around the corner and glanced at us. “Hey, man, you about done?”

Michael waved at him. “Yeah. I . . . just need another minute. I’ll be right in.” He looked back at me with an intense gaze and whispered, “I didn’t save him and he’s gone forever. And I just want to go home.” He started to turn away and go back into the garage.

I caught his arm, feeling the shock of his despair leap like a spark through my hand and into my heart. “I know it won’t be enough for you yet, but Will didn’t die horribly at the hands of monsters. He didn’t even die as you think of it. He was alive at the end and he
chose
to go on to something else.”

Michael gave me a bitter look. “This isn’t the ‘he’s gone on to a better place’ speech, is it? Because that’s just so much bull.”

“Then listen to what I’m actually saying. You remember all Marsden and I told you about the Grey and the things that live there?”

He nodded, wary, but listening.

I took a slow breath before I tried to explain. “There’s a sort of gatekeeper for that place. It keeps the monsters on their side of the line and us on ours.”

“Well, it didn’t do a very good job.” Michael’s voice shook.

“No, it didn’t. Not this time. Because Wygan destroyed it.” I was surprised at how easy it was to tell Michael these things. The Grey had always tried to muzzle me in the past. But perhaps I’d surpassed the need to be regulated. Or maybe it just couldn’t stop me. So I went on. “There’s no time for the details—you probably don’t even want them—but without this guardian, things fall apart. The monsters get loose in the world. At the end, someone had to take that job and Will chose it for himself.
Chose
. No one forced him. You know he was breaking, and what happened up in Queen Anne would have left him a wreck in this world. He had a chance to be better, but he had to leave here completely.”

“So . . . he
is
some kind of ghost after all?”

“No. He can’t haunt you, or be haunted by the memory of life. He’s not some kind of remnant of his former self; he’s something else. I can’t even explain what it is—I don’t really know—but it protects us . . . from things even worse than what you saw and heard and fought against in London and again here. That’s what became of Will.”

Michael didn’t look a lot happier, but he did seem less afraid and angry. The greenish tinge around his head faded a little and the orange sparks sputtered out. He seemed to be thinking about it, but hadn’t made up his mind if he believed it or if it comforted him any.

“Are you sure, knowing all that, that you want to go back to England?”

He bit his lip until it bled, but he nodded. “I had friends who didn’t look at me like I’m going to break any minute. Even—even with the things that are there, like Marsden and the vampires,” he added with an expression so bitter his mouth could barely shape the words, “I’d rather be there than here.”

A sour cold twisted through me and my throat felt harsh as I said, “All right. I’ll take care of Solis.” Then I added, “I’ll find some way to get him onto another track. I promise he won’t arrest you.”

Michael nodded, still abstracted, and headed back inside to work, still trying to make something better of the situation.

I breathed a few long breaths, trying to loosen the ache in my chest. I didn’t know how I was going to keep that promise, but I would. I owed Michael at least that. And I owed it to Will, too.

THIRTEEN

A
fter leaving Michael, I found a place to eat lunch and think. Obviously, I wasn’t going to skip out on my meeting with Solis after all, which was a relief, but also a problem. I had to find out if Solis really did believe that Michael had a hand in his brother’s disappearance, and if so, I had to turn him off that idea without telling him the whole truth of the matter. He’d never have believed it if I did, anyway, and I didn’t need to be suspected of being any crazier than he probably already thought me. But I had to have a plausible story that would cast a different light on the evidence he had. Once that light was on, I’d have to let him reconstruct a satisfying scenario on his own; if I gave him a tale that was too complete and whole, he’d become more suspicious, not less. He had to persuade himself.

I finished my lunch and drove back to my office. Parking at the municipal garage is ridiculously expensive, so I left the Rover in my own parking lot and walked to Seattle police headquarters at Fifth and Cherry. The usual afternoon rain hadn’t started up yet and it wasn’t as cold in Seattle as it had been around Lake Crescent, so I didn’t mind the hike, even if Cherry was one of the steepest slopes in downtown. I let my mind wander a little as I went, trying to decide what angle I’d take with Solis, but also just letting the problem of the lake tumble around in hope of some inspiration as to what I should do and if I should take Jewel Newman’s money.

The differences in the Grey landscape of Seattle reminded me that whatever I chose to do, I would not have the advantage of knowing the magical lay of the land any more than I knew the physical geography around the lake. I’d need help up there. But I wasn’t sure whom I could trust. I didn’t even know who the other mages that so upset Jewel were aside from her sister, Willow, and I hadn’t met her. I wasn’t sure about Ridenour’s involvement, but while he wasn’t a mage, he could still be trouble. I didn’t know who else was in the game; the only player I had any kind of line on was Jin, the yaomo. . . .

Thinking about the problem of Chinese demons, I paused for a light at Fourth Avenue and spotted a familiar-looking black coat and hat in the crowd on the opposite sidewalk. I thought about trying to call out to Quinton, but the distance was too great to expect him to hear me. I’d barely formulated the thought, though, when he turned and went across in the other direction, heading north toward Marion Street and the library. I would have liked to catch up to him, but I didn’t have the time, so I contented myself that I’d be able to page him once I was done with Solis and not have to tell him I was going on the lam from the cops.

The cliché from a dozen old crime movies made me smile and I was still smiling when I entered the police headquarters lobby. Solis and his dour expression wiped that off my face soon enough. He escorted me through the security checkpoint and deep into the building to a small room with a sign beside the door that read ATTORNEY CONSULTATION ROOM—NO UNAUTHORIZED RECORDING. That was more reassuring than having our chat in an interrogation room, but only a little, and I experienced an unpleasant jolt of alarm at the thought that Michael might have been wrong about Solis’s suspicions. The decor wasn’t any nicer, either, but at least the chairs were clean.