Arrival (Maddy Young Saga 1)

⠔

  “Thanks.”

  Berlin was sitting in the passenger seat of the Jag. Which I might add, had been professionally cleaned and looked brand spanking new. On that note, I was curious if any of the other public defenders had company cars. I guessed not.

  I turned to Berlin and said, “Thanks for what?”

  “For like, adopting me.”

  “Don’t sweat it kiddo.” I rubbed her leg.

  She smiled and nodded. A block later I noticed her wipe a couple silent tears off her cheek.

  ⠔

  I pulled into the Coffee and Toast parking lot—Coffee and Toast was the Two equivalent of the Waffle House—and hopped out. I had a meeting scheduled with Darrel. The police report had been sufficiently vague about the Isaac manhunt and Darrel promised he would tell me everything he could.  I hadn’t anticipated having Berlin with me and on this note, I said to the third wheel, “You remember Darrel right?”

  “Black dude.”

  I laughed. “Yes. Black dude.”

  We pushed through the doors. It was closing in on noon and the place was packed. Darrel was sitting in a booth halfway up the far wall. Darrel was drinking coffee and reading the paper. He looked up as we approached. He appraised me. Then Berlin.

  I said, “You remember Berlin?”

  “Of course.” He put his fist out and Berlin knocked knuckles with him.

  Berlin and I slid into the booth and I said, “Ask me what I did this morning.”

  He flipped the paper closed and eyed me curiously.

  “Come on, ask me.”

  “Maddy Young, please tell me in graphic detail what you did this very fine morning?”

  “If you must know . . . let’s see here . . . I went for a run, did some apartment hunting online, had a meeting with my new boss, adopted Berlin, got a company Jaguar, bought three suits—”

  He put his hand up. “Did you say that you got a company Jaguar?”

  Err.

  He peered out the window. Saw the shiny black sedan among the other automobiles looking like Kate Beckinsale at fat camp. He shook his head, “You mean to tell me that not only are you now defending the pieces of shit that I’m trying to put behind bars, but your sorry ass gets to drive around in an eighty thousand dollar car.”

  I decided to go with it and said, “That’s what I’m saying my brother.”

  “What did I tell you about calling me that.”

  “Sorry homie.”

  “Knock that shit off.”

  “Knock what off, Lebron.”

  Finally, he laughed.   

  I said, “Did you hear what else I said, I adopted—”

  “Yeah, yeah, you adopted Berlin. What do you want me to say? No big surprise there. Hey let’s order.”

  Darrel waved our waitress over and the three of us ordered. After the server left, I said, “So tell me how you found Isaac.”

  ⠔

  It’d been four days since Benny Villos had reported what he’d found at the abandoned warehouse. Four days since the dilapidated ruins of AAA Steel had been crawling with police cars, crime scene techs, and yellow tape. Actually, the yellow tape was still there, screaming to the squatters, dealers, and whores, in its golden voice, “If you didn’t know from just looking at the place, stay away from here.”

  The newest acquisition of the Denver Police Department, Homicide Division, ducked under the tape. Darrel looked down at his watch. It was 4:23 p.m. according to the bright red diver’s watch on his right wrist. It was fast approaching daylight savings, but they were yet to fall back, and the sun was balancing on the large warehouse. Darrel moved from the afternoon sun and into the cold shadows, a ten-degree drop in temperature. He shivered.

  There was a cop standing outside the roll-up garage door. As Darrel approached him, the cop began shaking his head. The cop, Samuels according to his name badge, said, “Nobody is allowed in.”

  Darrel stopped. He’d never heard of such a thing. “According to who?”

  “According to my boss. And his boss. And his boss.”

  “The chief?”

  “His boss.”

  “Shit.”

  Darrel turned around. He walked back around the building. His car was three blocks away. He did not head in that direction.

  He walked to the back of the warehouse and found a small side door.  It didn’t open on the second kick. Or even the third. It took six kicks for the door to swing open. Darrel hoped Samuels didn’t hear the cracking, but then again, Samuels was on the opposite side of the building, nearly half a football field away.

  Darrel pulled the small flashlight from his pocket and moved towards the back of the warehouse. The warehouse was built to house millions of pounds of sheet metal and there was row after row of metal bays stretching from floor to ceiling. Most bays were empty.  

  Darrel swept the arc of his flashlight across the dirt-covered floor, until it illuminated the ten-foot diameter of dried blood where the three bodies had been found. Vermin, mice, rats, and the likes had done a decent job cleaning, but the concrete was still stained crimson. When Darrel had first seen the bodies, his initial thought was that they weren’t looking for a man; they were looking for a bear. It was as if the weapon of choice had been a garden sow. And then a bowling ball. The victim’s bodies had been turned to mush.

  It had taken nearly two days to identify the three men. At least that’s what he’d been told. Darrel knew someone must have known the men’s identities well in advance of two days. Probably knew the second their hearts stopped beating. All conspiracy theory aside, Darrel had been shocked to learn the three men were all successful, wealthy, even prominent figures. One had been a research scientist, an Asian man of forty very renowned for his work on quantum mechanics. The other a black man, fifty-ish, a professor at the University of Denver who taught Anthropology. And the third, an aging white guy, one of the best brain surgeons in the country.

  Very odd indeed.

  There were a couple of windows in the large atrium, and the falling sun shone through, illuminating billions of dancing particles as it cascaded down to the concrete. Darrel wondered if any of those tinkerbells had belonged to the perpetrator. But it was a moot point. When dusting for fingerprints, they had found nearly 300 separate prints. 299 of them were in the database. Old AAA Steel workers, squatters, whores, druggies. All of them accounted for, except for one.

  Darrel had a feeling that was exactly why no one was allowed in the crime scene. Why all the news vans had been held at bay. Why the identities of the three men had yet to be disclosed to the public. That one unaccounted fingerprint was scaring a great deal of people.

  After half an hour, Darrel was ready to leave. But his instinct, the same instinct that had kept him alive as a gangbanger for nearly a decade, and the same instincts that had made him one of the best cops in St. Louis, was telling him to do one more sweep of the building.

  He started at the far corner. The corner nearest the roll-up garage. There wasn’t much over there, a couple dozen badly aging wooden pallets, and Darrel made sure his footsteps were silent. The only thing separating him from Samuels was a quarter-inch thick aluminum door. He inspected the pallets, but other than a family of spiders, he found nothing.

  He continued down the north wall. There were three large machines. Forklifts. Not the little ones you see zooming around Home Depot. We’re talking industrial forklifts. Huge. Their wheels alone were as tall as Darrel. At one time they appeared to be orange, but they were now covered with a thick layer of black.

  On the forklift closest to him, someone had used their finger to write in the thick dust.

  Three words.

  ⠔

  “What did it say,” Berlin interrupted.

  “That’s the thing. It was written in a language I’d never seen. Not like Chinese or anything. It was the regular alphabet; but unlike anything I’d seen before.”   

  Berlin leaned forward.  “Do you rem
ember the words?”

  “Actually, I do.”

  Darrel grabbed the napkin that was still sitting in front of me. Turned it over. Wrote a couple words. Pushed it in front of Berlin. I peered down at it.

  Q cilito zerultiss.

  My breath caught in my throat. I leaned backwards and tried to act casual.

  Berlin asked, “Did you Goggle it?”

  “Of course I did. No hits.”

  Berlin didn’t believe him. She pulled out a jPhone—my jPhone—from the front pocket of her overalls and did a quick search. After a minute, she said, “No results.”

  Darrel gave her a look as if to say, “Told you.”

  I leaned back. No results. A language that didn’t exist.

  Then why could I read it?

  ⠔

  A low creaking. Footsteps. A figure.

  “Stop, Police!” Darrel yelled.

  The figure crashed through the same door Darrel had entered.

  Darrel had run the 200 and 400 in high school before he’d dropped out. He still held two state records. Darrel crashed through the door ten seconds later. The figure ahead was darting into an alley a hundred feet to his left.

  The sun had set and Darrel spotted the shadow of the man twenty yards in front of him. There was a tall chain link fence splitting the alley and Darrel watched as the man jumped halfway up the fence and was over it in a matter of seconds.

  There was a thick chain and lock holding the fence together and Darrel pulled his gun. Mid-stride he popped off six shots. The chain fell and Darrel smashed through the fence. Darrel made up ten steps. By the time they reached the next alley, Darrel was twenty feet behind the guy. He could hear the man’s inhales and exhales.

  The man in hesitated at the next straightaway. A hesitation that would cost him.

  Darrel took a gamble. He guessed left. Darrel had the angle and smashed into the man, sending him sprawling against the hard concrete. Darrel jammed the gun into the man’s face and said, “Don’t fucking move.”

  ⠔

  My eyes were wide. I shook my head and said. “You’re kind of a badass.”

  Darrel smiled.  “Kind of?”

  “Okay. You’re a badass.”

  “Yes. Yes, I am.”

  ⠔

  Berlin and I spent our first night together eating pizza, playing Scrobble—she beat me twice—and watching movies. Halfway through the third movie, Berlin fell asleep with her head on my lap. I tried not to think about the pi symbol written on the forklift. I tried not to think about the three words Darrel had written on the napkin. But I couldn’t shake them.

  Q cilito zerultiss.   

  A war is raging.

  ⠔

  My cell phone alarm woke me at nine. I’d fallen asleep not long after Berlin and had slept more or less upright on the couch. I sneaked out from underneath Berlin, then knelt down and lifted her up. She couldn’t have weighed more than fifty pounds. I carried her to the bedroom and set her down. For a moment, I thought she was stirring awake, but within four breaths she was back fast asleep. I wrote her a note that I’d be home later and that she could go to the cafeteria if she needed anything to eat. Then I kissed her on the forehead.

  ⠔

  “Orange again?”

  Isaac smiled. He said, “We can’t all wear two thousand dollar suits that we just picked up from the tailor.”

  He reached across the table and grabbed at my neck. My chest tightened. His fingers brushed my throat. He pulled his hand away. He was holding a tiny pin in his hand. He dropped it on the table.

  I exhaled.  I had asked the guard to take off Isaac’s cuffs. The guard said he could only remove one set. Isaac had opted to have the wrist cuffs removed.

  I said, “I had a long talk with my friend Darrel yesterday.”

  “Darrel?”

  “The cop that tackled you.”

  Isaac smiled. “That brother is fast.”

  “So he says.”

  We made small talk for another couple minutes. Finally I said, “Last time I was here, you said that you knew who I was. What did you mean by that?”

  He shrugged, but didn’t answer.

  “Are you a Born?” The question just came out.

  Isaac raised his thin eyebrows. “A Born? I don’t follow.”

  I leaned forward. “You know exactly what I mean. Are you a Born? Were you born here in Two?”

   “Dude, I was born in Alabama.”

  “Right. How did you die?”

  “Shot.”

  “Shot?”

  “Yep.”

  “Where?”

  “Just outside a tonk.”

  “A tonk?”

  “A honky-tonk. That’s what we call bars down south.”

  “Let me see the scar.”

  He shook his head.

  After a moment, I said, “You’re full of shit.”

  Again, he shrugged.

  I was getting frustrated and I stood up. I walked to the opposite wall. Turned so my back was to Isaac.

  Was I off? Was this guy just another guy? A guy from Alabama? Just another guy that died in a bar fight?

  There was a scraping noise and I turned.

  Isaac had the pin from my shirt. He was scratching something on the steel table.

  I watched him for a minute. Then I walked around so I was behind him. I looked down. There were two sentences scratched into the metal table. It was the same language as the words on the napkin. The language that didn’t exist.

  I walked back around the table. Isaac didn’t take his eyes off me. The words on the table were upside down, but I could still read them.

  Ili noomas zin Naskiĝ. Ni noomas zin Vartistojn.

  They call us Borns. We call ourselves Keepers.