Bitter Waters (Ukiah Oregon Novels)

314 Pages·2003·0.975 MB·English

by  Wen Spencer

ALSOBYWENSPENCER
ALIEN TASTE
TAINTED TRAIL
B I T T E R
W A T E R S
Wen Spencer
A ROC BOOK
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are
used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is
entirely coincidental.
Bitter Waters (Ukiah Oregon Novels)
A ROC Book / published by arrangement with the author
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2005 by The ROC Publishing Group.
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Electronic edition: September 2005
To James Larkin,
who taught me not to waste daylight
Thanks to D. Eric Anderson, Barbara Carlson,
George Corcoran, Starr Corcoran aka Lady Jade,
Amy Finkbeiner, “Agent” Joan Fisher, Nancy Janda,
Kendall Jung, James and Carol Larkin, Heidi Pilewski,
Dr. Hope Erica Ring, June Drexler Robertson,
Lara Van Winkle, and all the Snippet Hounds of sff.net
And special thanks to Ann Cecil
CHAPTER ONE
Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Ukiah Oregon peered up the city street that climbed the steep
hillside; normally so narrow that passing cars risked clipping
side mirrors, it was now lined with television news trucks and
police cars. Red and blue strobe lights were reflected in every
raindrop. Nations of people gathered in the islands of light
generated by the streetlamps: curious bystanders with um-
brellas, tired cops in rain gear, and TVcrews trying to ignore
the drizzle as they prepared for the eleven o’clock news re-
port.
“Well, this is certainly the right street.” Ukiah scanned the
row houses stepping up the hill on either side of the street.
“2197 would put the house at the top of the hill.”
“Ah, Christ, what a circus,” Max Bennett, Ukiah’s partner,
muttered as he threaded the Cherokee up the slick paving
bricks and found a parking space. “Are you really up to this?”
After two grueling weeks in Oregon solving a missing per-
sons case, Ukiah and Max had flown out of the Pendleton Air-
port at dawn, West Coast time. Bruised, battered, and
bone-weary, they had planned to go straight home once they
landed at Pittsburgh International Airport. Ukiah had looked
forward to seeing his fiancée, Special Agent Indigo Zheng,
and his son, Kittanning. An urgent call about a missing boy,
however, caught them at the layover in Houston, and reluc-
tantly, they agreed to check out the case.
2 Wen Spencer
Ukiah eyed the confusion of people and vehicles. “Yeah, I
should be fine—this is Pittsburgh.”
There was a tap on Ukiah’s window, and he lowered it to
find Pittsburgh policeman Ari Johnson standing beside the
Cherokee.
“Hey, Wolf Boy!” Ari grinned at him. “How’s that kid of
yours?”
“Kittanning?” How did Ari know about Kittanning? Con-
sidering the alien Hex created Kittanning out of Ukiah’s
blood without benefit of a woman or the normal nine months
of waiting, they kept the baby a family secret.
“Ukiah. Kittanning. I get it. You named him after the
town.” Ari guessed correctly. “He’s what? Like three months
old now? Hopefully it’s been a quiet three months, not like
when he was born.”
Ukiah’s memory clicked in: Ari had been at the shoot-out
the day Ukiah recovered Kittanning; the officer had provided
them with diapers, clothing, and formula.
“Um, yeah, three months,” Ukiah said.
“Is he sleeping through the night yet?” Ari asked.
Max scrubbed at his face. “Jeez, Ari, you sound like an old
woman.”
“Triplets do that to you,” Ari said. “My life is all about ba-
bies and guns at the moment. You look like shit, Bennett!”
“Eight hours on a plane will do that.” Max tilted his head
in puzzlement, and then squinted at Ari. “You put them on to
hiring us?” In “you,” Max meant the cops, not Ari as a per-
son.
“You’ve been out of town,” Ari said. “We’ve had too many
kids go missing lately.”
“How many is too many?” Ukiah asked.
“Personally, one is too many, but the count is higher than
that. This makes five.”
“Within the last two weeks?” Max looked like he’d bitten
into something sour.
“Yeah. It’s been one every two days or so. Everyone’s
fairly jumpy.”
“Shit.” Max sighed, looking out his driver’s window and
seeing hidden danger in the night. They had learned the hard
BITTER WATERS 3
way that kidnappings usually meant people with guns and the
will to use them. In the following moment of quiet, rain
lightly tapped on the roof of the Cherokee. Max swore again,
and turned to Ukiah. “Well?”
“We do it.”
“Okay. I’ll deal with the family, kid. Gear up the best you
can.”
As a result of two layovers, some of their checked luggage
had gone astray: specifically the bag with their body armor
and some of their more sophisticated electronics. Luckily
their guns and basic communications gear hadn’t.
Ukiah slid up the window and opened his door to step out
into the rain. “Fill me in, Ari.”
“The missing boy is Kyle Yonan.” Ari took out his notepad
and glanced at it. “He’s white, approximately four-one, sixty
pounds, brown on brown.” Meaning the boy had brown hair
and eyes. “Last seen wearing a red shirt, blue jeans, and ten-
nis shoes. He turned four in July.”
So, they were looking for a child of limited abilities except
for finding trouble.
Ari tucked away his notepad. “The kid has a history of
winding up in odd places. Locked himself in a car trunk once.
Disappeared at Monroeville Mall and ended up in the mock-
up of Santa’s workshop. Weird shit like that all the time.
We’re hoping that it will be something like that again and not
another grab and run.”
“How long has he been missing?” Ukiah lifted the back
hatch on the Cherokee.
“About ten hours. There’s a small patch of yard in the
back. Kyle was playing in it with an older brother this morn-
ing. The brother came into the house for a drink, and Kyle
vanished. The family looked for three hours before they
called us.”
Us being the police.
“No ransom demand?” Ukiah asked.
“None of the missing kids had ransom demands.” Ari went
dead serious. “We’re praying you can find this one.”
And with four kids missing already, the police had the par-
4 Wen Spencer
ents call Bennett Detective Agency to get the legendary Wolf
Boy involved.
“How long has it been raining?” Ukiah found his rain
gear—boots, pants, and coat—and pulled them on.
Ari glanced upward, as if noticing the fine rain for the first
time. “Maybe about two hours. Off and on. It’s the first time
in weeks that it’s rained, wouldn’t you know. The family
turned the house upside down, and we’ve combed the neigh-
borhood. Not a sign of the kid.”
“This rain is going to make it tough,” Ukiah told him.
Ari shrugged with a rustle of rain gear. “They say you’re
the best at this.”
Ukiah knew they said a lot more than just that. He found
the bag with the GPS equipment and pulled it out of the pile
of luggage. It felt odd threading the tracer into his belt with-
out first putting on his body armor.
Max returned with a baby blanket as Ukiah pulled on his
radio headset. “This is Kyle’s blankie.”
Ukiah brushed his fingertips over the worn blue cotton,
finding genetic traces of a dark-haired boy with dark eyes and
a tendency toward hyperactivity, who would someday be tall
and intelligent if he survived his adventure. Ukiah pressed the
blanket to his face, closing his eyes, and breathing in the
boy’s scent. No blood trace or sign of violence stained
the cloth. He came up out of focusing on the blanket to find
he missed most of what Max had said, but it was stored in his
hearing memory, recorded despite his lack of attention to it.
“This is going to be nuts, kid,” Max had said, checking on
the tracer’s signal. “This boy sounds like he has less sense
than God gave a rabbit. They’ve got two locks on his bed-
room door just to keep him in at night.”
“He’s not stupid,” Ukiah told Max. “He’s just got too much
curiosity, too much energy, and no experience.”
“That’s just as bad.”
Ukiah considered what he knew of the area. They were on
the edge of Wilkinsburg, where it climbed up into the hills
that separated it from Penn Hills. Like much of Pittsburgh, the
houses dotted the steep hills wherever one could find a
foothold to build. Pockets of scrub woods occupied the parts