“There is no off the record to a reporter, Steve.”
“Come on, Quinn. You know I’m good for it. I never said a word about the thing with the Chief. You know why? Cause you vouched for him, is why. I know how the game works.”
She sighed, angry at the guilt that stabbed her every time she saw him. The case with his wife’s disappearance had landed on her desk three months ago, and she had given it everything she had. But his wife had vanished without a trace, and Quinn hadn’t been able to do anything to solve the case. Steve had once been a good crime reporter, but the grueling effort of enduring his wife’s disappearance along with the aggressive investigation against him as a prime suspect had finished him. He took to haunting crime scenes in the desperate hope something might turn up that would connect to his wife’s abduction. Quinn never had the heart to tell him how futile that hope was.
She lowered her voice. “Look, this isn’t for your buddies in the press, all right?”
“Not like they’re taking me seriously anymore.”
“Okay. I’ve never seen anything like this. This body is all over the place. There’s guts dripping from the streetlight, for God’s sake. But no evidence of what weapon was used to do it. I have a bad feeling about this. If there’s something that can take out someone like that and leave no trace, there’s no telling how bad it’s gonna get. It’s gotta be some military prototype fallen in the wrong hands. No other explanation.”
Steve had a faraway look on his disheveled face. “Just like the body at the park two weeks ago. And the one in the back of the nightclub a month prior.”
She narrowed her eyes. “How the hell do you know about that? Captain has ordered a complete press blackout. The Feds are all over this, trying to connect the dots. Or cover up something, knowing them. We’re all under a gag order. I can probably get cuffed just for talking to you about this.”
“No worries, Quinn. My lips are sealed.”
“Doesn’t explain how you know what you know.”
A weary smile touched his lips. “Dreams.”
“What?”
“Dreams, Quinn. I can’t explain it without sounding crazy. You think you’ll get locked up for talking? I’d be institutionalized.”
“Look, if you don’t want to share your sources, fine. Just don’t think I’m stupid, Steve. You have something pertinent to these cases, you let me know. And keep your nose clean. I’m not kidding when I say other eyes are all over this.”
“Yeah. Hey — any cameras working in this area?”
“C’mon, Steve. We’re professionals, remember? Got a teller machine across the street. Don’t know if it’s any good or even working for that matter. Keith’s going to check the feed when he’s done puking up his guts.”
“Let me know if you find anything strange, okay?”
“Haven’t you been listening?” Her erratic gesture covered the general area. “Everything about this is strange.”
“No.” Steve glanced back at the kaleidoscopic glow of emergency lights and the growing crowd of investigators, gawkers, and reporters. “I mean something really strange. Something you wouldn’t believe with your own eyes.”
She stared as he walked back to his car, considering calling him back. She shook her head. Steve was getting worse every time she saw him, but she couldn’t bear that weight for him. He had to exorcise those demons on his own.
Turning back, she shouted to the nearest investigator. “What happened to the guy with the wallet?”
“What guy?”
“CSI jacket. One of your guys. He was right there. C’mon, I need answers here, people…”
Steve had only driven one block away from the scene before he was accosted. A man walked directly in front of his car, forcing him to stomp on the brakes. The car squealed to a stop just before ramming into the stranger.
“Hey!” Steve paused to catch his breath, rolling down the window. Adrenaline flooded his nerves, turning his heart into a submachine gun on rapid fire. “Watch where you’re going, pal. You got a death wish or something?”
The man responded by walking to the window and sticking a Glock 26 in Steve’s face. “Think you can give me a ride?”
Steve swallowed, eyeing the glove compartment, where he had stashed his revolver. No way to get it without being shot. “Yeah, sure.”
The stranger slid into the passenger seat, keeping his gun leveled at Steve’s midsection. “Drive.”
Steve drove. Sweat slicked his forehead, and his palms felt slippery on the steering wheel. It was almost funny. When his wife had vanished, he had thoughts of suicide. The sheer hopelessness of the situation had pulled him into a vortex of self-pity and despair. He had been automatically labeled a suspect and the subsequent investigation destroyed his faith in the system and sent him spiraling into a self-destructive tailspin of drinking, insomnia, and burning himself out in the futility of chasing his wife’s ghost. Death had appeared attractive in those demoralizing instances of pure misery.
Funny how staring down the barrel of a loaded gun instantly changes that perspective.
“Look — what do you want? I don’t have money. If you want the car, just take it.” He glanced at the man from the corner of his eye. The stranger’s face was completely average, bland enough to fit in practically anywhere. His height and build were average as well. He was so ordinary that he practically blended in with the seat of the car.
“I don’t want your wheels.”
“What do you want? Who are you?”
The man glanced at Steve. “Call me Guy. As for what I want, it’s simple. I want to know about your dreams.”
Steve gave Guy a closer look. “You were there. One of the CSI agents.”
“That’s not your concern. Right now you need to tell me what you meant about your dreams.”
Steve was silent for a moment. The car drove as if self-automated, into a view of blurry lights and murky buildings churned to obscurity by a combination of rain and cheap wiper blades.
“I saw all three murders in my dreams. Each time it was like I was viewing everything from the eyes of the killer. At first I thought I was responsible. That somehow I was killing people during some kind of blackout phase. You know — like a split personality or something. I started recording myself when I sleep. Just to make sure.”
Guy listened in silence, accepting what would certainly sound like pure madness to anyone else. “So you found out you weren’t the killer. What else did you see?”
Steve hesitated, surprised to find he trusted a man who had just kidnapped him. But somehow he knew Guy had answers. He knew exactly what was going on.
“There’s some…creature. Like he’s made of shadows. Pale face, but not really a face.” He gave Guy a hopeful look. “Ring any bells?”
“Troglodyte.”
“Troglo…what?”
“Rebel. Exile. Transient doppelganger with gestalt objectives. The rare few people that survive seeing them call them ghosts or phantoms.”
Steve felt a shivery chill scrawl down his back. “But not you.”
“Not me. But it doesn’t matter what I call it. It’s from the Other side. Most times Others strike in a frontal attacks through threshold portals we call Aberrations. But they get crafty sometimes. Try to sneak in a single entity through the back door and create chaos before we sense their presence.”
“We?”
Guy’s lips compressed as if he regretted the slip. “Don’t worry about that.” He slid the handgun inside his jacket, easing the tension considerably. “The troglodyte is a parasite of sorts. Its mission is to find a perfect host. Only a fresh corpse will do, which explains the killer’s involvement. So far the attempts have been unsuccessful, but the troglodyte gets better with each attempt. The next kill may be the last. If a successful inhabitation occurs, the troglodyte will be fully corporeal. Once that happens, it will attempt to spread to other people. We call it the gestalt effect.”