Mark Smith - The Inquisitor

She watched the lights floating on the swift surface of the river, shining up from the city below. That’s where the children were going. They were going home. She sat down. She could still hear them, their song rising up from beneath the water, a bubbly, sweet canticle.

“Way down below the ocean, where I want to be, she may be…”

Hall arrived beneath the beech’s canopy, panting.

“Nothing I could do,” said Mitch.

Hall looked at Mitch in the darkness, thinking he heard a smirk in his voice. “All right,” said Hall. “We move fast-before Harry comes back. We use the kid as a chip. I go to the back door and get Geiger to come out. Then we all go inside, get the discs, and go.”

“Okay,” Mitch said.

Hall crouched down to Ezra’s eye level. He was surprised to find as much fury as fear in the boy’s gaze.

“Ezra, do this right and we’re done in five minutes, and then everybody goes home. When Mitch tells you to, I want you to call to Geiger. You shout, ‘Hey, Geiger, c’mere. I’m out back.’ You say it nice and cool, like you just want to show him something. I know you’re scared, so take a few breaths and calm down. Think about how soon this can all be over. I’m not going to hurt you or Geiger, kid. I just want to get back what your father stole.”

Hall stood up and turned to Mitch.

“Wait on me.”

Hall stepped to the shadows’ perimeter and then raced to the back door. Flattening himself against the wall, he took out his gun.

“Now, Mitch,” Hall whispered.

Ezra could smell Mitch’s sweat as the man leaned in close. It was dense and sour, the odor of something that had grown in darkness.

“Okay, kid. This is all on you. You screw up, a lot of people get hurt.” His hand came away from Ezra’s mouth. “Say it. ‘Hey, Geiger, c’mere. I’m out back.’”

Ezra felt a swirling in his head that made him feel like he was going to faint. He tried to fix his eyes on the blooming fountain of fireworks behind Mitch, but the image kept sliding away.

“Say it, kid,” said Mitch. “Call out to him-now.”

Ezra shook his head.

Mitch’s hand grabbed Ezra’s face and slammed the back of his head against the tree. “Do it.”

The wet glaze of Ezra’s tears turned each falling, pyrotechnic spark into a five-pointed star. It was a galaxy of pain, but again he shook his head.

Mitch stood up straight and turned toward Hall. “The little prick won’t do it.”

Hall tried to envision a one-on-one with Geiger inside the house. Did he have guns in there? Unknown, but doubtful. And Geiger had to be hurting; the fact that he hadn’t come out to join the search party confirmed that. Still, Geiger seemed to be immune to adrenaline and fear, so who knew what he was capable of? Hall had already guessed wrong-twice.

He decided to go into the house alone. If things got hairy, he didn’t want Mitch turning his encounter with Geiger into the O.K. Corral. He sprinted back to Mitch and Ezra.

“All right. Hold on to him, Mitch. Stay out here-I’m going in alone. Wait for my signal.”

Mitch clearly didn’t like the sound of this.“Why?”

“Because I’ve decided that this is the right way to play it.”

Mitch shifted his grip on Ezra and moved closer to Hall. “Well, seeing as how every decision you’ve made about how to handle Geiger has been wrong, maybe we should-”

“Do what I tell you, Mitch.” Hall leaned in until his face was inches from his partner’s. “That’s your job, okay? Now just shut the fuck up and do what you’re told.”

A crashing boom made all three flinch. After it passed, Mitch looked at Hall and nodded.

“Okay, boss,” he said. “Go ahead. Me and sonny boy’ll watch your back.”

Hall ran back to the door and pulled his gun out. He gave himself a moment and then swung the door open and stepped inside. He started down the hallway.

“Geiger!” he shouted. “It’s Hall!”

Geiger had dozed off in one of the living room chairs, and the voice cut into him like slashing teeth. It was Hall. How had he gotten out, and how had he come here?

“You’ve got the discs, Geiger, and we’ve got Ezra! Let’s do this!”

Geiger stood up. He felt a fiery stab of pain in his thigh, but it didn’t matter. And it didn’t matter how Hall had found them-he, Geiger, had brought him here. He had put Ezra and everyone else right in Hall’s crosshairs.

“Come on, Geiger-let me see you!”

Geiger’s gaze drifted through the room. There were two ways out: into the hallway and into the kitchen. He saw a wrought-iron poker standing against the hearth, its barbed spike covered in dust. He picked it up.

Hall’s voice seemed to be coming from somewhere near the back of the house. Geiger waited for him to call out again.

“We can finish this while no one else is here, Geiger! Nice and clean!”

Geiger cocked his head, tracing the sound. Now he was sure: Hall had come in the back door and was in the hallway, moving toward him. He was perhaps twenty feet away.

It was a given that Hall had a gun. Geiger shifted his grip to the midpoint of the poker’s shaft and held it like a spear. He raised the weapon, took a stance, and rehearsed a throw, pivoting on his left leg as he would have to do when he threw it. The leg quaked and burned, but the stitches held.

Hall had gone silent. By now, he must have moved past the hallway’s entry to the kitchen. Geiger slipped noiselessly through the living room’s doorway, into the kitchen. Did Hall have Ezra with him? He didn’t think so; it was too quiet.

Geiger stepped over to the kitchen’s rear doorway. Hall had to be in the hallway off to the right. Geiger raised the poker shoulder-high, stepped silently into the hallway, and turned.

Hall was ten feet away, alone, up near the entry to the living room. His back was a bull’s-eye, but if Geiger could get closer he could use the poker as a club. He waited, watching Hall creep toward the living room doorway.

When fireworks lit the sky again and were followed by a spate of crackles and pops, Geiger started forward, using the sound as audio camouflage. Hall was leaning around the entry’s molding.

Now just three feet away, Geiger slid his grip down to the poker’s handle and raised the weapon high.

“Geiger!” barked a voice behind him.

Hall whirled around and blindly backhanded his gun into the side of Geiger’s skull. Geiger dropped to his knees. The fireplace poker clanked to the floor.

Hall glanced up at Mitch, who stood just inside the back door. His partner’s gun was pointed at Geiger’s head, and the boy was muzzled and firmly in Mitch’s grasp.

Hall glared down at Geiger. “There’s no more time, Geiger-I want those discs!”

Geiger had trouble making out some of Hall’s words. There was an ocean’s roar in his right ear.

“Let the boy go,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.

Hall shook his head. “The discs-now.”

Geiger swung his head slowly and looked down the hallway at the boy. Then he turned back to Hall. “They’re in the bedroom,” he said, pointing to the doorway on the left.

Hall took a quick look inside the bedroom and saw a gym bag sitting in the middle of a four-poster bed. “Okay, let’s go-you first, Geiger. Mitch, wait in the living room with the kid.”

Geiger rose to his feet and walked unsteadily toward the entry to the bedroom.

Hall waved him inside with his gun and then pointed at the bag. “Open it.”

Geiger pulled the bag to him and took out an envelope. He turned it upside down and the minidiscs fell onto the bedspread.

An adrenaline mule kicked wildly in Hall’s chest. He sucked in a lungful of oxygen to neutralize it.

“So,” Hall said, “did you look at them?”