Dying for Her: A Companion Novel (Dying for a Living Book 3) (7 page)

Tuesday, March 25, 2003

A
fter getting my file from Peaches, I headed home. Only I didn’t make it that far. Charlie called me from his cell when I was about two miles from Blackberry Hill.

“I need you to come to Lafayette Square. Down here off of 18th. Do you know the Square Root Brewery?”

“Yeah,” I said and hooked a U-turn while the road was clear. Some bastard still honked though he had plenty of room.

“Head that way,” he said. “You’ll see the lights. Black and whites are all over the fucking place.”

Charlie ended the call without saying goodbye and I pressed my foot down on the accelerator. He didn’t say
I found your girl
. He would have if it was Maisie or Rachel. But there was definitely a body.

No other reason would have a bunch of cops and agents standing outside the pub.

I was still two blocks away when I first saw the lights. Great blue and red flashes bouncing off the brick buildings lining the Lafayette square district. The district is what I liked to call ghetto chic. This was one of the nicest areas in the city. Even the brick buildings had fancy molding and big picturesque windows. The landscaping helped to give it an upscale look, but the architecture smacked of row houses no matter how you packaged it.

I parked at the edge of the scene and climbed out of the car. Immediately, my breath fogged in front of my face and the ice in the wind chapped my knuckles. The cold air creeping into my jacket and those flashing blue-red-blue lights woke me up a bit, chasing back the edge of my last Blackberry pint that I shared with the Bobby George wannabe.

The wide, empty avenues running along each side gave a sense of foreboding, but dark empty streets always did.

I walked a few yards past the brewery, past the rubbernecking lookie-lous straining against the yellow tape, until I found my first uniformed officer. I flashed my badge so he’d lift the tape for me.

“Thanks. Can you point me toward Agent Swanson?” I asked.

The officer jabbed a stubby finger toward the edge of the park across the street. I saw a thinner crowd, only a few guys standing between a row of park benches. The white magnolia blossoms glowed like ghostly spectators in the flashing darkness above them.

I crossed the road.

“Swanson,” I said, loud enough so he could hear me.

Charlie turned and waved me closer. It was him, another FBRD agent, and the CSI guy taking photographs of the body.

Because there was a body.

A girl lay dead on the sidewalk near a park bench. A large dark puddle of blood and brain spreading out from the back of her head. She wore jeans, sneakers, and a nice sweater—or at least it must’ve been before chunks of her brain hit the sidewalk.

“What happened?” I asked Charlie, who’d finally finished talking to the other FBRD agent.

“Witnesses say the girl is Kaitlyn Green. The girl over there in the white jeans is her cousin. She confirms they came together. They met a couple of guys, were having drinks. Apparently all was fine and dandy until Kaitlyn told her death story.”

“Her death story?”

“Yeah, apparently, last year she was out for a jog and got hit by a car.”

“Drunk driver?”

“No. The driver had just turned around in her seat to swat her kid. It killed Kaitlyn but she woke up the next day, diagnosed with NRD. She was very proud of her condition, according to the cousin. She liked to tell everyone about it. Do you know there’s a website for this shit? People put their death stories out there for the whole world to see.” He looked down at his notes. “Heather Fan is the cousin.”

“What does that have to do with the guys?”

“Heather thinks the shooter who put the bullet in her cousin’s head is one of the guys. Brian Taft. He apparently reacted badly to Kaitlyn’s story, said some shit and left early. Then when they were walking to their car hours later, a man in a mask fitting his physical description grabbed Kaitlyn and roughed her up a bit. Kaitlyn fought back, has blood under her nails and all that, for all the good it did her. He still put a bullet in her brain.”

Brains on the concrete. That’ll do it. The girl wouldn’t be waking up again.

“Where was the cousin?” I asked.

“With her until she ran.”

I placed my hands on my hips. “So what do you want me to do? Find the—”

“No,” Charlie said. He put away the notebook and turned to me. “You’re still on Sullivan. No new cases until you wrap that up. I called you here to talk to the press.”

“Me?” I snorted.

“You’re good with this shit,” he said. “Diplomacy.”

“If you say so,” I said and looked over toward the news vans clustered at the edge of the crime scene. They strained against the yellow tape like ravenous dogs desperate for the girl’s bones.

“See,” he said. “You’re doing it already.”

I put my cold hands in the pockets of my jacket, and leaned a thigh against the black iron arm of a park bench. “What do you want me to say? Or
not
say.”

“I just don’t understand why some of them feel the need to be all loud and proud about this. Zombie pride or whatever the hell you want to call it. Do you know how many people would love to hide how different they are? How many kids go around wishing they were a different race or had both arms or whatever? They aren’t helping themselves by being all in-your-face with everyone.”

“So you want them to hide who they are? I suppose we can go back to the days when the
coloreds
were lucky if they could pass. Is that what you’re saying?”

Charlie sighed. “No, Jesus. Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m just saying that I want to tell Necronites to stay indoors. Do not announce themselves to everyone they meet or they’ll all end up with their brains blown out by some bigot. But we can’t say that.”

“It would be a bad idea,” I agreed, wiping at my nose turned cold by the wind.

“So just paint a rosy fucking picture, would you? Let them know they need to be careful, but also that everything is going to be OK.”

“Is it going to be OK?” I asked Charlie my friend, not my superior. I knew he understood when he ran his hand over his face.

“I hope so,” he said. “Eventually.”

I slapped his back a couple times, mentally forgiving him for being a dick earlier, and jogged toward the white news van perched at the far end of the tape where a black reporter and his camera crew waited. I wondered what he’d say if I’d just repeated Charlie’s spiel to him.

“Sir.” He called as soon as he saw me. “A few questions if you please, sir?”

I opened my mouth to give my military rank and stopped. Old habits.

“Agent Brinkley.” I offered my hand.

This caught him off guard, as it always does when you act civil to the press, instead of treating them like scavengers tearing at roadside carcasses. He had to switch his microphone to the other hand in order to shake mine. A petite little thing, compared to the massive camera on her shoulder, was already positioning herself behind the man for filming.

“Agent Brinkley,” the reporter said. “I’m Hal Hemsworth with Channel 6 News. What can you tell us about what happened here tonight?”

“We are not sure about the details yet, Mr. Hemsworth, but it appears that a young woman was shot. It will very likely be ruled homicide.”

“Gun violence has been nonexistent in the prominent Lafayette Square district. Is this a new trend?”

Gun violence is a problem all over St. Louis
, I thought. Rich neighborhoods were no exception.

I flashed a restrained grin. “I’m no real estate expert, Mr. Hemsworth. Though this looks like a hate crime. Those usually target people, not locations.”

The black man’s back stiffened. “A hate crime?”

“Yes,” I said. “The young woman may have been targeted for her medical condition.”

“Was she NRD-positive, sir?”

“That is what we have heard.”

The man turned to the camera then as if I wasn’t there. “Once a public safety concern, now a medical marvel, NRD-positive refers to a neurological disorder that allows certain individuals to resurrect from death, assuming their brain was not damaged in the death itself.”

I disliked the word
resurrect
, which definitely had a horror film ring to it, but I didn’t correct him. After all, I wasn’t part of the 2% who has this disorder, so who was I to speak for the Necronites? I sure as hell wasn’t much of a champion for their cause. Sure, I was trying to find the ones falling through the cracks, but I was no legislator. I was trying to keep them alive and accounted for. That had nothing to do with improving their quality of life.

“So she was shot in the head?” The camera girl asked. The newsman froze.

“It’s fine, we can voice over the clip,” he said, his showman face dropping away. “So the young woman was shot in the head?” the newsman asked in the same rehearsed voice as if the girl had not even spoken.

“That is correct,” I said. I was looking at the girl and wondering what her interest was. The pained look on her face, what was it saying? This petite, pretty little blonde. Did she have NRD? Was she grateful she could pass? Or was she just pissed to be upstaged by a man and talked over.

I gritted my teeth and stepped back from the crew. “Unfortunately, that is all the information I have at this time.”

“What a tragedy,” the newsman said, but he spoke to the large insectile eye of the camera. Not to me.

Yes
, I thought. But more than a tragedy. It tightened my guts. My girls—and I had come to think of Maisie and Rachel as my girls—were not safe. Their conditions were known and public. They could not hide. And the longer they were out there, missing, the slimmer the chance I could bring them back in one piece.

36 Weeks

I
’m sitting on the back porch with Jackson, finishing off a case of Rogue and watching the sun go down.

“You need to tell her,” she says.

“You need to cut your yard,” I say. “Do you even have a lawnmower?”

“If you don’t tell Jesse, she’ll never forgive you.”

I snort. “You act like I deserve forgiveness. We both know that’s not true.”

“She’s going to find out about Maisie and it will go over better if it comes from you,” she says and lifts the brown neck of the bottle to her lips again.

“If I’m going to tell her about Maisie,” I say and scuff the bottom of my boots against the little stoop. “Then I should tell her about Aziz too. Hell, I should throw in Gideon. And let’s not forget her father.”

I take another swig of my beer and feel the last of the foam slide down my throat.

“He said I’m making her ready for him,” I confess. “That it’s my fault she is what she is.”

“Jesse is a good kid,” Jackson says. “You can take credit for that if you want.”

“No, I can’t,” I say and look up at the sky. “But you can’t deny that he’s right. It is my fault Caldwell is what he is. I started this.”

Jackson interrupts my pity party. “‘A true war is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a war seems moral, do not believe it. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, you must know a war is what has always been—an absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.’”

“Did you memorize that whole book?” I ask.

“I read it every night.”

“You need a new book,” I say.

“If you don’t tell her you’re dying—”

“If I tell her, she’ll try to replace me.” I know that kid and her stubbornness. She’s about as good at accepting
no
as a stallion accepting the reins.

“Yes,” Jackson says, emphatically. “Yes. If not her, then Rachel.”

“Now you’re asking me to play favorites.” I snort and pull my leather jacket tight. I can’t imagine being any colder, but there’s got to be colder, right? There’s death.

“I don’t deserve to be saved,” I tell her. I sound repetitive even to myself.

Jackson runs a hand over her head. “If you won’t let them save you, then you have to prepare.”

For what? Heaven? Hell? I wasn’t sure either existed. I say, “I’ve been writing it all down. Does that count as preparation?”

She looks at me then, the white of her eyes reflective in the moonlight. “All of it?”

“Everything I can remember.”

Her face pinches as if a sharp pain has run through her. “Even Micah?”

“I can leave him out if you want,” I say, a peace offering.

“No.” She looks up at the few stars we can see. “Someone should know.”

Wednesday, March 26, 2003

T
he next morning, before I even left my apartment, I put in the request for all the Sullivan files. I specifically wanted whatever was recorded at Jerome, but I kept my request wide, just in case something interesting was churned up. Then I drank a beer. It was early, but I was having one of those mornings where everything was just a little stiffer than usual and beer helped with that.

I was at my desk by ten. Keeping a schedule—whatever the schedule—helped me focus. I’d been in the military too long to just free-fall through a day now.

Maisie’s folder was open on my desk when Charlie appeared, a woman in tow. When I first saw her, I did my best to keep my face blank, though I recognized her immediately.

“This is former military officer Gloria Jackson,” Charlie said. He’d quit shaving. His stubble was almost a full beard.

Jackson and I shook hands.

“She is a recent release like yourself,” he went on.

“Not released,” she said. Her face grimaced then. “Not exactly.”

“Have a seat,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

Charlie leaned forward one hand against my desk. “Captain Jackson is part of the pilot program I was telling you about.” When I looked confused, he offered clarification on her role. “She is an AMP.”

I remembered then. The pilot program was an attempt to pair remote viewers, with their ability to draw the future, with NRD-positive individuals, to serve as death replacement agents. This way, someone who could die, but not really, would save lives.

The program still had some bugs. Not all deaths were replaceable and people were still trying to figure out how to make money from this. Insurance companies, healthcare professionals, and law enforcement agencies all wanted a piece of the pie. The paperwork was outrageous, but we had won support by maintaining some stable replacement statistics for the last couple of years.

In the beginning the FBRD had two major functions. First, to investigate all crimes connected to Necronites. Mostly that meant cleaning up the mess from The Great Panic and camp detainment. This meant finding people, reintroducing them to society, that sort of thing. Our second biggest task was to make these individuals a commercial asset to the country by introducing as many of them as possible to what we were calling the Death Replacement Industry.

Our hands were full.

“I’ve asked Captain Jackson to help you find Sullivan,” he said. “It’s what she does.”

“It’s what I do,” I snapped. I should not have reacted. I respected Charlie as a superior but he was also one of my oldest friends. He should know I always do what I say I’ll do, and I said I’d find Sullivan.

Charlie froze and his blue eyes met mine.

This is about Aziz. You think I’m unstable. You think I’m obsessive. You don’t trust me.

I said nothing.

The air charged between us and I wondered if he would reprimand me. If he did, I’d take it without complaint.

“I’ll leave you to it,” he said and walked away.

When I turned, Jackson was sitting in the chair, waiting. She’d politely averted her eyes while Charlie and I squabbled, which won her some points in my book.

“What can I do for you?” I asked again.

“I’m here to assist in your investigations,” she said and before I could get pissed about it, she went on. “I know you don’t want my help, but this isn’t about you or your ego.”

I stiffened. “I’m not one of those dicks who walk around with a puffed up chest.”

I had a moment of hesitation before cursing in front of her. As a rule, I try not to curse in front of women, even if they talk like sailors themselves, but on her first day of basic training, Captain Jackson would have heard far worse coming from a man’s mouth.

“I saw you compete with the boy,” she said, being the first to acknowledge the bar the night before. It was her after all, alone at that table, watching me.

The heat crept up the back of my neck. “I saw
you
watching me.”

“You are competitive by nature.” Her face was still perfectly blank. Damn she was good. I’d never met a woman before who was as good—maybe even better—at hiding emotions as I was. When she didn’t speak, I caved.

“I like being good at what I do,” I said.

Her face flushed. “I need you to understand that this is very important.”

“Of course it is,” I said. “We are trying to save lives.”

She regarded me then. Her gaze heavy. It was as if she knew something I didn’t, and was trying to figure out if I should be let in on that secret or not.

Jackson sat up straighter. “I specialize in finding missing people. I’ve had a 100% success rate in the 134 cases I’ve worked so far. After we find your three targets—”

“Three?” I stopped her. “You’re here to help me find Sullivan.”

Her lips flattened. “You’re my partner. I’ll help you with everything.”

“Yes, pushing Sullivan off on you while I obsess about the girl would just prove everyone right, wouldn’t it?” I ask.

I was still pretty pissed that one of my oldest friends who was well-acquainted with my abilities thought I needed help. But as much as I hated a finger in my pie, I knew better than to tell Jackson to get lost. If I rejected her offer, Charlie had grounds for suspending me. He could call me irrational and obsessive. Worse, Jackson would probably think it was because she was a woman. Or worse, because she was a black woman. The only thing more insulting than being thought of as an incompetent misogynist was being considered an incompetent racist misogynist.

“I’d appreciate your help on all three cases, Captain,” I said. “But I’ve got a question.”

Her shoulders, which had relaxed at my acceptance, tightened once again.

“Why were you following me?” I asked. “Last night at the bar.”

“I wanted to make sure I could work with you before accepting Agent Swanson’s proposal.”

“Do you always investigate your partners before working with them?” I asked.

“It is a new policy. I want to start with the child,” Jackson added, drawing attention away from herself.

“Don’t let Agent Swanson hear you say that,” I said. “He brought you in to find Sullivan. He doesn’t want us working on anything else.”

“I know,” she said. “But I’ve already started on Sullivan. In the meantime, I think we can make progress with the girl. After all, I think she is more at risk than a grown man, who probably just doesn’t want to be found, don’t you think?”

I grinned. “I do, but I can’t help but wonder what’s in it for you?”

She considered me for a moment longer. Her face twitched and her eyes glazed. Then her hands clasped hard onto the chair. It took me a minute to recognize what was happening.

I leapt up and came around the desk just as Jackson began to convulse. I grabbed hold of her and eased her out of the chair and onto the floor as she shook in my arms. I tried to put her head down gently enough and get her rolled onto her side. My knees against her back, I held her there so she couldn’t hurt herself. Charlie and a couple other agents came out to see what the hell was going on.

“Call an ambulance,” I ordered. One of the guys ran off without question.

Charlie said, “Jackson has a complicated medical history.”

I gave him a
don’t be a dick
face.

“But confirmation is always best,” he said and went back into his office.

Jackson started to slow in her twitching. Her convulsions gave over to deep rasping breaths as she tried to suck air into her lungs.

I patted her back. “You’re all right. You’re all right.”

She went completely still and I worried she’d passed out. I bent over her to find her blinking and trying to sit up. This whole thing took maybe five minutes.

“Hey, easy there,” I said and tried to help her.

“I’m fine,” she said and pushed me away. For all her talk, she was just as prideful as I was. But seeing it relaxed me. Maybe I wasn’t the only one with something to prove here.

In a sitting position, her head between her knees, she drew slow and steady breaths. There was spit, snot, and blood smeared all over her nose and mouth.

“Shit,” I said. “Someone get us a fucking napkin or something?”

Another guy trotted off and returned with those scratchy hand towels from the bathroom. I handed them over to Jackson who cleaned herself up.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“No,” she said. She didn’t sugar coat shit.

Two paramedics came through the front door to collect her. When she refused to get on the stretcher, they helped her to her feet, insisting she get checked out with the equipment in the back of the ambulance.

“You need me to come out with you?” I asked.

She gave me a proper
fuck off
look, and I admit I liked her a little more. I saw a blood spot on the carpet where she’d fallen. I pointed at it when Charlie came up to see me.

“That’ll have to be burned,” Charlie said.

“A bit excessive, don’t you think? She isn’t contagious.”

“I just got off the phone with her boss,” he said. “She said Captain Jackson has a history of seizures. She is fit for work, but these
episodes
can be expected. Apparently they are still working out the kinks in her treatment.”

“What the hell did they do to her?” I asked. I tried to remember what I had heard about AMPs. They were soldiers who’d volunteered. First they were taught remote viewing, a remnant from the military’s ESP research in the 90s. Then, they were subjected to tests and alterations in the hopes that the NRD condition could be recreated successfully. The military thought soldiers who couldn’t die as long as they wore good helmets were a hell of an asset.

I watched Jackson through the glass. She sat in the back of the ambulance, her head tilted so a paramedic could shine a light up her nose and poke at her with gloved fingers.

“They messed with her brain,” he said. “Her boss called it ferromagnetic material. It’s what they injected into the volunteers’ brains when they were trying to turn soldiers into Necronites. Find out what crazy fucker came up with that idea and let’s uninvite him to dinner, all right?” For just a moment, he was my friend again. My old friend who served in three tours with me. Charlie who used his own knife to dig a bullet out of my ass. Just good ol’ Charlie Swanson. “I heard it killed 98% of the volunteers, or so severely retarded them that they wished they were fucking dead. Jackson should count her lucky stars that she isn’t pissing through a tube and eating through a straw.”

I watched Jackson turn and spit blood onto the concrete. Count her stars indeed.