“I don’t know any Rasa,” the voice said. “Now fuck off.”
Even through the tiny speaker, Herkus knew fear when he heard it. The voice had that edge, that brittle signal of restrained panic.
But why?
The cogs of his mind turned too slowly, hindered by a lack of sleep, but they connected at last. Adrenalin followed realization, charging his limbs. Instinct took over. Herkus spun away from the door, dropped low to the ground, as the attacker came at him, the knife outstretched in his hand.
The man’s momentum carried him forward, his gut meeting Herkus’s shoulder, the air driven from his lungs with a strangled wheeze. Herkus rammed into the attacker’s midsection, pushing him upward, and let gravity do the rest.
Snow cushioned the man’s fall, and Herkus had a moment to see his upturned face before he drove his heel into it.
Mark Mawhinney fell back, his lip already swelling. The knife slipped from his fingers, a blade that looked like he’d taken it from his mother’s kitchen. He spat blood, red spraying on white, and coughed.
When he tried to regain his feet, Herkus kicked him square in the groin. Mawhinney fell to his side, pulled his knees up, whined like a starving dog.
“Don’t get up,” Herkus said in English. “Your brother was a stupid man. Now he is dead. If you a smart man, you stay down, you stay alive.”
Mawhinney writhed in the snow, hissing through his torn lips. “You bastard,” he said, the words squeezed through his teeth, tears spilling from his eyes, melting tiny pits in the snow where they fell. “Fucking bastard … Sam did nothing … no call to … do that … bastard.”
Herkus crouched beside him and picked the knife from the snow. He pointed the blade at him. “Sam let the whore kill Tomas,” he said. “Arturas will forget this, you think? I don’t think. You go away from here, maybe Arturas can forget you. Go now.”
Mawhinney rolled onto his belly, hoisted himself up on his hands and knees, and crawled. Crimson drool formed a line between his mouth and the ground, leaving a trail behind him.
Herkus stood. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped the knife handle clean, and tossed it into the snow as he walked back to the Mercedes. As he approached the car, pain called from his shoulder. He stopped, rotated his arm, felt the tendons and muscles complain.
“I’m getting old,” he said.
Mark Mawhinney had meant to harm him, possibly kill him. Had Herkus not reacted in time, he might have succeeded.
The Irish brothers had messed it up, Rasa said. They tried to put the girl to work too soon. It was their fault. And Arturas would say the same.
Herkus looked over his shoulder.
Mark had reached the wall of the building. He grabbed a windowsill, tried to pull himself to his feet.
“Fuck,” Herkus said.
He turned and marched toward the other man, his hands ready.
22
DREAMS SHIFTED FROM darkness to light, from joy to terror. Galya was a child again, and her grandfather held her hand in his. The old man’s skin was coarse and cracked, and he smelled of tobacco. They walked along a path in the dark woods near her birthplace close to the Ukrainian-Russian border. Wild things watched from the trees.
Up ahead, she saw what might have been a little girl with yellow hair. She hurried her step, straining her eyes to focus on the shape. After a few moments, she realized the coarse skin no longer rubbed against her own; her hand was empty. She looked back along her path. Papa lay there on his back, those coarse hands folded across his chest, his face pale in what little light this place offered.
Growls came from the trees around him. A snout appeared from the undergrowth, low to the ground, sniffing the trail of the dead man. Then another, and another, dogs emerging from the woods to feast on her offering.
Galya opened her mouth to shout at them, but the earth tilted, throwing her down on the stones and rotting leaves. The ground lurched, pitching her against Papa’s body. Except Papa no longer lay there, and she rolled in the stones and mud. The dogs advanced, and she knew they had not come to feed on her grandfather. They had come for her. She tried to get to her feet, to get away from them, but the mud held her down like a warm blanket.
They pounced. She raised her hands to shield herself. Their mouths felt like hard hands on her body, their teeth like blunt, graceless fingers. As she drowned in the mud, they probed her ears, her ribs, her toes, her thighs, everywhere but those secret places reserved for a lover she might never meet. Finally, they parted her lips and ran across her teeth.
Galya smelled sweat and sour milk and knew she was dreaming. She swam upward through the mire, desperate to wake, but she tired, the effort too much. Instead, she let the darkness take her down into its belly, swallowed by a sleep so thick she thought she might have died.
As she sank, the hands left her, summoned by another voice, an animal howl in the distance.
23
BILLY CRAWFORD LEFT the girl to answer the thing upstairs. Always it called. Always wanting more. Never letting him be. One day it would take the light from his eyes, he was certain.
He climbed the stairway to the attic room, his shoulders brushing the walls as he ascended. It called again, its voice tearing at him like a claw. He stood still and quiet at the door, wincing at each screech.
“God help me,” he said, his voice not even a whisper. A private exchange between him and the Lord. “God give me the strength to endure it.”
He opened the door and stepped inside. He breathed shallow lest its odor overcome him. Six paces took him to within its vision.
Its eyes focused, its toothless mouth opened. It cried out, claws flaying.
“Quiet,” he said.
Its voice cracked as it rose, a broken wail that scratched at his hearing like a rat’s claws.
“Quiet,” he said, more forceful now.
Again it cried, its pale blue eyes wide and tearful.
He placed a hard hand over its mouth, forced it back down. It stared up at him. He felt its gums slip and slither on his calloused skin.
“Quiet,” he said. “Or I’ll hurt you.”
It grew still. Its toothless mouth stopped seeking purchase on his skin.
He knelt beside it. “Pray with me,” he said.
He brought his hands together, bowed his head, closed his eyes.
“Our Father,” he said.
He prayed that God on high would take mercy on this creature and end its suffering soon. He prayed for a time when he could sleep through the night without hearing its wounded howls. He prayed the Lord would take pity on whatever it had for a soul, festering inside its breast.
He prayed, and it wept.
24
LENNON WAS ON his way to his office, a can of Coke in one hand, the preliminary forensic report on Tomas Strazdas in the other, when a passing sergeant asked him if he’d heard about the Sydenham killing. The victim might be of interest.
“Who?” Lennon asked.
“Mark Mawhinney.”
Lennon stopped. “Sam Mawhinney’s brother?”
