Paradigms Lost - eARC

by Ryk E. Spoor

  “Are you flirting with me?”

  “As usual, of course.” We kissed. “Hey, how about I pick you out something pretty?” I said, as we were passing a jewelry shop.

  Syl grinned. “What girl could refuse? Even if you do have questionable taste in gems.”

  “I make up for it by my taste in girls.”

  She gave me a nudge in the ribs as we entered Marie’s Jewelry Box. “That had better be girl, singular, Mr. Wood.”

  Aside from the clearly visible CryWolf camera pointing at the door, the store itself was a not-so-subtle reminder of the changes the events in Morgantown had wrought. In the old days—barely a year distant—silver had been the most popular metal for affordable but adequate jewelry. Now there were considerably fewer silver pieces on display, even in large jewelry stores, and those that remained were far more expensive, and some had been designed with an eye towards defense as much as beauty. For a while, silver had eclipsed gold in terms of price per ounce, and even after the immediate hysteria had subsided, silver’s price remained far, far higher than it had been before the werewolves had made their debut.

  I noted even fewer silver pieces in this store—only two, in the back and not well-displayed. The majority of items were gold and platinum. Syl and I spent quite a while looking around, comparing, arguing gently on occasion, before we finally decided on a platinum-and-gold bracelet encircled with a spectrum of multicolored stones.

  “A lovely choice,” the owner, Marie, said, smiling—not surprisingly, since it was also one of her most expensive pieces. “Can I wrap that for you?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said, slipping it onto Sylvie’s wrist and kissing her hand, “I think we’ve got a perfectly good way to carry it, thanks.”

  Smiling, Marie took my proffered credit card. Her smile froze momentarily as she glanced at it. She looked back at me, eyes wide. “J-Jason Wood? As in…the Jason Wood?”

  I sighed. I might not be at movie-star-celebrity level, but I was already resigned to the fact that I was no longer a completely private individual either. “Yes, I’m Jason Wood.”

  She smiled. For a moment, I thought it looked a bit forced, but then it relaxed. “Well, then, welcome. Lord, what a change you brought down on us, eh?”

  “Heh.” I acknowledged the (unfortunately all-too-familiar) mildly amusing sally. “Not entirely my doing.”

  “Of course not,” she agreed, and turned to run the card through. “Changed my own business enough, though—that I can guarantee you. Hardly any silver jewelry available anymore, and the silver dust business—well, I’m sure you know all about that.”

  I nodded, noticing that the standard-issue box for silver dust packets was present but tagged “out of stock.” She noticed my gaze as she handed me the slip to sign. “Oh, my suppliers ran short on everything silver this month. I’m expecting a resupply in next week, if you were needing any…?”

  “No, no,” I said, passing her the white copy. “We won’t be here more than a couple of days, just driving around.”

  “Well, thank you very much for your patronage, Mr. Wood—and congratulations. I hope you will both be very happy together.”

  “Thank you,” Syl replied. “So far, so good!” She giggled as we left, jangling her new bracelet against the others she already had on.

  But her face grew serious after a few more paces. “Jason?”

  “Hmm?” I pulled my mind from the distraction of certain parts of Sylvie’s anatomy. “What?”

  “She seemed friendly enough and all, but I could have sworn…when she first saw your name, I thought I sensed fear—almost panic.”

  I blinked. “Why the heck would she be afraid of me?”

  Syl shrugged. “I don’t know. It was a momentary impression—a flash, you know—and then everything seemed perfectly normal. Just thought I should mention it.”

  “Great,” I grunted. “Guess I’d better check our supplies tonight. Just in case.”

  “Really, it’s probably nothing; I don’t have a bad feeling about her or anything. Let’s get dinner.”

  It was fully dark when we finally left the Cactus Steakhouse. (Steak, yes. I love seafood as much as anyone, but this vacation had been awfully seafood-heavy and we both decided on a change.) The stars glittered overhead, at least those which could overcome the town lighting, as we walked back towards our hotel. “Oooh, that was good,” I said finally.

  “It better have been, seeing as you ate so much,” Syl replied indulgently. “Jason, just because we’re married now I don’t want you settling down and growing a potbelly.”

  “Hey! I always eat a lot. And we were doing a lot of exercise this afternoon.”

  She was about to reply when something caught our ears. A…grunt? A cough? A slight gasp or something? I couldn’t quite place it, except it sounded somehow terrified. It was coming over the fence of a nearby yard. I glanced at Syl, to feel my stomach knot; her “feeling” face was on, that frighteningly intense gaze that focused on nothing, yet saw beyond anything. “Be careful, Jason!” she hissed, knowing my actions even before I’d decided.

  I nodded and gestured for her to stay where she was, near the fence, while I moved forward toward the gate. Cautiously, I pushed; it was open and swung easily. I wished I had my trusty ten-millimeter on hand, and wondered if I was going to be one of the cats that curiosity killed.

  The yard was dark; there were no lights were on in the house to which it was attached, and my eyes were still accustomed to the streetlights. But I could make out something on the ground, about thirty or forty feet away…and I thought I saw movement across the yard, another gate opening, and someone going through. It was nothing I could put my finger on…but something about that distant, moving figure sent a sudden shiver down my spine. “Hello?” I said tentatively.

  There was no answer, though I heard the faint clack of the other gate shutting in the distance. “Sorry to intrude, but I heard something…?”

  Still no answer, but no sudden attacks in the darkness either. I took a deep breath and stepped inside, walking slowly towards the object lying on the ground in front of me. Even before I reached it I had a very nasty feeling I knew what it was. I pulled out my keyring and turned on the mini-flashlight, pointing it downward.

  Lying on the ground before me was a dead man.

  “Oh, for crissakes,” I heard myself say. “I’m on vacation, dammit!”

  Chapter 59: Problems and Premonitions

  “Well, isn’t this just peachy,” I said, finally stripping off the clothes that had become steadily more uncomfortable during our police interviews. “Why couldn’t I have chosen somewhere else?”

  As the people who found the deceased—apparently the very recently deceased—Jerry Mansfield, not only had we been extensively questioned by the police but were issued the standard request to remain in the area.

  Syl managed a sympathetic smile, though she couldn’t have been feeling any more comfortable. “Jase, darling, I think we have to face the fact; it’s your karma. You attract these kind of things. If we went somewhere else, that’s where we’d find the trouble. Even before you met up with Verne, the cases you got involved with had some odd features.”

  I admitted that this was something I couldn’t argue, loath though I was to admit that there was anything to Sylvie’s “karma” theory. “Maybe this one will be resolved quickly…” I started, as I turned on the shower. I caught her narrowed gaze, sighed. “…or maybe not,” I said. “That feeling wasn’t just death?”

  “It was very, very bad, Jason. I haven’t felt anything like that since…since I saw Renee and knew she was going to kill you.”

  Renee’s name sent a pang through me, despite the year that had gone by. I missed her hardcase-cop façade and quiet friendship. “Did you see his face?”

  Syl nodded. “Horror.”

  “Well, it could have been a rictus of pain, but I agree, Syl. The first thing to come to mind when I looked at him was that he died in terror. Eyes wi
de open.” I frowned. “I looked over the body quickly, and without touching or moving him I couldn’t find any traces of injuries, either. No vampire bites, no slashes, and so on.”

  “A werewolf doesn’t have to cut you,” Sylvie reminded me.

  “True,” I said, stepping into the shower to let the hot water blast the sand off my body, “but, according to Verne, they do have to get awfully close to you in order to suck the life out of you without physical contact. You didn’t check out the area near the body, did you?”

  I could just make out Syl shaking her head through the mist-fogged shower door. “Not really—we didn’t want to muddle things up with more tracks.”

  “There was silver dust scattered over a wide arc in front of him—some of it was even on his clothes. If it had been a wolf, I’d have expected it to either be dead next to him, or at least to have made a rather loud protest about the stuff. They never are very subtle once they are hurt. But if I actually did see the killer leaving, he or she left dead silently, smooth and without great hurry either.”

  “But,” Syl pointed out, and it was a mark of both my worry and tiredness that observing her silhouette undressing only slightly distracted me, “the fact that there was silver at all is a pretty damning clue.”

  I didn’t answer immediately, but lathered my hair and washed. “I dunno, Sylvie. It just doesn’t quite click for me. Sure, the wolves can kill without the slashes, if we take Verne’s word for it—and I don’t doubt him—but still…I’ve never actually heard of them doing it that way. And even less would they do it if the victim started showering the area with silver.” I chewed it over in my mind as I ran soap over the rest of me.

  “Actually, I think you’re right, Jason,” Sylvie said. “It didn’t really feel like a wolf to me either. But if it wasn’t, why the silver?”

  I’d come up with a tentative answer. “Well, if you know that wolves can shapeshift, and you know something is trying to kill you without touching you—and the victim sure was scared about something—wouldn’t you think ‘werewolf!’ right away, no matter what the thing looked like?”

  “Oh.” I heard the faint sounds of Sylvie brushing her teeth. “That makes sense! Confronted by the unknown, you’d try whatever weapons you have available in the hopes that they might work.”

  “Now the real question is,” I said, getting out and toweling off, “why the heck I’m spending my time trying to figure it out. Let the damn cops deal with it.”

  She kissed me and stepped into the shower herself. “Because you know perfectly well that they’re not going to deal with this one. It’s ours. Wood’n Stake ride again.”

  I snorted. “Bah. I’m probably making a mountain out of a molehill. The autopsy will come back saying he died of a heart attack, and the silver dust will be glitter or something from a kid’s birthday party.”

  Syl’s outline against the glass shivered. “I hope so, Jason…but I don’t think it’s going to be that way.”

  When I pulled out the ten-millimeter and loaded it, she knew I felt the same way.

  Chapter 60: Touched with Silver

  Sheriff Carl Baker was a big, tired-looking man with thinning hair combed over the top of his head and a white-sprinkled mustache that also drooped tiredly. “Sorry to have ta drag you back here, Mr. Wood,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I know what it’s like when you’re doing an investigation.”

  “Guess y’ do, at that. Anyways, to be honest we’re kinda at a loss. Jerry may not have been the friendliest guy in town, but he sure weren’t the nastiest, an’ I don’t have a clue about who would’ve killed him.”

  “Are you sure he was killed?”

  Baker’s moon-round face twisted in a sour grimace. “Ain’t sure of anything, right now. Coroner says that so far as he’s concerned, Jerry should’ve been gettin’ up off the damn slab before the autopsy. Not a thing wrong with him—heart in great shape, brain jus’ fine, everything jus’ fine—’ceptin’, of course, that he happens t’ be dead.” He grunted and handed me a file. “Ain’t procedure, but you’ve got yourself a rep in more than one way—I checked out what the cops up north had ta say ’bout you. Anything in there give you an idea?”

  “Well, I’ll see…” I opened the file, started reading. Sheriff Baker, relieved of the responsibility of talking to me for the moment, went into the outer office.

  Baker wasn’t exaggerating; while I’m no doctor, I know how to read ME reports, and this ME was clearly frustrated. Jerry Mansfield, twenty-nine, had apparently been a health nut. He was in perfect shape—not too fat, not too thin, medical records showed excellent cholesterol and blood-pressure measurements, and so on and so forth. The coroner really truly had no idea why this man was dead. There weren’t any marks on his body, no foreign substances on his skin aside from a bit of dirt and silver dust. The latter had been found on his clothes, most heavily concentrated on the hands, head and neck, and…

  Wait one minute. I thought back to last night. There had been the regular sea breeze, but there was no way a significant amount of wind would have been getting into the high-fenced yard, and even if it had, the direction was wrong. What the hell…

  I flipped back to another section of the report, looking for something. It wasn’t there.

  “Sheriff…” I called.

  Baker stuck his head back in. “Found something?”

  “Can you have the coroner check for something specific?”

  “Sure. What do you need?”

  I looked back down at the report. “I want to know if Jerry Mansfield had any silver dust in his lungs. Your ME may be doing an autopsy on a former werewolf.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Baker burst out. “Jerry couldn’t possibly have been a werewolf!”

  I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Oh?”

  Baker looked nonplussed for a moment. “Well…look, he shopped with everyone else, didn’t he? Everyone’s got those things you designed—hell, there’s one right over my door here. Stands to reason the man couldn’t’ve been anything other than one of us.”

  I had to admit there was something to that. Unless a wolf had replaced Jerry Mansfield very, very recently, it was hard to imagine how he could maintain the masquerade in a place like this one, which as a tourist area had apparently made it quite a point to have everything covered from the wolf perspective. “Well, have him check it, anyway.”

  Baker shrugged. “I asked ya to look, I suppose I oughtta go along with it. You got any particular reason for this here idea?”

  I pointed at the photos of the body and the description. “There was silver dust all over the area in front of Mansfield, but if you look at the way it’s distributed, it wasn’t Mansfield doing the throwing; someone threw silver dust at him. He’s got it on his hands where it would be if he tried to shield himself, but mostly on his head and other areas where it would have been if someone tried to throw it at him. Now, I don’t know about you, but the only good reason I can think of to throw a hundred bucks’ worth of silver dust over someone is if you think they’re a werewolf.”

  Baker looked at the photos and swore mildly. “Goddamn. Now that y’ point it out, it’s plain as day.”

  “The clincher, of course,” I finished, “is that Mansfield didn’t have silver dust on him. No pouch or dispenser or anything like it. So it had to be the other person or persons who did.”

  While Baker went to call the ME, I continued studying the report. Footprint and track analysis was very disappointing. While you could, with difficulty, make out my prints and some of Jerry Mansfield’s, there were hardly any readable tracks elsewhere. One investigator said it appeared that something had been swept heavily across the area leading from the body to the other gate, which opened up into a well paved side street. If that was the case, it obviously was a murder of some kind—someone had erased the tracks. I studied the pictures for a few moments more, then put them back.

  Baker hung up. “Okay, he’ll take a look an’ get back to me s
oon. I hope you’re wrong, to be honest. I mean, Jerry was a friend. Not real close, but enough that it’d kinda shake me to find out he wasn’t what he seemed.”

  “Not to mention the other can of worms that would open if it turns out he was one.”

  “Noticed that, did ya?” Baker grimaced again. “Oh, yeah. What do I do if he was a damn wolf? Ain’t no laws dealing with this. The man paid his taxes an’ didn’t cause no trouble, so on that account, I oughtta treat it like any murder. But if he was really one o’ these shapeshiftin’ killers…no thanks, there’s a headache I just don’t need.”

  “Well, Sheriff, I did what I could. Sorry if it causes you more trouble.”

  He waved it off. “Nah, believe me, I’d rather have the answer than not. I’ll let you know what the coroner says.”

  “Thanks. I’m afraid that aside from that one offbeat suggestion, I don’t see anything else. If I think if anything, I’ll call.” We shook hands.

  Chapter 61: Close Call

  A few minutes later, I was letting myself back into the hotel room. Syl came out of the bathroom, gave me a hug and kiss which took a few moments in itself, and then asked, “How’d it go?”

  “The sheriff was actually more interested in getting my professional advice than in raking me over the coals,” I answered. “Handed me the ME report, which did tell me one interesting thing: the silver dust wasn’t Mansfield’s. It belonged to whoever or whatever presumably killed him.”

  Sylvie stared. “You know that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Unless Mansfield was a wolf, and as the sheriff pointed out, that’d be hard to pull off in a town that’s as wolf-wired as this one is. Or unless…” I trailed off. “Doesn’t quite work, dammit.”

  “What?”

  “Well, whoever threw silver dust at Mansfield thought he was a wolf. And it struck me that we do know of one supernatural type of creature that kills werewolves whenever it can get away with it.”