Chapter 40 - The Captor
Canyon parked the MCU behind the station. He and Timber headed into the duty room. Trevor was inside, heading for the door they just walked in. He ignored them, grabbed a piece of paper off a desk and wrote something down, then he looked up at the ceiling and said, “Gross.”
“What’s gross?” Timber said.
“Hold on, I’m talking to Troy.”
Timber opened every drawer in every desk in the duty room while they were waiting. He found a bag of cheese nibs and ripped it open, pouring half in his mouth. He found another and threw it to Canyon. Canyon grabbed it out of the air but did not open it. He was watching Trevor.
Trevor seemed done with his convo. “Rex is dead,” he told them.
“Nice,” Timber said.
“Graeme ate his head.”
“Are we talking chomp or chew?” Timber said.
“Ate it whole I think.”
“That’s nasty,” Timber said, tossing a cheese nib in in his mouth.
Canyon dropped his nibs on the duty desk. He wasn’t hungry anymore.
“I’m heading up to the Harlem Reservoir,” Trevor said. “You two are on mop up. Report to Mac.”
Trevor left. Canyon and Timber headed for the gear and supply rooms. They washed up, changed uniforms, got new batteries and fresh equipment, yawning through it all.
The police radio droned on and on, but it was all old business—all cleanup of the day’s messes.
Dressed and ready, they went to find Mac.
Canyon called Mac in ruhi. Me’n Timber are available for assignment.
Come to the receiving desk, we’ve got a high-profile prisoner coming in from Boone County.
They found Mac standing outside, watching the strangely empty parking lot, his arms crossed over his chest. Sirens wailed in the distance from all directions.
“They caught a foxen,” Mac said, his voice hard.
A prisoner transport van pulled in and parked in front of them. Four uniformed males got out, all wolven. Timber knew them all and greeted each by name. They opened the sliding door, and the prisoner was revealed.
He was a big guy with reddish hair and beard, hands and feet shackled to a bar on the floor of the van.
His face was dirty; his jeans and T-shirt were torn and filthy.
He scented like a foxen, and like dirt, sweat, and the Pravus.
He was staring out the windshield, a small, serene smile on his face, completely ignoring the wolven. A black eyepatch covered his left eye.
An officer handed over the arrest report. Mac took it and handed it straight to Canyon, while Timber shot the shit with the rest of the officers from Boone County.
Canyon skimmed through the lengthy report, reading between the lines.
It said that a farmer had reported unauthorized vehicles in a field.
One officer responded and found a single truck.
He approached it, but then a hidden male shouted to him to stay away, it was explosive.
The officer retreated and called for backup, and the truck exploded in the middle of the field while backup was on the way.
All that was left in the field was a hole in the ground.
The explosion sent the pieces of the truck flying, but no one had been hurt.
After a manhunt, they had found this male sitting on the back of one of the police cars.
He cooperated with the arrest but wouldn’t give his name.
He hadn’t spoken a word. He had no wallet or I.D.
on him, and his fingerprints weren’t in the system.
“He’s marked,” one of the officers told Mac quietly, handing him a clipboard for a signature.
Mac signed for the prisoner. “Bring him inside,” he said.
Canyon watched the big male as the officers unlocked the shackles from the floor and ordered him out of the van. That smile never left his face, and he did not speak, but he did as he was told.
Once he was standing outside, he stared up at the building, his face serene, the heavy shackles hanging off his wrists and ankles.
Mac walked in front of him a few times, then got right up in his face, chest to chest.
“Are we going to have a problem with you?”
The male did not respond, instead he looked through Mac like he wasn’t even there, looking at ease with the situation.
“You proud of yourself?” Mac growled. “You hurt plenty of people today.”
The smile disappeared, but the male did not respond.
Hold up, Mac. Canyon said. Lay off him. This might not be what you think.
Mac gave Canyon a look but kept quiet. They all herded the male inside and into an interview room. He sat where he was told to sit. Mac handcuffed the male to the desk, still shackled.
“Thanks guys,” Mac said. “You’ll get your shackles back tomorrow.”
The males filed out and Timber followed them. Canyon stayed to watch the interview.
“What’s your name?” Mac asked, hovering over the interview chair, but not sitting.
The male didn’t respond. He’d picked a spot on the wall and was staring at it. The small smile was back.
Mac got out some paper and a pen and tossed it in front of the guy. “Write it down,” he said. The male didn’t respond or move. Mac started firing personal questions at him, and when there was no response, he changed subjects.
“How many explosives were in the truck?”
“Where’d you get the truck?”
“Where’s your friends?”
“When were you marked?”
Mac continued to question the male, and the male continued to stare at the wall.
Try ruhi, Canyon said.
With a foxen? Mac said. He leaned against the wall. You do it.
Canyon went to the chair and sat down.
‘Sup.
No response.
Name’s Canyon Wheeling, but you already know that don’t you? You know all our names.
The male snuck a look at him and Canyon knew he’d been heard.
What’s going on? Mac said.
Nothing. He’s not answering me.
Canyon called Timber privately. I need Mac out of my face.
I got you, Timber said.
From somewhere down the hallway, Timber yelled, “Mac!”
Mac stuck his head out the door. “What?!”
“Tacos!”
“Oh, okay,” Mac muttered. To Canyon he said, See what you can get out of him.
Will do.
Mac left. Canyon and the male sat like they had been. After Mac’s footsteps faded, the male looked right at him.
Canyon considered, then said, I saw Reynard get taken into the Pravus last night. Me’n my brother tried to get to Khain, but we weren’t fast enough.
The male’s expression tightened, and his eyes searched Canyon’s, but he didn’t speak.
Reynard’s a hero, in my opinion. He tried to kill Khain.
Still no answer.
You put that truck in the field so the bombs wouldn’t hurt anyone, didn’t you?
The male didn’t respond, but his emotions began to broil, evidenced by his quickly changing scent.
Then you warned off the officer, so he didn’t get blown up.
Now the male was staring at him openly.
Is that why the bombs at SPD were put in the empty buildings in the back? So no one would be hurt?
The male looked like he was going to speak, but then he shook it off and straightened in his chair. He picked a new spot on the wall just over Canyon’s head and stared at it.
Canyon sat. He waited. He mused. He thought.
This male didn’t trust him; he wasn’t going to speak and there was nothing Canyon could do about it.
Canyon studied him instead—his dirty clothes, his scratched-up face, his eyepatch.
Canyon imagined the mark on his chest and what it had been like in the Pravus for him.
Canyon wondered if the male lived in Spookville, wondered if he had kids or a mate who needed him.
Canyon got up and paced in the small room, thinking about what he could say or do to cut through the bullshit and get this male to trust him.
Probably nothing—but he was going to try.