Chicago Police Department.
Else he was smoke again… gone.
TWENTY-ONE
May your own blood rise against you… and may the hearthstones of hell be your best bed forever.
With nowhere else to go, Giles found himself at Cafe Avanti, ringing the doorbell belonging to his two benefactors who lived overhead. At four in the morning, Giles had arrived carrying two spines in his blue easel bag slung over his shoulder, the bones rattling against one another, sometimes noticeably. He'd been wandering the streets of Chicago since his escape from the cemetery. He'd located the old homestead where his demonic father had lived once, but it was occupied, turned into a loft-styled duplex. Warm lights, pleasant to view from the street, trees all about. No one would ever guess that a serial killer had once lived there. Then he saw the unmarked FBI car cruising near. Jessica, no doubt, had sent some of her legions to keep an eye on Matisak's old place, just in case he should show up, and he had. The M.E. was sharp. He'd ducked into shadow, made his way off through alleyways and was gone.
Now Conchita Raold came to the upstairs window and called down, asking, “Is that you, Murphy? Who the fuck's ringing my bell? Is it you, Murph? You Fuck! We're through! So over! Get it?”
Giles backed away from the cafe doorway to stare up at the woman in the window. “It's me, Giles! I need a place to stay. I was thrown out of my apartment. Too much noise making my sculptures! I… I have to get some rest, and I have to see my sculptures.”
“We have the big-big opening tonight! You'll need to be alert to talk to visitors to the exhibit! Help me sell more coffee. You can't be hungover or nothing. It is tonight, isn't it? We agreed to the showing, tonight!”
“All right… OK, but I have to add something.” He held up the easel bag.
She could faintly hear the rattle of bones. “What is it?” she asked.
“More bones. The showing needs more bones.”
“All right. I'll come down and open up for you.”
Giles felt a great wave of relief come over him. It was a place where he was welcomed in, a place where he could hide, a place where they didn't turn him away, a place where they knew his name and it didn't frighten them.
It reminded him of the story he had read about how his father had killed two Cherokee Indian people, a man and his wife, living on a farm on a desolate section of a reservation in Oklahoma. How Matisak had been welcomed, fed, given a place to sleep the night, only to turn on the old couple like a viper, taking their lives for their blood, and for a long moment, he hesitated now at the door, fearful of something similar happening here, that he would wind up killing these people who had so fallen in love with his sculptures. At least Conchita had; Murphy reserved judgment, remaining aloof, cool. Giles didn't want what had happened with Lucinda to happen here. He hadn't wanted to harm Lucinda, either, but she'd really given him no choice.
Why had she been so wakeful that night? Why had she been such a snoop? Why did she have to pry and pry until he could no longer have her walk freely out his door?
Conchita stood in the doorway in her untied robe, inviting him in, telling him in no uncertain terms that she was alone and she could use a man.
“Where's Murphy, your husband?” he asked.
“We had another big fight. Whole thing… the marriage, the cafe, all of it's shot to hell. We really aren't what you'd call compatible. It just took us six years to find that out. Conchita's out of the box, Giles, out of the box.”
He thought of his box at the reference.
She continued nonstop, “And for the first time in a long time I can breathe.”
“You two seemed so… so…”
“Together?”
“Like really in love, yeah.”
“Front we put on for all our friends and the clientele, you know? You know how it is. In private we make war like fucking Indians on a tear! Damn that Murphy!” She laughed. “Only man who can make me see red. Didja know we both have some Native American in us?”
“No, I didn't know that.”
“That big black Murphy's a mutt. He's got some Blackfoot and Crow. Me, I'm Eastern-a touch of Pottawatomie-Blackhawk's people-aside from Mexican! And proud of it. You ever… ahhh… you know, make it with a Native American-Mex mix before, baby?”
“Ahhh… no, can't say as I have.”
She grabbed hold of Giles by his shirt and hauled him through the door. “Then you ain't really lived yet, white boy. Come with me.” She led him up to her bed, saying, “I liked you the moment I saw you.”
“My mother told me I had a little Cherokee in me… on my father's side. Told me how he got the blood and everything.”
“Cool… you'll have to tell me all about it sometime. But for now, I need your mouth on me, not flapping anywhere else. Come on!”
Giles saw not a single television in the place, and he asked about it.
“Fuck I want with that white man's opiate, sweetheart? Don't read his papers, don't listen to his bullshit radio, not even Rush Limp-baugh.”
She pushed him onto the bed, stripping him. Giles, fatigued, only marginally awake, laid back and enjoyed it, falling into a deep slumber even as he came in her.
GILES Gahran had vanished. It seemed he had again disappeared off the face of the earth. Jessica and Sharpe had been to see Petersaul to tell her that Darwin was safe, that Warden Gwingault had acted on the evidence twenty minutes before the scheduled execution, ten minutes before he got the call from Governor Hughes, who apparently had thought that he'd make FBI Agent Reynolds sweat out the end as if he would surely die. From what Darwin told Jessica, a major rift had resulted between Gwingault and Hughes, and the entire state was in an uproar and many residents wanted to see Darwin hung or drawn and quartered, or at least thrown into a cactus bed for his part in the hoax.
Darwin had been released pending any charges. It seemed no one knew exactly what the charges would be or how many would be leveled.
Jessica gave Darwin the number where he could talk to his brother, still in hiding.
“Then I'm on my way to Chicago. I want in on the kill.”
Harry Laughlin showed up at Petersaul's bedside as well. She had lost a lot of blood, and while weak and doped up, doctors had been able to repair the damage Gahran's scalpel had done her. It would take a long recuperation and some skin grafts, and even now she could not lie on her back, but they must all be thankful she was alive and in one piece.
“Get this bastard for Cates and for all his victims, Jessica,” Petersaul said, her voice quivering with pain, despite the drugs.
Laughlin took Jessica and Sharpe aside and said, “I've got bad news.”
“Now what?”
“Orders from Quantico passed along from D.C., you and Sharpe are off this case, ordered off. I'm to see to it you two get on a plane for HQ. Seems they're taking a dim view of the fun you had with Oregon Governor Hughes… that stunt you pulled, and the fact you are holding Towne in an undisclosed location believed to be somewhere along the O'Hare Airport hotel strip.”
“You don't think we'd have him anywhere within a thousand miles of Chicago, do you, Harry?”
“Don't play me for one of them. I applaud what you people did, but you did break the law, regardless.”
“To save an innocent man from certain execution!” countered Sharpe.
