A Taint in the Blood

Mouths opened and closed, including Mutt’s. He couldn’t hear anything. “What?” he said. “What?”

Sound returned without warning and he winced away from it. “They took her!”

One of the boys-Kevin? Jordan? Jim couldn’t remember. God help him, he couldn’t remember. What kind of cop was he? This boy took Jim’s arm and led him to the living room and more or less shoved him down on the couch. He put his hand on the back of Jim’s head, preparatory to pushing Jim’s head between his knees, when Jim raised a hand to stop him. “It’s okay, kid,” he told him. “I’m okay. Thanks. You did good.”

“What?” the kid mouthed. Jim still couldn’t hear him, but that was because the other boy was back up to one thousand decibels. He flapped his hand and it ceased. Mutt nosed beneath his arm, emitting a continual anxious whine, and that scared Jim more than any other single thing in the last five minutes. If Mutt had even a smidgeon of a clue as to where Kate was, she’d have been on her trail and long gone. Instead, Mutt crowded next to him, restless, even whimpering. He couldn’t remember ever hearing Mutt whimper.

“Who took her?” he said, enunciating even these few words with extreme care, because his tongue felt inexplicably too large for his mouth.

The older kid spoke. “Two men. They had something thrown over her, a blanket or a coat or something, and they hit her and then they threw her in the back of a van.”

“A van?”

The kid nodded.

“What color?”

The kid hesitated, and Jim’s heart sank. “It was dark,” the kid said.

“Of course it was dark; it’s four in the fucking morning,” Jim said, and caught himself when he saw the kids’ expressions.

The older kid swallowed and said, “No, I meant the van was dark, dark blue, maybe, maybe even black.”

Jim’s heart lifted again. “Did you-is there a chance-can you remember one or two or any of the numbers on the license plate?”

The kid reeled off the number like an off-duty cop. Jim stared at him, mouth slightly open. “What?” he said.

The kid did it again. “They’d daubed mud on the plate, but the streetlight hit it just right when they turned, and I-”

Jim lunged out of his chair and grabbed the kid up by his shoulders, the boy’s feet dangling two feet from the floor, and almost kissed him. The kid was afraid he was going to, but Jim set him down on the floor and thumped him on the shoulder hard enough to knock him forward a step. “Good job, kid,” he said fervently, “I mean really good job.”

He was halfway out the door before he thought about the boys, and he paused just long enough to bellow over his shoulder, “Don’t move from this spot, do you hear? And don’t open the door to anyone except me! And call your damn parents, damn it!”

Later, he wouldn’t remember very much about the drive uptown, but the expression on the face of the willowy blonde who was sharing Brendan’s bed that night would stay with him for a while. Mutt didn’t help, prowling next to him, ears lying back, fangs slightly bared, and an expression in her great yellow eyes that was not at all human.

Brendan took one look at Jim’s face and said, “What?”

His response was not adequate to the occasion, evidently, because Mutt leapt up on his table and barked once right in his face.

“Holy Mary Mother of God,” Brendan said. The blonde screamed and slammed the bedroom door.

“They took Kate,” Jim said tightly.

“Who took her?” Brendan said, but he knew as well as Jim did.

“I’ve a got tag number,” Jim said, and reeled it off.

A laptop sat on a crowded desk, and Brendan booted it up. “It’ll be stolen,” Brendan said over his shoulder.

Jim paced up and down in an agony of suspense. Mutt stood stiff-legged in the doorway, glowering and occasionally growling, although apparently just on general principles. Brendan cast an unfriendly eye in Jim’s direction. “And where the hell were you when she got took?”

“Asleep,” Jim said.

Brendan looked at him.

“Just find the fucking van!”

The computer beeped and a screen popped up. Brendan scrolled down. “Your van is registered to a Paul Cassanovas. And lookie here-it has in fact been reported stolen. Let me pull up the police report.” Brendan tapped some keys, another agonizing wait, and a second screen popped up. “Mr. Cassanovas reported it stolen yesterday when he parked it at the Dimond Fred Meyer and forgot the keys in the ignition when he went inside to buy groceries.”

“He left the car ru

“It happens, only usually it’s the driveway, when they run back inside in the morning. But you’re right: Usually you run across this kind of thing in the winter, when its cold and they want to come back to a warm car. Hmmm. Let’s do a search on Mr. Cassanovas in the corrections database, shall we?”

A minute later, Brendan said, “Bingo. Mr. Cassanovas has served time for B and E, burglary, theft.”

“Has he got an address?”

“Yes, but wait.” Brendan tapped a few more keys. “Last known address was a boarding house on Ingra. Here.” Brendan scribbled the number down. “Call them, see if he’s there.”

Jim snatched up Brendan’s phone and punched in the number.

“Not only does Mr. Cassanovas have an address-” Brendan said.

A sleepy, surly voice swore at Jim but answered his questions before the receiver slammed down. “He checked out last week,” Jim said.

“-he has known associates.”

“Who? Names, addresses.”

Brendan’s lips thi

“Son of a bitch,” Jim said, “they’ve got her, goddamn it, they’ve got her.”

“Son of a bitch,” Brendan echoed, still looking at the computer screen.

“What?”

“Guess who Mr. Cassanova’s counsel was?”

“Son of a bitch,” Jim said again.

“Well, yeah,” Brendan said, “but he’s also known as Oliver Muravieff. Wait a minute. Where are you going?”

“I’m going to talk to Oliver Muravieff about a little matter concerning his billable hours.”

Moving faster than anyone had a right to expect of a man of his size, Brendan was up and had his hand around Jim’s arm. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Let’s think about this. And after we’ve thought, let’s call the cops.”

The next thing Brendan knew he was slammed up against the wall. “Take it easy, Jesus, Jim,” he said. A door cracked open and the frightened face of a neighbor peeped out. “It’s okay, Mrs. Hartzberg,” he told her. “Everything’s fine. Just go on back to bed.”

It wasn’t easy to be serene with two hundred pounds of pissed-off trooper in his face, not to mention the snarling, snapping half wolf next to the trooper, but, to his credit, Brendan managed it. “Just calm down a minute,” he said. Brendan let go of Jim’s wrists, where his hands weren’t doing much good anyway, and raised both hands, palms out. “Just take a beat here and think this through.”

“There’s nothing to think about, Brendan. We can’t call the cops.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re his family’s cops,” Jim said. “They let Patton go on command. They’re not going to help us.”

“Come on, Jim, you don’t really believe that. Jim. Jim!”

Jim let Brendan go and walked out, Mutt moving like the hunter she was at his side.

He was conscious enough of what he was going to do to stop at the town house to pick up shirt, jacket, and his sidearm, although the latter was too big not to attract too much of the wrong kind of notice. It would have to go in the glove compartment. His backup piece, a.38, he strapped to his ankle.

He looked in the mirror and saw a grim-eyed civilian staring back at him. Whatever happened next, the troopers were going to come in for as little blame as possible. He looked up Oliver Muravieff in the phone book and copied down the number.

He went back downstairs and told the boys, “Pack up your stuff. I’m taking you home.”

They were frightened and silent during the ride. As he pulled into their driveway, he said, “Can you get in?”