Highborn Page 5

  Sathi nodded. “Cut her loose?”

  “Yeah.” Redmond stood. “Let’s go, Ms. Malak. We’ll escort you out.”

  Barely two minutes later, the two detectives had walked her downstairs to the front desk area. The two men turned and headed back inside and Brynna moved toward the door at a fast walk. Her eyes were on the beckoning sunlight outside when a dark-haired woman charged into the foyer and nearly knocked her over. She was speaking in rapid-fire Spanish, her words tumbling and shrieking and jumbled with panic.

  “¡Que alguien nos ayude, por favor! ¡Mi marido está teniendo un ataque al corazón! ¡Por favor, por favor—ayúdenos que se me muere!”

  “Ma’am—ma’am!” the desk sergeant tried to interrupt. “No habla Spanish! Speak English!”

  The woman either didn’t understand him or was too excited to comprehend what he was saying anyway. “¡Alguien debe entenderme! ¡Por favor, él está en el coche, allí delante del edificio a la derecha! ¡No creo que podamos conseguir el hospital a tiempo—él morirá!”

  “Does anyone here speak Spanish?” the sergeant bellowed. “She’s talking too fast—I need some assistance here!”

  “She’s saying her husband’s having a heart attack,” Brynna said without thinking. “She’s parked out front and he’s in the car. She thinks he’s going to die before they can get to a hospital.”

  The desk sergeant’s eyes widened, then he darted around the desk and ran outside. Two more uniformed officers followed as another man behind the desk yanked up a telephone handset, punched in a two-digit code, and spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece. “Dispatch, we need an ambulance stat at—”

  Brynna turned back toward the door, then stopped as the Hispanic woman went to her knees in front of the desk and sobbed. “Señora,” Brynna said, hesitating. She gave the woman’s shoulder an awkward squeeze. “Él tendrá todo razón.” He will be all right. She didn’t know if she sounded comforting or not, but it was the best she could do—she just wasn’t used to this. “Le ayudarán.” They will help you. Within another twenty seconds one of the cops had returned and gathered up the crying woman, and by the time an ambulance wailed to a stop outside, things had calmed down enough to where Brynna thought that she might be able to finally get out of there.

  “You never mentioned you spoke Spanish.” She paused at the sound of Detective Redmond’s voice.

  Brynna considered replying that he’d never asked, but gave him a noncommital shrug instead. “I … have an ear for languages.”

  Redmond’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “So you speak more than one.”

  “Sure.”

  “Really. How many?” When she hesitated, he folded his arms and looked even more disbelieving. “Come on, either you know or you don’t.”

  The smug tone of his voice was aggravating. “All of them,” she snapped.

  Redmond’s mouth opened, but for a moment he couldn’t say anything. “Right.” It was clear he thought she was insane.

  “Whether you think I’m telling the truth makes no difference to me,” Brynna told him.

  He studied her without saying anything for a few moments. While she waited—and she wasn’t sure why she was bothering—Brynna thought that women probably found him quite attractive. The rough ladies in the holding cell hadn’t kept their admiration a secret when he’d gone down there, and although the noncriminal females up here—policewomen and others—were more subtle, it wasn’t hard to pick up on the vibe. “So you’re going to stick with that story,” he said eventually. When she only looked at him, Redmond finally added, “Claiming that you can understand any language.”

  “I don’t have any reason to lie to you about that.”

  “Uh-huh.” He pressed his lips together and she knew he hadn’t missed the qualifier—about that. He carefully adjusted his glasses before he spoke again. “Tell you what. I have a meet this afternoon with a Korean guy to talk about his daughter’s disappearance. He doesn’t speak English very well, so you be back here at two o’clock and run interference.”

  “Interference?”

  “Translate for me,” Redmond said patiently. He kept his expression carefully bland. “Back and forth.” When Brynna didn’t agree right away, he leaned forward slightly. “Is there a problem?”

  “I don’t keep track of time,” was all Brynna could think of to say.

  The detective glanced at her wrists, then unbuckled the band of the watch he was wearing. “Take this.”

  Redmond’s partner had been standing silently the entire time, but now he frowned. “Eran—”

  “She’ll bring it back.” Redmond’s gaze sought Brynna’s. “Won’t you?”

  There was nothing for her to do but accept the watch. “Of course.” She peered at the band, then fastened it clumsily around one wrist. “I’m not a thief.”

  “Of course,” Detective Sathi echoed. He made no attempt to hide the sarcasm in his voice.

  “Easy, Bheru,” Redmond said. “It’s a cheap sports watch.” Redmond glanced back at Brynna, then pulled a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket and offered it her. “Here.”

  She didn’t reach for the money. “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  “But what is it for?”

  Redmond looked at her oddly. “If you insist on a reason, call it an interpreter’s fee.” He motioned toward the commotion out front, which was rapidly drawing to a close. “For helping us out with that lady and her husband.”

  Brynna pondered this for a moment, then nodded and accepted the bill. “All right.” She turned to go.

  “Is there somewhere we can drive you?” Detective Sathi asked her in his lilting accent. “You are supposed to be back here in”—he glanced at his own wristwatch—“just about four hours.”

  Brynna wondered if the man realized that she could speak Hindi better than he could. She resisted the urge, knowing it would probably irritate him. “No, thanks. I’m not going far.”

  “Indeed.”

  Brynna smiled a little, charmed by his formality in spite of herself. “I’m good,” she promised. “I’ll be back.”

  She knew they wanted to know more, but like all good things, her many, many secrets would have to wait to be revealed.

  Four

  True to her word, Brynna stayed in the neighborhood. It felt odd to be bound by a human schedule, but that was just one more thing she would have to adapt to in this world. Her stomach was twisting, rumbling, and rather painful, and although that could be ignored—she’d endured much worse—this was the start of the third day in this female form without something to eat and it was starting to run down—like an automobile, the body required fuel to keep going.

  She found a restaurant on Cermak Road about ten blocks away from the courthouse, a tiny place with a sign that read NICKEL AND DIME DINER above the front windows. The inside was just as grubby as the outside, with a half dozen booths beneath the windows and ten or twelve stools along the counter. Brynna chose a booth toward the back where she could sit just out of sight of the street yet still see who came through the door. Redmond and Sathi had followed her, although they had no idea she knew it. They drove with their car windows open and like the nephilim killer, each had a unique scent which she would forever be able to instantly identify. Their surveillance didn’t bother her, but she must never let her guard down regarding Lucifer’s Hunters. Sitting at the counter closest to the door were a couple of uniformed cops, but they didn’t make Brynna feel any safer.

  The waitress was a tired-looking woman of about fifty, with graying blond hair and the wrinkles of a hard life showing on her face. A name tag on her chest identified her as Paige. While she waited, Brynna scanned the dingy plastic-covered menu at the table. “Coffee,” Brynna finally said. “I want something without flesh, but I don’t see—”

  “W-What?”

  The stutter made Brynna look up. Paige’s eyes had widened and she was staring at Brynna. “Meat,” Brynna corrected. Oddly, sometimes the stupidest details of a
dialect would trip her up. “I don’t eat meat.”

  “Oh!” Paige scribbled on her book, looking relieved. “The cook can make you a vegetarian omelet, no problem. You want potatoes? Toast?”

  “Yes and yes,” Brynna answered. She glanced to her right and saw an old man at the counter munching on a piece of dark-colored bread. “Rye,” she added. Before Paige could leave, Brynna asked, “Can you give me change for a twenty? I want to buy a newspaper.”

  The woman glanced at the scarred tabletop, where someone had left three quarters and a couple of pennies. “Just take it out of that,” she said wearily, then walked away.

  Brynna watched her go, wondering what kind of life the waitress lived outside of this place. Paige smelled like bacon grease, cigarette smoke, and coffee, as though the restaurant had a soul and had insinuated itself into her skin. Beneath that was a faint scent of laundry detergent and a sense of wear, like every day was just one more chore.

  After a few moments Brynna picked up the three quarters and went outside. There were two newspaper machines, one for the Chicago Tribune and one for the Chicago Sun-Times; she chose the Sun-Times for no other reason than its smaller format would be easier to manage. Back inside, she worked her way through it, stopping only to enjoy the food that Paige brought. It might not have been the best the city had to offer, but as her first meal since she’d gotten here, Brynna thought it was damned good and finished every bite.

  Concentrating again on the paper, she quickly read nearly every page and used it as a learning tool—there was no faster way to acquaint herself with this city and environment. Competing with politics and gasoline prices was a big chunk of space devoted to the man who had shot the nephilim talking to Brynna in the drugstore yesterday. Advertisements, birth and wedding announcements, even the obituaries, were educational, and Brynna was a little amazed. The human life span had increased dramatically, yet what she read in the paper told her that mankind was still doing astoundingly stupid things to shorten their time on earth.

  A few patrons, mostly cops, came and went, but the Nickel and Dime was anything but busy. Brynna stayed in the booth for almost three hours, with Paige clearing the dishes and refilling her coffee without comment. Brynna left the paper there for the next person and went to the register to pay; as she did, she watched one of the old men at the counter drop two dollars next to his empty coffee cup before he left. After another waitress rang up Brynna’s check and handed her the change from her twenty, Brynna looked thoughtfully at the money in her hand, then walked back and dropped the ten-dollar bill on the table. Her burn was almost healed and barely even itched, and she couldn’t think of anything else to buy. This would leave her with over four bucks—enough for a cheap lunch—and she owed Paige for the newspaper anyway. A ten-dollar tip would probably make Paige’s day.

  Even hung with car exhaust, the air outside was refreshing and warm after the smells of the stale, over-air-conditioned restaurant. The dirty concrete and trash blown along the curbs by passing cars and trucks made Brynna long to be back in the park by the lakefront, where she would have had a reason to take her time walking back to the courthouse. She thought about the butterfly that had kept her from being caught by the Hunter, but she wouldn’t see anything that beautiful in this part of the city. This area was nothing but concrete and metal, broken only by tough, yellow-green weeds poking intermittently through cracks in the ground.

  She knew when Redmond and his partner drove past in their car so they would get to the courthouse before her, just as she knew they were waiting down the hallway when she came out of the women’s room after washing her face and hands. It was partly her sense of smell, yes, but it was also just a … knowing—what the humans might have incorrectly called a sixth sense, a term they had for trying to justify those things they would never be able to explain. The building was fairly quiet in the afternoon, the downside of the cycle before they built back up to the usual frenzy of a Chicago evening. The desk sergeant looked at her and frowned, but Redmond was there before the guy could question Brynna’s presence.

  “Glad you could make it, Ms. Malak,” Detective Sathi said. “We were wondering if you would.”

  “No, you weren’t,” Brynna said flatly. “You knew where I was from the moment I left here.” She turned toward Redmond, who looked oddly amused when his partner frowned. She unbuckled the detective’s sports watch, then held it out. “Where is your …” Now it was her turn to frown.

  Detective Redmond took his watch and strapped it back on. “Come with us, please.” Brynna fell into step between the two men and they moved deeper into the building. “He’s not my anything. He’s just a regular citizen whose daughter disappeared about a week ago.”

  “And you think I can somehow help.”

  Redmond shrugged. “The guy barely understands English and I’m not doing much better with what he says. Interpreters are like cops—there’s never one around when you need one.” He grinned a little at his own joke. “So that’s where you come in. Provided, of course, you can do what you say you can.”

  “I told you, I have no reason to lie to you.”

  “Right.” Brynna glanced at him, but there was no sarcasm in Redmond’s voice and his expression was placid.

  “In here.” Sathi pushed open a door that had a frosted-glass pane in its upper half and INTERVIEW 5 on it. A Korean man sat at a table in the center of the nearly empty room. The turquoise-colored silk scarf he was working with his fingers was the only spot of color in the room except for the dull yellow of a new legal pad a few inches away from him. The fabric was pocked with dirt smudges and frayed from rough treatment, as though it had been stepped on.

  Brynna and the two detectives filed in and Detective Sathi pulled the door shut behind him. Redmond and Brynna took seats across the table from the Korean man but Sathi stayed back, leaning against the door and folding his arms like a bouncer outside of a nightclub.

  Beneath a thick salt-and-pepper crew cut, the Korean’s face was angular and thin, the wrinkled skin loose as if he’d recently lost a lot of weight. When he looked at Brynna, his expression was a mixture of hope and desolation, like a man hanging on to the loose dirt along the edge of a cliff who still thinks that somehow he will survive the coming plummet.

  “This is Kim Li-kang,” Redmond said. “Mr. Kim speaks extremely limited English but he does understand some important words and concepts.” The detective had brought a thin file folder with him, and now he flipped it open and pushed a photograph toward Brynna. “Mr. Kim’s daughter is Cho-kyon. She’s nineteen and a nursing student at the University of Illinois. We estimate she’s been missing for about two weeks. We can’t pinpoint the exact date of her disappearance because they didn’t speak every day. The last time she called him was a Friday afternoon after class. Her roommate went away for the weekend, so she went missing sometime between then and Monday morning, when she didn’t show up for her classes.” Redmond frowned but didn’t look up. “No one’s seen her. Right now we have no leads.”

  Brynna examined the photograph, which showed a young girl with shoulder-length straight black hair and a sweet smile. She handed it back to Redmond. “And what am I doing here?”

  Redmond closed the folder. “We’ve got a real language handicap here. I think Mr. Kim is trying to tell me that he has information. I don’t know why he didn’t find someone where he works to translate for him, but he wouldn’t.” He looked at her steadily. “You say you can speak Korean. I think the rest is obvious.”

  It was. Without bothering to look again at either detective, Brynna leaned toward Kim. “Kim-shi, Jae irumun Brynna imnida. Hyongsa ae mal hago ship uen gosul essunmika?” My name is Brynna, Mr. Kim. Is there something you wish me to tell the detective? She picked up Sathi’s indrawn breath and resisted the urge to smile; the fool really had thought she was lying.

  The Korean man looked surprised, but only for a second. Then he began speaking rapidly. “E goes cun nae dal seukapeu imnida,” he said. This is m
y daughter’s scarf. His fingers clutched at it. “Bangkok uel bang mun han chinchok uen chak nyun ae boe naesumnida. E gol kolmok an ae chajassumnida. E go bwa—irum uel ba neul jilhan gos ae essumnida.” A relative who visited Bangkok sent it to us last year. I found this in the alley. Look—here is where she stitched her name on the edge.

  Redmond already had his pen poised over the legal pad. He scribbled rapidly as Brynna repeated what had been said and Kim pointed at the embroidered edge. “Ask him where exactly—the alley behind what?”

  “Clark gori ae rikyu jeom dwi ae kolmok essumnida. Keu nyeo ga sa neum gos aeso yak gan gu hwek molli neon. Cho-kyon eul bal gyeon ha gi wi ha yeo in guen an ae kolrokago essumnida,” Kim replied when she did. Behind a liquor store on Clark Street. Only a few blocks away from where she lives. I walk in the neighborhood to see if I can find Cho. Brynna repeated the man’s words in English. Before Redmond could ask his next question, Mr. Kim continued. His voice escalated with each word, becoming nearly a shriek by the time he was finished. “Keu nom e ya—Kwan Chul-moo. Nae dal eul yoo gwae han nom e ya!” It is him—Kwan Chul-moo. He is the one who has my daughter!

  Mr. Kim had half risen from his chair and Sathi came forward and urged him back down as Brynna dutifully repeated the man’s words. Redmond slipped his fingers beneath his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I need more than him just saying this. I need proof, a reason, something more than a scarf found on a sidewalk. I can’t barge into someone’s house or business on hearsay. Getting a search warrant is only the second step—first he has to convince me.”

  Brynna nodded. “Why do you say these things about Mr. Kwan?” she asked Mr. Kim in Korean. “The police need more than what you think. They need hard proof.”

  The older man’s face twisted, and in the folds of emotion there Brynna saw fear, fury, and helplessness. His answer was long and passionate. By the end of it, he was crying and looked a decade older. The two detectives turned to her expectantly and there was silence for a few moments while Brynna tried to think how best to tell these modern-day policemen about the ways of a part of the world in which they would never believe.