The Oni, page 9
Harrison pouted, his lower lips trembling. “I thought you’d be interested, that’s all. I wasn’t looking for it. I just sort of tripped over the crate it was in, and felt I ought to take a look inside.”
“There’s no need to open crates,” Zebar snapped. “We’re looking for records, not artifacts.” She took the proffered weapon. Its weight dragged her arms down. For comfort, she rested the blade against her shoulder, point up.
Harrison thrust his hands behind his back. He looked at his dust-caked Adidas. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” He met Zebar’s eyes defensively. “Give me a break. I don’t know what I’m doing. This isn’t my job. I’m supposed to be touching up backgrounds in Akeley Hall this week. The African veldt is getting dingy.”
Zebar shrugged and nodded. Harrison might be a whiner, but he had a point. She didn’t know how best to go about this task, either. If there was a ‘best’ way.
“I apologize, Warren. Of course you’re right, and I know how you feel. I planned to write some year-end press releases today, and instead I’m burrowing around amid dinosaur bones. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
Harrison accepted the apology with an awkward nod. He turned away, avoiding eye contact. It was embarrassing to have someone older, and in a higher position, defer to him. Even though she had been in the wrong.
“That’s okay.”
Zebar suddenly sneezed again. The sword leapt, and fell back heavily on her shoulder. An eddy of dust now seemed to swirl around her … or was it just the haze of her watery eyes? She had a distinct impression of moving air, although she did not actually feel a breeze.
“Do you notice a draft, Warren?”
The young man shook his shaggy head. “Not now. There was one before, when I picked up that sword.”
Zebar looked around the cluttered storage room. Her snub nose crinkled, as if trying to smell the air flow. Strands of silver-blonde hair clung wetly to her neck, tickling her. If there was a draft, its cooling effect was nil.
“Probably freak currents, set up by our own movements. Or maybe I’m hallucinating. I need oxygen. Moreover, I need food. Let’s knock off for lunch. The files aren’t going to walk away on us.”
Unconsciously, Harrison patted his abdomen. “That’s something I know how to do.” He started forward, then paused. “What about the police?”
“What about them?”
“You said the detective that came this morning promised that the lieutenant in charge of the case would talk to you later today. Suppose you’re out when he comes?”
Zebar clucked her tongue. “Well, he’s not going to arrest me, Warren. Even police lieutenants eat sometimes. Anyway, I’m only going as far as the cafeteria. He’ll be able to find me there.”
Harrison screwed up his face. The tip of his tongue popped out. “How can you eat that stuff?”
Because I usually buy the packaged yogurt, Zebar thought. As a publicist, though, she had to avoid reflecting negatively on Museum management, and in any case it was more fun to bait Harrison. “It’s not bad, if you stick to the right things. It’s cheaper than that place across the street where you hang out.”
“Worth the difference. I can have a different brand of beer every day of the month, including Sundays, and still leave some untried.”
Zebar sneezed again. She rubbed her nose. This was getting to be annoying. “I hate beer. By the way, Warren, if you get a chance, try to scrounge a couple of surgical masks out of one of the research labs.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Reduced risk of emphysema. Not having to eat in the cafeteria. Also, I’ll let you off an hour early.”
“Consider it done.”
Smiling, Zebar followed as Harrison cut a swath to the door. There they parted. The cafeteria was in the basement, but Zebar headed upstairs first. She wanted to clean off some of the crud clinging to her skin. When she reached her office, she realized that she still carried the heavy iron sword. It was an uncharacteristically absent-minded act, but she shrugged it off. Dragging the weapon onto the elevator, up to the fifth floor, simply to rest it in one of less cluttered corners of her tiny office, seemed like a good idea at the time.
CHAPTER 18
Amos Foster clipped the gold shield to the lapel of his sports jacket and eased out of the car. His raincoat remained crumpled on the passenger side of the front seat. What Foster most disliked about winter, and inclement weather in general, was the need for outer clothing. Coats and sweaters impeded his mobility and, therefore, his effectiveness as a detective. The drizzle that had started in the late morning had let up before he’d walked out of 520 First Avenue, and the unseasonable warmth made him consider stripping off the cardigan as well. Crossing a few yards of asphalt to the hospital’s side entrance, shorn of the raincoat’s protection, seemed a feasible risk.
If a nor’easter blew up in the next half hour, he’d borrow his partner’s coat.
Even the parking lot smells antiseptic, Foster mused as he sidled between a pair of ambulances.
His soles scuffed wet gravel. On consideration, he decided that observation was not accurate. The odor filling his nostrils had clung to his clothes from the office of the Medical Examiner. He hadn’t noticed it earlier because he’d driven with the side window wide open, the breeze whipping past, taking advantage of rain-cleansed fresh air, a rare commodity in New York City.
Joe Evans waited behind a glass door, watching his superior approach. At the last moment, the sergeant pushed the door open. Foster had to back down a step to avoid being struck by the blue edge.
“Hey!” the lieutenant protested.
“That’s for taking so long. I expected you twenty seconds ago.”
“Banter later, Joe. What happened to Fuchsia?”
“Got shot, fell off the roof. That was after he’d blinded Carver, my backup in uniform, by smashing a window. Almost.”
Evans started down a long, yellow-green corridor as he spoke. Foster kept pace.
“Almost?” asked Foster.
“Eyes heal fast. When they heal at all.”
The lieutenant grunted. This was more than Evans had given him over the telephone, but not everything, not by a long shot. No matter. Evans wouldn’t leave out any details that Foster had to know at that moment. If, later, the senior detective hungered for the full story, Evans would show him the full report before it went to Captain Matherson. In fact, Joe would probably insist he read it first.
“Why did Fuchsia run?”
Evans shook his head. “Probably holding. I’ve got a couple of third-grades tossing his apartment.”
“Even so, if he’d already told you where to find Cross … ?”
The hall ended abruptly in a sharp turn and a pair of high elevator doors, their dark brown paint marred by waist-high scratches. The wide doors whooshed apart before Evans pressed the up button. A clean-shaven intern shot out of the cab, pushing a rattling, unoccupied gurney. The two detectives flattened against opposite walls.
“Jersey driver,” muttered Evans.
The doors were closing, but the sergeant was quicker. He gripped and held one door until the machinery admitted defeat and opened wide again. Evans was practiced at this. He rode the West Side IRT every day.
“Fuchsia told us zilch,” he said, selecting a floor button. “I found Cross through dumb luck, the detective’s best friend. There I was, lolling around the waiting room, having a good time at the taxpayer’s expense, when I’m asked to look at a probable mugging victim. Lo and behold, a belated Christmas present!”
Foster shook his head in mock amazement. “If the public only knew how crimes are really solved.”
The elevator jerked to a stop. Foster and Evans stepped out into a corridor indistinguishable from the one they’d left except for an increased number of doors, and the nurse’s station before them. Evans waved to a stout woman in white as they passed the post unchallenged.
“Has Cross made a statement?” asked Foster.
“Nothing printable. Or even intelligible. He’s only begun trying to speak within the last ten or fifteen minutes. He collapsed last night at the emergency desk, bleeding all over the nice new tiles. He has to be kept sedated, for pain, but Asprin will allow us a few trenchant questions.”
Foster couldn’t let that pass. “Roosevelt sedates its patients with aspirin? I didn’t think the city was that broke!”
Evans grinned. “William G. Asprin. Cross is his patient.”
“You’re kidding.”
A right turn, and the homicide detectives almost ran down the tall, shaven-headed doctor coming out of a private room. “At last,” the latter said. He nodded at Evans and met the lieutenant’s searching gaze.
Evans skipped the introductions. Everyone knew each other’s name. “How’s our patient?”
Asprin rubbed his pate. “Theoretically he should still be unconscious but, as you know, he’s coming out of it sooner than the initial dosage should permit. He must have a tolerance for the drug.”
“Our files show he’s a user,” Foster said, “but not a heavy one.”
“I thought that might be it. There were no track marks or other overt signs, so we haven’t tested for that. Yet. We’ve been too busy keeping him alive.”
The lieutenant found a clean page in his notebook. “Who brought him in? Cabbie? Good Samaritan?”
“No one,” the doctor replied. “He walked in under his own steam, just. Considering the extent of his injury, though, I’m amazed he could hobble half a block, let alone the mile from the boat basin Sergeant Evans mentioned.”
Foster let that pass. An unlikely feat of willpower, but not impossible. His squad had already checked for cabs picking up any passengers, bloodied or not, near the section of Riverside Park around the time of the murder, without result. Something else bothered the detective.
“We had an APB issued on Cross, Doctor. Your people must have gotten a copy. Why didn’t you identify him when you called the precinct?”
“Because we couldn’t identify him, Lieutenant. He had no wallet or ID, although we found three hundred-dollar bills in a double pocket in his jeans.”
“I figure,” Evans interrupted, “that someone rolled the poor fish while he was dragging his ass down West End or Amsterdam.”
Asprin nodded in agreement. “This neighborhood gets worse every year. Only magazine editors and real estate promoters insist it’s undergoing a renaissance. That’s why I moved to Katonah. To anticipate your next question, Lieutenant, I couldn’t match the description, either. There isn’t much to match, as you’ll see.”
Doctor Asprin leaned back against the door, pushing it open. The detectives entered, Evans taking the lead.
The doctor had a point, Foster conceded. A trained observer might identify the man lying stiffly on the bed by the shape of his ear, the cheekbone angle, the eyebrow slant, a dozen minor details. Sergeant Evans was such an observer. Even so, if he hadn’t had the mug shot on his mind he could easily have failed to recognize Gary Cross.
The overwhelming impression was of whiteness. From the neck down. Cross was motionless beneath pristine sheets. Less than a quarter of the dealer’s face, on the left side, remained unbandaged. The flesh was so pale Foster had to look closely to tell where the thick, swathing gauze began. The colorless scheme was shattered by the spectral blue of Cross’s good eye, lined with red when it snapped open as the three men circled the bed. Several thin brown threads also seeped through the bandages at his right temple.
“Dressing needs changing again,” Asprin observed. “I’ll tell the head nurse on the way out.”
Foster placed a visitor’s chair flush against the left side of the bed. This placed him squarely within Cross’s line of sight. A bottle half-filled with faintly yellow fluid hung at the head of the bed, dangling plastic tubes that vanished beneath the gauze where his nostrils would be. Foster felt a sympathetic pang in his sinuses. He ignored it.
“Gary Cross. Can you hear me?”
The eye’s pupil rolled toward the detective. The lid blinked once.
“Good. I’m Detective-Lieutenant Amos Foster of the NYPD. On the other side is Detective-Sergeant Joseph Evans. We have some questions. We need answers.” Foster spoke slowly, softly, clearly. “Feel like talking?”
Cross’s lips twitched. “Naw tew pirrs.”
“Residue of the local anesthetic,” Asprin explained. “Just a slight numbness. We didn’t have to wire a broken jaw or anything like that. Most of the damage was confined to the upper skull.”
Foster nodded, keeping his eyes on Cross. He reached between his knees and turned the chair sideways, so that his legs pressed against the cool metal bedframe. He leaned forward, bending his right ear to the injured man’s lips. A faint, cloying odor wafted from the bandages.
“I didn’t catch that, Cross.”
A tongue like a swollen, badly bruised maggot plopped out, moistening cracked lips. Cross repeated himself. His voice was weak, his enunciation exaggerated. This time he made himself clear.
“Not. To. Pigs.”
Foster straightened and exchanged a weary look with his partner.
“It’s nice to be appreciated,” said Evans.
Foster grimaced.
“Listen carefully, Mr. Cross. My name is Amos Foster. I am a Detective First Grade, with Homicide. Not, I repeat, not Narcotics. At the moment, I don’t give a shit if you’ve got a warehouse in Newark full of junk, unless it has something to do with your being here. I want only one thing. I want the man who did this to you. You’d like that, too, wouldn’t you?”
The blue eye flickered. The left cheek developed a tic. Stiff, dry lips trembled. Cross was remembering.
“No. Man. Did. This.”
Evans raised an eyebrow. “He’s accusing Ulysses?”
“Cut the clowning, Joe.”
“All right. If it wasn’t a man, maybe the Cooper girl cracked his skull. Self-defense.”
Foster shook his head. Neither Cross nor the girl could have inflicted so much damage on each other. The detective noticed the tubes swaying slightly. Cross was shaking his head, too.
“Describe your assailant, Cross. Was there more than one?”
Cross’s mouth quivered.
“I want the bastard, Cross. I want him bad.”
The tic faded. “Like to. See that.”
The man’s voice was stronger now. Foster did not have to strain for each word. He arranged himself more comfortably on the chair. Perspiration beaded in the nape of his neck, dripping cold under his collar. His muscles sagged from missed sleep. That lone, near-vacant eye pulled at him.
Something extraordinary was eating Cross. Foster understood the dealer’s initial defiant attitude, as well as the suddenness with which it was dropped. You had to establish the rules before you played the game. Gary Cross wanted to help get his would-be killer off the streets. Foster knew when someone wanted to cooperate. Yet Cross still held back.
“Maybe you’d like the bully-boy who danced on your head to drop by and finish the job,” Foster pressed. “Maybe I wouldn’t lose any sleep if he did. If it was only you. Technically, you don’t even belong to us in Homicide. You’re alive. The girl wasn’t so lucky.”
The pupil of the eye became a pinpoint. “Dead?”
“Dead. If you hinder our investigation, you’re aiding the killer. You’ll be an accessory.”
“Shit,” said Cross. His eye shifted, evading Foster’s hard stare but making his head ache. He closed the eye and took as deep a breath as he could manage. His chest shuddered beneath stiff sheets.
“Give me something, Cross,” the detective urged. “Anything. A name. A description. Even a guess.”
Bandages rasped on the starched pillowcase as Cross turned his head to face the detective squarely. “I saw. No. Won’t believe.”
“Try me. Wednesdays and Fridays I’m gullible.”
Cross lay still for a long moment with his eyes closed. Foster feared he’d fallen asleep, that the pain-killers had caught up with him again. His hand reached forward to shake Cross awake again, despite Doctor Asprin’s warning glare. The fingertips brushed Cross’s shoulder.
The injured man’s lips moved sluggishly.
“Big. Red.”
“Not Big Red Torgeson,” Evans blurted. “He’s still in Dannemora.”
Cross shook his head violently. When he reopened the eye, red overwhelmed the blue; more blood vessels had shattered. Doctor Asprin leaned past Evans to grip Cross’s head in both hands, holding it still. Both the tubing and the stitches were temporary, but if Cross pulled them loose in his precarious condition the additional blood loss would kill him.
“Big!” Cross shouted. “Huge. Bright red skin.”
“Indians,” whispered Evans.
Foster ignored the jibe. Naturally, the killer would be splattered with blood. Neatness was not among his virtues, to judge by the job he’d done on Lynda Cooper.
“I need specifics. Cross. You know the routine. Hair and eye color. Height and weight. Distinguishing marks.”
Saliva trickled from the corner of Cross’s mouth, staining the gauze over his chin. He coughed half a dozen times. Foster could have sworn that Cross was trying to laugh.
“Distinguishing. Oh yeah. Fangs. Little horns. Pointy ears. Claws. Can’t miss ’im.”
Foster sat back in his chair. The metal backrest was not kind to his shoulder blades. “Is he hallucinating, Doctor?”
Asprin peered into the patient’s eye. Cautiously, he loosed his grip on the man’s head. Cross lay still. The doctor stood erect.
“It’s possible, Lieutenant. He’s going under again. A more natural sleep this time, I hope. If there’s a particularly vital question you need answered, I suggest you ask it now.”
One question? Foster had scores. Or would have, if he could drag enough information out of Cross to build on. The lieutenant’s fingers drummed on his thigh as he sorted his priorities.
“He’s slipping,” Asprin warned. “Better hurry.”
