Chapter Twenty-Four
It was night when Officer Guerrero showed up in his hospital room. He’d been there ever since the ambulance had whisked him away that afternoon. A nasty concussion, four broken ribs. No sign of poison in his system, nothing even close, and the kind emergency room doctor had looked at Vish like he was nuts when he’d asked if she could pump his stomach just to be sure. He felt okay now. He felt pretty good, actually, because he was floating on whatever awesome painkillers they’d pumped into him. He greeted Guerrero with a dreamy smile. “Hey, you.”
She looked down at him, her face expressionless. “Oh, you’ll be fun,” she said. She dragged a chair closer to his bedside and sat. He didn’t have a private room; there were three other beds lined up beside his, all occupied, so Guerrero reached behind her head and yanked the vinyl curtain around them to give the illusion of privacy. “I’m half tempted to ask you a bunch of questions right now, just to see what your drugged-out answers would be.”
“You’re not here to question me?” Vish struggled to sit upright. His ribs protested at that, but it was a dull pain, far away.
“Hang on.” Guerrero reached over him and fiddled with the controls on the adjustable bed until he was raised to a comfortable sitting position. She smelled like apples and shoe polish. She was in her warm-weather uniform again, her heavy black shoes incongruous with her shorts and short-sleeved top.
She sat on the edge of her chair, both feet planted on the floor, and leaned in to talk to him. She propped her tanned forearms on her thighs. “They’ve identified eight of the dead kids in that cave, got maybe a dozen more identifications to go. That’s not counting the three freshly-charred corpses we found.”
“The guys who attacked me. The surfers,” Vish said. “I’m not sure how they caught on fire.” He was babbling a little, and even in his narcotic haze he knew that was dangerous. There were lies he needed to tell, and Guerrero was sharp enough to see through them if he didn’t take some care.
Guerrero held up a hand. “I haven’t asked any questions. Stop volunteering answers.” She shook her head. “Word from the top brass filtered down to me: You’re out of this. You’re an innocent bystander who got targeted for no reason, and we’re supposed to leave you alone while we sort this mess out.”
Vish turned his neck to look at her. The room floated a bit at the movement, which was pleasant. “Really?”
“You got friends in high places, Vish.” Guerrero sat up straighter. “So I’m not even supposed to be here, much less ask you questions, which seems all kinds of wrong to me.”
“Asking me questions wouldn’t help, anyway,” Vish said. “I know you don’t believe me, but I don’t know anything useful.”
Officer Guerrero stared at him, then exhaled. “Yeah. So I hear.” She got to her feet. “I guess I’ll just see you around, Vish.” There was a note of warning in her voice that penetrated even through the warm, soupy haze in his head.
“How’d they kill all those people without anyone noticing?” he asked.
“Nobody knew they were missing, for the most part.” She shook her head. “We had missing-persons reports on file for some, but they were actors mostly, or singers. A few screenwriters. All of them were living pretty marginal lives. No concerned family members, no one to raise a stink. Most cases, we had no reason to think they hadn’t packed up and left town.” She twisted her mouth in an ironic smile. “They slipped through the cracks.”
Vish hoped he wouldn’t see Sparky Mother again. He couldn’t get that lucky.
Sparky bore a peace offering in the form of a gigantic flower arrangement, white camellias and flowering jasmine branches and stems of fragrant verbena stuck in a massive silver urn and tied with a blue satin bow. Sparky hovered by his bedside and waggled the arrangement back and forth.
“Poppy’s idea,” he said. “She chose them. It’s generally acknowledged her taste is better than mine.”
He plunked the arrangement down on Vish’s bedside stand, jostling aside the baby blue teddy bear Mariposa had given to him. It wore a pink t-shirt with a glittery heart on it and clutched a giant heart-shaped lollipop.
Sparky poked the bear with one finger, then glanced at the attached card. “Your fan club?” he asked.
“Is that… thing… dead?” Vish asked. “The thing that had taken over Troy?”
“Nope. Can’t happen. But he’s learned a lesson about not getting too big for his britches, maybe. Might be a while before he decides to mess with me again.”
“Is he going to come after me?” Vish asked.
Sparky cocked his head to one side and mulled this over. “There’s no reason for him to, but that doesn’t mean he won’t. Doesn’t matter. I’ll look after you.”
“That’s worked out really well for me thus far.”
Sparky snorted. “Okay, sure, I guess I can see where I might not be your favorite person right now. Don’t get snotty about it, though. I sort of saved your life.”
“You poisoned me,” Vish said.
“Nope. I just made you think you were poisoned for a bit. You’re fine. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m sorry about all this.” Sparky made a gesture to indicate the hospital bed. “But you’re going to be good as new. Better than that, I owe you a serious favor.”
Vish glanced at him. Sparky smiled. “I were you, I’d take this opportunity to cash in. We’ll get your book published. Or we’ll get you a job writing for another television show, one that doesn’t suck donkey balls this time.”
“I don’t want to have anything to do with you,” Vish said.
“You sure about that?”
“That I never want to see you again? Absolutely,” Vish said. “Anyone ever tell you you’re an asshole?”
“Watch it,” Sparky said. “I’m feeling kind of warm and fuzzy toward you right now, but even so, it’s not a good idea to insult me.”
Vish stared at the wall just past the foot of his bed. A television was on somewhere, turned to a news report about the bodies in his cave, but it was out of his line of sight, and anyway, he didn’t want to hear anything more about that, not for a long, long time. He didn’t trust himself to say anything further to Sparky right now, and he couldn’t stand to have him in his room any longer, so he just kept staring at the wall.
Eventually, Sparky sighed. “See you around, Vish,” he said, and left.
###
Acknowledgments
Special thanks go to Dan Liebke, Ernie Cline and Veronica Viscardi for making gentle and encouraging comments about Wrong City when it was in pretty ragged shape, to Morgan Dodge for banging out a fantastic cover in less time than it took to ask if he’d be willing to do it, to Cheryl Kraynak for vital edits, and to my wonderful aunt Elsbeth Monnett for wanting to read more about Sparky Mother.
About the Author
A graduate of the screenwriting program at USC's film school, Morgan Richter has worked in production on several TV shows, including Talk Soup and America’s Funniest Home Videos, and has contributed pop culture reviews and essays to websites such as TVgasm and Forces of Geek, as well as to her own site, Preppies of the Apocalypse. She is the author of Bias Cut, Lonely Satellite, Charlotte Dent, The Changeling, and Wrong City. Under the pen name Evan Allen, she has written the books Four Emperors and Three Warlords. Bias Cut won a silver medal in the Mystery category at the 2013 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPYs) and was a 2012 semi-finalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA). Charlotte Dent was a 2008 ABNA semi-finalist; Lonely Satellite was a 2014 ABNA quarter-finalist. Born and raised in Spokane, Washington, she currently lives in New York City.
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