"Organisms!"
"... you need to get a life."
Catherine moved to number eight's box and adjusted the power. "Somebody has to stay here and take care of them."
Donald sighed. "Better you than me."
Touch.
Her touch.
As electronic impulses continued to move out from the net, more and more words were returning. Hold. Want. Have. Number nine didn't know what to do with those words, not yet.
Wait.
"Is she asleep?"
"Yes." Henry sank down onto the sofa and rested his arms across his knees, the scattering of red-gold hair below his rolled-up sleeves glittering in the lamplight.
"Did you have to... convince her?"
"Very nearly, but no. I merely helped her to calm and exhaustion did the rest."
Celluci snorted. "Helped her to calm?" he growled. "Is that a euphemism for something I don't want to know about?"
Henry ignored the question. "It's late. What are you doing up?"
Lifting his feet up onto the coffee table and stretching long legs, Celluci grunted, "Couldn't sleep."
"Do you want to?"
It was asked innocently enough. No. Not innocently. Nothing Fitzroy did came under the heading of innocent. Neutrally enough. "No." Celluci tried to keep his response equally neutral. "I just thought that if you had any idea of what we're supposed to do next, well, I'd like to hear it."
Henry shrugged and threw a quick glance back over his shoulder toward the bedroom where Vicki's heart beat slow and steady, finally free of the angry pounding it had no doubt taken all day. "I honestly have no idea." He turned to look through the shadows at the other man. "Don't you have a job to go back to?"
"Compassionate leave," Celluci told him shortly, eyes half closed. "Shouldn't you be out, oh, I don't know, stalking the night or something?"
"Shouldn't you be out detecting?"
"Detecting what? It hardly makes sense to stake out the scene of the crime and you can bet that asshole Chen, or whatever his real name is, has vanished. All the profiles in the world won't help us identify a perp we can't find."
Henry reached down and fanned the papers on the coffee table by Celluci's feet. Vicki had spent the evening compiling the day's data and when he'd risen, just before eight, she'd presented her results.
"I spoke to everyone who might have had contact with him, except one of three bus drivers, and I'll speak to him tomorrow. Clothes and hairstyles may change, but tiny habits are harder to break. He smiles a lot. Even when he's alone and there's nothing apparent to smile about. He drinks Coke Classic exclusively. He usually has some kind of candy in his pocket. He most often sits in the seat in front of the rear door next to the window. He'd get on the Johnson Street bus at Brock and Montreal with a ticket, not a transfer. That probably means he lives downtown."
Henry had been impressed; and equally concerned. "Victory" Nelson appeared to have no room in her investigation for grieving. A steady emotional diet of rage, especially at this time, couldn't be healthy. He scanned the pages of notes and shook his head. "She's got everything here but a picture."
Reluctantly, Celluci agreed. Years of training seemed to have gained a foothold in Vicki's emotional response and she was now searching for the person instead of just blindly clutching at the name. "Detective Fergusson says he'll try to free up the police artist tomorrow."
"Why do I get the feeling that Detective Fergusson doesn't think that's necessary?"
"It's not that. It's resources. Or specifically lack of resources. As he pointed out, and this is a quote, 'Yeah, it's a terrible thing, but we can't hardly keep up with indignities done to the living.'" Celluci's lips thinned as he remembered various "indignities" he'd witnessed done to the living that had gone unpunished due to lack of manpower, or departmental budget cuts, or just plain bad management. He didn't, by any means, approve of Vicki's recent conversion to vigilantism, but, by God, he understood it. The satisfaction of knowing that Anwar Tawfik was dust and this time would stay dust, of knowing Mark Williams had paid for the innocents he'd slaughtered, of knowing that Norman Birdwell would loose no further horrors on the city, all of that weighed heavily against law in the scales Justice held.
He peered blearily at Henry Fitzroy from under heavy lids. How many others had there been? Hundreds? Thousands? While he'd been busting his butt and walking his feet flat, had Fitzroy and others like him been spending the night methodically squashing the cockroaches of humanity? Celluci snorted silently. If they were, they were doing a piss poor job.
Vampires. Werewolves. Demons. Mummies. Only for Vicki would he even consider accepting such a skewed view of reality. Maybe he should've listened to his family, married a nice Italian girl, and settled down. Much as Henry had done earlier, he shot a glance over his shoulder toward the bedrooms. No. A nice girl, Italian or otherwise, couldn't hope to compete. Vicki was a comrade, and a friend, and, as asinine as it sounded, the woman he loved. He'd stand by her now when she needed him, regardless of who, or what, stood by her other side.
He didn't want to have anything to do with Henry Fitzroy. He didn't want to respect him. He sure as shit didn't want to like him. He appeared to have no choice regarding the first point, had months ago lost the second, and strongly suspected, in spite of everything, that he was losing the third. Jesus. Buddies with a bloodsucker. Responses had to be filtered through the memory of power he'd been shown in Vicki's living room. Safer to play with a pit bull.