Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

Alan heard it, too. Footsteps coming up the stairs and now moving down the hall toward them. His mouth went desert dry, fear sucking all the moisture from his throat as he tried to swallow.

“I don’t know,” he said.

He grabbed his makeshift club from where he’d laid it on the cot and turned to the door to face the new threat.

XX

Davis caught up to Rolanda and Cosette in the doorway of the tenement. Rolanda smiled until he stepped around in front of them to block their way into the building. Both women visibly bristled when he insisted they wait outside.

“Look, you got me here—okay?” he said. “You did good. Now back off and let me do my job.”

Rolanda glared at him. “Your idea of doing your job is waiting for help. By the time anyone else gets here, they could be dead.”

“I hear you. That’s why I’m going in. Now. Without backup. But I can’t be effective if I have to worry about a couple of citizens at the same time. Is this getting through to you?”

Rolanda looked as though she was going to continue the argument, but finally she gave him a brusque nod. “Fine. Do your job.”

“Thank you,” Davis said, not quite able to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

He turned to try the door. The knob turned readily under his hand, and when he gave the door a gentle push it swung open. The air inside was stale with an undercurrent of bad odors that he didn’t care to try to identify. The walls and floor were in rough shape, holes punched in the plaster, refuse underfoot, graffiti everywhere. Your typical Tombs squat. It could be home to a bunch of harmless runaways and old winos, or it could be the clubhouse of a bunch of bikers, or some gang of street toughs with better armament than the NPD could ever hope to afford. In this kind of a situation, you just never knew.

Once inside, he stopped to listen, but there was nothing to hear, only the sound of his own breathing.

It was coming a little quicker than he’d have liked, nerves all on edge, skin stretched tight at the nape of his neck, shirt getting damp and clinging to his back. He knew he was being foolhardy, going in like this without any backup, but he’d made the commitment and he knew if he didn’t follow it through, Rolanda and the kid would do it on their own.

Screw it, he told himself. You only live once.

He slipped inside and headed for the stairwell. Halfway up the first set of stairs, he heard a scuffling sound come from behind him. He turned quickly, shotgun swinging around, finger tightening on the trigger. But it was only the kid. A moment later Rolanda followed her inside.

He started to say something, then shook his head. Short of shooting them, or handcuffing the pair to a lamppost outside, he didn’t see how he was going to be able to stop them from following him.

“Just keep the hell out of my way,” he told them, and started back up the stairs.

He reached the landing without incident and headed up the next set of stairs. On the second floor, he paused at the doorway of the first room he came to and looked inside. There were a few busted-up paintings lying on the floor along with a scatter of ratty-looking blankets, but otherwise it was empty.

Then he heard the sound of voices coming from a room farther down the hall.

Giving his unwanted companions a warning look, Davis moved on along the hall, cursing the way the floors creaked underfoot and the noise Rolanda and the kid were making behind him. When he stepped around the corner of the doorway, shotgun leveled, he almost fired. Standing in the middle of a seriously trashed room was a tall figure, covered in blood, some kind of club raised up in his hands. Behind him was a blonde woman, also covered with blood, who was crouching protectively over another woman.

But before Davis’s finger could exert more pressure on the trigger, more details registered.

No way the guy was going to get much damage in, wielding that puny stick.

More to the point, he looked scared as shit. And Davis knew him. Knew the blonde woman, too, from when he’d had the pair of them down at the precinct earlier in the day. Alan Grant and his girlfriend, Marisa Something-or-other. He saw recognition dawn on their features as well. Maybe he’d been a little too quick in scratching Grant from the top of his suspect list.

“Drop it!” Davis told Alan.

“But—”

“Drop it and assume the position, pal. On the floor, hands behind your head. Do it!”

As Alan started to comply, Davis felt a sense of relief that things were going to work out smoothly.

He’d gotten lucky. No crazed bikers. No crackhead with an AK-47 protecting his turf. Just a screwed-up guy who wasn’t going to be much of a problem at all. But then Rolanda and the kid pushed into the room behind him and he lost control of the situation.

“Oh my god!” Rolanda cried. “What happened?”

Cosette pushed past her and Davis, getting in the line of fire. Davis was about to yell at her, but then Alan threw aside the stick he was holding. “We need an ambulance,” Alan said. “Fast.”

“What we need,” Davis told him, “is for you to—”

But now Rolanda had gotten past him as well and there were just too many people moving around in the room. Davis lowered the shotgun, pointing the muzzle at the floor. On the other side of the room, Rolanda knelt down beside Marisa.

“If we can get her on this cot,” Marisa was saying, “we should be able to get her downstairs at least.”

“Who did this to her?” Rolanda asked.

Marisa shot Alan a glance. He was the one who answered.

“Rushkin. He cut her throat and then just took off.”

Davis moved a little deeper into the room and turned so that his back wasn’t to the door anymore.

He glanced uneasily down what he could see of the hall. “So where’s he now?” he asked.

Alan glared at him. “We don’t know. Now, are you going to help us, or do you want Isabelle to just die here waiting for you to make up your mind?”

Davis looked at Alan, then at the wounded woman, and made a quick decision he hoped he wasn’t going to regret later. The blood on Alan’s clothes could have come from his trying to help Isabelle. Fact was, the guy hadn’t struck him as capable of killing the Mully woman in the first place, little say cutting his own friend’s throat. None of them had a record and they were all so scared and screwed up about what was going down that he couldn’t help but try to take them on faith. For now.

“Okay,” he said. He turned his attention to Rolanda. “Think you can handle this?” he asked, holding up the shotgun.

When she nodded, he passed the weapon to her and knelt down beside the wounded woman.

Marisa had been stemming the blood with rags that were now soaked crimson. Davis quickly stripped off his jacket and shirt. He handed the shirt to Marisa and put his jacket back on over his undershirt.

“Cosette,” he said. “You and I’ll support her head and shoulders. Alan can handle her legs. On the count of three we’ll lift her onto the cot.”

“Why didn’t you kill Rushkin?” Cosette asked as she moved into position.

Alan gave her an anguished look. “I never got the chance.”

Davis filed that information away for the time being. There was a hell of a lot more going on here than met the eye, but he’d have to sort it all out later. Right now they had a life to save. Normally he would have left Isabelle lying as she was until the medics could get here, but Christ knew how long it’d take an ambulance to get through the Tombs to reach this place. As it was, the woman looked so weak he wasn’t sure she’d make it through the next few minutes, never mind a ride to the nearest hospital.

“One, two, three,” Davis said.