The Silent Girl

The Monkey King, clutching his staff, his long tail curling like a serpent. She thought of a sword whispering through the night, the blade slicing through her throat. Her gaze shot upward and for an instant she thought she saw it perched above, its feral eyes shining from the darkness. But there was no creature there, just an empty steel hook awaiting a fresh side of meat.

Slowly the groans and creaks faded to silence. Yet she and Colin stood in place, backs pressed against each other, both of them frantically scanning the shadows. In every direction that Jane aimed her flashlight, she spotted no intruder, yet the darkness seemed to be watching them. And with this light in my hand, she thought, whatever is here knows exactly where we are.

“Keep moving,” she whispered. “To the door.”

“What is this thing? What are we dealing with?”

“Let’s not wait around to find out.”

He was not about to be left behind. As she moved toward the door, she could almost feel his breath on her neck. For a man like Colin, a gun was fake courage, enough to transform a coward into a bully and a killer. But put that man in the dark where he can’t see the enemy, where blindness is the equalizer, and the coward is stripped bare again. Only after they’d reached the exit and stepped outside did she hear him give a relieved sigh. The air smelled of the sea, and in the sky, circling jets glittered like moving stars. She pulled out her cell phone, but hesitated before making the call. What would she say? The power failed and we all freaked out. Heard things in the dark and imagined monsters.

“You gonna call or what?” said Colin. The coward was gone, and the bully was back.

She lifted her phone to dial and went instantly still, her gaze riveted on the warehouse rooftop. On the figure squatting there, silhouetted like a gargoyle against the night sky. It was watching her, just as she was watching it. Does it see me as friend or enemy?

“There it is!” yelled Colin.

Just as he raised his gun to fire, Jane grabbed his arm. The bullet went wild, flying harmlessly into the sky.

“What the fuck?” Colin yelled. “It’s right there, kill it!”

On the rooftop, the figure didn’t move; it simply sat staring at them.

“If you don’t take it down, I will,” said Colin. Once again he lifted his gun and suddenly froze, scanning the rooftop. “Where is it? Where’d it go?”

“It’s gone,” said Jane, staring up at the empty rooftop. You saved my life once; now I’ve saved yours.

THIRTY-ONE

DONOHUE’S A DIRTBAG,” SAID TAM. “I SAY WE JUST LET THE THING take him out. Let it take them all out.”

The thing. They had no other name for whatever it was that had perched on the warehouse last night. No one had seen its face or heard its voice. They’d caught only glimpses of it, and always in darkness, where it was little more than shadow moving across shadow. In the battle between good and evil, the thing had clearly staked its position. Already it had cut down two hired killers. Now its gaze was fixed on Donohue.

But it spared me, thought Jane. How does it know I’m one of the good guys?

“Whatever it is,” said Frost, “it’s pretty damn clever at avoiding surveillance cameras.”

The three detectives had spent all morning in the second-floor conference room, reviewing video footage from cameras mounted throughout the Jeffries Point neighborhood where Donohue’s warehouse was located. The feed from one of Donohue’s cameras was now playing on the monitor, and it showed an evening view of his parking lot. Jane watched her own car pull in through the gate and park in the stall next to Donohue’s Mercedes.

“Smile. You’re on candid camera,” said Frost.

On the video, Jane stepped out of her car and paused to look at the sky, as though sniffing the wind. Is my hair really that messy? she thought, wincing at her own image. Do I really slouch that badly? Gotta learn to stand straight and hold in my stomach.

Now Donohue’s man Sean appeared, and they had their conversation about Jane’s weapon, Sean insisting, Jane squaring her shoulders in resistance.

“Why didn’t you ask us to go there with you?” said Tam.

“I was just there to pick up the note. It was nothing.”

“Turned into a lot more than nothing. You could have used us.”

On the screen, Jane and the bodyguard disappeared into the warehouse and the view went static. There was no movement, no change in the parking lot except for the transitory glow of a car’s headlights as it passed by on the street. Frost fast-forwarded the video five minutes. Ten minutes. The image suddenly flickered and went blank.

“And that’s it,” said Frost. “The same thing happens in all four of his surveillance cameras. The power cuts out, and the picture goes blank.”

“So we don’t have a single shot of the thing,” said Tam.

“Not on Donohue’s cameras.”

“Is this thing invisible?”

“Maybe it just knows what it’s doing.” Frost brought up thumbnail photos of the warehouse exterior. “I brought my camera out there this morning and took these pictures. You can see where all the cameras are mounted. As you might expect, they’re focused on entrance points. The doors and the truck bays. But the back side of the building is just uninterrupted wall, so it wasn’t under surveillance. Nor was the rooftop.” He looked at Jane. “So it is physically possible to evade the cameras. Which means this doesn’t have to be some supernatural creature.”

“Last night, it was easy to believe it was,” said Jane softly, remembering the eerie creaks and squeals of the meat hooks swaying around her in the warehouse. “He has a security system and bodyguards. He’s armed to the teeth. But against this thing, Donohue has no idea how to protect himself and he’s scared shitless.”

“Why should we care, exactly?” said Tam. “The thing’s doing our job for us. When it comes to cleaning up the bad guys, I say let it rip.”

Jane stared at the photos of Donohue’s warehouse. “You know, I have a hard time disagreeing with you. I owe that thing my life. But I want to know how it penetrated the building. I was right there, yet I didn’t see it until the very end. When it allowed me to see it. When it sat up on the roof long enough for Donohue’s man to see it, too.”

“Why would it do that?” said Frost.

“Maybe to prove to us it actually exists? Maybe to scare Donohue, show him it can take him down anytime it wants to?”

“Then why didn’t it? Donohue’s still alive and kicking.”

“And scared to death,” said Jane. “Funny thing is, I’m not afraid of it anymore. I think it’s here for a reason. I just want to know how it does what it does.” She looked at Tam. “What do you know about wushu?”

He sighed. “Of course you’d turn to the Asian guy.”

“Come on Tam, you’re the logical man to ask. Seems like you know a lot about Chinese folktales.”

“Yeah,” he conceded. “Courtesy of my grandmother.”

“Donohue thinks that ninja warriors are after him. I looked it up last night and I found out ninja techniques actually come from China. Donohue says these guys are raised from childhood to kill, and they can penetrate any defenses.”

“We both know half of that is fantasy.”

“Yeah, but which half?”

“The half that made it into Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”

“I liked that movie,” said Frost.