Parts & Wreck Read online

  “He was investigating me?” she asked. Hitch mouthed a very apparent, “Duh” and then mumbled, “Told you so.”

  “Oh yes, we have to be very sure about these things. We’re not hiring waitresses, here. This is a very serious business, fraught with danger. It’s thankless and the pay isn’t spectacular.”

  “Sounds stellar. When do I start?” Luce gathered herself to leave, debating reaching over and snatching Thorwald’s report. The cover of which simply bore her name. She could only imagine what the man had said about her, about the state of her apartment, or that she answered the door inappropriately.

  “There are some rewards.” Wade reached across the table and touched Luce’s hand, coaxing the tiny hairs on her arm to rise. “If your hesitance is in regards to working with me, I assure you, I’m the best at what I do. And I’m certain that we’re meant to be partners.”

  Luce gulped. His eyes were locked on hers, confident and something else.

  “That’s quite enough of that, Wade,” Sister Mary-Agnes stood suddenly and glared at him. “Give Ms. Montgomery and I a moment alone.”

  “But.”

  “Out!”

  Wade scrambled to his feet and exited the room. When Luce turned back to the defrocked nun their faces were nearly touching and Sister Mary-Agnes’s was a rictus of anger.

  “Careful, Ms. Lucid,” the woman hissed. “There are consequences for responding to flirtation.”

  “Oh, I know about birth control.”

  “That is not what I’m talking about.” Sister Mary-Agnes slapped her palm on the table, the resulting sound could have issued from a wooden ruler.

  Luce startled. “If you’re worried about it, shouldn’t you be talking to Wade?”

  “I am concerned about Wade. That he’s a target. All the good repo men and women are, but there are forces around you that reek of folly.”

  “No, no. That’s just a new soap.”

  “It’s a warning. Do you understand? He’s to be your boss; no matter how lax he can be, you must listen to him. He’ll keep you alive, if he can.”

  Luce nodded and ducked out into the hall, the words “keep her alive” still buzzing around her head ominously.

  “Don’t mind her,” Wade said. “She’s a little dramatic when she’s…”

  “Tipsy?”

  “I was going to say something else, but yeah, that works.”

  Luce sighed, unable to flip on her normally quick wit. “You’re not going to get me killed are you?”

  “I’ll try not to.” Wade winced as he said it.

  “That’s a little less forceful than I’d have expected.”

  “It’s all I’ve got. But if it’s any consolation, I suspect you’re pretty good at staying alive. Been doing it on your own for quite a while, right?”

  Luce nodded. “Damn right.”

  Wade walked her out, scheduling an orientation for the next day and propping a sheaf of paper in her hands. “The contract. Bring it back signed.”

  Chapter Five

  “The flirting has got to stop!” Wade told himself, slamming his palm against the steering wheel. He sped into a quick right onto the viaduct, checking the mirrors for cops before gunning it.

  The car sped through the construction, over the tunnel they were building that was meant to be safer than the rickety bi-level freeway. Wade would miss the stretch, its winding, tenuous curves. Its promised danger of decrepitude, reminding him of decaying roller coasters and dry rot and the potential for death.

  Sister Mary-Agnes had, more than once, accused Wade of having a death wish, of blaming himself for Catherine’s death and then Rachel’s. He’d refused to agree, but in his head he couldn’t find another rationale for his behavior. The rash judgments, the rushing into situations without malice aforethought. It was this last one that had been the end of Rachel.

  Their case was relatively straightforward.

  Kidney Twins.

  Kidneys seemed to be particularly susceptible to demonic infestation. You’d think liver, because of the whole demon alcohol thing, but not so much. There aren’t nearly enough clean livers harvested to make hiding out in them beneficial for the vermin.

  In this instance, the kidney twins had found each other and were working as a team to kidnap hookers and make them go to churches to perform outrageous—and filthy—acts to disrupt church services, also, periodically to dress like nineteen-fifties pinups and make them Belgian waffles. This last bit of intel was confirmed during Wade and Rachel’s raid on the condo where the twins were hiding out.

  “I can’t believe it,” Rachel had said, scowling up at the well-lit apartment. She still wore her best prostitute drag, as she called it, hair braided into cornrows, a sweatshirt with the neck torn far enough to show some cleavage and almost cover her exposed panties, high heels and, the pièce de résistance, some carefully drawn on track marks and needle stick bruises. “How can I not be good enough to terrify parishioners? It doesn’t make sense. Those demons must be cock-eyed!”

  Wade had been in near hysterics at Rachel’s tirade, hunched over and supporting wild guffaws against his bent knees. “Stop it,” he cried. “You’re killing me.”

  But when he’d glanced back in his partner’s direction she was gone and the front door of the condo was open. Wade charged the apartment, bursting into the kitchen to find Trixy and Belinda cowering beneath a Formica dinette in their bullet bras, hair tied up in head scarves. A pair of waffle makers smoked on the countertops.

  “Rachel!” Wade darted into the dining room, then a larger room with a sunken seating area and a barrel-shaped fireplace in harvest gold or one of those colors that showed up in every house built in the seventies. Again, empty.

  He stopped to listen and heard a distinguishing gurgling noise and the scuttling sound of legs, too many of them. There was a thud, and then a second set of the same eerie noises drifted from somewhere above him.

  Bolting for the stairs, Wade began to panic, feeling the same rush of guilt and fear bore straight to his heart, fill his lungs with air so heavy he didn’t think he’d be able to breathe. When he burst through the upper hall door into the master bedrooms, the kidney twins were each slumped against the wall like discarded dolls, legs akimbo and a green sludge curdling over their lips, down their chins and staining their shirts. On the opposite side of the room, Rachel stood stock-straight, hands in fists at her side and a grin so wide you’d think she’d just finished chewing up a flock of canaries.

  “Rachel,” Wade had said, though it was really more of a question.

  She rubbed the last of the green sludge the demons had used to grease their entry off her cheeks and winked at Wade, lasciviously. “Not Rachel anymore.” The words leaked out of her, winding him in the process. He fell back on the bed, momentarily stunned. Catherine’s face swam in his vision, superimposed onto Rachel’s.

  The wicked grin.

  The terrible lies coming out of her beautiful mouth.

  Those eyes.

  “Oh!” it whined. “You’re not going to cut those men open, Wade? I so would have loved to watch. Especially from over here.”

  Wade reached inside the messenger bag slung across his chest, digging past the packets filled with scalpels, the cotton swabs, the sterile bandages to the items he’d hoped he wouldn’t have to use. The crucifix and the handcuffs.

  There wasn’t anything left for him to do.

  He was too late, again. Once the demons took form and took over a body as a parasite, it became a job for the priests and he only had a brief amount of time before even that would be an exercise in futility.

  He tried to play it smooth, under the radar.

  “There’s nothing left for me to do here then, is there?” he said, engaging the creature.

  “Not unless you want to give us a ride to the nearest singles bar. We’d like to get this body good and stuffed by a few strangers.”

  Wade seethed. Tried to rein it in.

  But before he could stop a
nd think, his hand was inside the bag and palming the handcuffs. Pinching the cross at its base, he withdrew both rapidly and launched himself across the room. He tackled Rachel and held her on her back between his powerful thighs, pressing the crucifix into her deeply furrowed brow.

  The pair of demons inside her screamed, a wet, mewling sound that came with a horrendous sulfurous stench as though Rachel had been eating burnt match heads, or Wade had stumbled onto an active volcano.

  “Shut up!” Wade yelled, struggling to fit the first cuff around the woman’s flailing wrist. She belted him hard with the other with such force that he rolled across the carpet, tangling up awkwardly with the unconscious men.

  Rachel’s demons laughed raucously and bounded to the window, throwing it open and then, before Wade could untangle himself, gave him a little salute and did the unthinkable. She jumped.

  Wade ran to the window, still hopeful, they’d only come up one floor, but as he reached the sill, his heart sank. The rear of the condo hung over the interstate like a cliff. In the distance, he saw Rachel’s body outlined in a pool of blood leaving the scene atop a DeTray’s Bible Book Centers truck.

  Sister Mary-Agnes had tried to make him see reason. See that Rachel’s actions had played no small part in how the repo had gone wrong, but try as he may, Wade couldn’t stop blaming himself, and he vowed on that day that he wouldn’t get close to another partner, ever again.

  Of course, he’d said that after the one before Rachel.

  He’d said it after Catherine.

  “Something is fucking wrong with your follow through, dude!”

  Wade turned the Porsche onto the West Seattle Bridge and pulled off on Harbor to look at the skyline. Even on overcast days, he loved the city. The people in it were another story.

  Luce.

  He couldn’t deny the attraction he felt to her, or the urges that swelled within him in her presence. The way she’d taken down the test squad. He couldn’t lie to himself. He had been turned on, had struggled to hide the fact.

  But he couldn’t act on it.

  He wouldn’t.

  …

  Other cities have smog, choking and gritty and probably lethal. But in Seattle, that low-lying morning fog clinging to every possible surface is smoke from the monstrous network of coffee roasters located deep within the bowels of the city, the scent piped into the air like oxygen in a Vegas casino.

  On some nights, Luce could swear she heard the haunting cries of the dissidents who refuse to switch from canned coffee to whole bean. Or maybe she just wished she could grab a Sanka without stares and whispers.

  Because it’s against the law to discuss life-changing transitions without the presence of a nose-ringed barista, Luce and Hitch ended up in a cramped, sweaty-windowed coffee shop with a conundrum on the table between them.

  Luce sipped her latte as she mulled over the contract.

  “Basically,” she broadcast. “Working for The Parts Department is one giant confidentiality clause.”

  Hitch scowled at the assembly of caffeine zombies before responding in his trademarked know-it-all tone. “It should be blatantly obvious why they need to keep their work a secret, but by signing this, Luce, you could be agreeing to just about anything.”

  “Like what?” Luce glowered. “What else could they possibly be hiding? It’s not like they were ambiguous about the morality of this. It’s not pleasant. People die as a result. And I’d have to live with that.”

  “No, you don’t have to.”

  “I do. I need this job. I can’t very well work a normal nine to five. You know that. It won’t work for me. I won’t be able to hold it together. And seriously, screw you for making me say that.”

  Hitch wilted a bit, his normally smug demeanor softening in response to her vulnerability. “But what if you’re agreeing to donate your own organ in the event that an important political figure becomes possessed? What then? It’s not like your own partner won’t have the tools necessary to slice out your still-beating heart.”

  She tried to imagine Wade turning on her like that, putting the scalpel to her. Exerting his power. She’d have no way of stopping him. And if he had to do it, he would. His loyalty was to the Department.

  Maybe Hitch was right.

  But so what? That didn’t change the fact that she needed the job. And to make a move based on Hitch’s input was inviting his insufferable gloating. He never could contain that shit.

  “Not gonna happen, buddy.” Luce snatched up the pen, popped a jawbreaker, and signed the disclosure statements.

  Hitch slapped his palm down before she could sign the employment acceptance. “I’m worried, Luce. It doesn’t just sound dangerous, it is. It’s been proven. Crowson didn’t lose his last partner in a crowd. She’s not waiting at a lost and found somewhere like a sweater. That woman’s dead.”

  Luce released the wet ball of sugar from her mouth and held it out as she whispered. “Shh, you know how crazy you sound right now?”

  “Me?” Hitch grimaced so hard his face shuddered and he launched from the seat, pacing and weaving through the crowd of coffee drinkers as he yelled, “There are other jobs out there, Luce. You don’t have to take the first one to drop in your lap. In fact, you shouldn’t. I sense something on the horizon, something wicked.”

  “Does it this way come?”

  “Shut up.” He gripped a man’s shoulders and lurched around him. The man’s eyes darted about curiously, as though he were aware of Hitch’s presence. “Listen to me, Luce. I only have your best interests at heart. I’m warning you. Don’t sign up for this. Only death can come of it.”

  Hitch’s explosive behavior wasn’t necessarily a new thing. Despite a normally staid demeanor, Luce had a way of pushing him to the limits of propriety. Though this time was different. There was something about his freak-out that didn’t sit well.

  Was it fear?

  “I need you to honor my choices.” Luce looked off through the gauzy haze of the window sweat. She imagined herself alongside Wade, striking down evil, basking in the glow of honest and righteous achievement. “Did you ever think this might be a calling?”

  “What?” Hitch dropped back into the seat opposite Luce. “Like from God?”

  “No, from a telemarketer. Of course, God. Maybe I was born to quash the demonic uprising. To crush them and save people’s spleens and tonsils and stuff.”

  “I can honestly say, no. I’ve never thought that. Like ever. Never. Not once.”

  “Your view must be limited by the fact that you’re imaginary.”

  Hitch gasped. “I take offense. The very fact that I’m imaginary is indicative of the level of creativity and verve surrounding my very essence.”

  “Riiight.”

  Hitch straightened. “I think you’re into him. And it’s clouding your already murky thunderclouds of judgment.”

  Luce glowered. Hitch was pulling up to some very dangerous territory. Judgment, being a key indicator of mental illness, was an off-limits conversation topic and he knew it. In fact, it was right up there with the period of time where she couldn’t resist eating corn starch or when she wore that parka to the beach…she tried not to think about that one—clearly a fashion mistake (though it seemed oddly appropriate at the time…as did the corn starch).

  “Don’t go there, Hitch. I’ll dream you away.”

  “You don’t even know how to do that.”

  “But I’ll try and that’ll be indicative of how disappointed I am.”

  “All right.” He threw his hands up. “You go ahead and sign up for this suicide mission, but I won’t be there to help. I can’t watch you when you’re self-destructive.”

  “That’s not one of my symptoms.”

  “So you admit you have symptoms.”

  “I admit that I don’t, but that sometimes I can call my quirks that, simply for effect.”

  “You’re crazy.” Hitch stabbed a finger in her direction.

  “Doesn’t matter. And you’ll be t
here. You can’t stay away no matter what you say; you’d get so bored.”

  Hitch rolled his eyes, but Luce knew he would never leave her. He had been with her for years and if she were being honest, she depended on his judgment far more than she should. Even in that moment when she gripped the pen tightly and hovered over the signature line, his words rang in her ears.

  He’d said them before, but when it counted, he was always close by and from time to time, his efforts seemed less than imaginary.

  High school had been particularly treacherous for a girl like Luce. Kids can be cruel when they figure out you’re talking to someone who isn’t there. Luce hadn’t gotten a handle on talking to Hitch in her mind yet and occasionally she’d slip up, always in the presence of only the most loose-lipped of gossips: Polly Petruschka.

  Polly must have had a dental mirror to peer around corners, for no sooner had Luce chastised Hitch with a quick, “Stop you’re going to make me laugh and then I’ll look even crazier than they already think I am” than Polly was there.

  “Oh, who are you talking to?”

  “Uh…myself.”

  “Tell her you’re trying to memorize a speech,” Hitch said.

  Luce did as instructed.

  The girl nodded, lips smacking and her tongue poking her cheek out. “That’s not what it looked like.”

  It didn’t take Polly long to assemble a crack team of bitchy girls to dog Luce’s every move and ridicule her every misstep. Their goal seemed to be that of a documentary film crew, catching the crazy girl in her natural habitat. Luce would stiffen and glare each time she saw a camera pointed in her direction, or likewise, roll her eyes, flip them off, or some derivative there of.

  And so, it came to pass, that Polly got tired of waiting for something to happen and hatched a wretched scheme involving a boy Luce actually liked. Aaron Statlender. A prank so vile, Polly was lucky it didn’t end up like a horror movie revenge plot with an axe in her forehead like the girl in Friday the 13th. Talked into meeting Aaron for a “date,” Luce showed up at a recently shut down restaurant in a ball gown.

  “Aaron?” she called into the darkness. “Are you there?”