Burden of Solace Read online

  After kicking off her shoes, she served up a dollop of tuna for Scratch and a generous pour of wine for herself before collapsing into the overstuffed sofa. Her eyelids weighed heavy, but she knew sleep was hours away. She’d seen too much today, both good and bad, and her mind kept replaying images of the girl and the man who saved her. The Guardian especially occupied her thoughts. Even though she couldn’t remember his name - the man’s name, not the number he had been issued like his uniform - she felt a connection to him.

  She also felt something digging into her back. Too tired to stand up, she reached under and pulled out the TV remote. It seemed like a sign from the universe, so she turned on the idiot box. It was tuned to a local 24-hour news channel and she was dropped into the middle of a story about a recent rash of people - all women - going violently insane, apparently from overdosing on some bizarre new drug. Memorial Hospital had seen a couple of those in the ER, both of them showing up in the middle of a night when Cassie wasn’t there. Whatever these people were taking, it did a serious number on their heads. Their most recent patient had been convinced that everyone else was a zombie and that she was the only remaining human on earth. Her death certificate listed the cause as coronary failure, but the night shift nurses swore the woman had died of fright.

  “Mayor Munson says this year’s Heroes Day celebration will honor two individuals for the first time since the event began in 2002.”

  The news anchor yammered on while stock footage from the first Heroes Day played, with 175’s predecessor, Ironhorse, presenting a medal to the first honoree. After the Exohuman Control Act was passed in 1920, XAC had tried to strip Ironhorse of his rights and identity also, “honoring him” with the title Guardian One. But Atlanta had stood up for their own, and the 11th District Federal Court ruled that because he had been born even before the Civil War, Ironhorse couldn’t be retroactively declared non-human. That she remembered that nugget from high school surprised Cassie. She’d been a wiz at science and math, but history had bored her.

  The grinning young medal recipient in the footage looked ordinary enough, just a random guy who had risen to the occasion and committed some act of bravery. She couldn’t recall the details of his heroism, but Cassie imagined the medal was proudly displayed in his home, a reminder that at some point in his unexceptional life he had tasted what it was like to be special. Cassie snorted a bitter laugh and muttered into her wine glass.

  “Special ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  Cassie knew a thing or two about being special. She’d grown up smart and driven - driven to succeed, expected to follow in her parents’ footsteps as a doctor. She was the girl who ruined the grade curve, the one with no friends. Girls her own age had seemed vapid and silly. The boys were even worse. She quickly learned the difference between the attention-getting teasing that boys perpetrated on girls they liked, and the cruel jibes they aimed at her. In high school, only one boy had pursued her affections, and even that turned into heartbreak and betrayal. College was almost as bad, her wariness pushing away the few boys who dared to ask her out. Her only ‘friends’ were the ones clever enough to see the benefit of having the best and the brightest in their study groups, only to discard her after finals. She learned to keep to herself, and her personal world continued to shrink.

  Yes, she probably understood 175 better than most. They had both been cursed with specialness, a quality that set them apart from everyone else, dividing them from the people they tried to help. His scars were hidden by a helmet. Hers were buried deep - old wounds that had formed protective layers around her heart. In their own ways, both she and the Guardian had become tougher and that toughness made healing impossible.

  Scratch leapt onto the back of the couch and began cleaning his face. Cassie rubbed behind his ears, earning an appreciative purr. She knew better than to pet him for too long. He had a tendency to claw, albeit lightly, at random moments, which had earned him his name. A constellation of nearly invisible scars on her hands and arms branded her as a cat lover.

  “You’d still love me if I was horribly scarred, wouldn’t you?”

  The cat regarded her for a moment before returning to his bathing. Cassie refilled her glass from the bottle on the floor. She drank and the television droned on. In time the sleep that was long overdue came to claim her.

  *

  The man cruised his purposely nondescript car past another strip club, the fourth one tonight, but found no women loitering outside. He was beginning to regret passing up the girl he’d spotted at the second club. She wasn’t much to look at - undernourished and overpainted in a way that spoke of drug addiction - but the night was beginning to take on a beggars-can’t-be-choosers flavor.

  I should have come out earlier, when there were still more to choose from.

  It was safer for him, moving about unnoticed at night. Unfortunately, it also limited his opportunities to play. He could find much more suitable material for his proclivities if he went inside the clubs, but that would expose him to witnesses and, worse, security cameras. Witnesses he could fix using his talents. Manipulating cameras and recordings wasn’t in his wheelhouse.

  He had decided to head back to the second club - on the off chance that the skinny girl was still there - when he spotted an enticing opportunity. Standing beside her minivan with the hood up, she looked to be in her mid-thirties, with ash blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. Baggy jeans and a hoody, a fatherless stick-figure family populating her rear window - a single soccer mom who had stayed too late at her book club meeting and forgot to fill up the tank. His passenger window whirred as he slowed to a stop beside the van. His mind reached out for her, ready to slip inside and take control before she bolted.

  “Everything okay? Can I call someone for you?”

  She crossed her arms, pulling at the thin jacket to cover her full breasts. She was nervous, afraid - a reasonable frame of mind given the late hour and deserted streets.

  “No, no, I’m good. My husband will be here any minute.”

  He was reasonably certain she was lying about the husband. But, erring on the side of caution, he seized her mind with his, inserting himself forcefully to forestall any outcry that might draw attention.

  Get in the car, his mind commanded.

  Her eyes grew huge and she began to shake. Her lips trembled as they stumbled over half-formed syllables. All that came forth was a gurgling sound. Her mouth snapped shut and she began to sink to the ground, a mewling whine rising from her throat. She was gone. Whatever intelligence had once resided in her was banished and the empty shell was now useless, even for his carnal purposes.

  His head fell back against the headrest in exasperation. This just wasn’t his night. First the slim pickings, now the only interesting prospect turned out to be one of the fragile ones. Her mind had snapped under the pressure of his. This was the fifth toy he’d broken in the last few months before he even got to play with it. There was nothing to do now but finish her. He programmed her mind with imagery and sensations - snakes and hairy spiders crawling on and into her. His final command prevented her from speaking or screaming until he was long gone.

  “Okay then,” he said. “As long as you’re sure. Be safe.”

  He pulled away and rolled up the window. In his rearview mirror he watched her begin to jerk about, slapping at the phantasms that swarmed her legs and arms. She clambered up on top of the minivan and began ripping at her clothes and clawing her own flesh, desperate to escape the writhing imaginary mass that threatened to envelope her.

  What a waste, he thought. I haven’t had a blonde all week.

  CHAPTER 4

  “Caiside, come hug your old granda. I’m after starved for female attention.”

  Even though he’d lived in the states for the lion’s share of his ninety-three years, Riley Whelan still had a County Donegal brogue thick enough to smear on toast. His old Gaelic tongue still rendered her name as ‘Cay-si-day’. Cassie herself normally had only a hint of
the old country in her voice - an occasional rounded vowel or a ‘th’ replaced with a ‘t’. Since she’d been raised by her grandparents from the age of nine, she’d picked up their accents as a child. Nowadays, it mostly came out when she’d had a drink or three, but whenever she spent time with her dear GranDa, that lilt surfaced from habit and unconscious mimicry.

  “I’m not buying that for a minute, you old rogue. I imagine if I dusted for fingerprints, I’d find yours on half the nurses’ bottoms around here.”

  She came and embraced her grandfather as he lay in his bed. He looked thinner to her eyes. She made a note to check with the nursing home staff on the way out. The cancer that had invaded his lungs had spread so far that all that was left to do was keep him comfortable. The surgeons had cut out as much as they dared. Removing any more would reduce his breathing capacity and he would suffocate.

  He began to cough, something he did quite a bit these days. Cassie grabbed a tissue and handed it to him. He pressed it to his lips until the fit subsided. She noted with relief that there was no blood staining the tissue.

  “Don’ believe a word those nurses say. Except the tall blonde, of course. She’s a fine bit o’ stuff, that one. An’ it’s right there, at the perfect height. Me hand takes a mind of its own when that one’s bendin’ over.”

  “And what would Granny say if she saw you playing grab-arse with these women half your age, eh?”

  Riley blew out a dismissive breath, which almost started a cough. Cassie reached for another tissue, but he got it under control.

  “Your granny had her backside manhandled more times than she could count when she was nursing for the Navy. A mighty fine lookin’ woman, she was. Mighty fine. I once broke a guy’s nose for ooglin’ her bum.”

  Cassie recognized the signs he was about to launch into the story of how he’d met her grandmother. It was a high tale, exciting and romantic, and she’d heard it many times growing up.

  “It was my first tour at sea, a machinist’s mate on the Vestal at Pearl. I’d just come back from leave when we had the misfortune of drawing service duty on the old Arizona, moored right up snug beside her like a pup. But what do I see, moored just off our port bow? A hospital ship - the only one in the entire Pacific - and she’s right there, filled with pretty nurses and just out of reach.”

  Cassie didn’t have the heart to stop him. He’d always loved to tell the tale, even when Granny was still around to correct him and add her side of the story, which didn’t always square with his.

  “I tell, ya, I earned a demerit or two lollygagging with a pair of borrowed binoculars. Aye, it was worth every bit of it. And a good thing it was too. Sunday morning, bright and early, I was up on the bow with those binoculars, tryin’ to catch a glimpse of those pretties. I was still there when the air-raid sirens sounded, and it was bein’ there that morning that saved me life.”

  Cassie had heard the tale so many times she could tell it herself. He wove such a tapestry with his words, of how he had been blown off the deck and into the water by the first bombs. If he had been almost anywhere else on the morning of December 7th, 1941, he would have likely died when the battleship’s ammunition magazine was hit. Instead, he was among the first sailors fished out of the burning waters by motor launches from the hospital ship. When they got him on board, he was concussed, burned and peppered with shrapnel in his back, but he was alive.

  “An’ there she was, bending over me, an angel in white. I swear, I’ve never seen a more beautiful creature in all me days. I knew right then that I was going ta marry that girl.”

  He waved a hand, clear IV line trailing after, indicating a framed photo on the wall - Granny in her Navy days, fresh-faced and grinning. Alongside the faded picture was a uniform patch from the hospital ship. Cassie could remember earlier tellings of the tale, when Granny would lean in close at this point, whispering. “The old fool still insists that was me, but I wasn’t assigned to his ward until three days later. Still, he does tell a lovely story.”

  Cassie walked around the room, tossing empty plastic cups and picking up various items of clothing he had dropped wherever the mood struck him. Riley had never been a tidy person, something Granny learned to live with rather than complain about. As he wove his narrative, she caught a whiff of an old family friend lingering in the cups. Under the pretext of putting away a pair of socks, she slid open a few drawers until she found the rascal’s secret.

  “Riley Liam Whelan,” she said as she rounded on him, brandishing the empty bottle like a dagger. “What have I told you about this kind of thing?”

  He stopped his tale mid-word and gave her a hang-dog look.

  “Dinna be preachin’ ta me, sweet Caiside. I’m an old man with not so many days left. I’d hate to die of the t’irst.”

  Cassie bore down on him, gently poking with the bottle.

  “That’s no excuse for finishing it without me,” she said. “Now what will we have to bend our elbows?”

  A grin split her face. She couldn’t keep up her feigned anger for long with him. She dug in her bag and pulled out a fresh bottle of his favorite Irish whiskey.

  “Havin’ a bit of fun with me, my fine girl? I don’t know if you got that from me or your granny, but it puts her spark in your eyes.”

  He launched into another round of coughing and Cassie grabbed a cloth handkerchief and passed it to him. It killed her to see him this way. They probably didn’t have more than a couple of months left before she wouldn’t be able to share a drink of Jameson’s with her GranDa. No matter how talented she was with a scalpel, like the scarred Guardian, she couldn’t fix him, and that gave her one more reason to be angry.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as she cracked the seal on the bottle. “I shouldn’t provoke ya so.”

  She snagged a couple of plastic cups from the dispenser on the wall and poured them each a shot. The cups were meant for hydration and washing down the copious number of pills these elderly patients needed. But today they were for celebrating life, something she and her GranDa were clinging to. She handed one of the cups to Riley.

  “The day I stop sputtering is the day they close me eyes, love. Dinna apologize for that.”

  They raised their cups in silent salute, hers to him and his to, well, whatever it was he cheered when they shared this moment. That was the thing about their quiet ceremony - it didn’t involve talking. It wasn’t a grandfather-granddaughter thing. It was a drink with a friend, and it didn’t require words. It was two mates in a pub, touching glasses in the tacit agreement that things, although not what they could be, certainly could be worse. She knocked back her drink and then stared into the depleted cup. After a respectful interval, she spoke up.

  “It’s not the coughing that makes me apologize, GranDa. It’s that I can’t help you. Of all the people I see, every day, you’re the one I can’t save.”

  Riley waved his hand, ready to dismiss her guilt, but she was having none of it.

  “I saved a little girl yesterday. She’s only four years old and someone shot her, in the chest. She wasn’t supposed to live, but I changed that. I did it with the help of a man who’s so damaged he can’t show his face. He’s in need of help, but I can’t give it to him either, no matter how hard I try. And I can’t help you.” She paused to pour another slug into her cup, sipping it this time. “It eats at me, GranDa - the ones I can’t help. The ones that deserve to be saved but aren’t.”

  They sat in the quiet for a spell. He broke the stillness with a heavy sigh. Miraculously, he didn’t cough before speaking.

  “I’m reminded of one summer up at the cabin. Your mum and dah were off somewhere, as usual, helping those that needed it. You couldna’ been but six or seven then, all skinny shanks and boney knees.”

  Cassie sniffed and nodded. A smile crept to her face despite her troubles. Riley had that way with her.

  “You were in heaven, runnin’ ‘round the woods and swimming in the lake. A regular Snow White you were, with blue birds coming
to your crooked finger and rabbits sittin’ at your feet. Then came a day that you found a blackbird, the kind with the yellow and red stripes on its wing. It was terrible hurt, that one. You gathered it up and brought it to yer Granny. ‘It needs fixin’, Granny,’ you says. ‘Can you help me make it better?’”

  “I remember,” Cassie said. “We made a nest in a shoebox and gave it water with an eyedropper. It died sometime in the middle of the night.”

  “And you cried and cried, all the while mad as a hornet. You never cared for losin’ and that’s not changed a lick.”

  Cassie sat and ruminated. It was true - she didn’t like losing. She’d already lost her parents and Granny, and now she was losing Riley, the last of her family. Her world continued to shrink.

  The moment was cut short by a buzz from her phone. She flashed an apologetic smile at Riley as she reached for it. He waved aside any need for her to feel remorse. He’d spent enough years surrounded by healers to know that the world required them at inconvenient times and only the most selfish of hearts begrudged sharing them when the need arose. Cassie pulled on her glasses and swiped to read the incoming text message. She bit at the corner of her lower lip as she read the words again, hoping she had gotten it wrong. Riley lifted an eyebrow.

  “Bad news, I take it?”

  She blew out a breath as she bowed her head.

  “My patient, the little girl I told you about. Her father just died.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Detective Lieutenant Bill Walsh shoved an unlit cigarette into the corner of his mouth before he squatted down and lifted the sheet. He took a good look at the victim's face. Everything he really needed to know was in the report he’d received from the patrolman first on the scene. Still, he made it a point to always look at the faces that went with the names. They were people, not bodies with labels. He needed that connection, that visceral link to the victims and perpetrators. He needed it to make sure he never lost sight of why he did this job. He hoped it made him a better cop. He’d settle for keeping a hold on his humanity.