Robert Crane: Untouched

“A mile?”

“About ten feet. I doubt Wolfe bothered with explosives.” He was firm; there was no more room to negotiate. I nodded and started to walk again. “And you don’t know,” he said, falling into step beside me.

“Don’t know what?” I asked, confused.

“You don’t know what would happen if you got an arm or a leg blown off. Yeah, it may grow back, or it may not.”

“I heal pretty fast,” I said. “I’ve regrown an awful lot of skin since I met you.”

“Ouch.”

“That’s what I said.” Deadpan. Perfect. He grinned at my wisecrack and I smiled back.

He walked a few more paces and I saw him gnaw on his lower lip. He turned his head to look at me. “You don’t blame me for all the hell you’ve been through since…”

“Since you and Kurt rousted me out into the world?” I shrugged. “If it wasn’t you, it was gonna be Reed or Wolfe. Reed might have been gentler,” I needled him, giving him a wry smile, “but it all worked out, I suppose.” Except I now had a psychotic mutant squatting in my brain.

“Yeah.” He opened the door to the parking garage and held it for me. “I guess it did.”

I heard Zack beside me, the squeak of the rubber soles of his boots on the tile floors, heard his breathing. I caught a whiff of his cologne and took a deep breath through my nose. I could feel the heat from the exchange positioned in the entrance nearby blowing on me.

Kurt Hannegan was waiting by the car, a thoroughly disgusted look marring his otherwise ugly face. I put my emotional turmoil to the side, because however bad I was feeling, I wanted to make sure that Hannegan felt worse. Again, if I could blame this on Wolfe, I would, but the truth is I loved pissing him off.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said with a grunt. He was wearing a tweed suit coat with brown patches on the elbow and a brown tie to contrast with his white shirt and dark pants. He had tried to comb the meager hair he had left on the sides of his head to the top in an attempt to…I dunno, revive the glory days, I guess, but it failed.

“You mean you haven’t been looking forward to this?” I said, feigning hurt. “Kurt, didn’t you miss me?”

“No.”

“Sure you did,” I said. “You missed me with your little popgun the first time we met. I think it’s a metaphor for our entire relationship.”

He looked at me, wary. “That I’ll always be shooting at you?”

“And I’ll always be dodging and kicking your ass.”

We got in and he drove out of the garage without another word. It was a heated structure, with space enough for a couple hundred cars. The Directorate maintained a fleet of vehicles, along with the countless other things they kept—Black Hawk helicopters, weird and experimental weaponry, a host of agents, facilities all over the U.S. and the world. I had to wonder who funded it all, who ran the whole show, and what the real purpose was, if it was something different than what I’d been told.

Kurt kept the speedometer pushing eighty most of the way. We streaked through the farmland that surrounded the Directorate, zipping along a state highway until we got on the freeway loop that circled Minneapolis and St. Paul. We headed east, as the sky showed the faintest hint of lightening in that direction.

After about twenty minutes we exited onto a street that held houses on one side and warehouses on the other. My pulse quickened as we neared our destination; I didn’t think we’d find Mom, but I wondered what Wolfe was playing at. If he’d given me the address, there had to be a reason for it. It couldn’t just be a dead end.

We turned onto a side street filled with small warehouses, all gray, all run down and drab, and Kurt stopped the car. We all stared at one in particular, with shiny brass numbers reading 3586 hanging on its dingy concrete block walls above a steel door.

I was out of the car a few seconds after it stopped, Zack and Kurt hurrying behind me. When I looked back, Kurt was looking around, nervous, and had his hand resting on his gut. I assumed it was because it was within easy reach of his gun, but maybe he just liked it there.

“We’re gonna need a minute to pick the lock,” Zack said when we reached the door. I shook my head, grabbed the handle and pulled. I heard a creaking before the mechanism broke free, the metal handle tearing from the door. I reached inside and pushed the guts of the lock out, then ripped the door open. I didn’t wait for either of them to comment before I walked in, pausing inside to give my eyes a chance to adjust to the dimness.

It was all one big room with concrete floors and corrugated metal walls. There was a lump over in the far corner and I went toward it. The soles of my boots tapped against the bare concrete and each step sounded like doom as it echoed off the metal walls. As I got closer to the shape, my hand came up to cover my nose; a horrible smell filled the air and it got worse as I got closer and closer.

Zack and Kurt had flashlights on behind me, and I gestured for one of them to hand me theirs. Zack did. The beam played along the ground as I went toward the mass. It was big enough to be a person, it wasn’t moving, and I hoped I wasn’t about to find one of Wolfe’s greatest hits.

“It smells like he killed something in here.” Kurt gagged as he spoke, the choked glottal stop sound sending an echo of its own off the walls.

“Maybe he’s keeping trophies,” Zack said.

“You mean…body parts?” Hannegan didn’t bother to hide his revulsion at the thought.

“I don’t think Wolfe was a collector,” I said. I knew it somehow, the same way I knew everything else, even though he wasn’t talking to me right now. He was watching, waiting for me to find out what he’d left for me. I kicked the lump with my toe. It didn’t move or squirm or anything. I knelt down, the flashlight shaking a little, and pushed at it. It was soft, cloth, and filthy.

I grasped it and it lifted with ease, a blanket all balled up. I shook it and it unfurled, and I sighed as I realized what it was.

“Bedding?” Kurt asked. “Is that…is that his bed?”

“Yeah. All balled up, like he was a hamster or something.” I felt Wolfe bristle at my comparison, but I was annoyed. I shook it again out of a sense of irritation, and something came loose within the depths; I felt it moving inside. I shook it again and felt it tumble down, falling out of the sodden, filthy blanket.

I tossed the bedding aside and stooped to retrieve what dropped. It was a purse. Black, leather, no longer than my arm and with a broken strap. I opened it and shined the light inside. Frustrated, I turned it upside down and let the contents spill out to the floor. Lipstick, a cell phone, a few other odds and ends, and a wallet.

I picked up the wallet and noticed the name on the driver’s license before I saw the face: Brittany Eccleston.

The picture was of my mom.

“How did you get this?” I mumbled the words, but I knew Kurt and Zack could hear them. I just hoped they assumed I misspoke or was talking rhetorically to Wolfe, who, as far as they knew, was not there.

Many, many stories I could tell you…but I have my price . The words were taunting, teasing. I killed him and he was still an absolute shit to me. At least he wasn’t around to physically abuse me anymore.

“You think he got your mom?” Zack’s voice was laden with concern, and it sounded genuine.

Kurt was more analytical. “No way to tell without more evidence.” He pointed. “The strap’s broken; he could have just ripped it off of her. The I.D. has her address on it, “ he nodded to me. “This explains how he found her.”

I wondered if I could chance another interrogatory toward Wolfe without attracting the curiosity of Zack and Kurt, but I decided against it. He’d wanted me to find this, to get curious, so I would do what he wanted. Maybe he knew more, maybe he didn’t. All I was certain of was that he wanted Aleksandr Gavrikov out of that containment cell, and that scared me.