Alien Taste

  Ukiah examined the heavy wheel base. The right blade was clean, but he found blood and hair caught under the rims of the left. “This was it. Someone hit Wil Trace in the head with this.”

  “And took his body out the back,” Max added, “if no one saw him leave the front.”

  “Or the body is still in the house,” Ukiah amended.

  Agent Zheng shook her head. “We’ve checked the house.”

  From the attic window, Schenley Park stretched out as a canopy of green. Max looked out over the treetops and shook his head. “I’m starting to hate that park.”

  Ukiah crouched on the same path that Janet Haze had taken two days before. To him the passage of Wil Trace’s body was clear. “You said that your people checked the park?”

  “There wasn’t any indication that he went into the park.”

  Ukiah glanced up at Max. “Can’t you see this?”

  Max shook his head. “It’s just a bunch of footprints to me. What is it?”

  Ukiah forgave the FBI somewhat. It seemed to him as if they should be perfect and infallible. The path was there, why hadn’t they seen it? “A man came this way, carrying something extremely heavy. See how deep his footprints are on this piece of level ground, compared to the others? Here, here, and here—blood. It’s going to be easy to follow, but it’s a day old.”

  “Might as well see where it goes.” Max took out his pistol and checked its clip.

  Agent Zheng nodded too, so they started down the dirt footpath.

  Unlike Janet Haze’s earlier trek, the blood trail followed the path to one of the park’s wide graded trails until it came to the edge of Panther Hollow. There Wil Trace’s abductor cut through shallow woods to a set of train tracks. The railroad, they discovered, forged through the heart of Oakland, almost unseen, hidden by the folds of land, bridges, and tunnels. Ukiah had heard the train occasionally, the rails singing, but never traced the engine’s almost invisible route before. They walked through the narrow gorge between the Carnegie Museum and Carnegie Mellon University and found a tunnel. On the other side of the tunnel, the gorge continued. The Oakland traffic hummed high overhead on bridges crossing the ravine. Ukiah recognized the buildings perched above them and thus the streets crossing the bridges: Center Avenue and Baum Boulevard. It meant they were only a few blocks from the office.

  Just before the railroad dipped down to join the busway, the blood trail climbed up the steep embankment to street level. It was a hard scramble, leaving Ukiah impressed with the strength of anyone who could do it with a body slung across one shoulder. They were in a bleak area. The street was deserted despite the fact it was full daylight. The buildings stood empty, windows boarded up, signs torn away.

  The blood trail led to a door hanging askew on its hinges. Max caught Ukiah’s shoulder before he entered, pausing him. Max had his pistol out, pointed skyward. He indicated Ukiah’s gun with his eyes and a frown. Agent Zheng held her pistols skyward too, apparently also unwilling to enter the building unarmed.

  Ukiah slipped his Colt out of his kidney holster, made sure the safety was on, then nodded his readiness.

  The door opened to a large room, the far wall a bank of windows through which hazy sunlight barely cut through filthy glass. Dust coated the floor like a gray carpet. A host of footprints marched through the dust; dozens of people had entered and left the supposedly abandoned building.

  Max moved cautiously into the large room. Agent Zheng followed behind. Ukiah stalked behind, stiff-legged, the hair on the back of his neck rising. Something was wrong. He moved slowly forward, straining to identify the sense of danger, to give it a shape, a name.

  Except a few broken chairs, the only furniture in the room was a battered desk set under the bank of windows. Marks on the floor indicated that there had been an elaborate cubicle system in the vast room. Offices lined the side walls, executive claims on privacy.

  “The attacker carries Wil Trace to this center support.” Ukiah called the trail as he found it, his eyes only half on the marks in the dust. “He puts him down. Wil Trace lies here, awakes, and starts to crawl. The attacker drags him back and ties him to the support.”

  “Trace is alive?” Surprise colored Zheng’s voice.

  “He was. There’s no more blood.” What was the danger? “The wound has stopped bleeding and the attacker doesn’t hurt him again. Other people come in two groups. The first group walks around Agent Trace. There are three men and the attacker. The second group wears biker boots. They wander around the room; it seems at random. There are five men and a woman in the second group.”

  “The second group sounds like the Pack.” Agent Zheng said. “Who are the first group, though?”

  Ukiah shrugged helplessly.

  “They put something on this desk.” Max pointed at the disturbed dust on the desktop.

  Ukiah nodded, following the tracks to the desk. “The one that brought him here put something here and retrieved it. A pen or pencil. See, these are his fingers sweeping through the dust to pick it up.” Ukiah frowned at the feather-fine track across the desk. The pen or whatever had rolled across the slightly slanted top. He stooped and looked under the desk. A hypodermic syringe glittered under the desk. “This doesn’t look good.”

  “What is it?” Max asked.

  “A syringe, and it’s been used.” He fished it out. On the tip of the needle, he found human blood. “It was used on Wil Trace.”

  Max drifted off, checking into the nearest empty executive office. He had his PDA out, digging through the Internet. “This wasn’t a random spot. They knew this place was empty and considered it a safe meeting place.”

  “Can you tell what he was given?” Agent Zheng asked tentatively, doubt clear in her voice.

  Ukiah pulled out the plunger and touched the tip, then slipped his pinkie into the cylinder. It had been used twice. At one time it had been filled with a complex pharmaceutical that he took to be the missing immune-suppression drug. The second substance was a bloodlike protein that triggered memories of Janet Haze’s oddly broken DNA. He frowned. Agent Trace was injected with blood?

  He sensed something then and grew still, unable to name it. The feeling of something horribly wrong struck him again. This time he got the impression there had been something he overlooked, a warning left unrecognized. He cast back over the last few hours, trying to spot it. A black car had been parked near the office that morning. It had been in the alley behind Janet Haze’s house, parked and empty three houses down.

  The second set of tracks leading into the building, those of the Pack’s, led in but didn’t go back out.

  The Pack had followed them to Janet Haze’s, then raced ahead to this building, and waited.

  It was an ambush.

  There was a slight noise from Agent Zheng, a sharp inhale of surprise, but it hit him like a shout. He spun and found Rennie Shaw barely ten feet away, dressed in fatigues, shotgun in hand.

  How did he get so close without me sensing him?

  The Pack leader had turned too as Agent Zheng gasped, leveling his shotgun at her.

  “No!” Ukiah flung himself in front of her.

  A boom like a cannon filled the enclosed room and the blast hit him square in the chest, throwing him backward through the air. He hit the ground tumbling from the force. It hurt less than he expected Then he remembered he was wearing the flak jacket. If he could have breathed, he would have laughed.

  He started to get up, gasping for breath. He had been kicked by an elk with less force. Rennie was coming on, chambering another shell. There was something about the Pack leader’s face, his eyes. Ukiah suddenly realized that for Rennie, no one else existed. Rennie was here to kill him.

  Ukiah scrambled backward on all fours, discovering he’d lost his .45, gasping hard for a breath that wouldn’t come. Rennie lengthened his stride, brought down the shotgun, aimed at Ukiah’s head.

  Max suddenly appeared behind Rennie, pistol shoved against the back of the Pack leader’s head.
“Drop it! Drop it or I’ll blow your brains out.”

  Rennie froze. Just then, Ukiah sensed others in the building, hiding in the shadows. Even as he looked about for them, groping still for his pistol, they emerged from the ring of executive offices. Six in all, armed with shotguns. Like Rennie, they were intently looking at Ukiah.

  “Put your guns down!” Max shouted, nudging the back of Rennie’s head. “Do it or I’ll kill him.”

  Ukiah heard the clunks of shells being chambered.

  “Drop your gun,” Rennie told Max, “or we’ll kill you too.”

  Too, because they had come only for Ukiah.

  “Back down, Max.” Ukiah forced the words out of his bruised lungs and then gasped for another breath. “They just want me. Back down and let them have me.”

  “Over my dead body, son.”

  That was uttered from the heart and not from the mind. Damn it, Max, don’t start thinking like that. I don’t want you dead too.

  So he lied to Max. “They’re not going to hurt me, Max. You know I’ve told you weird shit in the past, and I’ve always been right.” He struggled for breath. “Back down, and none of us will be hurt.”

  He looked up at Rennie, met his eyes squarely and silently pleaded to him. Don’t tell him the truth. Let him believe me. Don’t let him force you into killing him.

  Max let out a long sigh and slowly lowered his gun. “I hope you’re right, kid.”

  Pack members moved in, stripped Max of his weapons, and put him on his knees, hands on his head. There was a sudden uneasiness in the Pack members.

  A large Native American man stepped beside Rennie. “He’s the one, isn’t he?”

  Rennie shrugged and motioned Ukiah up onto his knees. The Pack leader stepped forward to catch the neck closure of Ukiah’s flak jacket and, in one hard pull, tore it open. The edge of the shotgun blast had punched through the fabric above the Kevlar plate. Blood trickled from a pellet embedded in his collarbone. Below it, a fist-sized bruise was already shading to black.

  Rennie pressed his fingers into the wound and then licked the blood from his fingertips. “He’s the one.”

  The Native American shook his head. “Coyote must be wrong about this.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. We can’t afford to be wrong.” Rennie looked down at Ukiah. “What say you, boy?”

  “Do what you want to me,” Ukiah whispered earnestly, “but not here, not in front of him. Leave them here and finish this wherever. I beg you, don’t hurt them.”

  Rennie stared down at him, a long unreadable look. Finally, he reached into the baggy pockets of his fatigues and pulled out an aerosol can. He flipped the can’s lid off in a practiced flick of the thumb, then kicked Ukiah solidly in the chest. As Ukiah gasped for breath, Rennie aimed the can into Ukiah’s face and pulled the trigger. Green gas blossomed out to kiss Ukiah’s lips. The smell was sweet and suddenly distant. He tried not to inhale, but the gas was down deep in his lungs already, making him cough and sputter, sucking down more as he did. Ukiah managed to think, At least this won’t hurt much, then the world canted sideways and darkness closed in on him. Strangely his hearing remained, like a stereo left on after the lights were turned off. There was a low moan from Max, a deep utterance of despair.

  “What do we do with them?”

  “Can’t make the boy a liar. Cuff them to a post, then follow.”

  Ukiah marked their movement by sound. They moved remarkably fast for being burdened with his body. The run ended with the beep-beep of a car answering a remote and the thunk of a trunk lid popping open. A moment later he felt carpet against his cheek and hands roughly searching him.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “A camera,” Rennie answered. “It’s probably got a remote recording system, probably in the Hummer.”

  “Should I double back and get the recording out of the truck?”

  “No,” Rennie commanded. “This was supposed to be a slash, not a grab. We don’t have time to clean up the loose ends. Just strip him down, be sure to get everything, then we go.”

  They pulled off his headcam and its power unit. They took his wallet and his phone, tossing them into the bushes from the sound of it. They found the tracer clipped to his jeans, ripped it free, and smashed it. He was left completely untraceable and defenseless.

  “That’s it,” Rennie said. “Gather the Dogs. We’ll meet at the den at midnight.”

  The trunk lid slammed down, entombing him.

  This was supposed to be a slash, not a grab.

  So he had been right. They had planned to kill him, but something had gone wrong. Something was not what they expected, but what? He searched for the reason he was still alive, for clues to keep himself alive. He recalled only a handful of unreadable looks and obscure remarks. He didn’t even know why they wanted to kill him. I’m dead, he finally admitted to himself. You don’t get grabbed like this and survive—but at least I saved Max.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Wednesday, June 17, 2004

  Unknown location

  He was in the trunk for hours. There were mysterious starts and stops. Finally they drove over a rough road and stopped for good. The car doors opened and shut. The drug had worn off slightly; he could open his eyes and make a slight whimpering noise. The trunk lid was unlatched and lifted. He tried to bolt, but none of his muscles responded. He lay instead, looking helplessly up at Rennie Shaw.

  The Pack leader was what Max called a Black Irish, with black hair and intense blue eyes. There was something hard and fierce about his face. His broad nose, strong chin, and sparse black eyebrows molded into something that could have been anger or hate or fear. Ukiah couldn’t read him, couldn’t tell what lay ahead.

  It was full night and the warmth of the day was gone. By the fishy stench and soft murmur of water, one of Pittsburgh’s three rivers ran close at hand. He filled his lungs with the damp air and knew it was the Monongahela. He listened hard and caught the faint rumble of roller coasters from Kennywood Amusement Park, the happy screams of those paying to be frightened.

  Behind the Pack leader stood an old warehouse. Ukiah knew the type well. It had been built when steel was king, then stood empty since the king had died. It was over five hundred feet long, essentially one endless room. Its windows were huge banks of one foot square pieces of glass, numbering in the hundreds, filthy, mostly broken.

  If it was like countless other warehouses, it was surrounded by empty buildings and bordered by the river. If the drug ever wore off to the point he could scream, no one would hear him.

  A woman came to stand beside Rennie. She had long black hair, dark worried eyes, and a full mouth pressed tightly shut, as if she didn’t like or approve of what was about to happen.

  “It’s wearing off,” she said. He knew her voice. She had been the other watcher in the woods. “Should I dose him again?”

  “No Hellena.” Rennie gripped Ukiah’s wrist and yanked him easily up into a fireman’s carry. “I want him awake. I want him scared.”

  As Ukiah flopped on the large man’s back, he caught a glimpse into the car’s interior. Keys glittered in the ignition. A wire fence ran around the weedy parking lot, but no gate blocked the exit to a badly paved street. If he could get free, here was his way out. He forced himself to relax, to wait. Next time would be his last chance.

  The Native American was waiting just inside the door. Rennie swung around toward the Native American, giving Ukiah an idea of the hugeness of the building. A circle of spotlights flooded the center, like a boxing ring, only slightly larger. The echoes measured the darkness, bouncing back as mere ghosts of their former strength.

  “Bear,” Rennie murmured quietly to the other man. “Get my shotgun from the car. You and Hellena—keep hold of your shotguns too. Make sure they’re fully loaded.”

  “What are you going to do with him?”

  Ukiah couldn’t read the inflection. Had that been a question or a challenge?

  “Just fetch my gun and keep you
rs ready.”

  Rennie carried him to the circle of lights and let him down to the floor a lot gentler than he expected. The floor was concrete, with a century of dust and pigeon droppings layering it. As Rennie rolled him onto his face, Ukiah gave a test wiggle of his arm. It moved slightly, a halfskip motion on the cold concrete. Rennie caught his wrists and snapped cold handcuffs on them.

  There were others now—Ukiah could sense them in the darkness—twenty if one counted Rennie, Hellena, and Bear, moving closer. They were wary and unsettled. There might as well be neon signs: “Bad shit going down.”

  Bear appeared with two shotguns. Rennie hauled Ukiah up to his knees, tripoding him with his hands cuffed behind his back. Once he was sure Ukiah wouldn’t pitch over, he took one of the shotguns. He backed up, leaving Ukiah at the center of the lights and the watching eyes.

  “Coyote!” he bellowed, reminding Ukiah of a monster summoning in a B-rated movie. “Coyote! I’ve got Prime’s son down here!”

  Son? They knew who his father was? They wanted to kill him because of his father?

  Footsteps sounded from above, where a finished loft area must be hidden by the lights. Hinges creaked. Ukiah felt instead of heard the body jumping. The presence raised the hairs on the back of his neck. With the slightest of sound, the one they called Coyote landed just inside the circle of light.

  He was a tall man, corded muscle, hair short and grizzled. He stared at Ukiah with gold eyes, and Ukiah could feel the hatred like a wave of heat. In his hand Coyote held a fire ax; and plain as if he spoke, his thoughts were of hacking Ukiah’s body into small pieces and feeding them to a roaring fire.

  Every fiber in Ukiah’s body tried to bolt. His torso jerked backward and his legs heaved him halfway up before the drug weakness sent him sprawling onto the concrete. He managed to land on his side, at least, instead of his face. Instantly he tried squirming away, but his muscles were all noodles again. Coyote shifted his hold on the ax and stalked forward. Again his thoughts were clear—on his side, Ukiah was in the perfect position for a beheading. Ukiah whimpered in fear, too scared to be ashamed of the weakness. Dear God, don’t let him near me!