Afterburn by Karen L. Abrahamson
* * *
The sleet slapped the windshield so hard Jason might as well have been screaming down I-5 into a storm at eighty miles an hour. The soggy mixture obscured his vision just as bad, even though he was stationary. Tension ran down his arms to hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel of his little BMW.
Why he was sitting here in the AGS parking lot with the cedars almost bent double in an unnatural wind and the almost-sleet pouring down, was a question he couldn’t answer.
“Either get out of the car and do what you said you were going to do, or go the hell home.”
He should do the latter. His shift was over. He didn’t have to prove anything to Blacklock.
Trouble was, he had something to prove to himself and the only person who could help him with it lay beyond those busy doors.
There’d been a stream of people arriving in the last thirty minutes—a lot like what happened at the police station when something big was in the wind. He looked out at the trees.
“An ill wind.” Something was coming down and Vallon Drake was in that building.
Swearing, he launched himself out of his car and hunched across the parking lot, muttering about idiots and asylums. He tried the main door and then swore louder when it rattled on its locks. He spotted an intercom and slammed the button with his fist.
A moment and then, “American Geological Survey. May I help you?” The voice was slightly breathless. And overhead a camera whirred up his body to his face.
Jason hauled out his shield, flashed it.
“S.P.D. Name’s Bryson. I need to speak to Vallon Drake.”
Silence, and then, “Wait a moment, if you please.”
“The hell I will. It’s pouring out here.”
But the intercom had already gone silent, leaving him standing in a pool of amber light with the rain making sodden work of his knock-off Burberry trench coat and shirt collar, and the trees howling in their branches like wild women.
He should have gone home. He should just admit his mistake, cut his losses, and let Clint take the lead on this one. Step back before he dug himself in so deep he could never get out.
“Thank you for waiting, Detective Bryson. Agent Drake will see you now.” He heard the door buzz open and was tempted to just turn around and walk away. Taking this step was going to be one he couldn’t take back. As final as Cheryl’s.
He closed his eyes and yanked open the door. Cheryl had always told him to be a risk taker. In her last days she’d said she wanted him to have a life—to find someone. Well, Vallon Drake just might be someone if she came out the other end of this investigation.
The bland scent of recycled air met his nose and the exhaust system blew a cold breeze down his neck. And yet there was an electric feel to it that set the hairs on the back of his neck on end. It was a feeling he recognized from a camping trip with Cheryl to Yosemite National Park. An earthquake had shaken the place while they were there. Beforehand everything had stopped—the wind, the bird call in the trees. It had creeped him out then, too.
He searched the ceiling for cameras, spotting nothing, but a cursory look really couldn’t ensure his privacy. He took his coat off and shook it out on the floor. They left him outside—they could clean up the mess.
He started down the corridor to a T intersection and almost ran into Vallon, the effeminate, albino man he’d seen leave her house at her elbow, but now strangely dressed in moccasins, pajamas, robe, and a rain jacket.
“Agent Drake. Thank you for seeing me.” He kept it formal, hoping she would be the one to break the ice, but her face said there wasn’t much hope of that.
She looked exhausted. Dark circles under her eyes—dilated again, as badly as a kid on acid.
“What brings you here on such a bad night,” the snow-haired man said in a voice pitched too high. The guy had the look of the perennial target for bullies when in school—more so in his getup. But he seemed to wear his oddity like a triumphant badge as he hovered at Vallon’s elbow.
“And you are?”
“Pardon me. Landon Snow, at your service. I’m an associate of Agent Drake.”
Such formality, and Vallon still hadn’t said anything. Jason made a point of turning to her. “I needed to ask you some follow-up questions and I thought I could catch you at work rather than intruding on your free time.”
Her dark gaze flickered in her pale face. Bloodless lips almost seemed to curve into a smile. “Such a considerate man.”
Landon’s gaze snapped to her, and Jason realized this gnome of a man was far more than a business associate. Guard, maybe? Observer, certainly, with his too-sly eyes. Jason wouldn’t trust him as far as he could throw him.
“I try. Is there somewhere we can speak in private? An office, perhaps?” He glanced at Landon. “Alone?”
“This really isn’t a good time, Detective. There has been some—difficulty—this evening, and I was just taking Agent Drake somewhere to recover.”
Which explained the pallor of Vallon’s face and the visible tremor in her hands that was so unlike the woman he’d dealt with before.
Her gaze shifted to Landon slower than it should have, and her throat worked as if she were trying to locate the words. “I can deal with this.”
Landon seemed to hesitate. He looked over his shoulder back the way they’d come. A long corridor lined with doors, and a door with a window at the end. Jason caught a glimpse of a Eurasian-looking woman’s face.
“May we use your office, Landon?”
Hesitation, but then an interested look on his face and, “Of course. Mi casa es su casa.” He flourished his arm at a door and Vallon ushered Jason into a darkened room, leaving the little man cooling his heels in the hall. Jason wouldn’t put it past him to have his ear pressed against the door.
“This is an office?” He scanned the room. Walls covered with the weirdest shit Jason had seen in a long time. Tables—science lab type—covered with too many glass tubes and bubbling beakers. “What? You build Frankenstein here?”
Jason did his best Igor impression, but it didn’t even elicit a smile.
“His work room. A library. Landon does research for the AGS.”
He glanced from her to the bubbling concoctions. “And this relates to geological surveys how?”
She closed her eyes and fatigue settled like a mantle over her. It was clear he hadn’t come at a good time, and yet he had to do this regardless of her state.
“It’s really none of your business. Now what did you need to talk to me about?”
So she was going to play it as if nothing had happened. Probably better for the both of them, though he seriously wanted to put some color back in those cheeks.
“I’ve got some follow-up questions from the investigation.”
She nodded, and motioned him toward the rear of the large room.
Strange shit sat on the tables. The smell of rot and fermentation saturated the air. Bubbling jars. Was that a hamster cut open? And the pictures on the wall between the stacks of books—why would anyone display a drawing of a snake swallowing its tail, a creature that was a half-man-half-woman Chimera, or something that looked suspiciously like the pyramid and eye off the greenback. The strangeness of it left him guarded, and careful he didn’t touch anything as Vallon led him into what felt like the nether regions of a bad dream.
Then a desk lamp flared on and she motioned him to a chair by a desk covered with papers.
“So?” She didn’t sit even though she needed to steady herself.
“We got the Coroner’s full report.”
Again no comment, and he couldn’t figure out whether it was just the fatigue he sensed, or whether she was being purposely reticent.
“It confirms preliminary results that Lamrey died of asphyxiation. Every bone in his body was crushed. All your CPR couldn’t have saved him.”
“Or caused the injuries, as you suggested during our initial interview.”
“My partner might think that, b
“I suppose that should have been my line.” She eased herself into a chair as if it hurt, and he wondered what had happened since he left her.
He met her gaze. “The report also says there was concrete in all his orifices. Care to share your explanation of that?”
But she already had. A tightening around her eyes showing how the news disturbed her. The flicker had been real grief unless she was a consummate actress, and from what he’d seen of Vallon Drake she was as up front as it got, if a tad secretive about herself. Honest, but not about to reveal her inner workings to anyone.
She sighed. “I can’t say.” She went to stand up, but he stopped her with his hand over hers.
She froze, yet the heat in her hand almost burned. And there it was—the surge of—what? Attraction? Electricity, that made him think he was connected to the whole damn world.
“Is that really appropriate, Detective?” She slipped her slim fingers from under his and the sensation was gone, leaving the room dimmer than before.
He quirked a smile. “Perhaps more appropriate than either of us wants to think. But I’m not finished here. Sit.”
She did, her dilated eyes locked on him as he hauled his photocopies out of his jacket pocket and flattened them on the table edge then spread her drawing of Lamrey’s death-sprawl and the arched wall beyond him.
“I thought we covered this.”
“We did, but there are things that don’t add up—or do add up to a theory that I think you might be able to help me with.”
“I already told you, I didn’t kill Simon Lamrey. I was trying to save him.”
“Funny, but I almost believe you.” He left the sketch in front of her, then slid the photo of the concrete wall with its arch beside it.
Her brows raised and she swallowed, then met his gaze. “I suppose I should thank you for your vote of confidence.”
“I’d rather you told me what really happened.”
A glance back at the documents before her and then, “I’ve told you what happened, Detective. All I can.”
“Aah. Well then. No explanation for the lines of arch that match your drawing?” He pointed them out. How the hell was he going to do this and not come off sounding like an absolute fool? How the hell had he gotten to the point where he could even consider something like this? He left the papers where they were.
“Creative license?”
Jason sat back in his chair.
“You know, policing really lets you see the weird side of the human condition. The old shopping-cart woman who walks around with foil on her head to protect her thoughts, and when she takes the hat off she suddenly turns up dead. Then there’re the psychics who provided information that helped solve the Green River murders, and the person who walked through a burning house and came out totally unscathed. Weird shit that can’t be fully explained.”
He watched her expression try to conceal how she was trying to make sense of his story so far. She looked guarded but interested. Just where he needed her.
“Shit like that makes a man wonder, but he sure as heck isn’t going to discuss that kind of thing with his partner. Nope. Those are thoughts you keep to yourself—or tell someone you really trust. My wife used to say there’s always something strange under the sun.”
“She doesn’t say it now?”
“She’s dead.” It came out flat and bald and the twisted feeling in his gut was just the same as it always was when he said it. Cheryl, gone. Maybe that was why he was doing this—because he couldn’t let go. He watched Vallon realize he wasn’t a philanderer—just a pathetic widower.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” An indication her guards softened, and that was a good thing.
“It doesn’t matter. Let me get to my story. Makes me shake my head because who the hell is going to believe it?”
Suddenly she looked as if she wanted to escape, her gaze flickered to the darkness where a red exit sign glowed red over the door.
“So it seems to me maybe an Agent could be going to back up a partner at a parking garage, but she finds something totally weird. Like maybe when she phones her partner she hears a phone and follows the sound, but she finds something really strange. Like maybe her partner is—” He held her gaze now. “Is in the wall—like his phone. She somehow manages to get him free, but when she tries CPR the police show up and all they see is a woman bent over a dead man.”
“You couldn’t possibly believe that.” But the shutters closed on her face suggested something different. Clearly he was onto something.
“Couldn’t I? Let me tell you a little story.”
“Another? My, aren’t I lucky.” She sat back, arms folded in a prove-it position across her chest.
“It’s a story I haven’t told anyone, because when I think about it I feel like I’m losing my mind.” And why he was baring himself to this woman when she could easily ruin his career with this information, he didn’t know.
“When my wife died I thought my world had ended. Cheryl was everything to me. Even though she’d asked to be cremated, I couldn’t do it. I had her buried up at Crown Hill Cemetery thinking how she could enjoy the trees and the view. One particularly bad day when I desperately needed her to be alive I went to visit. Damned if I could find her grave. I even did a standard grid search. It was like—like I’d wished her grave out of existence or something. There were flowers I thought I recognized on the spot I thought the grave had been, but no headstone. Nothing.
“I was furious. Totally furious. I went stomping across the hill and stood there looking at one of the graves feeling like the whole world had done me a bum deal. And then I thought about the gift Cheryl and I had had. She was everything—the light to my darkness. The laughter in my life, and I realized I’d been so lucky to have her even for such a short while. I knew she’d want me to move on. She’d even told me so. And suddenly I just wanted her grave to be there so I could tell her how much I loved her. Funny thing was, when I went back across that hill, I almost tripped over her grave with the flowers I’d put there and I’d swear on a stack of bibles that it was sitting exactly where the empty place had been a while before.”
He watched her gaze flicker, a small sense of recognition as if finding a kindred spirit. He wondered why that almost made him happy.
“So you see, sometimes I think it’s possible for things to move. Shift. Change.”
Alarm rose briefly in her gaze and then she sat up with a small shake of the head. “I’m sorry, Detective. I really don’t see what any of this has to do with me. Agent Lamrey was dead on the pavement. That’s all I have to say.” She stood up and almost staggered before catching herself on the desk. “And now I’m afraid there are urgent matters I really must attend to. If you’ll excuse me?”
It took him a moment to remember to stand. He’d hoped—no, he’d been sure—that she would tell him what had really happened. Instead she ushered him out the weird room to face the white gnome.
“Landon, could you show Detective Bryson out? I really need to get back. Goodbye, Detective. As always, a pleasure.”
Politeness, or was she trying to send him a message. He kept his response to a nod, and allowed Landon to lead him to the door. The little man waited as he pulled on his coat.
“Agent Lamrey’s death has been very stressful, Detective. For all of us.”
“Death always is,” he said, his voice rough in his ears. He stepped to the door and shook the little man’s hand. “So’s change.”
Landon’s gaze barely flickered, but his pale eyes dilated as if all light disappeared. Jason stepped out into the rain and hunched back to his car. Slid behind the wheel and looked at the door.
Landon stood there, watching back.
Chapter 15—Out of the Past