Chapter 12—Like a Cockroach
ANDI STUMBLEDinto the precinct, barely able to walk straight. He’d had one hell of a night due to a massive termite swarm in the area where he lived. He didn’t have any termites in his own house, but several of his neighbors had healthy colonies either in their homes or on their properties. Conditions for swarming had been perfect the last few days, and he had felt it building up. Yesterday the alates had finally taken flight, resulting in a battering of images and impressions. It was never just one colony that swarmed, but all the colonies in a certain area, which made it even harder to bear. Even though the swarming itself had taken place during the day, sparing Andi the feeling of flying into a thousand different directions at once, the residue of the day’s excitement still lingered everywhere. Predatory insects who had taken their fill. The digging of newlywed couples in their search for the perfect spot for their new nest. The strange emptiness of the established colonies that had just lost a junk of their populace. It was all intensified, way more than usual, and not even two hours of meditation had helped.
Andi refused to take a sleeping pill, since they made him woozy. He also didn’t want to be helpless in his own home in case anything happened. Being slightly paranoid in addition to hisgeschenkcertainly made his life even more complicated than it already was.
When he reached his desk, after trying very hard not to acknowledge how everybody jumped out of his way with a panicked expression, he found a cup of herbal tea and a plain bagel in front of his keyboard. George was sitting behind his own desk, drinking coffee and eating what looked like a salmon sandwich. In the morning. Andi tried his best not to hurl.
“Good morning, Andi. Rough night?”
Andi opened his mouth to give a sharp retort and thought better of it. George had done nothing—yet—to deserve getting his head chewed off, and he had brought tea. Andi decided to give him an honest answer. “Like you wouldn’t believe. My neighbors were a bit—lively. I feel like I didn’t get any sleep.”
The look of surprise on George’s face told Andi he hadn’t expected an answer, not to mention a nice one. Andi shrugged. “Did the computer find anything on Taylor Vance?”
The grin lighting up George’s face told Andi they had a hit. If only he’d had the mental capacity to truly appreciate it. Andi had been afraid Taylor Vance would be a dead end for them, so actually having found him or at least a trace leading to him was a reason to celebrate. Some part of him knew that, while the rest of his body, together with any thoughts more complicated than setting one foot in front of the other and safely placing his ass on the seat of his chair, felt like it was covered in slowly drying resin—sticky, restricting, suffocating. And Andi was the mosquito arthropologists would be finding trapped in amber in about two million years from now.
“When I left yesterday, I extended the search to all databases, just to be on the safe side. And we have a lead. Taylor Vance isn’t in the system as a processed criminal, but I found his name in connection to a car accident six months ago. There’s only the picture on his driver’s license, and that’s blurry as all hell, though the address is promising. He lives in Sangaree, just like Ronald Wallace, on General Davis Drive. The house is in the name of one Ichabod Vance, presumably Taylor’s father.”
Andi grabbed his tea and bagel. “What are we waiting for?”
George grinned, slipped into his jacket, and took his keys. They made it to Sangaree in less than fifteen minutes. It took them a few moments to figure out which house belonged to Taylor Vance, since they all looked neglected. When they approached, Andi could feel the house was empty. No humans inside, as the countless ticks, bedbugs, and mosquitoes attested. His shoulders slumped. This was so far their only solid lead. If it led them to a dead end after he’d felt this small sliver of hope….
Andi hesitated. Their chances were already slim. It couldn’t hurt to at least open himself up a bit and check their immediate surroundings. After the night he had, it was a risk—his defenses were still low—but what if he did find something they would otherwise miss? There were still a few steps to the front porch, and since he knew there was no danger inside except for the mold, he purposely dipped into the minds of the arthropods in a half-mile radius. The avalanche of impressions promised a massive headache later on, but what mattered was the presence of a person he picked up in the house to the left of Taylor Vance’s home.
Sweat that carried an abundance of pheromones, turning the person into some kind of psychedelic color cluster amidst the information about vibrations on the ground, quality of soil, currents on the air, and the state of the rotting wood in most of the houses.
This one was definitely abandoned, the windows nailed shut with planks, the door hanging slightly ajar because the hinges were so rusted. Why somebody would go to the trouble of barring the windows and then leaving the door open would have puzzled Andi if he hadn’t gathered from the termites living in the walls that there was an intruder. Somebody who didn’t belong. Just like dogs or cats, social insects knew the people who lived in the homes they occupied. They could identify them by the pheromones they emitted. The person currently lurking in the living room was a stranger, not welcome at all. The real owner hadn’t been there for at least two “dead spaces” and probably would never return, which was of no interest to the termites. All they knew was that the person inside at the moment didn’t belong.
Andi knew it was a long shot, a wild speculation. The man could be anybody from a squatter to a junkie who was hiding from God knew what. But even if it wasn’t their suspect, perhaps the person had seen or heard something that could help them. Andi decided to risk it and drew his weapon. George arched an eyebrow at him when he veered off to the left. There was no time for explanations, so he just awkwardly jerked his head in what would have been a more impressive gesture if he weren’t already feeling the beginnings of a migraine. At the moment, the adrenaline kept the pain at bay, which would change the moment he came down from this particular high. Right now, though, he was on the hunt and nothing could stop him. He sensed George falling in line behind him, his weapon undoubtedly drawn.
The termites in the house sensed his approach and got restless, not happy about another intruder into their peaceful home. Since the insects were so upset, they broadcasted everything going on inside as if through loudspeakers. The man had become aware of their presence and wanted to flee. Unlike Ronald Wallace, he didn’t go for the back door but opted to jump out of a window instead. The rotten planks barring the empty frame gave easily, as if they had waited for this chance to return to the soil. He rolled through the weeds and came to his feet in a fluid motion that didn’t quite fit with a junkie or some homeless guy.
Andi put on an extra burst of speed, raising his weapon. “Freeze! Police!”
The man whirled around in the direction where once upon a time a fence had divided this property from the next one. Now there was only the distinct thickening of the grass one usually got along the perimeter of fenced-in property, where the lawnmower could somehow never reach. It was surprising that even after years of negligence, this line was still discernible.
The suspect didn’t even come close to it. Out of nowhere, George appeared on his right flank, threw himself forward, and caught the man around the waist, bringing them both down with a heavy thump. The man struggled beneath George, getting in some good hits against George’s ribs and even one to his temple, all the while screeching like a madman. “That’s police brutality, that’s what it is! Let go of me!”
George took the abuse with a stoic face and then simply grabbed the man, a Caucasian, presumably in his late thirties and about five eight, and turned him on his stomach. While he slapped some cuffs on him, he read him his Miranda rights.
“Fuck you, you fuckers! You have no right! I want a lawyer, now!”
Andi sighed. The good news was, the way the man was behaving he was definitely hiding something. If it had anything to do with their case, they would know as soon as they had his identity confirmed. He looked different from the man on the driver’s license, but not different enough to convince Andi he wasn’t their guy. And wouldn’t that be lucky?
“Chill, man. We just wanted to ask you a few questions. But you decided to make a run for it, which makes my deeply suspicious cop mind wonder what you’re hiding. Plus,” Andi gave the man a smile full of teeth, “you resisted your arrest and assaulted an officer of the law. That’s something the CPD takesveryseriously, considering all the things going on at the moment. Now, why don’t you show your goodwill and tell us your name? Since I assume you’re an upstanding citizen and all of this”—he made a sweeping gesture with his hand, not bothering to hide his sarcasm—“is just one big misunderstanding on our side.”
A glare full of hatred was all Andi got and all he had expected. The man’s mouth opened and shut a few times, but he was definitely smarter than Ronald Wallace—he remained silent. Fucking damn. Andi shared a glance with George before they hauled the man to his feet. One of his front teeth was broken, and he smelled like mold and old dust. He had no doubt camped out in the abandoned house for some time.
As soon as they were back at the precinct, they processed the guy, confirmed with a facial recognition program and his fingerprints that he was indeed Taylor Vance, and let him make his call. While they waited for Vance’s lawyer to arrive, George motioned Andi into the empty room next to interrogation room four.
From the tension George was radiating, Andi knew what was coming, so he waited patiently for his partner to phrase his questions. This was the exact reason Andi didn’t do partners. Had he been alone, he would have just told everybody he had heard or seen something in the other house. Unfortunately, that kind of explanation wouldn’t fly because George had been there with him and knew damn well how devoid of suspicious sounds the area had been and how impossible it had been to see anything from the front yard of Vance’s house.
George walked back and forth with his hands linked at his back. Suddenly he stopped in front of Andi with a strange expression in his eyes Andi couldn’t quite decipher. There was anger, as he expected, but also worry, a certain resignation, and perhaps even a tiny hint of—admiration?
“Listen, man, this is totally weird. You know what I’m going to ask, and I know you’re going to lie about it, for whatever reasons. So I’m not going to ask how you knew. Just like I’m not going to ask again how you knew about the dead girls inside the building. I’m almost sure I don’t want to know. Just tell me one thing—is what you’re doing in any way, shape, or form illegal?”
Andi was genuinely surprised. He had expected something entirely different from George: a rant, threats, accusations, the end of their short partnership. Not this strange mixture of openness and—was that hope? Andi wasn’t sure. And since George had just proven how different from most of their colleagues he was, Andi decided to let him in, if only just a bit.
“I swear to you on everything that’s holy, nothing of what I do is illegal.” Most probably because nobodyknewwhat he could do, but that was details. Nothing of importance. “I know how it looks, I know you’ve got many questions, and you’re right. I would lie to you and you don’t want to hear the truth anyway. So—can you trust me on this?”
