John Miller - Death Draws Five

“Of course.” Martinez turned to a group of horrified-looking assistants who were clustered around her. “You heard the man.”

One of them nodded, and ran off.

Ray looked into the cell. Butcher Dagon’s one-piece orange jumpsuit lay shredded among the twisted metal that was once his bunk. Fortunately, he hadn’t had a roommate, or else what was left of him would have been lying on the floor in pieces as well.

“Were all the bodies fully dressed?” he asked.

“What?” the Captain asked.

Ray looked at her coldly. “I’m beginning to think that you’re out of your depth here, Captain. Dagon loses his clothes when he transforms into his fighting form. I was wondering if he’d managed to dress after waltzing out of your cell here, or if we’re still dealing with a naked homicidal maniac. If that’s the case, he should be a little easier to spot, and we’re going to need all the help we can get with this one.”

Martinez looked at another one of her assistants, a tall, thin man with a prominent Adam’s apple that bobbed nervously every time he swallowed.

“Well.” Swallow. “I don’t know.” Swallow. “Some of the bodies.” Long swallow. “Were pretty... damaged.” Swallow.

“Find out,” Martinez said between clenched teeth.

He nodded, swallowing, and ran off as well.

Ray shook his head. “Not much we can do until he’s spotted.”

Martinez nodded. “I was afraid you were going to say that. I was hoping...”

Ray shrugged as her voice trailed off.

“I’m a fighter,” he said. “Not a finder. Our best hope is the telepaths and precogs. Our second best is the ordinary citizen. If this burg has any ordinary citizens. You’ve got to put the word out, publicize his escape like Hell. Let everyone know he’s dangerous. Someone has to have seen the hairy little bastard.”

Martinez frowned. “That’ll only cause a panic. Plus, we’ll look bad.”

“You’ll look worse,” Ray pointed out, “as the body count mounts. Now you’ve got a cop killer running around. The citizens are sympathetic. But when—not if, but when—Dagon adds a couple of ordinary citizens to his score, all Hell will break out. You’ve got to let the public know what’s going on.”

Martinez nodded reluctantly.

“Put me in a room with him,” Ray promised, “and I’ll take care of him. Until then, I’ve got to be patient and wait. Just like you.”

Martinez nodded again.

Ray had the feeling that this was going to be a long, difficult wait.

Staten Island: Nighthawk’s Nest

Cameo spread the comforter that Nighthawk had given her upon the living room sofa. It was new, right out of its plastic wrapping. She settled down on it and closed her eyes for a moment, then looked at Nighthawk.

“Ready?” she asked.

He nodded from the adjacent loveseat. He reached into his inside jacket pocket and took out the harmonica, turning it over in his hands for a moment. Then he tossed it to her.

Cameo caught it deftly and studied it herself. She put it to her lips and blew a tentative note that came out like a blaaaattt! from a whoopie cushion. She paused, then ran a simple scale, smiled, and a song came spilling out of it that Nighthawk hadn’t heard in a long time. It was Robert Johnson’s “Drunken-Hearted Man,” and before it ended Nighthawk was laughing and crying and clapping his hands in time all at once. He recognized the style in which it was played, and there was no doubt at all in his mind that it was Lightning Robert Nash blowing like he did back in ‘46 when they were both dying together in that charity hospital.

Cameo took the harmonica from her lips and smiled. “You looking good for such an old fart, Nighthawk. Too damn good.”

Choked up with emotion, Nighthawk couldn’t answer for a moment. “I… I got a disease that day. You remember.”

“Hard to forget the day I died, old boy.”

Nighthawk nodded. “I’ve never forgotten, either. This disease went way deep into me, deeper than my flesh, deeper than my bone. It changed me. It gave me powers, Lightning. I can take other peoples’ essence. I can take it from them and use it myself.”

Lightning Robert whistled through Cameo’s lips. “That sounds mighty powerful, John.”

Nighthawk nodded solemnly. “It is. I’ve tried to use it righteously over the years... but that first day... when it first came over me... I didn’t know how to control it.” He looked down, unable to look his old friend in Cameo’s eyes. “I took too much from you, Lightning. And I killed you. I’ve been living all these years afraid that I stole your soul—or part of it—to keep me alive. You, and others, that day.”

Lightning looked at him. “You may have took something from me, John, but it wasn’t my soul.” He laughed. “I seem to still have that. I sure do.”

“I’m glad of that, Lightning.”

“Maybe you killed me.” Cameo’s head shook. “I don’t know. I do know I was old and dying, anyway. The cancer was eating me alive. I hurt. Man, how I hurt. If you were able to take the pain away and by the way send me home, well, John, we was friends. I wouldn’t begrudge you that.”

“Thank you, Lightning.”

“My pleasure, John.” He looked around. “Where am I, anyway?”

“You’re in the body of a young lady named Cameo. She was able to call you back by holding your harmonica.”

Lightning looked down at it, held in her small white hands. “You live in a strange world, John Nighthawk.”

Nighthawk laughed. “You don’t know the half of it, Lightning. I’m a hundred and fifty years old now. In my time men have walked on the moon and visited the planets of another star. Men can fly. They can read your mind. They can turn invisible and disappear. They can do most anything except bring peace to the world.”

Lightning shook his head. “Then I’m glad I’m where I am and you’re here. You was always one for stirring things up, John. I was the quiet one.”

They sat in silence for a moment like old friends who hadn’t seen each other in decades enjoying an unexpected meeting.

Then Nighthawk asked, “What’s it like, Lightning, where you’re at now?”

Lightning looked at him and smiled. “I can’t rightly say, John. It’s like I don’t know anything past the time my heart stopped beating, but there’s dreams, like, I can almost remember. Dreams of a place that feels like home.”

“Is that all you can say?”

“That’s all I can say.”

Nighthawk nodded. It was enough. He knew now that he hadn’t destroyed his friend’s soul all those years ago. If he had, Cameo would never have been able to call it back from wherever it was now.

“You got to get back right away?” Nighthawk asked.

Lightning Robert Nash considered. “I can sit awhile. Play some tunes.”

“That’d be nice,” Nighthawk said.

“You know this one,” Lightning said, and put the mouth organ to his lips and started to blow “Sweet Home Chicago.”

John Nighthawk clapped his hands and sung in a sweet baritone that age had not dulled.

Those who heard them faintly through the walls of Nighthawk’s small house were mesmerized by the music. It sounded like nothing they’d ever heard before, as if it were being played by spirits, or perhaps angels.

Las Vegas

Ray spent the afternoon with a special flying SWAT squad investigating Butcher Dagon’s progress through Las Vegas, which was marked by a tidal wave of unsubstantiated rumor and a smaller trail of very substantiated bodies spread across the city in no discernible pattern.

The SWAT team guys were all right, but Ray would have felt better if they’d had at least some other wild carders in the field who had some useful powers. It turned out, however, that the Las Vegas PD was not exactly on the cutting edge when it came to hiring non-nats. Not that the telepaths pulled off casino patrol by Captain Martinez didn’t have their uses.