“They were gone. I went all the way to the other side of the tunnel. It’s closed off.”
“Do you think they are just gone, like before?” Charlie said. “Like when Sophie did whatever she did? Atomized them, I guess?”
“I don’t think so. Certainly the one that clawed Fresh wasn’t hurt very badly. We hit the other ones hard, though. I saw what happened. But they were really strong, a lot more than the one I shot in the alley when—you know.”
“I was mesmerized by her or something,” said Charlie, still embarrassed about the time he had let the Morrigan give a handjob in an alley off Broadway and Rivera had delivered nine rounds of lifesaving .9-mm cock-block. “And sad. I was weak and sad.”
“Doesn’t matter, Charlie. What I’m saying is they got out of that tunnel somehow, and there’s no way out except the entrance we came in, not even a maintenance passageway like in the BART tunnels. And they didn’t get by me.”
“Did you check for drainage grates? You know they were sliding in and out of the storm sewers, they don’t need much space when they’re—”
“There’s a Buick in the tunnel,” Rivera said. “A big, old, yellow Buick. All the way at the Fort Mason end, which is boarded up with four-inch-thick beams. So either this man in yellow moved twenty pieces of heavy equipment out of the tunnel, parked his car, then moved twenty pieces back in, or he has another way of getting in and out of that tunnel. A way I can’t see.”
Audrey came back through the glass double doors and joined them.
“Her mom is bringing her over now.”
“Oh, good, she’s not alone,” Charlie said. “Lily’s mom is nice. Kind of surprisingly.”
“You’re dead to her,” Audrey said.
“Why, what did I do to her?”
“No, I mean you need to remember that Charlie Asher is dead to her. She’s not going to recognize you in this body.”
“Oh, yeah. Right.”
A nurse came in from the ward side of the waiting room and everyone looked up. She headed right for Rivera. “Inspector, he’s awake and asking for you.” She looked apologetically at Audrey and Charlie. “I can only let the inspector in, or family. I’m sorry.”
“We’re family,” Charlie said.
The nurse looked at him, then at Audrey, and seemed as if she was trying to think of exactly how to answer without seeming horrible and racist, when Rivera said, “They are part of this investigation. I didn’t want to tell the doctor, but this was an assault. Mr. Sullivan is a herpetologist and Ms. Rinpoche is a sketch artist.”
The nurse appeared almost relieved, but did look for Audrey’s sketch pad. Audrey held up Charlie’s smartphone. “All digital now.”
“We gave him something for the pain,” said the nurse.
As the nurse led them into Minty’s room, which was behind a glass wall facing the nurses’ desk, Audrey whispered, “My last name isn’t Rinpoche, that’s a title.”
“You’re not a sketch artist either, are you?” Rivera whispered back. “I couldn’t remember your last name.”
Minty Fresh’s injured leg was bandaged and held in traction so his knee was at a right angle. His hospital bed was propped up about thirty degrees and his other leg jutted a foot and a half out into space. He smiled when they came in. His face was starting to go gray.
“This is some bullshit,” said the Mint One. “I’ma die and my foot is cold.”
Audrey tried to adjust his blanket, but with the one leg propped up she couldn’t make it work without uncovering him to the waist. She whipped off her sweater and wrapped it around his foot. “Until I can get the nurse to bring you another blanket.”
“Thanks,” said the big man.
“How you doing?” said Charlie.
“How was you doing when this happened to you?” Minty looked to Audrey. “Don’t you put me in one of those creepy puppet things like you did him, just let me go, you hear?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Audrey said. She hugged his jutting foot. “I didn’t know. I would have warned you. I watched them get strong, so strong, with each of the Squirrel People they killed. It was so horrible. I didn’t know you were going to go after them. I didn’t know.”
“What are you talking about?”
So she told them about the attack on the Buddhist Center, about how the Morrigan had grown, taken form as they slaughtered the Squirrel People. She told them about Yama releasing her, saving her from the Morrigan, and what he had said about trying to establish the new order.