Wen Spencer - Ukiah 3 - Bitter Waters

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Bitter Waters
a sequel to Alien Taste and Tainted Trail
Wen Spencer
First Printing, May 2003
ISBN 0 451 45922 9
To James Larkin,
who taught me not to waste daylight
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 umbrellas, tired cops in rain gear, and TV
crews trying to ignore the drizzle as they prepared for the eleven o'clock news report.
"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 persons case, Ukiah and Max had flown
out of the Pendleton Airport 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 reluctantly, they agreed to check out
the case.
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? Considering 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 babies 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 person.
"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 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 tennis 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 morning. 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 parents 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 neighborhood. 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 without 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 bedroom 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
deemed too sheer. At the foot of the hill lay the rest of Wilkinsburg, with plenty of buildings standing
empty and a reputation of being a rough neighborhood, and then the river. Fascinating danger lay in every
direction.
"Yes, I suppose it is."
***
A flood lamp gleamed on the tiny, rain-bejeweled backyard, littered with toys. Barely ten feet by
twenty feet, the fenced-in area of worn grass seemed a relatively safe and escape-proof area. Ukiah
ignored the toys and grass to concentrate on the fence. As he expected, the rain-slick steel held traces of
the boy's climb to freedom. Beyond the fence, the land fell away into a nearly sheer drop, its steepness
disguised by wild cherry trees and banks of dying goldenrod. Animals had pushed paths through the tall
brush, and the boy had followed.
The path came out on the parallel street, lower down the hillside. The cement of the sidewalk
seemed washed clean by the rain. Ukiah crouched at the edge of the woods, sweeping hands over the
wet stone, trying to find any clue. Max drove up in the Cherokee, turning off the headlights as he turned
the corner so as not to blind Ukiah's now highly light-sensitive eyes.
Focused on the hunt, Ukiah was only dimly aware that Max had gotten out, and signaled Ari in
his squad car to kill his lights. The policeman got out with the thud of a car door and the quiet squeak of
rain gear rubbing against itself.
"How does he do it?" Ari asked quietly. "I can't even see."
"He was raised by wolves." Max misled Ari. It was true Ukiah spent years running with the
wolves, but it had nothing to do with his abilities.
"I thought all that wolf boy stuff was bullshit."
"Not all," Max said. "By the way, Ari, thanks for the baby stuff in June. It was a lifesaver."
"No problem," Ari said. "You two really weaseled out of there fast; not that I blame you, the first
of the media was already showing up. Hey, that reminds me though. There's a new federal agent in town
asking questions about the shootout."
"Federal agent? What branch?"
Ari grunted and searched his pockets for a business card. "Grant Hutchinson. Homeland
Security. He pulled me into questioning on Friday. He had photographs of you two."
"Us?" Max asked as Ukiah glanced up, startled out of his focus. Max flashed the business card
so Ukiah could see it and then studied it himself. "What kind of photos?"
"Professional photographer's photos, really high-quality stuff. Most of the pictures were of you
guys, but he had one of me. He wanted me to ID you two."
"Did he say why?" Max asked as Ukiah went back to tracking.
Ari made a rude noise. "No. Not a clue. He kept me in interrogations for an hour, asking
everything from my religion down to if my belly button was an innie or an outie."
"What did you tell him about us?" Max asked.
"Your names," Ari said. "That the kid is a tracking wonder and that you two were out in Oregon,
trying to find Kraynak's niece. I don't know any more than that, other than, as far as I've ever heard or
seen, you're good people."
"Thanks," Max said. "Friday, eh?"
"Friday afternoon, just after I went on shift," Ari said.
As Max questioned Ari about the federal agent, Ukiah finally found the trace he had been
searching for: the rich earth of the hillside stamped into the shape of a small shoe print. All but crawling,
he followed the track down the street another hundred feet before it vanished. He crouched in the
drumming rain, patiently sweeping the cement with his fingertips. The chill of the night vanished for him, as
did the beat of the rain. The distant hiss of tires on wet pavement silenced. Even the light went as he
focused in tight on the rough cement. He became aware of the sand versus gravel content. The faint feel
of bird tracks left from a sparrow crossing the newly poured cement sometime in the far past.
Nothing of the boy.
He flicked through his other senses. Unless he found something here, the trail was gone. He could
begin a spiral search pattern, hoping to stumble across a new start, but in the rain, every minute made the
chance less likely.
Fine-tuned, he realized he was drawing in air ever so faintly tainted by blood. He stilled
completely, aimed at the scent. It pressed against his skin, invaded his nose. Locked onto the smell, he
sniffed, nostrils flaring, casting about dog-like. Slowly, he worked his way to a corrugated pipe set into
the ground where a side alley joined the main road. Water ran in a tiny stream down the street and into
the mouth of the pipe. No water, he noticed, poured out of the pipe on the other side of the alley.
"Kyle? Kyle?" he called into the pipe. His voice echoed back at him.
Under the sound of rain and rushing water and his own heartbeat, he thought he could hear the
faint ragged breathing of something small.
"You found him?" Max came to crouch beside him. Ari trailed behind.
"I think he's in this pipe." Ukiah considered crawling into the drain. No, only a small child would
fit. He examined the narrow darkness with his flashlight. "It's T-shape with a drain in the center. If he's in
there, he's down the center pipe somehow. There's so much white noise with the rain that I can't be sure.
I'm smelling blood."
He sniffed again, drawing in the coppery smell. Blood, but not enough information to tell the
source.
Ari shifted restlessly behind them. "It could be a wounded raccoon or possum."
"You said he got into weird places," Ukiah countered.
Ari eyed the pipe as if it would bite him. "Yeah, but, shit, that's a creepy little hole in the ground."
Max stood and swept his flashlight back up the hill to the boy's yard. "His brother told me that
they had been playing with a ball, throwing it back and forth. If the ball landed on this street, it would
have funneled down into this pipe."
Lying in the water, Ukiah reached in as far as he could stretch, questing with his outstretched
fingers. His fingertips found the ragged edge where the pipe turned down, water pouring over the lip,
washing away any sign of the boy.
The rain started to come down harder, moving from a light patter to a quickening drum.
Max swore. "If he's down there, this is going to get ugly fast. This is part of Nine Mile Run."
Sometime in the past, several creeks had been routed completely underground in concrete culverts that
converged to form Nine Mile Run; it was a deadly labyrinth they had dealt with before. "Damn, if the
airline hadn't lost our luggage, we could snake one of the minicams down the drain to be sure."
"I'll call for a rescue team and look for a manhole," Ari offered, seeming anxious to get away
from the narrow pipe.
The rill of water coming down the hill was already deepening. Ukiah flashed to another child in
the storm drains, a maze of swirling dark waters and an unhappy end, when Max was forced to pull him
out half-drowned. "Max, I don't want to do that again—wander around lost while the kid drowns. We
should see if we can find a map of the system."
"The rescue team can deal with the storm drain," Max said. "All we need to do is convince them
that he's really down there. Are you sure?"
"No," Ukiah had to admit. How he could squeeze into the pipe and see if Kyle was actually stuck
in the pipe? If he was younger, closer to Kyle's age, he could fit.
It occurred to him there was a way to be smaller.
Ukiah dug his Swiss army knife from his pocket and made a deep cut across his wrist.
Max swore in surprise and caught Ukiah's shoulder. "What the hell? Ukiah? What are you
doing?"
"I'm going to make a mouse." Ukiah caught the flow of hot blood in his palm. "And I'm going to
use it as an extra set of eyes."
Max released him. "Okay. Just keep it out of sight. I'll keep Ari distracted."
Ukiah clung to the memories of the boy as the rest of the day drained down into his hand. The
blood stopped as the wound healed shut. He concentrated on the blood cupped in his hand, urging it to
take form instead of seeping back into his body, merging with him again. It formed a quivering sack.
Bones took form, a racing heart, and then finally the dark fur of a black mouse.
"Thank you," Ukiah breathed, and carefully placed the mouse as far into the drain as he could go.
"Go on, find the boy."
He leaned his body against the pipe, and thought only of the mouse as it skittered fearfully along
water into the darkness.
cold wet steel, undulating in frozen minihills, a rushing river of muddy water, a vast
curving ceiling echoing back the white noise of water, something huge ahead, the growing smell
of blood, the edge of a great hole, clinging to the edge, trembling with fear …
Ukiah tried to send comfort and encouragement over the fraying link. He could create the mouse
because he was in truth a collection of independently intelligent cells acting as a whole. Whatever method
his cells used to communicate, endowing him with telepathic abilities with his mice and those closely
related to him, depended much on mass. The smaller the collection of cells, like the mouse, the shorter
the distance he could communicate with it.
If he had been reduced down to hundreds of mice, none of them would venture down the
terrifying drop. They would be too hard-wired by instinct to follow that course. They would flee to a safe
dry place, and eat until they had energy to merge into a larger, stronger creature, hopefully human,
hopefully with enough of his memories intact to return to being Ukiah. Thus, only with Ukiah's human
mind directing the mouse remotely, did it overcome its fear and carefully pick its way down the rusty cliff.
brown curly hair, a male human, a chilled cheek, closed eyes …
"It's him," Ukiah whispered.
"Unfortunately," Max's voice came over Ukiah's headset. "The nearest manhole is way down
here, around the corner, and it's really started to pour. Damn, where's that rescue crew?"
Ukiah murmured an answer, trying to coax his mouse back out. It was on the edge of his
influence, though, and frightened. It scurried back and forth on the imagined safety that the boy provided,
hesitant to face the dark alone. Suddenly it slipped into the fast-moving water that chuted down over
slick bare skin. Ukiah squeaked in surprise as the mouse was swept down through a hole between child
and pipe and washed away.
"Ukiah!" Max called over the headset. "What's wrong?"
Ukiah leapt to his feet and bolted toward Max. "I've lost my mouse! I need to get it back."
Max exploded into curses.
The rain beat furiously down now, sheeting off the rest of the world so it seemed like Ukiah
struggled within a pocket universe to save the boy. He rounded the corner and found his partner and Ari
beside an opened manhole, shining lights into the hole.
Max looked up, obviously torn. "Kid, the water is already deep and fast, and it's raining harder
now. We don't have ropes, and you're not even sure what direction to go. Just wait for the rescue crew."
"I've got to go," Ukiah said, wishing Ari wasn't there so he could argue with Max openly.
Perhaps, it was better this way—he could never win arguments with Max. He hadn't considered losing
his mouse when he sent it into the drain—a lost mouse was much too dangerous to the world. Hex had
used a single stolen mouse to create Kittanning. With a second mouse, the Ontongard leader had nearly
remade Max into a clone of Ukiah. Even without the evil intentions of the Ontongard, Ukiah could not
ignore that somehow, some part of the dismembered child Magic Boy, perhaps just a lone mouse, had
become the Wolf Boy, and eventually himself.
He had to get it back. He brushed past Max to the manhole, ignoring the look that spoke
volumes.
***
The sound of water falling out the throats of countless feeder pipes, echoed by curving concrete,
combined into an unending deafening roar. Ukiah climbed down the slick metal ladder into the ink
blackness. The water grabbed his foot as he went to step off the ladder, trying to jerk him under. He
braced himself against the current and found his footing. The water flowed up to his knees, numbingly
cold, seeming nearly solid with the force it applied on him.
Ukiah stood a moment, waiting to adjust to the cave darkness pressing in on him. As his eyes
adapted, the fist-sized disk of filthy concrete illuminated by his flashlight became a curving, grime-coated
wall, a shimmer reflecting off the moving blackness that was water, and the thin paleness where the two
met in a mud-tainted froth. Sound and pressure filled in what he could not see; he sensed the top of the
pipe close to his head and the opposite wall just out of reach and out of sight.
Trying to ignore how little space was left between the flat plain of water and the top arch of the
pipe, Ukiah concentrated on finding the boy and his mouse. Kyle had been west of the manhole, but this
culvert ran north to south. Ukiah replayed the last moments of contact with his mouse. It had rushed
away from him, heading south, not east toward this culvert. Nor could he sense his mouse now, or glean
anything of the boy. Ukiah decided to follow the flow of water and see if there was a main junction pipe.
Letting go of the ladder, he waded with the current, fighting to stay upright. The cement floor, unseen
under the water, sloped with the steep hillside, which would make getting back hard. His flashlight
danced through the cave darkness as he staggered forward.
Fifty feet down, the pipe ended, spilling its water down into a ten-foot-tall main junction pipe
running east to west. The water was deeper, over his knees and creeping toward his hips. Much deeper
and he'd lose his footing against the current completely. And he still wasn't sure if he was going the right
direction. He played his flashlight down the left-hand wall of the pipe, looking for something that led back
north to Kyle.
Max said something to him over the headset, the thunder of water drowning out his words.
"What?" He cupped his free hand over his ear, trying to keep the water's roar out.
"Which way are you going?"
"I went south. I'm going east now. First left!" Ukiah shouted and spotted a likely feeder, forty feet
down. While only four feet in diameter, the pipe was still wide enough for him to travel without getting
stuck. "I'm going to head north now. Hopefully it will take me back to Kyle!"
He overshot the feeder, shoved past the opening by the rushing water. Gripping the lip of the
pipe, he hauled himself back and up into the pipe. He had to squat, duck-walking against the water, but
luckily it only came to his shins. Fast-food drinking cups and empty pop bottles floated past him, washed
out of gutters and into the storm drain. He came to a small dam made from a wedged tree branch and a
Kentucky Fried Chicken box.
Perched on top was his mouse.
"Oh, thank God," he breathed. He picked up the tiny bundle of shivering wet fur and, unzipping
his coat, tucked it into his shirt pocket. He broke up the tree branch, clearing it out of his way, letting the
water float the debris away.
"Come on, Ukiah!" Max called over the headset. "It's turning into a downpour out here! You've
got to get out!"
"I'm almost there!" He worked his way past the smaller pipes feeding into his, sniffing for the
blood trace he picked up earlier. There!
His luck held. Kyle's pipe was little more than an elbow, doing an abrupt right angle into the
drainpipe Ukiah crouched in. While only about a foot across, it should have been wide enough for the
four-year-old to wriggle through. Ukiah worked his hands up between the boy and pipe. While Kyle's
front was pressed tight to the pipe, there seemed plenty of room in the back. Why was the boy stuck?
Wedged tight against the center of the boy's back was a ball. Irregularities in the pipe kept the
ball from descending, and the boy lacked any way to push the ball up, as his hands were trapped to his
side.
"Ukiah!" Max was shouting.
"I almost have him, Max." Ukiah pushed the ball up and out of the pipe, and the boy slid down
into his arms in a gush of water like a baby being born. Alive. Unconscious. Ice cold. "Got him!"
"What?" Max shouted.
Ukiah didn't bother to answer. He waddled awkwardly down the pipe, carrying the limp boy. At
the mouth lip, he halted with a groan of despair. The water level had risen dramatically in the junction
pipe; most likely the rushing water would come up to his chest now. Just dropping down into the flow
would be like stepping out in front of a speeding car; he doubted he could keep his feet when it hit him. If
he lost hold of the boy in this torrent, he wouldn't be able to get him back.
"Max! Where are the rescue crews?" He cupped his microphone to keep the water's roar out.
"Max, I'm going to need someone on ropes."
"Hold on!"
He waited in the vast, dark wet roaring. Two lights appeared in the feeder upstream and picked
him out. "I see them!"
The lights separated, one coming on while the other stayed, anchoring ropes. The first rescue
worker came fast, carried on the rush of water like a piece of debris. Ukiah caught Max's scent as the
first light slammed against his pipe, revealing that it belonged to his partner.
"What are you doing?" Ukiah shouted at him.
"Getting you out of here!" Max shouted back. "Come on!"
Max steadied him as he climbed down into the current. The water smashed into him, and then
tried pulling him down and carrying him away. Together they worked their way back to Ari, standing
anchor for the rope. The policeman was tied off with a second rope, leading back to the ladder.
Brilliant light and water streamed down through the open manhole. Hands reached down for the
boy, and Ukiah blindly passed the small limp body upward.
"Go on," Max shouted.
Ukiah ducked his head, lost between cave black and brilliance. "I can't see!"
"Go on, Ari!" Max waved the cop ahead, and then guided Ukiah's hand to the ladder. "Can you
make it alone?" Ukiah nodded. "I'll go first and act as your eyes."
Max climbed up, and was there, a steadying hand and voice, when Ukiah scrambled out of the
manhole. Rescue No. 1, the heavy rescue truck from the Shadyside station, Engine No. 14 of the
Oakland fire station, and another squad car had filled the street while Ukiah was in the storm drains. The
night was full of flashing lights, blaring radios, moving bodies, shouting voices, and restraining hands.
Ukiah covered his eyes as they shifted painfully back to human normal, trying to block out some
of the confusion around him. At least the earlier cloudburst had ended, and the rain had tapered down to
a fine drizzle.
"He's fine." Max fended off an attempt to get him onto a gurney. "Just give him a moment."
A compromise of him sitting on the fire engine's bumper was reached, and a woman pushed
away his hand, commanding, "Let me see. Do you have something in your eyes?"
"The light hurts." He blinked open his eyes, squinting against the glare. "I got used to the dark."
"Then you probably don't want me to do this." She shone a penlight into his eyes and watched
them dilate. Behind her, the ambulance pulled away, whisking Kyle off to Children's Hospital. "You really
should leave this stuff to us," she chided. "Good work, though. It's great to have finally found one of the
missing kids."
A few minutes later she announced him completely fit. By then, word of the rescue had reached
the media, and four TV news reporters from the local channels arrived, followed by cameramen and
more bright lights.
"Mr. Oregon, how did you find the little boy?"
"We're told he's been taken to Children's Hospital. How badly was he hurt?"
"Were there any signs of the other four missing children?"
"No. He just went after a lost ball," Ukiah told them, following Max as his partner cleared a path
to the Cherokee. "He climbed down into the storm drain and got stuck. This wasn't connected to the
kidnappings."
"How did you find him? The police searched the neighborhood for hours. People here say you've
only been on the case for less than an hour."
"Did you follow his scent, Wolf Boy?"
"No more questions." Max unlocked the Cherokee remotely, and opened the passenger door for
Ukiah. "We've had a rough day and we're heading home now."
The reporters chased Max around the Cherokee as he threw the damp climbing ropes into the
back and then got into the driver's seat, repeating the same questions while he shook his head and said,
"No comment."
Max and Ukiah were silent until they turned the first corner, leaving the chaos behind them.
"Did you get your mouse?"
"Yeah." Ukiah took the mouse out of his pocket and found a power bar to feed to it. "Where did
you get the ropes?"
"Bought them off a neighbor. Rock climber. I paid the little shit twice what they were worth."
"So you paid him all the money in the world?"
Max looked at him, surprised, and then grinned. "I suppose that is what they were worth to us."
***
Their offices were in Shadyside, a small, affluent neighborhood filled with boutiques and
mansions. Max had bought the house when he was happily married, planning to fill it with antique
furniture and spoiled children. His wife died in a car accident, changing those plans, and the mansion was
now the office for Bennett Detective Agency. To Ukiah, it was a second home, complete with his own
bedroom.
摘要:

[FrontTeaser][VersionHistory]BitterWatersasequeltoAlienTasteandTaintedTrailWenSpencerFirstPrinting,May2003ISBN0451459229ToJamesLarkin,whotaughtmenottowastedaylightCHAPTERONEWilkinsburg,PennsylvaniaSunday,September12,2004UkiahOregonpeeredupthecitystreetthatclimbedthesteephillside;normallysonarrowthat...

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