Inheritance: A Novel Part 6

"You don't sound worried, though."

"No need, really. They were kicking his a.s.s, sure, but it wasn't like he was just sitting there taking it, you know? I mean, this guy's a mean motherf.u.c.ker. The guy learned to kill people in the state prison at Beeville. By the end of the fight Collins' uniform shirt was hanging around his waist like a hula skirt."

Paul nodded. He'd heard of fights like that before, but hadn't been in one himself. His instructors at the Academy had told him they didn't happen all that often.

"You said they froze, though?"

"Yeah," Mike said. "They did. They had everything they needed for a search warrant. The girl screaming would have been great probable cause in and of itself. They could have established everything they needed right there."

Paul saw the problem immediately. "They went back in, didn't they?"

Mike nodded. "Collins did. Wes still had Hector Avalos face down in the gra.s.s. But Collins went in and started checking out the stolen property. Collins, he was looking at all that jewelry and thinking he'd just caught a capital murder suspect. It doesn't get that much bigger than that. He had casino eyes, you know?"

Not really, Paul thought. It seemed absolutely stupid to him that Collins would risk a good arrest by doing what was, at best, a questionable search.

But Mike turned to Paul and his smile leveled out. "It wasn't as bad as it sounds," he said.

Once again, Paul got the feeling that Mike had read his mind.

It's going to be interesting, Paul thought, partnering with somebody who could read him so well.

"Really," Mike said. "It wasn't. They had all the elements of a good arrest. They just needed somebody to articulate it for them. You know, make it fly?"

Paul was about ready to agree, just out of politeness, when the radio's emergency tone went off.

Instantly, he and Mike broke off their conversation and listened in. The dispatcher said, "Three-zero-zero-three Morgan Rollins Road at the Morgan Rollins Iron Works." She sounded implacably calm. "I have Eighty-five Fourteen hitting his e-tone, not answering his radio. Possible officer-in-trouble. Clearing all but East."

The dispatcher cleared from the all-routes channel and was speaking only to her guys on East again.

"I've got everybody a.s.signed to a call right now, guys," she said. "I need somebody to go ten-eight. I'll take any unit."

"s.h.i.t," Mike muttered.

"That's us, isn't it?" Paul said. "That's our district."

"Yeah," Mike said, gripping the steering wheel. "We're not even halfway back yet." He mashed the throttle down to the floor and within seconds the Crown Victoria was up to its top speed, the car heaving up and down over the uneven pavement like a speed boat skipping over waves. Again Paul felt his stomach rising into in throat. His fingers clutched at the edge of the seat, at the door handle, anything to steady himself.

Mike keyed the radio. "44-70, show us on the way."

"10-4," the dispatcher responded.

Everybody was so calm, Paul thought. Their voices never cracked. He, on the other hand, could barely focus. He tried to picture a map of their district in his mind, but couldn't locate the Morgan Rollins Iron Works in it.

Paul looked over at Mike. His face was suffused with a sort suppressed tension, but there was no weakness, no self-doubt.

"Who's Eight-five Fourteen?" he said.

"Narcotics," Mike answered. "Hold on, okay?"

Mike banked the car toward an exit ramp so sharply that Paul came dangerously close to vomiting. He held on to the edge of the seat, willing himself not to close his eyes, because he knew if he did he'd throw up all over himself. The engine whined loudly and Paul gripped the seat even tighter.

Paul's head rolled to one side and he made the mistake of looking out at the ruined buildings and clapboard houses they pa.s.sed. He was only dimly aware of the radio chatter. The voices merged with the wailing sirens so that, to Paul at least, it sounded like a blur of noise. He was too frightened by their speed to untangle anything he heard.

And then they left the street lights behind them, and all that remained was the empty black of vacant lots and a ribbon of a dark uneven road ahead. Toward the end of that road, beyond a line of trees, Paul thought he could make out three crumbling smokestacks rising up into the air.

"That's it there," Mike said. He grabbed the radio again. "44-70, we're coming up on it now. We should be ten-six in just a moment."

"Acknowledged, 44-70," the dispatcher answered.

A voice Paul didn't recognize came on the radio. "Hawkeye Bravo, we're ten-six over the location. We've got a visual on 44-70's approach."

"That's the helicopter," Mike said.

Paul nodded. He craned his neck forward to try to look up through the windshield into the night sky, but he couldn't see the helicopter.

"10-4, Hawkeye Bravo," the dispatcher said. "Can you see Eighty-five Fourteen?"

"Negative," the helicopter pilot answered. "We're searching with the FLIR cameras now."

"10-4," the dispatcher answered. "Let us know. All officers, be advised, Hawkeye Bravo is ten-six."

And then the ruins of the Morgan Rollins Iron Works rose up before them, and had Paul been driving, he thought for sure he would have slammed on the brakes, officer in trouble or not. The ruins were-his mind groped for the right word-vile. Yes, that was it, vile. That is a bad place, he thought, a diseased, insane, wretched place. Don't go any further, his mind insisted. Don't, for the love of G.o.d, don't.

But they were already skidding through the remnants of the old iron gate at the entrance, pa.s.sing a parked Malibu-the detective's car, Paul thought-and climbing a cracked and winding road bordered by overgrown shrubs. They slid to a stop near a twisted pile of metal blocking a rickety staircase that led up into a black confusion of catwalks and loose cables and rusted pipes.

Mike didn't bother to shut off the car. He pushed his door open and was running before Paul even had his seatbelt off. Paul groped at the release for a moment before freeing himself, then ran after Mike. For a moment, Paul thought they were going up the staircase, though he didn't see how. It was far too packed in with debris. Then he froze again, something lurching in the pit of his stomach like a hand had reached inside him and squeezed. This place, this old moldering pile of sc.r.a.p iron, had caught him. His gaze wandered upwards, searching the darkened upper reaches of the superstructure, trying to isolate exactly what it was that frightened him so about this place. He felt his lips tingle and grow cold. An undeniable dread was worming its way through him, and it occurred to him that worming was the perfect word for it, for that dread was a living thing. He was sure of that. It was as real and as alive as the voice in his head, the one pleading with him to turn back, to get far away from there.

"Move it!" Mike shouted.

Paul shook himself. Mike was slipping into a narrow gap in the twisted metal at the base of the stairs. He's not going up them, Paul told himself. He's going around them. He knows this place.

"Come on," Mike said to him. "You have to stay close. You can get lost in here." Then he keyed up his radio. "44-70, be advised, we're entering the structure. Ask Hawkeye Bravo if he can give me a visual on something in here."

"10-4," the dispatcher said. "Everybody hold the air. I got 44-70 out on officers in trouble. Hawkeye Bravo, you copy on that visual?"

A short pause.

"Hawkeye Bravo, 10-4, Ma'am. We've got 44-70 and his partner on the FLIR. I've got faint heat signatures up near the round room, but nothing moving-Wait! Hold that. I got movement just south of the round room. Can't tell if it's a person or a..."

The helicopter pilot trailed off. Paul stared at his radio, waiting for more, but nothing came.

"Or a what?" he said. "What's the round room?"

"This way," Mike said. He had his gun in his right hand, his flashlight in his left, hands back to back in the cla.s.sical style Paul remembered from tactics training back at the Academy. He drew his own weapon, clicked on his flashlight, and followed after him.

"Middle of this place," Mike said, glancing back over his shoulder, "is a round room. Big place, walls are twenty feet high at least. That's what he was talking about."

Not the round room, Paul thought. That's not right. It's the diesel generator access station.

He stopped again, wondering where that knowledge had come from. He had never been here. He'd never worked in an iron works. None of what he saw looked familiar in the slightest, and yet he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this place was a bad place, and that the round room Mike and the helicopter pilot spoke of was actually a place the men who worked here so long ago had come to repair the diesel generators that operated the slider belts and the electricity and a hundred other things that made this place run. Why was that, he thought. How did he know that?

"Let's go! Look sharp," Mike said.

Paul tried not to look up at the superstructure. He focused instead on the dark tunnel before them, on the small, moving circles of dusty metal walkway lit by their flashlights.

I am doing a very stupid thing, he realized. I know this place is bad, and yet I'm allowing myself to be led like a lamb to the slaughter. No, he thought, correcting himself almost angrily. He was very sure of himself now. He was not going like a lamb to the slaughter. Not like a lamb.

Like a goat.

"Paul," Mike said in a brutal stage whisper. At the same time he motioned with his gun. "Get your gun up. Be ready."

Paul nodded slowly, not wanting to show any weakness but at the same time unable to keep his fear down. G.o.d, he thought, I'm doing this badly. He's not going to trust me after this. How could he? I wouldn't, if I were him.

But then Mike was pushing a blanket aside and stepping through, and for a moment, Paul stood alone. The crumbling metal walls suddenly seemed very close. The totality of this place, its immense wrongness, was leaning in on him, covering him.

No, he thought. Not covering me. Pulling me in. This place, it wants to hold me, own me, devour me whole. It wants to consume me.

On his hip, the radio sizzled.

He looked down at it, surprised. He couldn't make out the voices, the words used, but he could sense the urgency, and that urgency snapped him loose from whatever this was, the hold this factory had on him.

Paul pushed his way through the blanket and emerged into another metal tunnel, this one lined with broken bodies and trash and used needles in the dust. Mike was standing there, his gun lowered to his waist. Beyond him was a large circular chamber formed by immense walls. The body of a mutilated detective lay there, a crumpled, broken thing.

But Paul noticed none of that. His eye was drawn immediately to the large white Angora goat milling around in confused circles inside the chamber. Its large, black, vacant eyes caught Paul's, and then it looked away.

"No," he said, taking an involuntary step back.

"Do you see it?" the helicopter pilot shouted over the radio. Paul could hear him clearly now. The calm veneer had slipped from his voice. He was absolutely frantic. "You should be right on top of it?"

Paul could only stare. The goat ducked its head and made a low, moaning noise that Paul remembered from his days on his father's farm. The animal was confused, frightened.

Or is that me, Paul thought, projecting my fears onto it?

He wasn't sure.

"Do you see it?" the helicopter pilot said again.

"44-70," Mike said, and dimly, absently, Paul was aware of the crack in Mike's normally calm exterior. His words broke off there as he stared at the dead detective, the staggering white goat, the blood spattered over everything.

He's frightened, too, Paul thought. But not as frightened as me.

"44-70, are you okay?" the dispatcher said. "Mike, answer me. Are you okay?"

"10-4," Mike said, sounding for a moment like his response was automatic. "10-4," he said. "We see it." His voice cracked. "Oh Jesus, we see it. 44-70, start us EMS. The shooting team. I need more officers to contain this scene. Start me a supervisor, too. Jesus, start everybody. You're not gonna believe what we got here."

Chapter 4.

After twenty-six years on the job, and sixteen of those in Homicide, Keith Anderson was used to nights like this. When they went to parties with their non-cop friends, and somebody would say they bet he had to work some weird hours, Keith would joke he was so used to it he could do it on autopilot. But it really wasn't a joke. Truth be told, he could have done it on autopilot, though he never did. He loved it too much.

But he had been just about to get into bed. He was standing there in a white t-shirt and boxer shorts, looking at his Blackberry on the nightstand, studying the caller ID display. Margie, his wife, was still asleep, but groaning irritably at the buzzing phone. It would have been nice, Anderson thought, to spend at least one uninterrupted night in bed with his wife.

He accepted the call.

"What's going on, Chuck?"

"Keith? You awake?"

"That's kind of a stupid question."

"Keith, listen, we've got some real trouble."

Chuck was Charles Levy. He'd been Keith's sergeant in Homicide for the last six years now, and he was one of Anderson's oldest friends.

Anderson was only forty-eight, but there were times, like this, as he looked down on his pasty white legs and felt every muscle in his back aching, that he felt positively ancient. He mopped a hand across his face and sighed. "What's going on, Chuck?"

Beside him, Margie stirred. She sat up and turned on her light, then leaned against the headboard of their bed.

Anderson glanced over at her and nodded as Chuck Levy spoke into his ear.

"East Patrol's got a huge f.u.c.king mess on their hands," he said. "Real bad." His voice sounded like it was about to break. "Keith, it's Ram. He's been killed. His partner, too. Raul Herrera, if you know him. I...I don't know Herrera."

Anderson was certain he hadn't heard that right. "Wait, say that again. What do you mean Ram's been...you mean our Ram? You mean Bobby Cantrell?"

"Yeah," Levy said.

This isn't happening, Anderson thought. I'm about to wake up. Come on, Keith, wake up.

"What's wrong?" Margie asked. "Is Ram okay?"

He put his hand on her stomach. He tried to tell her no, that somehow Ram had just been killed, but the words wouldn't come. Instead all he could do was shake his head.

"Keith," she asked, more urgently now, "what's going on? Tell me what happened."

"Killed," was all he could say.

Margie clapped her hands over her mouth, and as Anderson watched she drew her knees up to her chest and started breathing in short, noisy sobs. She shook her head violently back and forth. She watched him without blinking.

"How did it happen?" Anderson asked.

"I have no idea. Like I said, East Patrol's got a mess out there. They've got Ram and Herrera down and about forty others, too. A bunch of junkies apparently."

"Forty?" Keith said disbelieving. "Did you say forty people dead?"